Justinian

TWENTY-NINE

In the year that witnessed the destruction of the Ostrogoths at Busta Gallorum and Mons Lactarius, two Nestorian monks from Persia who had sojourned in China sought an audience with Justinian.

‘The monks are here, Serenity,’ a silentiarius announced to the emperor, seated as usual at his desk in his triclinium or private study. Here, rather than in rooms of state or the chambers of the Council, the administration of the Empire was increasingly carried out, by the ‘many-eyed’ emperor — ‘the Sleepless One’ himself — working alone at night till dawn.

‘Ah, Paul,’ murmured the emperor, looking up with a smile from the codex he was scanning, ‘a little bird tells me you’re composing a poem — a description in hexameters of our Church of the Holy Wisdom.’

‘The bird speaks correctly, Serenity.’

‘Then I look forward to a private reading on completion of the work. You may admit our visitors.’

‘Fathers Hieronymous and Antony,’ announced the usher and withdrew, flushing with pleasure at the emperor’s recognition of his opus.

Two black-robed figures entered the tablinum and bowed. ‘We much appreciate your granting us an interview, Serenity,’ declared the foremost, a man of burly build with a large bald head, fleshy hooked nose and a pair of lively black eyes. ‘Father Hieronymus,’ he went on, clapping a hand to his chest. ‘Father Antony.’ And he indicated the other, a birdlike figure with a nervous smile.

‘But — I understood that you were Persians,’ said Justinian, looking mildly puzzled. ‘These are Roman names.’

‘Our abbot requires us to take the names of Roman Fathers, in honour of the Founder of our Order — the great Nestorius,’ explained Father Hieronymus.

‘I see. Well, Fathers, how may I help you? Or perhaps I should be asking your help. As Nestorians, you may be able to assist me in untying a doctrinal Gordian Knot, that is proving to be particularly, ah — knotty. It concerns my Edict regarding certain writings by three followers of Nestorius, which I’m attempting, with considerable difficulty, to get my subjects to accept; the Edict, not the writings, I should say.’ And he regarded the pair invitingly.

‘Alas, Serenity, the purpose of our visit is not to do with matters spiritual, but rather concerns Mammon,’ said Father Hieronymus. ‘If I were to ask you, Serenity, what was the Empire’s most valuable luxury item, what would be your answer?’

‘Silk,’ replied the emperor without hesitation. ‘It’s required for robes of state for officials and high clergy, also for diplomatic gifts to foreign potentates. And of course it’s highly prized by women of the upper class. The cost, however, is prohibitively high. Thanks to our control of the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb leading into the Red Sea, we can get some silk from China, our shippers buying it from merchants based at Taprobane.* The trouble is, Persian traders are strongly entrenched there and usually manage to buy up all the silk before we can get our hands on any. Which leaves the overland route — the ‘Silk Road’ — from China via Central Asia to Persia and the Mediterranean. Our commerciarii buy it from the Persians at scheduled frontier posts.’

‘Putting the Persians in a perfect position to extort monopoly prices,’ observed Father Antony.

‘Exactly!’ retorted Justinian with some heat.

‘So — wouldn’t it be splendid if silk could be produced within the Roman Empire,’ said Father Hieronymus.

‘It would indeed,’ concurred Justinian, adding wryly, ‘We can all dream, I suppose.’

‘It need be no dream,’ said Father Hieronymus in earnest tones.

‘Go on,’ prompted Justinian, his interest quickened.

‘When Father Antony and I served in China as missionaries, based in the great city of Nanking,’ went on the monk, ‘we were able to observe, among many other things, how silk was manufactured. Hatching from an egg, the caterpillar of the silkworm moth feeds on the leaves of the mulberry plant; then, when it has attained a certain size, it secretes around itself a cocoon of fine thread — silk, in other words. Inside the cocoon it prepares for metamorphosis — the change from grub to moth. Before this can happen, the grub is killed by steam or hot water. The silken filaments from several cocoons are then unwound together, being spun into a silken thread. After which, once the thread is cleaned, the normal process of weaving and dyeing — as with cotton, wool, or linen — can take place.’

‘Fascinating, truly fascinating,’ enthused Justinian. ‘There’s just one small detail you’ve omitted though. While the Empire has no dearth of mulberry plants, the silkworm moth is not a native species, and is nowhere to found inside our realm.’

‘A want which can be rectified,’ said Father Hieronymus, beaming at the emperor and tapping the side of his nose. ‘Suppose Father Antony and I were to travel to China, smuggle out silkworm eggs, then bring them back into the Roman Empire — would you be interested, Serenity?’

‘Would I be interested! But won’t smuggling out the eggs be hideously dangerous? Their silk industry is bound to be a jealously guarded secret. I shudder to think what your fate would be if your theft were to be discovered. Their methods of execution can be, let us say, inventive.’

‘We have thought of a means of transporting the eggs, Serenity, which virtually eliminates the risk of detection,’ put in Father Antony. ‘Examine, if you will, our walking-staves.’ And he held out his long, stout staff of ash. ‘See, Serenity, the top unscrews, revealing the inside of the staff to be hollow — the perfect receptacle for concealment of the eggs. When the top is screwed back on, the join is undetectable.’

‘Brilliant,’ breathed the emperor, shaking his head in admiration. ‘What can I say? If you are willing to undertake this mission, Rome will be eternally in your debt, and your reward commensurate. Now, for your journey you will need — ’

‘There’s something else we could bring back with us from China,’ broke in Father Antony excitedly, ‘something whose importance, I believe, far exceeds even that of silk.’

‘Be quiet, fool!’ hissed Father Hieronymus savagely. ‘You do not interrupt an emperor.’ Turning to Justinian, he declared, ‘A thousand pardons, Serenity. He has an obsession that makes him forget his manners at times.’

‘Let us hear him, anyway,’ responded Justinian with a patient smile. ‘Obsessions can be interesting.’ Turning to Father Antony, he went on in courteous tones, ‘Pray continue, Father.’

‘The Chinese have a means of reproducing books,’ said Father Antony eagerly, ‘that does away with the tedious and time-consuming labour of copying each page. Using a sharp tool, a page of writing is carved, in reverse, onto a block of pear-wood, the field being removed, leaving the letters in high relief. The block is then smeared with ink and pressed onto a sheet of a material similar to our papyrus, but finer and less brittle. When the block is removed, lo and behold — there is the page perfectly reproduced! The process can be repeated an infinite number of times, thus making the dissemination of knowledge cheap, and available to all with the ability to read. Think, Serenity,’ the monk continued passionately, ‘- Holy Writ and the writings of the Christian Fathers such as Augustine, Eugippius, and Salvian could become available to millions throughout your Empire and beyond, who otherwise could never afford to read them!’

‘An intriguing idea, certainly,’ declared Justinian. ‘My own seal performs a function not dissimilar, many times a day. I have one objection, though. If I were to allow your Chinese invention to be adopted, many thousands of skilled copyists working for the book-dealers, to say nothing of the clerks in the imperial chancery engaged in reproducing promulgations, would lose their livelihoods. I would not have that on my conscience. At the present time, a book is a rare and precious thing. Perhaps it should remain so, especially if it deals with matters of Divinity. Now — preparations for your journey,’ he went on briskly. ‘Where were we?’

‘Well, we did it!’ Father Antony declared, as the two monks looked back at Jiayuguan, the imposing gateway at the end of China’s Great Wall, ‘the mouth’ that marked the western limits of the Celestial Kingdom.

Thus far, the mission had proceeded without a hitch. The year-long journey to China, in the train of an ambassador of the Son of Heaven, had been tedious but safe, the task of collecting the precious eggs requiring only vigilance and caution. Two holy men from Rome’s distant Empire aroused respectful curiosity but not suspicion. Now, beyond the security of an ordered state, they were faced with an arduous odyssey through harsh terrain, beset with perils from brigands and wild beasts, until they reached the Persian frontier and civilization once again. After that, the remainder of the journey through the well-policed Empire of the Shah-an-Shah to the Roman ports on the eastern Euxine coast should be smoothly uneventful. Meanwhile, being part of a small caravan of merchants bound for Persia with a freight of spices, jade and silk offered a measure of security. To defray expenses, they could draw on generous funds supplied by the imperial Treasury — the beautiful gold coins of Justinian, recognized as international currency everywhere, from Beijing to Britannia, from Gaul to Zanzibar.

The first stage of the journey, on the western fringes of the Gobi Desert, lay through a dreary tract of red earth seamed with gullies and pimpled with low, stony hills. After several weeks, this arid emptiness gave way to scanty pastureland: a corridor of tawny steppe running between the Tien Shan — ‘the Heavenly Mountains’ to the north — and to the south the feared Taklamakan, the desert ‘You Enter and Never Return’ in the language of the Uighur, the wild, nomadic local people.

The journey of Fathers Hieronymus and Antony from Jiayuguan to Constantinople

The days passed in a blur of repeated rituals. First, after a scanty breakfast of dried apricots and leathery strips of dried mutton, loading up the camels — evil-tempered, shaggy brutes with two humps; then, several hours plodding through steppeland relieved occasionally by stands of pine or willow, the haunt of wolves and wild boar; a midday meal followed by an extended rest period against the hottest part of the day; and another march in the late afternoon till camp was pitched an hour before the setting of the sun.

There were occasional breaks in the monotony of the journey: stopovers at the towns which punctuated the Silk Road — Turpan, Korla, Kuqa, Aksur, each with its colourful market filled with noisy crowds, and traders selling everything from spices and harnesses to rock salt, skins, and cummin. Once, they witnessed a game of buzgashi — a ferocious tussle between mounted herdsmen for the carcass of a sheep.

At last they came to the oasis town of Kashgar, where the route divided — one path leading north and east for Samarkand and Persia, the other south for India. Taking the northern route, the caravan struck up a treeless valley into the Pamir Mountains, a bleak wasteland of barren crags and stony defiles, dominated by the distant, towering mass of Mush-taq-ata*, its snow-clad peak soaring above a tangle of saw-toothed ridges. Here, animals had grown huge as a defence against the cold — outsize yaks, sheep with five-foot horns, a dread species of enormous bear.

One night, the caravan, camped on an alluvial plain beside a glacial lake, was disturbed by a commotion in the camel lines. Rushing to the spot, the merchants were confronted, in the flickering light of the camp fire, by a horrifying sight — a bear of vast size attacking the tethered beasts, two of them reduced to shredded corpses. Standing on its hind legs, the creature, jaws agape revealing rows of vicious fangs, reared high above the terrified camels; even as the merchants looked on in helpless horror, another beast was clubbed down, half-decapitated by a blow from the monster’s paw armed with razor claws. Breaking loose, the remaining camels charged off into the night, their frantic braying fading at last into silence.

The bear now turned its attention to the men who, retreating to the fire, managed to fend off its furious lunges with blazing brands. At last, as though satisfied with the carnage it had wrought, the creature abandoned its attack and lumbered on its way.

In the morning, the shocked and devastated merchants recaptured three of the six fugitive camels (of the others two had fallen into a gully and broken their necks; the third was never found) and recovered what could be salvaged of their scattered merchandise — much of which was damaged beyond repair. Cacheing this, they bade farewell to the two monks and sadly turned their faces to the east, intending to return when they had built up another caravan in China.

The two monks now faced the daunting prospect of crossing the high Pamirs alone. Weeks later, starving, exhausted, and suffering from frostbite, they staggered into Samarkand as penniless beggars, having been relieved en route by bandits of their funds (but fortunately not their staves). In the bustling metropolis they were able to join another caravan bound for Persia, their medical skills enabling them to earn their passage money. The remainder of the journey, through Transoxiana, Turkestan, and Persia to the Euxine coast where, at the great new Roman port of Petra Justinianopolis* they took ship for Constantinople, was uneventful. A year almost to the day since leaving China, they disembarked at the quayside of the Golden Horn.

The mission proved an unqualified success. Under the close and expert supervision of the monks, the eggs were hatched at the proper season by the heat of dung, and a thriving industry was rapidly established, soon producing silk of a quality to equal China’s, but costing infinitely less than the imported cloth.

* The Indian navigator.

* Ceylon/Sri Lanka.

* Mount Kongur.

* Formerly just Petra, it was renamed and extended after being captured from the Persians, who had occupied Lazica. (See Chapter 23.)