Justinian

JUSTINIAN

I did not pander to my lusts. Every so often, though, when they grew unbearable, I would ask money of faithful Myakes and go off after sunset to slake them. Some of the other women at the brothel gradually came to accept me, so I did not have to rely entirely on the complaisance or availability of that one.

As I have already said, days and weeks and months in exile began to flow into one another, with little to distinguish any particular day from any other. Only the unusual was worthy of note, and little enough of that happened. A few times a year, a ship from Constantinople or one of the Anatolian cities of Romania, Sinope or Amastris mostly, would tie up in the harbor. Then we would have a brief orgy of catching up on news from the wider world, much of it old news by the time it reached us.

Avid to find out how the Roman Empire was faring, I pestered captains and sailors alike for word of what Leontios was doing. For the first year the usurper's fundament defiled the throne, the answer was, as best I could tell, that he did nothing whatsoever. This in no way surprised me, being in perfect accord with the character Leontios had previously exhibited.

"Everything is peaceful," the seafaring men would say, perhaps hoping to wound my spirits by showing that the Empire was doing well without me.

If that was their intent, it failed. In calm weather, a ship's captain may fall asleep whenever he pleases with nothing evil befalling his vessel. But if he is asleep when a storm blows up, the ship will go to the bottom before he can wake and try to make amends for his carelessness. So I judged it would be with Leontios, and my judgment was vindicated.

That, however, as yet lay ahead, for news from the Roman Empire trickled in slowly. News from all over the world trickled into Kherson… slowly. It lay on a trade route that stretched east all the way to the land of Serinda, whence we Romans learned the secret of manufacturing silk during the reign of the Emperor for whom I was named, and west to the island of Britannia and even to another island beyond Britannia, of which geographers may speak but of which I was previously ignorant.

Most merchants travel back and forth across a single section of the trade route, but some, pulled by greed or the desire for adventure, wander far from their homes. In taverns in Kherson, I met men from India- the eastern India, the one Alexander conquered, not the one also known as Ethiopia- and Persia, from Germany (the source of so many barbarous tribes that have harmed us Romans) and from this distant island I mentioned, which is called, I think, Ibernia.

"No, I've never been to Constantinople my own self," a traveler told me in a hideous mixture of Greek and Latin enlivened by a barbarously musical accent, "but I know a man who has. A priest, he was, out of some little town in Gaul-"

"Arculf!" I exclaimed. The odds were against it, I knew, but he was the sole priest from a little town in Gaul I had met in the imperial city.

And may I be condemned to the eternal fires of hell if the merchant did not nod. "Aye, that's the man," he said. "A good and holy soul he is, too."

"Yes," I said, agreeing with him completely. "How did he come to distant Ibernia?"

I needed some time to puzzle out the answer to that. Arculf, it seemed, had in fact not gone to Ibernia but to Iona, a small island off the western coast of Britannia. There the trader's uncle, a certain Adamnan, was abbot of a monastery. Arculf, being shipwrecked there, related his tales of travel in Romania to this Adamnan, who took them down in Latin. And so, knowledge of the civilized world does reach, distantly and in dreamlike wise, even those far-off places.

What happened to Arculf after his ship foundered at this island of Iona, the trader with whom I was drinking did not know. Learning even so little of my old acquaintance, though, brightened that day and several after it, and also gave me my own tavern tale to spin out in later times.

"Not a bad story, for a man without a nose," another merchant judged a few weeks later, and bought me a cup of wine.

"I am Emperor of the Romans," I declared, having already had a good deal of wine that day.

"Not a bad story, for an Emperor without a nose," he said, and the laugh he got gave him the last word.

As I have intimated, no great stretch of time passed before Leontios began demonstrating on the throne the qualities on account of which he had so singularly failed to endear himself to me. A ship crossing the sea from Sinope brought word that raids into Romania led by the Sklavenoi, which had diminished thanks to the vigorous efforts I undertook to combat them, were once more increasing in both frequency and ferocity.

Not long afterwards, news came that the prince of Lazika, whose name, if memory serves, was Sergios, brought his district, which lies on the southeastern shore of the Black Sea east of Trebizond, under the dominion of the deniers of Christ, as Sabbatios the Armenian had with his a few years before.

Both these tidbits reached Kherson months after they happened. Myakes heard the first of them on the wharves, I the second in a tavern. When I brought it back to him at the xenodokheion, he looked thoughtful and said, "The generals in the military districts aren't going to be very happy with Leontios."

I snorted. "Who would be happy with Leontios? No one with his wits about him, that's certain." Then, unbidden, a horrid thought struck me. "By the Virgin Mother of God, Myakes, suppose one of those generals overthrows Leontios and takes the throne while I rot here, across the sea from everything that matters?"

"Don't really know what you can do about that, Emperor," Myakes said. He twisted awkwardly, trying to scratch the small of his back. "Something bit me."

Something had bitten me, too: fear. Back in Romania, as Myakes had said, the generals were undoubtedly seething at Leontios's ineptitude. And, if one of them took it into his mind to do more than seethe, he had the resources with which to topple the sluggard: men and weapons and gold.

And what had I? A pallet in a xenodokheion in a half-barbarous town owing first allegiance to the Khazar nomads, and one former guardsman who had constituted himself my servant still. And somehow, incredibly, more than two years had passed since Leontios shipped me into exile. Save for being hale in body once more, I was no closer to returning to what was rightfully mine than I had been when Apsimaros poured my fever-wracked carcass onto the Kherson quay.

"Suppose someone who actually knows how to rule seizes the throne," I said, clutching at Myakes' arm. "Leontios is an easy target, but I can think of half a dozen men who would be very devils to put down."

"So can I," he answered, scratching still. He did not sound greatly concerned. He was always calmer by nature than I, and he had also come to be contented with the life he was living. And yet how can I say that, having spent so long content to live like a beast satisfying animal lusts but no others? Nor, though I did not yet know it, was my exile anywhere near complete.

My trouble was simplicity itself: how was I to go about establishing an army that could retake Constantinople in a town lacking enough men to form a proper regiment, and in a town, moreover, where, being who I was and what I was, I could not hide, and where the tudun was determined I should do no such thing? Easy enough to discover the difficulty. Discovering a solution to it was years away.

I had, by then, made a couple of tavern friends I felt I could trust: a half-Khazar named Barisbakourios and his brother Salibas, who sometimes went (and whom I preferred to call) by the more properly Greek name, Stephen. Drunk and sober, they proclaimed they would be glad to help me regain my throne. With faithful Myakes, they made me an army of three. With an army of three, I stayed in Kherson.

News continued to trickle into the town, however distantly removed from the time when it had actually occurred. One of the relatively rare ships from Constantinople itself brought word that the Arabs had seized Carthage. I drank myself senseless when I heard that. One of the reasons my grandfather, Constans, had sailed to Italy and Sicily and his eventual murder in the barbarous west was to protect Carthage from the followers of the false prophet. And now, Constans having given his life to defend it, Leontios fecklessly threw it away.

"Leontios will have to do something about that, Emperor," Myakes said when, the next day, I took word back to the xenodokheion.

"Will he?" I had a headache like death, which inclined me even more than I would have been otherwise toward doubting any possible link between Leontios on the one hand and doing something on the other.

"Aye, he will," Myakes answered through a mouthful of salt-fish stew. He was eating in a hurry, as he intended to go up to the harbor to look for work. But he spared me a couple of more sentences, saying, "Losing Carthage is like losing Thessalonike or Ankyra would be. He can't ignore it."

"Who says he can't?" I returned. Ignoring inconvenient difficulties was one of the few things Leontios had proved he did well.

Here, however, Myakes proved correct. Leontios set out a fleet, I learned eventually, and, to my astonishment, succeeded in driving the Arabs from Carthage. Returning in larger numbers, however, they then defeated us Romans. The commander of the Roman expedition, a certain John, sailed back to the Empire for reinforcements, not having enough men with him to stand up to the larger army the deniers of Christ had moved against him.

On his reaching Crete, though, his junior officers revealed a plan of their own: to sail east rather than returning to the west. They struck for Constantinople, having proclaimed one of their own number Emperor of the Romans.

"He has a funny name, a foreign kind of name," the sailor who was telling me the story said, "so people are calling him Tiberius instead of, of\a160…" His memory failed until I bought him another cup of wine. "Of Apsimaros, that's it."

"Apsimaros?" I had been drinking wine myself; at that name, I swallowed wrong, coughed, and sprayed little drops of red over the tabletop in front of me. "They couldn't have dug up a bigger nobody if they tried for a year."

Strictly speaking, I suppose that is not true. Phokas, whom my great-great-grandfather overthrew to the salvation of the Roman Empire, had been but a commander of a hundred before a mutiny raised him to imperial rank- in his case, I shall not say imperial dignity. Apsimaros was of higher standing than that.

After dabbing at himself, my informant said, "That's the name, all right. Once you hear it, how can you forget it?" Except, of course, as a means of gaining more wine. "He's in Sykai now, they say, across the Golden Horn from Constantinople, and trying to figure out how to break in."

I bought him still more wine in the hope that he could tell me something else, but he, wine or no, had run dry, leaving me disappointed. To become Emperor, a rebel must seize the Queen of Cities. My great-great-grandfather had managed it against Phokas, for no one defended the vicious tyrant. Leontios had managed against me, seizing the city from the inside out, so to speak. Apsimaros, though, was attempting what I would also have to do when my day came: breaking into Constantinople against opposition. The followers of the false prophet had not managed that. Could anyone?

The next ship up from Constantinople brought the announcement of the accession of Tiberius, Emperor of the Romans, who, it was reluctantly admitted, had once borne the barbarous appellation of Apsimaros. That was all the official word given forth. Myakes got more out of the sailors, who, remembering what they reckoned my former rank, were reluctant- were afraid- to speak to me.

"He bribed Leontios's soldiers up at Blakhernai, that's what he did," Myakes reported. "They opened the gates for his men, and in he came. Did some pretty good plundering, the soldiers he had with him." His sigh said he wished he'd been there himself. But then he brightened. "Ah, that's the other thing: Apsimaros caught Leontios." He beamed from ear to ear.

I shrugged. "Since he's calling himself- miscalling himself- Emperor now, I suppose he would have. Leontios must be shorter by a head." It was my turn to sigh. "Too bad. I wanted to kill him myself."

"He's not dead, Emperor." Myakes beamed wider than ever. "Apsimaros the asp bit him, sure enough, but not to death. He packed him off to the monastery of Delmatos, but first- do you know what he did first?"

"Sooner or later, you'll tell me. Why not now?"

Myakes took no notice of my irritability, and, in fact, cured it with half a dozen words: "Emperor, he cut off his nose."

My hand went of itself to the scarred wound I bore. "He did what?" I said, and then held up my hand. "No, don't say it again. I heard you. Truly God is a just judge. That comes closer than anything I could have imagined to tempting me to forgive Apsimaros for stealing the throne that belongs to me. I don't forgive- I'll never forgive- but I am tempted."

"He's ruling under the name Tiberius," Myakes reminded me.

That made me shrug again. "He's sitting on my throne. No reason he shouldn't steal a name that belongs to my family, too."

As a matter of fact, though, now that I think on it, my clan had also borrowed the name Tiberius, taking it from the Emperor who ruled just before Maurice and who was, in the days of my great-great-grandfather, a man of good reputation. How and why that Tiberius came to bear his name, I cannot say, he being the first Roman Emperor to carry it since the one in whose reign our Lord was crucified.

"His brother, I hear, is named Herakleios," Myakes said. "Whether that's his real name or one he's put on, I couldn't tell you."

I vaguely remembered that Apsimaros had had a brother who was an officer of some sort. For the life of me, I could not remember what that brother's name had been; in no way had he distinguished himself. Apsimaros wo uld undoubtedly promote him to high rank anyhow: if a man could not rely on his own brother, he could rely on no one. Remembering how little my father had been able to rely on his brothers, I felt relying on no one the better choice.

Then I looked over at Myakes. Had I not relied on him, had I not had him upon whom to rely, I would surely have died not long after my exile began. But comparing Myakes to my ambitious uncles was comparing figs and fingers. Myakes was in no position to supplant me, no matter what he did. Apsimaros would always have to keep one eye on his Herakleios, just as my father had had to watch his brothers Herakleios and Tiberius, just as I would have had to watch my brother Herakleios had he lived.

I said, "I pray to God, Myakes, that Leontios has no one to look after him as you looked after me when I needed you most."

He grunted; I'd succeeded in embarrassing him. "Emperor, I've been taking care of you about as long as I've been a man," he answered after a pause for thought. "I've been doing it so long, I'd hardly know how to do anything else."

He seemed to feel about it the same way I felt about the throne: the one was his destiny as the other was mine. But he was luckier than I, for his calling, unlike mine, had suffered no interruption.

Time went on. I never abandoned the hope and intention of regaining my throne, but I had no luck building any sort of force to help me do it. My only new recruit besides the aforementioned brothers, Barisbakourios and Stephen (or, as I have said, Salibas, he answering impartially to both), was a gigantic fisherman named Paul, who was as strong as any other two men I have ever seen. Unfortunately, what God had given him in bulk, he took away in wit, with the result that the fisherman was often called- though seldom to his face- Moropaulos, Foolish Paul.

Carthage remained in Arab hands. Apsimaros, having been part of the fleet that failed to reclaim it, must have regarded it as a lost cause. In the east, though, he beat back an attack by the followers of the false prophet, and that frontier, being the gateway to Anatolia and to the imperial city itself, is more vital for the Roman Empire.

By the news that slowly dribbled into Kherson, Apsimaros displayed more energy on the throne than had Leontios. That this is less than the highest of praise, I freely admit; a dead man would have found it difficult to display less energy than had Leontios.

In the year following his successful defense of Roman territory, Apsimaros sent into exile Bardanes, sometimes called Philippikos, consigning him to the island of Kephallenia. Reckoning this upon my fingers, I find that it must have been in the fourth year of Apsimaros's usurpation, which was the seventh year of my exile. The more I think on it, the more incredible it seems, and yet I am convinced it is accurate.

"What did Bardanes do?" I asked the traveling jeweler who gave me the news.

"Story is that he dreamt he had an eagle shading his head, and was stupid enough to say so in front of somebody who took word to the Emperor," the fellow answered.

"That was stupid," I agreed. From time out of mind, the eagle has been the symbol of Roman power and, by extension, of the imperial dignity. No wonder Apsimaros exiled him; he had as much as claimed he would be Emperor one day.

In the next year, the Arabs under Azar attacked Kilikia. Apsimaros's brother drove them back to their own lands with heavy losses. The Armenians also rebelled against the Arabs whom Sabbatios had installed as their overlords. Apsimaros sent men to help them, but the deniers of Christ proved stronger there, driving out the Romans, regaining the territory that had rebelled, and burning alive a good many of the Armenian grandees who had risen up against them.

I know I heard this story in detail far more circumstantial than I recount here, but count myself lucky to remember any of it at all. Sitting not far from the sailor who was spinning it was a small, thin, brown man with wavy black hair and features of almost feminine delicacy. During my time in exile, I had learned that such men came from distant India.

They did not often come from distant India, however; in those seven years, I had seen no more than half a dozen. Thus I looked at this fellow with some considerable interest. Perhaps men from India also come to the imperial city from time to time. If they do, however; they do not come to the grand palace; before my forced journey to Kherson, I had seen never a one.

The man from India also stared at me. I had grown resigned to that from children and strangers, the general run of Khersonites having by then accustomed themselves to my appearance. But the Indian's stare was different from those of many seeing me for the first time: curious, not horrified.

After a bit of staring, that curiosity got the better of him. Picking up his cup of wine, he came over to me as I stood in front of the bar, whereupon, pointing a brown finger at the center of my face, he asked, "Why do you look like that?" His Greek was not very good, and flavored by a singsong accent unlike any I had heard before. He certainly did not know enough of the language to be polite.

"Why do I look like this?" I repeated, to be sure I understood him. He nodded. He being a barbarian, I thought him also a fool, and gave back the sort of answer I should have offered to a Roman twit who put such a question to me: "I lost my nose somewhere, and don't know where to find it."

That got a laugh from the drinkers who heard me. The little man from India, though, nodded again, as if what I had said made perfect sense. "If you want," he said, "I build you new one."

"Oh, splendid," I said. "Will you make it of clay, so that I can paste it onto my face?" I won another laugh with that sally. I laughed myself, bitterly. One winter, the second or perhaps the third I was in Kherson, I had taken a knife and carved a nose out of wood, taking pains to let no one, not even Myakes, know what I was about. Rather than pasting it to my face, I had attached it by means of a cord tied round my head. When it was done, I carried it off to a rain puddle (again making sure no one saw me), donned it, and examined my reflection. My opinion of the result may be inferred from the fact that I never wore it again.

Once more, however; the man from India, rather than giving up or growing angry- as I was certainly beginning to do- replied as if to a serious question: "Oh, no, very much no. I make from flesh of you."

He wore a tunic not much different from mine. Instead of a belt, though, he had a rope around his middle, with a flat wooden box dangling from it in place of the usual leather pouch. From the box he drew a knife that reminded me of the one the executioner in Constantinople had used to try to slit my tongue.

Had I been back at the grand palace, anyone daring to produce a weapon in my presence would have met a quick end at the hands of the excubitores, or perhaps a slow end at the hands of the executioners. His intention in so doing would have mattered not at all; the act would have sufficed and more than sufficed.

But I was in a smoky tavern in Kherson. My hand went to the knife I wore on my own belt, but I did not so much as pull it from its sheath, waiting instead to learn what he would do or say. "Make from flesh of you," he repeated, and, with the knife as pointer, sketched a flap of skin on his forehead, saying, "Do cutting here, you see- you understand cutting?" He knew how limited his Greek vocabulary was.

"I understand," I told him. "You are speaking of surgery."

"Surgery," he agreed happily. "Is word I am wanting, oh very yes. Do cutting here, I say, and it go down over\a160…" He pointed to the hole where my nose had been. "Make more cutting." He ran his thumb along the bottom of his own nose. "Sew together, wait for heal, you have again nose. They no do this here?"

"They do not do this here, no." Even in my own ears, my voice sounded far away. To have a nose again\a160… I had dreamt of having a nose again, but knew too well how dreams vanish on waking. My hand moved to the scars- smooth now, and painless, from the passage of years- around my mutilation. "Would it be as good a nose as the one I once had?"

Without a moment's hesitation, he shook his head. "No. You still be ugly. You not be very, very ugly no more, oh very yes you not." No, he did not have enough Greek for politeness. As when he took out the knife, though, I remained unoffended. His attitude bespoke a certain basic truthfulness.

I found more questions: "How is it you know how to perform this surgery? Have you done it before?"

"Do it three times, me." He held up three fingers, in case I had not followed him. "How I know how? My brother- is right word, brother?- he do this times many. He\a160… baidyas." This, it turned out, was, as best I can set it down in Greek characters, the Indian word for physician, the small brown man being unable to remember its Greek equivalent, if indeed he ever knew it before I said iatros. "I do you?" he asked.

As he had not before, I did not hesitate now. "Yes, you do me," I said. At that time, in that place, what had I to lose? He could not very well have made me uglier than I already was. And if I had not died of fever when my nose and tongue were cut, I doubted I should perish of it from what, as I could see, would be a lesser infliction of the knife.

Then he revealed he was indeed a trader. I had shown myself too eager. The glow that came into his eyes had nothing to do with the lamps and torches illuminating the tavern. "What you give me to do this?" he asked.

"What do you want?" I asked, suddenly cautious. As Emperor, I had dickered with the Arabs over tribute, but, till I came to Kherson, that was my only experience with the fine art of haggling. Exile had broadened my knowledge of an art for which an Emp eror had but limited use; even so, I knew I was less acquainted with it than a man who had made his living by it from childhood would have been. I tried to distract him by asking an unrelated question: "What's your name?"

"Auriabedas," he answered; that, again, is as close as I can come to rendering it into Greek letters. He was not distracted. "Is gold good in this part of world," he said, a tribute to the quality of our Roman nomismata I could have done without at that moment. He held up a hand, showing thumb and all fingers. "You give five- this many- of gold."

"Five?" I clapped a hand to my forehead. "I am not a rich man." A humiliating thing for the Emperor of the Romans to have to say, but true. "I can give you two." I did not know how much money Myakes had, nor what he could spare.

Auriabedas's fine features assumed a look of tragedy that might have suited him for one of Euripides' dramas. "Is not enough, oh my no," he said. "You not pay five, you stay very very ugly, oh my yes."

"Three, then," I said. "I tell you, I am not made out of gold."

"Five," Auriabedas repeated. He had not much Greek, but, being a canny merchant, had made certain he knew the numbers in our language. "You no want pay, I no want cut." He looked at me. "You no want pay, maybe I say ten soon."

We were two nomismata apart. With a nose, even one that left me uglier than I should have been had my own encountered a club, I could deny I was physically imperfect and hence debarred from the Roman throne. Without a nose, I had no prayer of raising enough support to return to Constantinople; years of bitter exile had proved as much to me. Was I to throw away my chance to regain the throne in a quarrel over a couple of nomismata?

"Five," I said, hoping Myakes had five nomismata to his name.

Auriabedas beamed at me. "I fix you," he said. "You be ugly, but you not have to fuck in dark like I bet now." He cocked his head to one side, seeing if that shot went home- as indeed it did. Not since arriving at Kherson had I taken a woman in broad daylight.

"Come to the monastery tomorrow," I told him. "I will pay you." If Myakes had not the money, I knew whom to rob.

Myakes proved to have the money. He put it in my hands. The only question he asked was, "This fellow's not a mountebank?"

"I don't think so," I said. "If he were, he would boast more about how wonderful he was and how he'd never had any trouble with this surgery and how everyone to whom he's ever set a knife has come out of it handsome as a pagan god. A man who tells me straight out I'll still be ugly after he cuts strikes me as an honest man."

Having weighed that, Myakes nodded. "Maybe you're right, Emperor. Sounds like you've got a decent chance, anyways."

One thing more he did not- would not- say. To let him know I understood it without his words, I said it for him, as it had occurred to me the night before: "Besides, being as I am, what do I have to lose?" His jaw worked. He glanced down at the floor of the xenodokheion. But when his eyes returned to mine, he nodded once more. If I was to be Emperor again, I had to have a nose.

I had not told Auriabedas at what hour to come to the monastery. From sunrise on, I paced back and forth, nervous as a cat trying to watch three mouseholes at the same time. I was beginning to wonder if he would come when, a little past noon, he did. "You go outside," he said, pointing. "Need very much see what I do."

Out we went, Myakes walking a pace or two behind us, sizing up the man from India. When he did not say anything or try to dissuade me from my course, I concluded he had decided, as I had, that the fellow at least thought he knew what he was doing.

Auriabedas sat me down on a large stone. The wind was blowing off the sea, so the stink of fish was missing from the air. By then, I noticed its absence more than its presence. Auriabedas gave me a small jar. "Drink," he said, undoing the stopper. "Wine and poppy. I cut, you hurt not so much."

I drank. The stuff had a muzzy taste to it. After a while, the world began to look dimmer than it had, an effect the poppy has on the eyes. I yawned. I felt sleepy, detached, almost floating away from myself.

From his little wooden case, Auriabedas drew the knife he had shown me in the tavern; needle and thread; some linen rags for bandages; a couple of hollow wooden tubes, each one thicker than my little finger; and, absurdly, a pen-and-ink set. He leaned forward, touching me with surprising delicacy to measure the exact size of the wound he aimed to repair. Then, inking his pen, he drew on my forehead the shape of skin he intended to cut out and fold over the hole in the center of my face.

"It looks like you're drawing a leaf," Myakes told him, he being able to see the shape I was trying to discern from sense of touch alone.

"Leaf, oh yes," Auriabedas said. "For center of nose bottom and for sides. You understand?" He touched the wings of flesh around his nostrils to show what he meant. Then he looked at Myakes, seeming troubled as he did so. "I cut. I hurt. I make pain. You are understanding this, oh yes? I need mans to hold. Not one man. Two mans, three mans, maybeso more mans. Not have here."

I held up a hand. Once moved, it seemed to stay in place of its own accord. "Auriabedas, by God and the Virgin Mother of God I swear I shall not move as you cut me. Do what needs to be done. I shall endure it."

The troubled look did not leave his face. "You say this now. What you do once I start cut, that very very different. I tell you. You hear me?"

"I hear you," I answered. "I shall not move, I tell you. Do you hear me?" I folded my arms across my chest and tilted my head up so he would have the best possible light by which to work. "Begin."

He began.