Justinian

JUSTINIAN

Herakleios lasted three weeks to the day after his brother Apsimaros came into my hands. What I had hoped would happen came to pass:

on learning of the usurper's capture, his brother's supporters melted away until he was left with a band any self-respecting bandit chief could have bested. And one of his few remaining followers promptly proceeded to betray him to Barisbakourios.

"How are you going to reward him, Emperor?" Myakes asked. "With thirty pieces of silver?" He laughed, to show it was a joke.

It did not strike me funny. "Betraying a usurper's brother is hardly the same as yielding up the Son of God," I replied. "I'll give this fellow two pounds of gold." That made Herakleios more expensive than our Lord had been, but Judas, of course, did not- could not- get full value for Him.

Barisbakourios brought Herakleios into the imperial city a few days later. I rewarded my old comrade from Kherson more substantially than the soldier who had given him Herakleios: it was then that I named him general of the military district of the Opsikion, a post that, along with being one of the most important commands in the Roman Empire, paid its holder thirty pounds of gold a year. At the same time, I sent Theophilos, who, to my surpri se, had served Barisbakourios well as his lieutenant general, to head the Karbisianoi, the Aegean fleet, a post paying five pounds of gold a year. The Aegean then being quiet, my assumption was that he could do no great harm in the position, and might do well.

As I had been with Leontios and Apsimaros, I was eager to speak with Herakleios, who had been the last man in arms against me. Barisbakourios led him before me; though not so decked in chains as Apsimaros had been on reaching Constantinople, Herakleios wore manacles that clanked when he went down in an awkward prostration. "You know what I will do with you, of course," I said as he got to his feet once more.

"You'll kill me some kind of way," he answered. "I don't doubt that for a minute." He had a guttural accent like his brother's and resembled him in bodily appearance, too, being tall and slim and lighter in complexion than most Romans.

In a couple of sentences, he also proved he had a good understanding of the way the world works. "You're right," I said. "You deserve nothing less."

He had courage. His shrug made the manacles clank again. "I hope you have the courtesy to make it quick," he said. "I wasn't the one who overthrew you. All I did was try to keep my own brother on the throne. I lost, and now I'm in your hands."

It was not begging. It was nothing like begging. He might have been reminding me of an appointment I had next week. Never before, never since, have I seen a man discuss his fate so dispassionately. His calm words swung me toward agreement where tears and histrionics would have earned him an ending opposite that which he craved. "Fair enough," I told him. "You'll not suffer."

"For which I thank you," he said, and then, still dispassionately, continued, "I never would have guessed you'd pull this off."

"God was on my side," I told him, to which he had no answer. I asked him a question about which I had been wondering since my days up in Kherson: "Is your name truly Herakleios, or did you change it when your brother changed his?"

"Herakleios is the name my mother gave me," he replied. "Had we both changed at the same time, he would have become Herakleios and I Tiberius. I was named for your- great-grandfather, is it?"

"Great-great," I said.

"Your great-great-grandfather, then, the famous Herakleios who saved the Roman Empire. My brother wanted to do the same thing." He raised an eyebrow; as I have noted, he kept his sangfroid in the face of death remarkably well. "You will admit, the Empire needed saving after three years of Leontios."

I shrugged. "Your brother became my enemy the instant he had the crown set on his own head instead of recalling me after he cast down Leontios."

"How could he?" Herakleios sounded honestly curious. "Your nose was lopped. I see you have had it repaired- you must have found a very clever surgeon- but I do not think you had done that back in the days when my brother first became Emperor of the Romans."

In that he was of course correct. But he was also my prisoner, under sentence of death, and I, not his brother, Emperor of the Romans. Nothing required that I answer him. Rather than doing so, I gestured to Barisbakourios, who in his turn gestured to the men under his command. They led Herakleios away to await his fate. To his credit, he did not tax me about the inconsistency he had exposed.

News spread rapidly of my return to Constantinople and my reassumption of the imperial power stolen from me ten years before. In Thrace, the pursuit first of Apsimaros and then of Herakleios brought word of my arrival to every town and village. In Anatolia, the officers I sent out to take over for any suspected of retaining their loyalty to the previous usurper let the soldiers and peasants know I was firmly in command in the imperial city.

I also sent messengers announcing my return to Oualid in Damascus, the new miscalled commander of the faithful having succeeded the accursed Abimelekh only a few months before I regained the throne. Merchant ships took the news to Alexandria, to the Phoenician cities- and to Kherson and Phanagoria.

Not long before autumn storms made travel on the Black Sea too unsafe to contemplate with equanimity (although, as I knew from horrifying experience, deadly storms could arise on that sea at any time), a merchant vessel from Phanagoria came down to Constantinople. Its captain, a certain Makarios, sought an immediate audience with me. On my servitors' learning he bore a message from Theodora, his request was granted at once.

After prostrating himself before me, he said, "Rejoice, Emperor, for your wife has borne you a son, and both were well, the latest report I had before sailing."

By then, I had grown accustomed to rewarding men who brought me good news. "Half a pound of gold for Makarios here!" I called out. The sea captain bowed himself almost double. A eunuch scribbled a note on a waxed tablet, thereby insuring the command would be remembered. "Has the boy been baptized?" I asked Makarios.

"Yes, Emperor, he has." Regardless of whether he had just become a richer man, Makarios suddenly looked apprehensive. He coughed a couple of times, nerving himself to continue. At last, he did: "Emperor, he was baptized as Tiberius."

The throne room grew very quiet. Courtiers and excubitores stared at me, wondering how I would respond to that. Well they might have; though Tiberius was a name my family used, it was also that which Apsimaros had ruled. Putting those two facts together, I thought I understood how and why the name had been bestowed. "Tell me," I said to Makarios, "did Ibouzeros Gliabanos have a hand in naming the baby?"

"Why- yes, Emperor." He sounded astonished. "How could you know that?"

"Because my dearly beloved brother-in-law the khagan of the Khazars was, is, and always will be a trimmer. He could not have known I had beaten the usurper when the boy was born, could he?" I asked. Makarios shook his head. I went on, "Had I lost, the name would have pleased Apsimaros, since he stole it himself. And it\a160… suits me well enough." I wondered if my uncle Tiberius still lived. I had not bothered to find out about him and his brother Herakleios. Come to think of it, I have not bothered to find out about the two of them to this day.

Makarios said, "Emperor, I am to tell you that your wife misses you and longs to come to Constantinople and lay your son in your arms."

"I miss her, too," I answered truthfully. "Her confinement being safely past, I shall send a fleet to Phanagoria- or to Kherson, if she'd rather; let the rich men there sweat to see the Augusta pass through on the way to the imperial city, after they tried to murder me- to bring her back to me. They can sail tomorrow, or I will know the reason why."

"Emperor, I beg your pardon, but you'd do better to wait," Makarios said. "I count myself lucky to have got here without bad weather. It's late in the year, it truly is."

"If I command the fleet to sail-" I began.

Makarios dared interrupt me: "Only God commands the weather, Emperor." Courtiers gasped. Since I had already executed a good many who opposed me, they thought the sea captain likely to be next. And killing him would have saved the fisc half a pound of gold.

But I refrained. The only thing I said was, "I hope that Cyrus has heard of my successful return, so he can come to Constantinople from Kherson this season."

"I don't know the man, Emperor; I'm sorry," Makarios said. "But the ship that brought the news to Phanagoria had touched at Kherson first, so I expect he knows about it, whoever he is."

"No one of any particular importance," I said. "He's only the man I've picked as the new patriarch of Constantinople."

"If he's no one in particular, who knows whether-" Makarios abruptly fell silent, hearing all of what I'd said, not the first part alone. I dismissed him and then dismissed him from my thoughts; that I can dredge his name from my memory as I write these words surprises me.

Cyrus, as chance would have it, arrived in Constantinople a few days later with a harrowing tale of tempest survived on the sea. Since I had my own story of that sort, the two of us traded them. That done, I summoned him to supper, at which time he said, "Emperor, you honor me beyond my deserts by raising me to the patriarchal throne."

"Nonsense," I told him. "You left a safe and comfortable post in Amastris to cross the sea and come to my aid because you saw- however you saw- I would be Emperor again. You having had faith in me, I now have faith in you. Loyalty I reward with loyalty, just as I reward treason with death."

He bowed his head. "May I give you the service you deserve."

"I expect you will," I answered, and he has, no doubt about it. He having arrived in Constantinople, the local synod, as was its duty under canon law, presented me with his name and those of two nonentities as candidates for the patriarchate, knowing in advance what my choice among them would be. Despite modesty, he has, I must say, made a splendid ecumenical patriarch.

And, as I told him at that supper, I was also proceeding with vengeance against those who had overthrown me ten years before and against those who espoused the cause of the usurper Apsimaros rather than my own. I made no secret of the vengeance I was taking; I have never made a secret of the vengeance I still continue to take. At my order, artisans erected several gibbets atop the inner wall to the city, so that I might edify the people by causing them to contemplate the fate of those stupid enough to have opposed me.

First to be hanged on the gibbets was Apsimaros's brother Herakleios. As I had promised him, his end was quick and easy. While he dangled there, I caused Apsimaros to be brought out of his cell under heavy guard to view the corpse. For the usurper's end I had something more elaborate in mind. Meanwhile, however, to keep th e people in a contemplative mood, I executed various of the other officers who had been imperfectly loyal to me.

As Makarios had known it would, the season of autumn storms soon arrived; I was glad Cyrus had managed to come into the imperial city before travel became so dangerous only a desperate man would think about it. As ecumenical patriarch, he celebrated the glorious festival of our Lord's birth in the church of the Holy Wisdom.

A week or so before Lent began, I chose to put an end at last to Leontios and Apsimaros, thereby giving the city mob of Constantinople, in a rowdy mood in any case before the onset of the solemn season, something out of the ordinary to talk about and celebrate. To assure a large crowd in the hippodrome, I decreed a day of chariot racing. This sport, which I am given to understand was a commonplace up to the reign of the Emperor whose namesake I am, is reserved for special occasions these days, partly because the partisans of the rival teams are still given to riot and all manner of unseemly behavior to show their support and partly because the races are ruinously expensive and not even the imperial fisc can afford to offer them frequently.

Along with the horse races, I also announced a triumphal procession through the imperial city, from the Golden Gate to the hippodrome. People crowded under the colonnades on either side of the Mese to watch.

First came a company of excubitores, gorgeous in gilded parade armor with bright-dyed cloaks streaming after them. Behind them walked civilian servitors carrying sacks of silver miliaresia, from which they threw coins into the crowd, the occasion, while auspicious, not calling for gold.

After the men with the money glumly tramped Leontios and Apsimaros, each in the filthy tunic he had worn while imprisoned in the monastery of Delmatos, each with his hands manacled in front of him. So the people could tell which wicked usurper was which, a secretary with a large sign bearing each man's name followed him. And, for the benefit of the many who could not read, the secretaries called out the names of Leontios and Apsimaros in loud voices, as well as their crimes: "These vile worms dared rebel against the vicegerent of God on earth, Justinian, Emperor of the Romans!"

"Tu vincas, Justinian!" the people shouted, for I rode in a chariot drawn by white horses directly behind the overthrown usurpers. I waved to the right and then to the left, acknowledging the appropriateness of the old salute on this day, as on the day when I first reentered the Queen of Cities.

At my side marched faithful Myakes, who, of all my guardsmen, did by far the most in trying to prevent my ouster and who served me so long and well in my exile. Not for anything on earth would I have deprived him of the opportunity to share in avenging the outrages Leontios and Apsimaros had inflicted upon us.