Justinian

MYAKES

He would have done better to listen to me, Brother Elpidios, then and some other times, too. Or maybe in the end it wouldn't have mattered, anyway. No way of telling that, not really. If you change one thing, most of the others stay the same. You never can know, not for certain.

But, considering how things ended up, I wish Bardanes had stayed on Kephallenia.

All winter long, I had been making plans for Theodora's entrance into Constantinople- and for that of little Tiberius, too. I wanted to see my wife's face as I paraded her down the Mese. From Atil and from Phanagoria, she imagined she knew what the imperial city was like. I smiled whenever I thought of that: she was like a man who, having seen two copper folleis, fancied he could tell his neighbors about a gold nomisma.

I also wanted to remind her how much I valued her, and to show I cared for her still, despite my having returned to the heart of the civilized world. Accordingly, as soon as spring approached, I sent Theophylaktos the eunuch to Phanagoria with a good-sized fleet to take my wife from Ibouzeros Gliabanos and bring her back to the imperial city.

No one said a word to me about the earliness of the season. When I commanded the fleet to sail, sail it did. Having been away from Theodora for most of a year, I was impatient to have her by my side once more, and even more impatient to set eyes on the son I had never seen. I knew, too, that the fleet would have some considerable layover in Phanagoria while Theodora came thither from whatever part of Khazaria to which she had removed herself- Atil, most likely- on my departure from Phanagoria for the land of the Bulgars.

Not to stretch the tale unduly, the fleet turned out to have sailed too early in the season for its own safety. A storm blew up on the Black Sea the day before the fleet would have made port at Phanagoria. Theophylaktos survived, but several ships went down and more than three hundred sailors drowned.

This news I gained from Makarios, the merchant captain who the fall before had brought me news of Theodora's confinement and the birth of Tiberius. He had got to Phanagoria ahead of my fleet, escaping the storm, and set out after the survivors limped into that town. After recounting the unfortunate tale, he added, "The tudun of Phanagoria also told me to give you a message from Ibouzeros Gliabanos."

"Did he?" I said, amused. "Go ahead." I expect it to be a warning against killing any more officials the Khazar khagan had sent out to govern the cities he ruled.

But Makarios said, "He told me to tell you two or three ships would have been plenty to bring your wife back here to Constantinople. He says you didn't need to throw so many men away doing that. Did you think you were taking her by force?" He held up a hasty hand, as well he might have. "These are his words, Emperor, not mine. All I'm doing is delivering them."

"I understand that," I said. "I am not angry at you. But the Khazars will pay for their insolence. All the cities up there will pay for what they did to me. If I were you, Captain Makarios, I'd trade along the southern coast of the Black Sea, not the northern one. Once I am through with those towns, they will have little to trade."

"Thanks for the warning, Emperor," he said, but I could tell by the way he said it that he did not believe I intended my words to be taken literally. He having brought me good news, I hope his business has not suffered in the subsequent years of my reign.

Two months and more passed by before Theophylaktos and the ships of his fleet still floating returned to the imperial city. I bore the delay with such patience as I could, knowing from my own experience how long news and people took to travel across the tremendous breadth of the steppe.

At last, though, a messenger brought word that the fleet was pulling into the Golden Horn, whose harbors were closest to the palace at Blakhernai where I still dwelt. Hurrying up to the roof of the palace, I saw the ships with my own eyes. On one of them would be my wife and son, although they were not so near as to let me make them out. I called orders to the servants and departed.

The fleet was just tying up at the docks when I rode up on a bay gelding: a much handsomer piece of horseflesh than the Bulgar pony aboard which I had come down to Constantinople, even if lacking in both intelligence and endurance by comparison. As I hurried down the pier toward Theodora and Tiberius, I prayed they had had a smoother voyage on the Black Sea than my last one.

"Justinian!" A familiar voice made me spot one waving hand among many. I waved back to my wife, who held up my son for me to see.

I stared and stared at the child of my flesh, he who will succeed me when that flesh is subjected to the common fate of all mankind. He was plump and reddish and, like his mother, had a full head of dark brown hair. After noting these characteristics of his, I noted one of my own: intense surprise that I could view a child of mine without being filled with anger and hatred, the only emotions suffusing me whenever I set eyes on my daughter Epiphaneia.

Sailors having extended the gangplank from the ship to the wharf, Theodora left the vessel and entered the imperial city. "Justinian, here is your son," she said in Greek that showed she had been practicing with merchants or priests during her sojourn in Khazaria, and she handed Tiberius to me.

My hands were unpracticed at holding babies. Tiberius cared not at all. Seeing me smile at him, he smiled back, enormously. I laughed, and so did he, a baby's squeal of joy unadulterated. Whatever his elders might have thought, he cared no more about my nose's being less that it might have than he did about the unpracticed fingers out of whose grip he tried to squirm. His sublime indifference to my features would of itself have sufficed to endear him to me.

Then, continuing to hold him in the crook of one arm, I turned and used the other to wave out to Constantinople, imitating my wife's diction as I did so: "Theodora, here is your city." I could not resist adding, "Is it not almost as grand as Phanagoria?"

Taking a wifely privilege, Theodora stuck out her tongue at me. "You told me stories about Constantinople," she said. "I thought you were as big a liar as a bard who sings songs to my brother the khagan. Now I see you did not tell the truth because you did not say enough."

"Tervel the Bulgar told me the same thing," I answered. "His ambassadors would come back from the Queen of Cities and say what they saw, and he would not believe them. When he saw for himself, he too knew they had been keeping much to themselves."

"I want to see all of this city," Theodora said. "If it is mine, I need to know it."

"Soon you will see the most splendid pearl in the necklace, when I crown you Augusta and Tiberius Emperor in the church of the Holy Wisdom," I said, pointing southeast to show her where in the city the great church lay. Because of its height, the exterior of the huge dome was visible from most of Constantinople, though no one, viewing only the exterior, could gain the smallest inkling of the magnificence housed within.

After we had stood talking for a little while- and after Theophylaktos had got down on his hands and knees, not to prostrate himself before me but to kiss the tarred, gull-dung-smeared timbers of the harbor belonging to his native city in thanksgiving for having come home safe at last- a commotion at the foot of the pier made me look in that direction. Approaching amidst a considerable retinue was a litter carried by bearers with eagles embroidered on the chests of their silk tunics. The walls and even the handles of the chair were gilded; silk worked with golden threads curtained the windows.

Theodora's eyes, already wide, grew wider. "Who rides in this- thing?" she asked. Her Greek, though much improved, had no words for what she was seeing.

One of the attendants opened the door to the litter. The woman who descended wore robes very much like mine. "Come with me," I said to Theodora. "I'll introduce you to my mother." Word of my wife's arrival must have reached the grand palace almost as soon as it got to me.

My wife inferred a good deal from my tone. Quietly, she asked, "You and your mother do not like each other?"

"Not always," I answered, as quietly. "God willing, you and Tiberius will make a difference." That, after refusing my mother's urging to remarry, I had wed a barbarian princess had made a difference, and not a good one. But a grandson would set no small weight in the other pan of the scale. Raising my voice, I said, "Mother, I present to you my wife, Theodora, who shall be Augusta, and my son Tiberius, who con tinues our line. My wife, I present to you my mother, the Augusta Anastasia."

Politely, Theodora inclined her head. "I greet you, mother of my husband," she said. The words were Greek, but I got the idea she was translating them from Khazar ceremonial.

"Welcome to Constantinople," my mother said, and then, more warmly, "Welcome home." She held out her arms. "Let me see your son."

She knew how to hold an infant, having gained experience with me, with my brother Herakleios, and, now that I think on it, with Epiphaneia as well. She smiled down at Tiberius, and he up at her: he would smile at anyone who smiled his way. He made the sort of noises infants make when they are happy. And then, his grandmother still holding him, he pissed himself.

I thought she would be annoyed. She started to laugh. "These things happen," she said, and turned a thoughtful eye my way. "They happened with you." To Theodora, she added, "He is a handsome boy."

"Thank you," my wife said. She turned and called in the Khazar language, waving as she did so. A slave woman who had accompanied her on the ship from Phanagoria came hurrying up. Theodora took Tiberius from my mother and handed him to the woman. She spoke some more as well. Not having used the barbarous jargon of the nomads who dwell north of the Black Sea since my own departure from Phanagoria, I understood not a word she said, but context made her desire plain: that Tiberius's deplorable state be corrected. This duly came to pass.

My mother said, "I know Justinian will have you live with him at the palace he has chosen for his own, Theodora, but you must bring your grandson to me often, so I can see him and play with him."

"I will do this," Theodora replied. If she saw anything unusual in the separate households my mother and I maintained, she kept quiet about it. I do not believe she did, it being the custom among the Khazars for the khagan to live apart from even his closest family.

Theodora having ridden across the steppe with me from Atil to Phanagoria, I felt certain she would prefer a horse to a litter for the far shorter journey from the harbor to the Blakhernai palace. A litter waited nonetheless, to convey Tiberius (and, incidentally, the slave who had charge of him) to the palace.

My mother's eyes grew wide when she saw Theodora swing up into the saddle, riding astride like a man. Somewhat to my surprise, she said nothing; she had made up her mind to be polite to my wife, even if more for Tiberius's sake than on account of Theodora's own multifarious virtues.

I rode back to Blakhernai alongside Theodora: a little ahead of her, in fact, not only because I was Emperor but also because I knew the way. She exclaimed at everything, as any newcomer to this God-guarded and imperial city will do. But, for her, everything was more all-encompassing than it might have been for, say, a Roman from an Anatolian town. "Stones in the roadway!" she murmured at one point, the very idea of paving being exotic to her.

"Yes," I said happily, as if I had invented cobblestones myself.

She kept craning her neck. "All the buildings are so high," she said; we were riding between rows of three- and four-story apartment houses, nothing at all out of the ordinary for Constantinople. People on the balconies overhanging the street peered down at us. Some of them waved. None presumed to empty chamber pots on our heads, which has happened before in the history of the city. "So high," she repeated. "Why don't they fall down?"

From time to time, in earthquakes, they do fall down. I forbore to mention that, saying instead, "Our builders know what they're about."

She accepted it: how could she do otherwise, this being her first journey through Constantinople? When we got to the palace wherein I had dwelt since returning to the imperial city- and where I dwell yet- servants and slaves and eunuchs came out and prostrated themselves before us. Though the Khazars have a somewhat different ritual, she grasped what that meant. "These are all yours?" she asked in no small astonishment.

That I understood; her brother the khagan, though living in great luxury, had but a fraction of my retainers. "These are some of what is mine," I answered proudly- and truthfully. "They are also some of what is yours."

Theophylaktos, ever so delighted to be back in the imperial city, took charge of Theodora then, conveying her to the chamber off the hall of Okeanos that had been readied against her arrival. I saw no more of her until we dined together as the sun was setting. By then, serving woman had plucked her eyebrows, powdered and rouged her cheeks, painted her lips, and curled her hair. She would never look like a woman born in the Roman Empire, but she looked more like one than I had ever seen her. "You are lovely," I told her.

"Am I?" She shrugged. "In Khazaria, we decorate horses like this, not women."

From that day forth, though, she voiced no further complaints against Roman fashion. And she praised the food highly. Full of roast goat soused with fat myself, I said, "These are the dishes they imagined they could make in Phanagoria. Now you taste them as they should be." A servant poured me more wine. "The vintages are better, too."

"Yes," she said emphatically, having also been sampling those vintages.

Presently, Theophylaktos escorted her to my bedchamber, then departed to let us celebrate a mystery in which he had no hope of sharing. Two or three of the serving women would no doubt be downcast at Theodora's return, for the attentions I had given them in her absence would cease, except, perhaps, for occasional amusements.

"My wife," I said, barring the door.

"My husband," she answered. A proper Roman wife would have cast her eyes down to the floor in modesty. Theodora boldly met my gaze. I had not the heart to reprove her, not when she had proved herself loyal to me at her brother's expense. For treachery, the sword; for its reverse, rewards.

All at once curious, I asked, "What did Ibouzeros Gliabanos say when you came back to him and Papatzun didn't?"

Her smile was exactly that which I should have used had I been in her place. "He said many, many, very many very bad things. But all the time he said them, the way he said them was-" Running out of Greek, she used a word in the Khazar language, expecting me to know what it meant.

And, for a wonder, it was a word I chanced to recall. "Admiring?" I said, giving it to her in the tongue of the Roman Empire.

"Admiring, yes, thank you," she said. "Like he hated and had pride for you at the same time."

That probably went a long way toward accounting for the khagan's mocking message after my fleet met shipwreck. Having thrown in his lot with Apsimaros, he must have hoped I would fail in overthrowing the usurper, but, on my success (and, indeed, on my successful escape from his trap before that), he could not help but show a certain reluctant respect.

Theodora looked from the barred door to the bed in front of which I stood. Pointedly, she said, "Did you call me here to talk about my brother?"

I burst out laughing, half scandalized, half delighted. As I knew, Theodora had been a maiden the night we wed. But, on being properly introduced thereto, she had come to take no small delight in that which passes between man and woman. Once I left Phanagoria, she would have done without. Of my own amusements in that regard during the time we were apart, I said nothing, nor did she inquire, knowing the man's prerogative in such affairs.

But we were apart no longer. After putting out all the lamps in the bedchamber save one alone, I divested her of the robe she wore. Even by the light of that single lamp, I saw how childbirth had changed her body. Her breasts were larger and softer than I remembered, her hips thicker, the skin on her belly looser and marked with fine pale tracings it had not held before the child she'd carried stretched it. As far as fleshly perfection went, the serving maids with whom I had been dallying in Theodora's absence were without doubt her superiors.

None of them, however, had saved me in time of need. None of them had stood apart from their brothers to save me. None of them had given me a son to be Emperor after me. And so, while they were pleasant and diverting, Theodora was my wife.

After I made myself naked, she had no cause to complain of the salute I gave her, wordless though it was. When we embraced, standing there by the bed, my lance stood between us, but only for a moment. "So warm," she said, moving it to rub against her belly.

Before long, we lay down together. Each of us knew what pleased the other; I had nothing in which to instruct her, as I had needed to do when bedding a new serving girl. Once kisses and caresses had excited us both, she rolled onto her back, her legs open, inviting me to complete the conquest of her secret place.

That I wasted no time in doing. Theodora's breath sighed out as I thrust myself deep into her. Her thighs gripped my flanks, I rode her until she gasped and called out my name and what I have always taken to be a string of Khazar endearments, though I have never asked her the meaning of the words.

I had not yet spent myself within her, as I had usually done at her moment of delight when we enjoyed the marital couch before my enforced departure from Phanagoria. Enormous in the dim lamplight, her eyes looked past me, through me, rather than at me. Realizing my lance retained its temper, she murmured, "Go on. Oh, go on"- again, immodest, but in its way immensely flattering.

On I went. Again she tensed beneath me. Again she quivered. Again she called my name. And, this time, I sent my seed deep into her womb a moment later.

"You are a big man, a great man," she said admiringly. "You go on and on, you make me crazy for you." She mimed clambering atop me and taking me by force.

I laughed with her, a laugh not far from exhaustion. The truth of things- a truth I kept from her- was that I kept on and on because I took less pleasure from each single stroke than I had before Tiberius passed out through the way on which I was now going in. The sheath into which I thrust my sword now fitting more loosely than had been the case, I had to work harder to reach my full pleasure. Her giving me less satisfaction was, precisely and in inverse proportion, as those learned in arithmetic are wont to say, the occasion for my giving her more.

Having thus labored long and hard, I fell asleep, awakening sometime later from a vivid erotic dream of the sort commonly sent by Satan to tempt us Christians away from the paths of virtue. This particular erotic dream, however, was sent not by Satan but by Theodora, who had amused herself by finding a way to revive my manhood while I lay snoring. Once I was not only revived but awake, she impaled herself on me and, moving slowly and languorously, brought both of us another round of joy. Though unsure whether I could complete my half of that wordless bargain, in the end I managed it.

We both slept then, waking only with the sunrise. The bedclothes bore stains from my seed dribbling out of her in the night: not the stains of maidenhead overwhelmed, as on the first night, but those of a deeper, longer-lasting intimacy. "I am glad you're with me again," I said, and, despite her body's being somewhat less enjoyable than before, I spoke the truth.

My having chosen to dwell at the palace in the Blakhernai district rather than the grand palace furnished the opportunity for a parade through most of the imperial city when the time came to crown Theodora Augusta and Tiberius junior Emperor. This met with the raucous approval of the Constantinopolitan city mob, more of whom were able to gape at the procession that would have been the case had we gone only the short distance from the grand palace up to the church of the Holy Wisdom.

It also met with Theodora's approval, for it allowed her to see the many monuments and churches and splendid buildings lying along the Mese. We did not solicit Tiberius's opinion, as he was still far too small for it to matter in any way. From somewhere- God only knows where- Theophylaktos produced an imperial robe of a size appropriate for a baby. When dressed therein, Tiberius looked absurdly majestic- and, I must say, majestically absurd.

Ceremonial required Theodora to hold Tiberius up for the people of Constantinople to see and to admire throughout the entire procession. This proved one disadvantage of making the aforesaid procession longer; not far past the column of Markianos, she whispered to me, "My arms will fall off."

"Keep going anyhow," I whispered back; departing from tradition was dangerous. When she looked mutinous, I added, "Besides, they all love him." Her face softened, for that was obviously true. Women cooed and men smiled at the spectacle of a plump, good-natured baby- which Tiberius was- decked out in a miniature version of his father's magnificent robes.

"So sweet!" a woman exclaimed, and heads close by her bobbed up and down in agreement.

"You see?" I said to Theodora.

"I see," she replied, but, never being one to shy from speaking her mind, she added, "I wish you carried him a while." Then, proving how much better her Greek had become, she made a pun, saying, "I carried him nine months already."

"My turn will come inside the great church," I said. She subsided, recognizing that against necessity one struggled in vain. Ceremonial and necessity, when mentioned in matters pertaining to the Emperor of the Romans, might as well be one and the same.

We passed through the Forum of Constantine, paraded by the church of St. Euphemia near the hippodrome, and came up to the Milion, which marks the end of the Mese. The heads of Leontios and Apsimaros were still on display in front of it, both somewhat the worse for wear but distinguishable one from the other on account of Leontios's mutilation.

Deliberately, Theodora turned her back on the last remains of the two usurpers. "Revenge," she said, "is good."

"Truly God was wise when He sent me to your brother's court," I told her, receiving in return a proud smile.

Not far past the Milion stands the church of the Holy Wisdom. "It is the biggest building I have ever seen," Theodora said, peering up and up and up at the massive structure of golden sandstone. From the outside, the massiveness of the church is its most noteworthy feature. Like an egg, it hides its riches within a plain shell.

When we went into the narthex, the outer chamber before the worship area itself, Theodora exclaimed at the mosaics. "Yes, they are fine," I agreed, "but you will find work that comes close to them at the Blakhernai palace, and work to match them in the grand palace. However\a160…"

We went on, into the naos itself. Cyrus the ecumenical patriarch waited for us beside the golden altar table. And he waited longer than strict ceremonial would have dictated, too, for Theodora, having decided to stare up into the great dome, stood transfixed, apparently unable to go forward.

Following her gaze, I also looked up into the dome. Having come to the great church many times, I normally took even such a marvel for granted: so familiarity enslaves us all. Now, though, I saw as it were with new eyes, viewing it, thanks to Theodora, as if for the first time once more. The sunbeams streaming through the many windows ringing the base of the dome, light striking off the golden tesserae in the dome itself, shifting if I moved my head by so much as a digit's breadth\a160…

"It floats in the sky," Theodora whispered. "Nothing holds it up but the light. It is not part of the building."

None of that, of course, was literally true. And yet every word of it seemed true. Having once begun to stare up into the dome myself, I needed a distinct effort of will to look away. I touched Theodora on the arm, which called her back to herself. Together, we approached the altar. Now Theodora could see and appreciate the marble and precious metal that had been lavished on the great church. Before, the overmastering splendor of the dome commanding her attention, no lesser marvel had been able to show itself to her.

Cyrus prayed, beseeching God's mercy and lovingkindness for me, for my family, and for the Roman Empire. When I became Emperor of the Romans, George, then ecumenical patriarch, had set the crown on my head, but it is the Emperor who crowns both the junior Emperor and the Augusta. The assembled grandees having added their acclamations to those of Cyrus, the patriarch handed me the first of the crowns I was to bestow.

"Behold the Emperor Tiberius!" I cried, and set the crown on my son's head. I kept hold of the crown as well, it being made for a fully grown man. On feeling something brush against his hair, Tiberius whipped his little head around, trying to find out what it was. When he saw the crown, he grabbed for it; his hands were beginning to obey his will. Once he had seized it, he tried to bring it down to his mouth so he could chew on it, as he did with everything that came within his reach.

"Many years to the Emperor Tiberius!" the nobles and bureaucrats of Constantinople cried. The acclamation was more casual than on many such occasions, many of the grandees being diverted by the junior- very junior- Emperor's antics. From the women's gallery came more laughter and sighs of amusement: the noblewomen shared affection for a baby with their humble cousins on the street.

Tu vincas was not a shout that went up at the coronation of any junior Emperor, conquest being the prerogative of the ruling Emperor. I could not even leave the crown on Tiberius, as I should have done had he been older. Once I had satisfied the symbolic requirement of placing it on his head, I took it away again. Tiberius reached for it, and howled when he could not get it.

More laughter rose and echoed from the dome. Theodora rocked Tiberius in her arms till he calmed. Having waited for that moment, I took the second crown from the hands of the ecumenical patriarch. The Augusta is more often crowned in the Augustaion, the enclosed open space south of the church of the Holy Wisdom, but I performed the ceremony inside the great church, combining it with the coronation of my son. Theophylaktos had grumbled a little at the proposal, but not much. And, being Emperor, I had my way.

At my gesture, Theodora slightly inclined her head. I set the crown on it, saying, "Behold the Augusta Theodora!" Tiberius, meanwhile, beheld the crown on his mother's head, let out a squeal of delight, and tried to get it, imperially certain it had been placed there for his amusement alone.

Over the echo of that squeal, more acclamations rang out. Most were in Latin, the ceremony for crowning the Augusta having changed less over the years than that for the Emperor. Indeed, it was my great-great-grandfather who changed the official title of the ruler of the Roman Empire from Augustus to the simple word Emperor.

"Thank you," Theodora said when the acclamations had faded. "God bless you." I nodded, well pleased, having wanted her to use those words to remind the grandees she was of Christian faith even if of Khazar blood.

I took the first crown from Cyrus once more and, accompanied by my wife (who still carried our son in her arms) and the ecumenical patriarch, went out through the narthex to the entranceway to the church of the Holy Wisdom. The crowd out there- people lacking the importance to be admitted to the great church to witness the coronation ceremony with their own eyes- burst into cheers to see Theodora adorned with the Augusta's crown. They cheered even louder when, as I had done inside the church, I set the junior Emperor's crown on Tiberius's small head.

Servants flung coins into the crowd from sacks they carried for t he occasion: gold and silver both here. Rather than watching the city mob struggle over the largesse thus distributed, I went back into the great church. Again, the nobles and high functionaries shouted out fulsome acclamations for the newly crowned Tiberius and Theodora.

They had, no doubt, acclaimed Apsimaros a year before. They had, no doubt, acclaimed Leontios as fulsomely ten years before. They would, no doubt, acclaim some other vile, worthless usurper as fulsomely should he chance to overthrow me.

I did not aim to give the whores the chance.

My mother beamed at me, saying, "I am very glad to see you using the grand palace once more. I know your memories of those who dwelt here before you came back are unpl-"

With a sharp chopping gesture of my right hand, I cut her off. "This palace has a larger dining hall than the one at Blakhernai."

"Reason enough," my mother said. "I am also pleased to see you reconciling yourself with some of the people who remained busy in the imperial city after you were forced to leave. That way lies security." I made no answer. She was in any case not seeking one, as she swung all her attention to Tiberius. "How is the littlest Emperor?" She punctuated that by tickling him under the chin. By way of reply, the littlest Emperor squeaked with delight.

One of the spatharioi I had appointed since returning to the city, a certain Helias, came up to me and said, "Emperor, everything is ready."

"Good," I told him.

He was about to go when a cook came running out of the kitchen, crying, "Who is this black devil who wants to work with us?" He made the sign of the cross. "I have never seen such an ugly man in my life!"

"Oh, that's my cook," Helias answered. "I call him John, because I can't pronounce his real name. He's an Indian or an Ethiopian: something like that. He is ugly, but he can really cook. He's put a belly on me since I bought him six months ago, I'll tell you that. When I heard the Emperor had a banquet in mind, I brought him along to help."

"Let me see him," I said, curious to learn whether he would resemble Auriabedas.

The cook trotted off, returning in a little while with a fellow who in fact did not much look like the little man who had restored my nose. This man was tall and muscular, with skin black rather than brown and hair growing in tight little curls. His features were hard and coarse, his nose, though seeming undamaged, even flatter than mine.

After clumsily prostrating himself, he spoke in bad Greek: "Emperor, you eat my food, you like my food."

"All right, John," I said, and, diverted by his strange appearance, gave him a nomisma, which he took with a loud, shrill whoop of delight. I turned to the cook who had brought him into my presence. "He may be ugly, but he seems to have no harm in him. Let him cook, so long as he does not bother the rest of you."

Bowing, the cook led John back into the kitchens. That proved well timed, for the invited guests began arriving shortly thereafter. One by one, they prostrated themselves, bowed to my mother and to my wife, and let eunuchs take them to the places assigned them at the tables. Having been seated, they began drinking wine and talking shop with one another, as men of similar trades will do when cast together.

None of them paid any special attention to the magnificence of the hall in which they were enjoying themselves. It was, for these functionaries of intermediate to high rank, a familiar setting. All of them had frequently come to the grand palace while Apsimaros and, before him, Leontios, had set their fundaments on the throne. Some of them I remembered from the days before my exile; a few I remembered from as far back as the days of my father's reign.

I greeted them with the nineteenth verse of the twelfth chapter of the book of Luke: "\a160'Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.'\a160"

My mother, whose piety, always deep, had strengthened further in the years of my exile, looked sharply at me. I returned my blandest stare, and she subsided. The bureaucrats and courtiers I had assembled- they must have numbered about sixty altogether- lifted their cups in salutation. "May you also be merry, Emperor," one of them called, whereupon the rest gave forth with loud agreement.

Food began coming out of the kitchen then: oysters and spinach, octopus and leeks, prawns in cheese with garlic. I had no idea what share in all this John the black man from India (or wherever his homeland lay) had had, but the dishes were uniformly excellent. My guests might have taken the dining hall for granted, but good food they appreciated, and were loud in its praises.

After the prawns came roast boar in garum, the piquancy of the fish sauce complementing the meat's fatty richness. Again, the courtiers lauded the viands to the skies. Pork is a poor man's meat, but the wild boar is of different substance from the humble, garbage-eating pig, and these connoisseurs recognized and appreciated the difference.

They sighed over geese stuffed with figs and plums and served on a bed of cabbage, and moaned almost as they might have done over a beautiful woman when the servants carried from the kitchen lambs glistening with the fat in which they had been baked. Crushed mint leaves were sprinkled over the carcasses, which still smoked from their time in the oven. To add flavor to the meat, the cooks had also inserted peppercorns and tiny quills of cinnamon into the flesh. Biting down on one of them prompted a man to reach for his wine goblet.

As my guests had toasted me before, so now I pledged them. Lifting my cup, I waited until I had their attention before saying, "To the memory of the days that have gone before."

They drank- how could they not drink, when the Emperor of the Romans proposed the toast? But they did not understand; I could see as much in their faces. My mother also looked puzzled. I caught Theodora's eye. She smiled at me. I smiled back.

We all paused a while for another cup of wine before the servants brought in dessert. My mother, who had been dandling Tiberius at every moment in which she was not actually eating, now discovered he had fallen asleep in her lap. "Will you excuse me?" she asked. At my nod, she rose, holding her grandson in her arms. To the guests, she said, "I have my sweet here." They nodded, some, no doubt, having grandchildren of their own.

Theodora leaned over toward me. "This will make it easier," she said.

"It will," I agreed. "Less explaining to do."

In came the cake, full of dates and cherries and sweetened with honey. In, also, came Myakes, resplendent in the gear of a captain of excubitores. Knowing him to be my crony, the courtiers accepted his presence as nothing out of the ordinary, for which I was glad.

"Is something wrong?" I asked.

He shook his big head. His beard shone in the torchlight; I was surprised to notice how gray he was getting. We were none of us so young as we had been. "Not a thing, Emperor," he said. "Helias sent me to ask you when we'd be starting." He looked a trifle sour at that. But I knew what he could do, and so had assigned the chief role here to the spatharios, to see what he would make of it.

"I don't think it will be very long," I answered in a low voice. A few of my guests leaned forward to try to hear what I was saying to Myakes, but only a few, most being less obvious in their inquisitiveness. I went on, "They'll want to be departing soon, as they expect to rise with the sun tomorrow. I won't delay them. Is the nomisma ready?"

"Oh, aye, Emperor," he said in a hollow voice. "Helias's little joke."

He did not approve. I did, saying, "I like it." He shrugged, bowed, and departed.

About half an hour later, taking advantage of a lull in the conversation, I rose, thus formally ending the banquet. The functionaries, familiar with such ceremonial dicta from the time during which Leontios and Apsimaros sat on the throne, rose as one man and, with fulsome praises, thanked me for the boon of my company. Along with Theodora, I departed by the doorway leading toward my bedchamber. The guests left through the other door, the hallway outside of which took them straight to the entrance.

But that was not the only passage in the grand palace leading to the entrance. Theodora and I doubled back through the maze, she following close behind me, trusting me to know the way. And so I did, despite a long absence and visits only rare after my return. Even before stepping out of the door, I heard voices raised in complaint and argument.

Through the complaints, Helias kept saying, "This is all at the express order of the Emperor."

"Well, where is he, so that we may protest to him?" one of the functionaries demanded, his voice full of indignation.

"Here I am," I said, showing myself. Armed and armored excubitores surrounded my erstwhile guests on three sides and, now that I had appeared, moved to cut them off from access to the grand palace as well.

"What is the meaning of this?" that same loud functionary asked, loudly.

"The meaning is simple," I replied. "The lot of you prostituted yourselves with the usurpers. For your whoredom you shall pay. 'Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee.'\a160" Where before I had quoted the nineteenth verse of the twelfth chapter of Luke, now I used the verse following, the twentieth. Pointing to the big-mouthed wretch, I said, "Go up to Helias."

As if in a daze, he obeyed. My spatharios tossed a nomisma in the air, caught it, and looked to see whether it showed my image or that of the Son of God. "Emperor, it is the Emperor," he told me.

"That is the power of the sword," I replied. Fitting action to word, Helias drew his own sword, which came free from the scabbard with a rasp of metal. Without a word of warning, he drove it deep into the bureaucrat's belly, twisting his wrist to insure the stroke was mortal. The bureaucrat fell with a shriek, futilely clutching at his torn flesh.

The other functionaries shrieked, too, in horror and anticipation rather than anguish, though their anguish would come soon enough. I pointed to one of them, whom I chose at random. "You. Go to Helias." When he balked, I added, "Whatever happens to you afterwards, it will be worse if you disobey me now."

Trembling, the fellow approached my spatharios. Helias tossed the coin again. He looked at it, then toward me. "Emperor, it is the face of our Lord."

"These days," I said, "we no longer use the cross, out of reverence for Him Who was crucified on it. The gibbet serves instead. Truss up this son of a whore and hang him, once you've found out how many of his traitor friends go with him."

Two excubitores seized the functionary. Thoughtfully, Helias had made sure he brought plenty of rope. Even more thoughtfully, he had brought gags with which to silence the cries of the men bound and awaiting execution. That, however, lessened the racket only a little, for my guests, realizing they were all fated for one death or the other, howled like dogs crushed under wagon wheels. They surged against the excubitores, only to be driven back by bared blades.

One by one, with me picking some and Theodora the rest, the functionaries and bureaucrats, weep and bawl and blubber and foul their clothes as they might, were compelled to go before Helias for the toss of the coin. As I recall, rather more than half of them were put to the sword, the rest bound and gagged and then hauled off to the gibbets to meet the fate fortune had decreed. The last few died (or were gagged) cursing me. Die they did, though.

When the last one had been cut down, I spoke to the excubitores: "Take this carrion and throw it into the cemetery of Pelagios with the suicides, for these vile beasts brought their deaths upon themselves." Turning to Theodora, I added, "Tomorrow morning, the servants will have to wash down the walk with buckets of water, lest this blood draw flies."

"Good," she said. "Yes. We will do that."

We went back into the palace. We saw no servants as we hurried toward the bedchamber in which, I suppose, I had been conceived- the night's work had put fear in the hearts of everyone who heard it, as I had hoped it would. Once in the bedchamber, we coupled like ferrets, both of us heated red by the spectacle we had watched. Theodora bit my shoulder, hard enough to draw blood. "Have to get a bucket of water poured on that, too," I said. We laughed, loud and long.