Justinian

MYAKES

Easy, Brother Elpidios, easy. We don't ask guests at our xenodokheion here to be saints, now do we? Of course we don't. Every man's a sinner, right? The only perfect man was the Son of God.

Yes, Justinian went out and fornicated with prostitutes. Why are you asking me when he admits it himself? Yes, I know he was the man who fought so hard for the canons of the fifth-sixth synod that condemned brothels and those who kept them. No, that didn't stop him. Pretty plain it didn't stop him, wouldn't you say?

A hypocrite? Justinian? Less so than most men I've known. But he was a man, and even then well on the sunny side of thirty. Once his wounds healed up, his body drove him, same as it does any man that age. Yes, he fell into sin every now and again. You get rid of every man who's fallen into sin that way every now and again, all of a sudden the world starts looking like a pretty empty place.

Me, Brother? What did I do when we were up there in Kherson? Oh, this and that. I was working a lot of the time, remember. Was I working all the time? Now, what ever would you mean by that, Brother Elpidios?