Justinian

JUSTINIAN

My first clear memory of exile is waking from deep sleep and seeing Myakes' face above me. Beyond me, and seeming miles above me, were the roof beams of an unfamiliar building. The straw of the mattress on which I lay was lumpy and scratchy; I had never been in such a disgraceful excuse for a bed in all my life.

With awareness came the return of pain. At first I reckoned that the lingering aftereffect of some dream I had been lucky enough to escape, but it persisted. Memory followed awareness by a few heartbeats. Leontios had done that to me in the hippodrome, while the people laughed and cheered. Intending to get a sword and kill him then and there, I tried to stand.

"Easy," Myakes said. "I just got done thanking God that you're a live."

I have never been one to heed advice. Here, however, I had no choice, discovering as I did that my limbs would not support me- would, indeed, barely move at my command. The coarse wool tunic I wore was soaked with sweat, not from the effort of attempting to rise, but as if I had just broken a fever. That, I realized, was exactly what I had just done.

Trying to speak, at first I produced nothing save a harsh croak. My mouth tasted of stale blood. The wounds there had trouble healing on account of the moisture from my saliva. But they were not the disabling wounds Leontios had ordered the executioner to inflict. I tried again, and this time made understandable words: "What is this place?"

"A monastery," Myakes answered, adding after too long a moment's hesitation, "Emperor." I forgave him the hesitation, given my state then. After another pause, he spoke again, modifying what he had said before: "A monastery in Kherson."

More memory returned. I needed a distinct effort to nod my head. "Yes," I said, speech coming easier now, "he said he would do that to me."

My voice sounded wrong in my ears, and not only because it was rusty from disuse or because I moved my tongue as little as I could. The tone, the timbre, was not what it had been. With a gaping hole in the middle of my face, I sounded different from the way I had when I was made like every other man.

Cautiously, I brought my hand up to the empty place where my nose had been. It still pained me, as I have said, but at a level far below the agony it had inflicted. It was a cut. It was healing. "How long have I been here?" I asked.

"Five days, Emperor," faithful Myakes said, this time without the hesitation over the title that was, of course, still rightfully mine. "The tudun and the monks thought you would die, but your fever ended last night, and now-"

"Now I want something to eat," I said. My insides were a vast rumbling cave. Looking at my hand and arm, I saw how much flesh I had lost- or rather, how much flesh had temporarily melted away from me. That melting, though, could be reversed. Lost flesh, as I and eunuchs will attest, is lost forever.

"I've been giving you watered wine," Myakes said. Stout fellow, he was probably the only reason I had not gone before the judgment of all-powerful God some days earlier. Now he got to his feet and hurried out of the chamber where I lay. From the other beds nearby, I realized this was not a monastic cell, but the xenodokheion attached to the monastery. None of those other beds had anyone in it. In Kherson, guests were few and far between.

I had made it up to one elbow by the time Myakes and a monk came back into the xenodokheion. The monk carried an earthenware bowl on a wooden tray. I had already resigned myself to fare far rougher than the tender viands I had enjoyed back at the palace, and was expecting something like barley porridge. That, however, was not what the aroma rising from the bowl suggested. I pointed to it, asking, "What's in there?"

"Fish stew, Justinian," the monk answered. How could I upbraid him for failing to use my proper title when, out of charity, he was feeding me?

"It smells wonderful." With no small effort, I sat up straight. My head swam, but I did not let myself topple over. He handed me the bowl, and a wooden spoon wherewith to eat from it.

The stew was hot and salty and rich. The fish in it was either dried or salted, but I did not care, feeling myself restored with every mouthful I swallowed. The salt stung my wounded mouth, but I had lately known worse hurts than that. I did not look up from the bowl until it was empty.

"Thank you," I said to the monk then. "That may be the most delicious meal I've ever eaten."

"God bless you for your kindness in saying so," he replied, sounding not merely surprised but astonished. At the time, I did not understand. Before long, I did. The first bowl of fish stew I ate was surely made with the ambrosia of the pagan gods for a spice. The fifth bowl- no different from the first- tasted good and sated my hunger. The fiftieth bowl- no different from the first- I ate with resignation rather than relish. By the time I ate the five hundredth bowl and then, I think, the five thousandth- no different from the first- I loathed it with a loathing I had thought reserved for an unloved wife. But, in Kherson, eating all too often meant eating fish stew.

I spent nine years in Kherson. The monk, I found later, had lived his whole life there, and he was not a young man. I daresay he had had a surfeit of fish stew by the time he finished cutting his milk teeth. No wonder he was startled to discover anyone with a good opinion of it.

"Wine?" I asked.

"I shall bring you some," the monk said.

When he returned, it was my turn to be surprised. The wine, sweet, fruity, was an excellent vintage, and not one with which I had previously been familiar. "Where does this come from?" I wondered aloud. "I have never drunk of it in Constantinople."

"We make it here; the hillsides are suited to the grape," the monk answered. "We make it mostly for ourselves. It is not a famous wine, so shipping it far across the sea does not pay."

I drained the wooden cup he had given me, wishing for more. Over the long years that followed, I drank a great deal of the sweet red wine of Kherson. Unlike the stew of salted fish that seemed the characteristic local food, it never bored me. But then, the most the stew brought with it was a bellyache. The wine, if drunk in sufficiency, brought oblivion. To an exile in Kherson, oblivion was sometimes the most precious gift God could grant.

I did not know then I would spend so many years away from the imperial city, for I did not fully understand how isolated from the rest of the civilized world- or perhaps I should simply say, from the civilized world- Kherson was. My thought then was to heal, to raise a force, and to return to Romania to cast down Leontios. In the bright glow of returning awareness, it all seemed very easy.

Intending to ask for another cup of wine, I found myself yawning instead. Was the vintage of Kherson so strong? No, I was weak, and had not realized how weak I was. However much I wanted to remain sitting, I could not. As a man will after waking from a fever, I quickly fell back to sleep.

"He's going to make it," I remember Myakes saying. Of course I am, I thought, and thought no more.

When my eyes came open again, it was night. Somewhere not far away, a single lamp burned, so the chamber in the xenodokheion was not absolutely dark. I remembered at once where I was. I also realized at once I was stronger. This is not to say I was strong; a boy whose beard had not yet sprouted could easily have laid me low. It is a measure of how near heavenly judgment I had come.

Beside me, someone was snoring. At first, I thought it was a carpenter sawing through a thick log. I had no trouble picking out the rhythm: push-pull, push-pull, push-pull. But the fellow was no carpenter, and had no saw. It was only Myakes. I wondered how little sleep he had got while I lay in feverish delirium. Having served me so well through that, he deserved to recover now.

Next to his pallet lay a stout cudgel. Leontios's men had robbed him of his sword, and he must have had neither chance nor money to get another since arriving at Kherson. But he aimed to protect me as best he could, and a club was better than nothing.

I sat up. It was easy, this time: I was stronger. Myakes might have fed me as best he could, but he hadn't fed me much. One real meal counted for more than whatever he'd managed to spoon into me while I lay delirious. And, encouraged by how easily I had succeeded in sitting, I stood.

During the time when I was out of my head with fever, someone seemed to have stolen my legs, replacing them with half-baked dough that wanted nothing so much as to buckle under my weight. I swayed like a ship on a tossing sea. No doubt I should have been wiser to lie down again, but that would have been as much as admitting defeat. Besides, I needed to piss.

Breathing hard, I looked around for a chamber pot. The mere act of breathing felt different after my mutilation, and not only because the wound, while beginning to heal, still festered. Air seemed to strike the interior of my body too soon, so that it felt harsh and raw even when it was not. And, when I exhaled, my breath no longer came down over my mustache and lips, something I had not noticed with the topmost part of my mind until its absence brought it to my attention.

Spying the pot at last- one lamp was not enough to illuminate so large a chamber- I made my way toward it. Myakes and I being the only ones in the xenodokheion, the monks could have placed it near us, but had not done so, I suppose for no better reason than that they had not thought of it. They were there to give their guests food and shelter, not convenience.

Standing had been hard. Walking was harder. I thought I would fall over at every step; I have had a far easier time managing while drunk. Stooping down to pick up the chamber pot was also anything but easy. But I managed to ease myself without getting the floor too wet, then returned to bed.

Myakes had not wakened when I rose, but the rustle of straw under my body as I lay back down made him open his eyes. Glancing my way, he saw I too was awake. "You all right, Emperor?" he asked.

"With this for my palace, how could I be anything but delighted?" I answered, startling a grunt of laughter out of him. Then I responded to what he had really meant: "I'm better than I was, at any rate. I walked across the room and back just now." I spoke with some small pride, as if I were Pheidippides still alive after having run from Marathon to tell the Athenians of their victory over Xerxes.

"Eat and sleep and rest- that's what you've got to do for a while," Myakes said. "Once you have your strengt h back, you'll-" He broke off. My likely future must have looked bleak to him.

Not to me. "I'll go back to the imperial city and reclaim my throne," I declared. "How long can Leontios last as Emperor? He's a joke, and not a funny one."

In the dim, dim lamplight, I could not see Myakes' expression well. He must have known that. Even so, he looked away from me, perhaps to give himself a moment in which to gather his thoughts. When at last he spoke, his voice was sadder and more gentle than I had ever heard it: "Emperor, Leontios didn't cut your nose off just for the sake of hurting you, you know."

I slammed into the full meaning of that like a man running headlong into a wall. Myakes was right, of course. Leontios had not mutilated me only to imitate my father's mutilation of my uncles; he had done it for the same reason my father had mutilated them: to disqualify me from ever seeking to regain the imperial dignity.

Because the Emperor of the Romans and the Roman Empire are so intimately connected to each other, it stands to reason that a mutilation to one implies a mutilation to the other. For as long as the Empire has existed, a physically imperfect man has been reckoned unfit to rule. That is why Emperors commonly have eunuchs as their chamberlains- they know the servants in such intimate daily contact with them will not seek to take their place on the throne.

Of itself, my hand went to the part of me no longer part of me. My fingers jerked away from the crusted scabs they found.

Myakes had been watching me. "Now do you understand, Emperor?"

I understood. I understood all too well. I understood why he had hesitated before giving me my title, that first time he spoke upon my regaining my wits. I understood that, to him, it was now but a title of courtesy, a title of pity, not the title of respect it should have been.

That was what it meant to him. Not to me. Clenching my fists, I said, "By God and Jesus Christ His Son, I will take back the throne, Myakes. I don't care if I don't have this"- and now I made my hand linger where the fleshy part of my nose had been-"and I don't care about anything else. It- shall- be- mine- again."

"Yes, Emperor," Myakes said, but more as if humoring me than as if believing me. "How will you do it, though? And if, uh, when you do, how can you make people accept you?"

"How will I do it? I don't know yet," I answered. "Once I do, how can I make people accept me? That's easy, Myakes: I'll kill the ones who don't. Once I kill enough, the rest will get the idea, don't you think?"

"Yes, Emperor," he said again.

A couple of days later, having heard I was recovering from my wounds, the tudun of Kherson came to pay me a call. The Khazars have had their affairs intermingled with ours since the days of my great-great-grandfather, who persuaded them to join him in attacking the Persians. They also join us in opposing the followers of the false prophet, and have embarrassed the Arabs more than once.

To my way of thinking, they have no right to lord it over Kherson, which properly is, as it has always been, Roman. But the sword and the bow make their own law, and so Ibouzeros Gliabanos, khagan of the Khazars, is also overlord of Kherson.

The tudun, his governor here, was barbarously ugly and spoke a vile Greek, but I quickly discovered him to be no fool. "You are to me a problem, Justinian," he said, studying me with a curiosity that, I judged, had nothing to do with my mutilation. Unlike most, he was able to see past it to the man I remained.

"I do not wish to be a problem to you," I answered. However much I despised the necessity, I had to speak him soft, for he held the power here.

"Do you want to be Emperor again?" he asked.

"I am Emperor still," I said simply.

"Then you are to me a problem." He pointed a finger at me. "I do not want a problem with the new Emperor in Constantinople. He send his ships here, we have fighting, we have trouble, the khagan blame me." His nervous expression said more clearly than his words that such blame was liable to be lethal. My respect for Ibouzeros Gliabanos rose; a sovereign who could inspire such fear in his subjects was not to be despised.

"Leontios will do nothing," I said. "That is what Leontios does best: nothing."

The tudun's smile stretched across his wide face but did not reach his narrow eyes. "You say this? He cast you down, and you say this?"

"He did not move to cast me down. His friends moved him." I picked up a bowl and set it down a couple of feet away to show what I meant.

"Maybe they move him to fight, too," the tudun said.

Myakes let out a snort, showing he shared my opinion of Leontios. The tudun's gaze swung toward him. But the barbarian shook his head. "You say this. I do not know it is true. I do not want to find out." He pointed my way again. "Justinian, if you live in Kherson, you live quiet. You understand- live quiet?"

"I understand," I told him, and I spoke the truth. But understanding and agreement are not the same.

The tudun's narrow, dark little eyes glinted. He was not the least capable of men, nor the least suspicious. "You live quiet," he repeated. "You make trouble, we know who does." He touched his nose to show what he meant. "We not let you make trouble. We give you back to Roman Emperor." This time, he patted the back of his neck to show what would happen to me were I returned to Constantinople.

"I understand," I said again, though still knowing in my heart that I was the rightful Emperor of the Romans. A nomisma does not cease to be made of gold even if dropped into a latrine.

Those narrow eyes glinted again as the tudun studied me. I discovered for the first time the advantage of my mutilation: not only did it draw the gaze to it in horrified fascination, it also made my expression harder to read by changing the contours of my face. "You be good," the tudun said severely, as if to a naughty child. He strode out of the monastery, satisfied he had done his duty.

"You're going to have to be careful, Emperor," Myakes murmured. "You're going to have to be patient."

I knew those words, but had never thought they would apply to me. "God is teaching me humility," I said. Myakes nodded eagerly. He wanted me to stay quiet, too. That meant he could stay quiet along with me. He got his wish, though at the time I had not intended that he do so.

A couple of weeks passed before I was well enough to leave the xenodokheion. I thought I had most of my strength back, though by looking at my body I could see how much flesh I still needed to restore. But what sufficed for walking around in the monastery, I soon discovered, was less than adequate for the greater journeys required beyond its doors. Quickly growing winded, I had to rely on the strength of Myakes, who accompanied me, as much as on my own.

This was so despite Kherson's minuscule size. A healthy man could have walked from one end of the place to the other in half an hour. Even I would not have needed much longer, that first time. To one used to the marvels of the imperial city, being forced to live in Kherson was like having to drink water- and water of poor quality, at that- after wine.

The life of the town, such as it was, clustered close to the harbor. Though ships from the Roman Empire were few and far between, the little fishing boats kept sailing out onto the Black Sea to bring back the catch on which the life of Kherson depended. Many others depended on the boats for their livelihood: carpenters, netmakers, sailmakers, brothel-keepers, taverners.

Over everything hung the odor of fish. I discovered in Kherson that, whichever part of the nose is responsible for the sense of smell, it lies deep within the organ, not at the tip, which had been taken from me. I had no trouble whatever discerning the stinks of fish drying in the sun, fish pickling in salty brine, fish frying, and fish rotting. As time passed, I grew accustomed to those stinks, hardly noticing them. In the early days of my exile, though, they made their presence insistently felt.

A washerwoman emptied a barrel of water out onto the roadway in front of her shop. Soaking rapidly into the dirt- Kherson boasted no paved streets- the water soon vanished, leaving behind only a patch of mud to entrap unwary passersby, and perhaps to enhance the washerwoman's trade.

Seeing that brief puddle, though, gave me an idea. "She'll have more water in there, won't she?" I asked Myakes.

"I expect so, Emperor," he answered. After a brief hesitation, he asked, "Are you thirsty? There will be wineshops for that."

I was not thirsty. I had no doubt he knew I was not thirsty. He was trying to protect me from myself, always a losing battle. I went into the washerwoman's shop. She looked up from the tunics she was wringing out. Her mouth twisted. Then, of a sudden, her faced cleared, or nearly cleared. "You're him, aren't you?" she asked in strangely accented Greek. "Justinian, I mean."

"Yes, I am Justinian." Till that moment, I had never had to humble myself before anyone but my father, and found the experience both strange and unpleasant. Nevertheless, I persisted. Pointing to a wooden hogshead, I asked, "Is there water in that barrel?"

"There is water," she agreed. Then she went on as Myakes had: "Are you thirsty? I will get you a cup."

"No, I am not thirsty," I said. "I want to see myself. May I look?"

She hesitated. Her lip curled again, which should have told me everything I needed to know. But I had been polite. Though she looked troubled, she nodded to me. Nodding my thanks in return, I went over to the hogshead and peered down into it.

In the grand palace in Constantinople, I had a mirror of polished silver as tall as I was, in which I could examine my magnificence when decked out in the imperial regalia. A handsome man had always stared back at me from that gleaming surface. My regalia now consisted of a dirty wool tunic. I had been disfigured. The water in that miserable old barrel seemed an appropriate instrument in which to view myself.

It was dim inside the shop, and dimmer within the hogshead. For a moment, I thought I would see nothing. Then, my eyes having adapted to the gloom, I wished nothing was what I had continued to see.

Everyone knows the seeming of a man new-recovered from illness that all but took his life: the sunken eyes, the skin stretched tight across cheekbones, the expression that says- and says truthfully- he has won a battle against a foe as deadly as any who roars on the battlefield, sword and bow to hand. All that I expected; all that I found. In my imagination, I had subtracted from my appearance most of my nose- or, at least, I had thought I had done so.

I have many times been reminded imagination and reality are not identical, but never more forcibly than on that quiet morning in that humid little shop. In my imagination, the wound was neat and precise, with pink flesh appearing under where my nose had been. In fact, my face took on the aspect of a skull, with a large, dark opening in the center. The presence of my eyes above it could not overcome the horrific, skeletal impression I created even on myself.

Sickened, I turned away from the hogshead, for the first time understanding in my belly why ancient custom forbids the imperial throne to a mutilated man. Who, I wondered, could bring himself to obey the commands of an Emperor whom good fortune had so conspicuously abandoned? What disasters would the reign of such a one bring down onto the Roman Empire?

Turning toward Myakes, I saw he had long ago grasped what I was realizing only now. "You see, Emperor?" he said, meaning the word in its most literal sense.

"Yes, I see," I answered, and, for a moment, despair threatened to overwhelm me. "I see," I repeated heavily, and, after thanking the washerwoman for what she imagined to be her kindness, I spoke again to Myakes, in listless tones: "Let's go."

"Aye, Emperor," he said, compliant as always.

And by that unquestioning compliance he saved me. I strode out of the washerwoman's shop into the warm, bright sunshine. Myakes followed without hesitation. He need not have followed. He need not have accompanied me to Kherson at all, or nursed me when fever from my wounds nearly took my life. Better for him had he stayed behind in Constantinople.

But he had followed and cared for me. He followed still. If he followed me, mutilated as I was, others would follow as well. The logic was as inexorable as any the pedagogue whose name I have long since forgotten tried to inculcate in me, as inexorable as the logic demonstrating the hypostatic union of the two natures of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

"I will be Emperor again," I murmured, and then, "I shall be Emperor again," which partook of more of the flavor of inevitability building in my mind.

Myakes said nothing. I daresay he thought I was mad. But if he thought me mad, why did he still call me Emperor? Humoring a madman, perhaps? Perhaps. But why would he have gone on serving a madman? As exile, I had no claim on him; he could have done better for himself had he abandoned me. To the bottom of my soul, I believe something in him still sensed the power of the imperial dignity clinging to me even in Kherson, as the scent of perfume clings to a woman long after she sets aside the jar from which it has come.

I did not traverse Kherson end to end, not that first day. The smell of fish frying in hot oil wafting out of a tavern near the washerwoman's shop made my stomach growl like a bear. I pointed to the tavern, saying, "Let's get some of that. It will be better than the salt fish they'll give us back at the monastery." I had already had plenty of that.

Myakes looked down at the ground. "How do you propose paying for it, Emperor? At the monastery, they don't ask for money- or they haven't yet, anyhow. If we stay there much longer and Leontios doesn't send any, they will, I expect."

Was I more astonished than I should have been? Maybe I was, but in all my life I had never once had to pay for food, and the idea that I might need to do so now had never entered my mind. Almost as much as the glimpse of my appearance, it brought home to me the brute reality that, in the eyes of the world, I was Emperor of the Romans no more. Well, the world was and is an ignorant place, and I have had occasion to teach it more than one lesson.

Nor had I ever had to worry about money for myself before: for the Roman Empire, yes, but not for myself. I had had everything. I now had nothing. Realizing to the fullest how far I had fallen was dizzying. I found myself swaying on my feet. This, I judge, was also due in no small measure to my remaining bodily weakness. Having recovered from that in part, I had imagined it completely overcome, and now discovered I was in error.

"Let's head back," Myakes said, seeing both my discomfiture and my weakness. And, indeed, he took my arm and bore some of my weight when I faltered. The salty stew was waiting for us when we arrived. I ate of it, then crawled under my blanket and slept like a little child after a hard day's play.

When I woke, I was stronger.

One day not long after that, Myakes said to me, "I expect you'll be all right here for a spell, Emperor. I'm going up into the town."

"What are you going to do there?" I asked.

"Look for work on the docks," he answered. "We'll both be better off if we have a bit of cash jingling in our pouches." He slapped the one he wore on the belt round his tunic. Nothing jingled there, it being empty.

"But-" I began. I can name no rational reason for the pained embarrassment I felt. Myakes had been serving me since I was hardly higher than his knee. He had risked his life more than once on my behalf. Why his proposing to labor so that I might have money so affected me, I cannot say. That it did, I cannot deny.

Myakes, however, would hear none of my inchoate protest. "Got to be done," he said cheerfully. "I've been a farmer and I've been a soldier. After those, dockwalloper won't be so much of a much."

He poured down the wine the monks had given us with our morning porridge- salt-fish porridge, of course- and went out, whistling a dirty song whose tune our pious hosts fortunately did not recognize. That left me with nothing whatever to do and with no one with whom to talk, the monks being occupied after breakfast with their own concerns.

I went into the monastery chapel to pray. A couple of monks there gave me approving looks. After noticing that, I ignored them, wondering how I should address the God Whom I had served all the years of my life, Who had rewarded me with rank and comfort and pleasure beyond those of which most mortal men can dream\a160… and Who had then cast me down.

Quoting the Psalmist, I said, "\a160'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'\a160" Though easy to say, that was hard to accept. The Lord had judged my family harshly: my brother, my father, my wife all struck down young, and now my own fall from wealth and splendor. God had let Satan inflict boundless suffering on Job, whose faith had not wavered.

In the end, God rewarded Job for his steadfastness. That thought helped me shape the rest of the prayer I sent up to the heavens: "Test me as You will, Lord; I am Your instrument. And if it should happen that You grant me return to the Queen of Cities, I shall glorify Your name unceasingly. But if it be Your will that I remain here throughout my span of days\a160… I shall glorify Your name unceasingly in that case as well." I crossed myself.

I stayed in the chapel a long time. Next to the church of the Holy Wisdom, it was a hovel, but a house of God is a house of God, no matter how humble. I did not need to think about what to do there; I already knew. And so I remained, while the sun wheeled across the sky.

As evening approached, Myakes returned. He stank of sweat but had money in his pouch. "I won't have any trouble keeping us in coins," he told me. "It was like they'd never seen anybody who wanted to do some work and wasn't going through the motions- or maybe I'm just used to moving faster than these people on account of all the years I've lived in the city."

"All right," I said, still obscurely troubled that he should have to labor with the sweat of his brow for our welfare. But what was the alternative? That I labor myself? For one thing, I had not yet fully recovered my strength after the fever that followed my mutilation. For another, should an Emperor of the Romans have become a common roustabout? I saw that as even less fitting than living off Myakes' stalwart efforts.

Every morning after that, he went off to the docks. Almost every evening, he came back with a full day's wages, sometimes in Roman folles and miliaresia, sometimes in silver minted by the followers of the false prophet, sometimes in coins I had never seen before, coins from out of the barbarous west of the world or the all but unknown east. Kherson was not a great trading center if only the number of merchants who called there was taken into account, but it did draw folk from every corner of the earth.

Myakes was generous in sharing with me what he earned. Though I continued to spend a good deal of time in the chapel, I was also able to make forays into the town and, if the impulse struck me, to buy for myself a cup of wine or some fried fish drenched in vinegar. I had, in fact, the illusion of freedom- freedom, that is, so long as I did not try to leave, or even think of leaving, Kherson.

It was not enough.