Justinian

JUSTINIAN

Iwoke to tumult, some time in the late hours of the night. Only the earliest hint of dawn showed in the window. Beside me, the girl I had taken to bed for my pleasure the evening before stirred and mumbled and rolled over; the soft tip of her bare breast brushed against the side of my arm. I sat up. The racket was very loud, louder than it should have been anywhere near the palace at that hour.

My sitting woke the girl. "What is it?" she asked.

"I don't know, Zoe," I answered. "Whatever it is, the excubitores should set it to rights before long." Assuming the guardsmen would do just that, I leaned over and began to caress her. She sighed, I hope with pleasure, and slid closer to me.

Then someone began pounding on the door to my bedchamber. I snarled an oath, wondering who dared presume to disturb the Emperor of the Romans at his sport. "Flee, my son!" my mother cried. "Foes are in the palace!"

Zoe cried out in fear. Her forgotten, I sprang to my feet. To ward against murderers in the night, I always kept a sword by the bed. Even in near darkness, finding it was no more than the work of a moment. I flung an undertunic over my nakedness and unbarred the door.

My mother stared at me in mingled surprise and dismay. "No, son!" she exclaimed. "Out the window"- she pointed-"and make what escape you can." Zoe came up behind me, wearing rather less than I was. My mother ignored her, sure proof of the depth of her alarm. "Flee!" she said again. "You have only moments- the palace is betrayed."

I thrust the sword out ahead of me, as if to run through an enemy. "Did my great-great-grandfather run from danger?" I demanded. "Did my grandfather? Did my father, when his brothers tried to overthrow him? If they want me, they will find me ready to fight. Where are the excubitores?"

My mother groaned. "Most of them stood aside and let the usurper's men into the palace."

"Who is the usurper?" I demanded, wondering upon whom I should have to avenge myself.

Before my mother could answer, I heard someone around a bend in the corridor say, "The Emperor's bedchamber is that way." Several men came running, their sandals pounding against the mosaic tiles of the floor. To this day, I wonder which of my servants thus betrayed me to my foes. I wonder if he serves me yet. If he does, I wonder how long I can make him last, how much I can make him suffer before dying, if ever I learn who he is.

I had no time to concentrate on the voice, though, for several low ruffians came dashing round the corner. They all had swords. "There he is!" one of them cried, pointing at me in the torchlight. Not wanting the fight to endanger my mother or even Zoe, I rushed toward the traitors, intending to cut my way through them and however many had invaded the palace.

They being many and I one, though, my success was less than I had wished. The first man I attacked fell with a groan, clutching at a gash in his side. But the second, being a better swordsman, kept me at play. "Don't kill him!" one of the other brigands shouted. "Leontios wants him alive." Thus I learned who craved to steal my throne.

"I want me alive," my opponent panted, parrying a blow that should have laid his face open.

But, as the ancient pagan saying has it, even Herakles could not fight two. That dog kept me too busy to deal with any of the others as they deserved. One of them tackled me and knocked me to the floor. Unable to slash him as I fell, I hit him in the side of the head with the heavy pommel of my sword. He groaned and went limp. Before I could do anything more, another man grabbed my arm and wrenched the sword from my hand.

"Now we've got him!" my assailants roared. I punched and kicked and butted and bit, learning the taste of their blood. No one came to my aid. Despite all I could do, they swarmed over me, binding me hand and foot. After that, they spent some little while beating and kicking me, whether out of general hatred or because of the fight I had put up I cannot say. I bent my head down, hoping to keep them from smashing my teeth or breaking my nose. Looking back, that seems funny.

"What do we do with him now that we've got him?" somebody asked.

"Take him to the great church," answered the man who had fought me sword to sword. "That's were Leontios is at, and that's where the patriarch, God bless him, is at, too." I cannot imagine why I was surprised to discover Kallinikos had joined those betraying me, but I was.

The ruffians hauled me to my feet. A couple of them thrust their arms through between my arms and my ribcage and hustled me along. Dawn was breaking. In the trees and bushes around the great palace, birds began to sing. I remember that quite clearly. Again, I cannot say why. God, Who knows everything, will know that as well.

Men came up to me and reviled me: like any other dogs, they snapped at what they thought weaker than themselves. I cursed them as foully as I knew how, foully enough to make some of them gesture to avert the evil eye. I hope the curses I sent their way bit anyhow.

As we drew near the church of the Holy Wisdom, a swarm of people came out of it. At their head strode Kallinikos and a man I recognized after a moment as Leontios. I cursed him, too, at the top of my lungs. He took no notice, having already assumed what he fondly imagined to be the imperial manner. "Bring him to the hippodrome," he told the men who had me, "to the stadium where the horses run." Even as usurping Emperor, he remained redundant.

To the hippodrome- and, I suppose, to the stadium where the horses run- we went. As we went, I saw that two of Leontios's followers carried between them a man suspended from a pole. He turned his head and saw me, too. I might have guessed faithful Myakes would not stand by without doing his best to keep me from being overthrown. His best, like my own, had not been good enough.

"God bless you, Emperor," he called to me. One of the brigands walking alongside hit him in the face. Forgetting I was also bound, I tried to break free of my captors and come to his aid. That got me nothing but another buffet of my own. My ears rang.

Into the hippodrome we came. They hauled me to the stretch of track near the finish line, between the main grandstand- which was already black with people- and the Kathisma, the Emperor's seat, from which I had so often watched the pounding chariots come down to the line.

"Leontios!" the people shouted. "Tu vincas, Leontios! Leontios, Emperor of the Romans! Many years to the Emperor Leontios!" Listening to their fickle faithlessness, I felt like a husband coming home early one day to discover the wife he had trusted sucking on his best friend's prong.

The men who had charge of Myakes dumped him down on the ground. That made the mob bay louder, many of them, no doubt, believing him to be me. Then the cries grew louder still: an executioner, his features hidden by a black hood, came striding up the track toward me.

"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me," I murmured, wishing I could make the holy sign of the cross. Turning to Kallinikos, I said, "If you give me unction before he slays me, God might make the pangs you will suffer in hell for betraying me a trifle less agonizing."

Instead of answering, Kallinikos turned to Leontios for permission: sure enough, the dog had a new master. Leontios had also heard my words. He walked up to me, a b road false smile on his face. When he held up both his hands, silence dropped over the hippodrome like a cloak. Into it, he cried, "I, Leo, am now Emperor of the Romans!"

More acclamations rose, those rather discordant, some men hailing him as Leo, others who listened but did not hear persisting in calling him Leontios. How he styled himself mattered not in the least to me. I knew who he was. I knew what he was. So long as I had breath in me, even if it should be but for the next moment, I would not forget.

He held up his hands once more. Silence fell again. He said, "Out of the love and comradeship I feel yet for the Emperor Constantine, I shall not slay his worthless son Justinian, however much he deserves it."

Now the buzz from the crowd was surprised, confused. I felt surprised and confused myself: did he think he could leave me alive without my seeking to avenge myself and regain the throne rightfully mine? I had known he was a fool. I had not known he was such a fool.

But he was. He went on, "Let Justinian's nose be cut off, as Constantine cut off the noses of his brothers Herakleios and Tiberius. And for good measure, let his tongue be slit, too, that you may never more hear him order the ministers you rightly killed today to steal from you your money, your property, your freedom. Then off he goes to Kherson, and you'll never hear of him or from him again at all."

Once more, the cheers from the grandstand redoubled. True, the mob would not have the pleasure of seeing a head leap from a body and bump along the track while blood fountained from the stump of the neck. But they would have their blood, albeit not so much. And, instead of a quick end to their sport, they could enjoy my screams and moans for as long as Leontios chose to indulge them.

Now he beckoned to the executioner, who advanced upon me. Behind the hood, his eyes were thoughtful: the eyes of any good craftsman measuring the task ahead of him. "Emp- uh, Justinian- it will be easier for you if you hold very still and let me do what I have to do here," he said.

"May you die of the plague," I told him. "May your prick drip pus and wither. May your daughter couple with a dog on the Mese. May the demons of hell tear your flesh from your bones with pitchforks and throw it in the fire to burn forever."

I thought I might as well have been cursing a stone. Everything I said rolled off him, leaving him untouched. I suppose he already bore the weight of so many curses from so many men that one more mattered not at all. He turned to my captors. "Hold him tight, if you please. I'm going to do his tongue first." Maybe my words had got through to him after all. It was cold, cold comfort.

I clenched my teeth so hard, one of them broke. That, at the moment, was the least of my concerns. Matter-of-factly, the executioner went through his bag of tools, finally selecting a small, sharp blade, more a scalpel than a knife. I twisted my head back and forth until someone behind me seized me by the hair and prevented it.

The executioner stood before me. I spat in his face. The spittle soaked into the black hood and was gone. I vowed he would not force my jaws open. Some vows are wasted. He grabbed my beard in his left hand and pulled down. All at once, to my helpless horror, I understood why Alexander the Great had required his men to shave their chins. Despite all I could do, my mouth came open.

Fast as a striking serpent, the executioner slashed me with that little knife. At the same moment, though, I was trying once more to jerk my head to the side. I could not move much, but I did shift a little. And so, instead of slitting my tongue from root to tip, he gashed the side of it, also cutting my gum and the inside of my cheek.

I shrieked, both because the pain was bad and to make it seem worse so he would not inspect the wound to see what sort of job he had made of it. My mouth filled with blood, faster than I can write this. I spat in his face again, a great spurt of red. Some went in through the eyehole of the hood and made him rub at himself to restore his vision: a tiny measure of revenge, but I could take no large ones.

If I could not, he remained professional about the whole business between us. Wadding up a cloth, he stuffed it into my mouth. "Press it against the wound, hard as you can," he told me. "It will help slow the bleeding."

In spite of the rag, blood dripped down my chin. More ran down my throat, tasting of rust. But, with the rag in my mouth, I could not curse the executioner again, as I very much wanted to do. That worked to my advantage, he assuming I did not speak because I could not, and that the mutilation had been successfully accomplished.

As if the executioner were likely to forget, Leontios prodded him: "Now the nose. Remember the nose."

"Yes, Emperor," the fellow answered, which made me try to break free of my captors all over again: that anyone could presume to call this bumbling fool Emperor of the Romans infuriated every fiber of my being.

The executioner rummaged through his tools. This time he drew forth a larger blade than he had used before. He tested the edge with his thumb, shook his head, and stropped the knife against the leather sole of his shoe, standing on one leg like a stork to do so. After another test, he was satisfied and walked up to me once more. The early morning sun glittered off the newly touched-up edge.

"You have to hold him still again," he told the men who had charge of me. "Otherwise, the job won't be as fast and neat as it ought to be." He never spoke of mutilation. I suppose that by thinking of what he did as the job, he saved himself the trouble of thinking about what sort of job it was.

I think of this now, looking back at the moment across a gap of a decade and a half. Perhaps I should summon one of my executioners, to find out if I am right. I wonder if they would answer me honestly. I wonder if they have even considered the matter. Every trade has its secrets, and every trade has its blind spots, too.

Looking at these latest sentences, I see that I wish to avoid the narration of what came next, as if, by speaking of something else, I could will that bit of time into nonexistence. The executioner set the edge of the knife against my nose, just below the point where bone gives way to cartilage, and sliced down. The end of my nose, with the nostrils, fell into the dirt at my feet, and that is the last I ever saw of it.

Again, my blood streamed after it. The crowd cheered. "He'll never be Emperor again!" Leontios shouted, and the cheers got louder. Again, the executioner, efficient in his craft, pressed a bandage to the hole in my face where my nose had been. That might have kept me from bleeding to death, but made it very difficult for me to breathe.

"Why don't you cauterize the cut?" asked the fellow holding my hair. He laughed nastily. "That'll make this bastard hurt even more."

"From what I've seen, cauterized wounds are more likely to fester," the executioner replied: a serious answer to what he judged a serious question. He turned to Leontios. "Unless you want to give him more pain, of course, Emperor."

"Let it go," Leontios said. "He could have killed me, I suppose, and he didn't. Get him on a ship, get him out of the city, get him out of my sight."

One of his henchmen prodded Myakes with his foot. "What about this one? Strike off his head and have done?"

I expected Leontios would say yes to that. But, through a haze of agony, I saw him shake his big, stupid head. "No, he can go to Kherson, too. The excubitores are my bodyguards now; they'd grumble if an officer of theirs died for no reason but that he was loyal."