Theodoric

TWENTY-ONE

Zeno stirred, as his mind returned to consciousness. He opened his eyes: blackness. He tried to sit up; his head banged against an unyielding surface. He extended his hands, which encountered what felt like cold stone. Where was he? With mounting alarm, he recalled his last memory: himself lying on a sick-bed surrounded by courtiers and physicians, the Patriarch of Constantinople leaning over him, intoning the last rites.

Terror engulfed the emperor as he realized the awful truth. Through some appalling misdiagnosis, perhaps while in a cataleptic state, he had been pronounced dead, then entombed — alive! Filling his lungs with stale and fetid air, he began to shout for help.

‘Simmer down, you ghastly bunch!’ bellowed the choirmaster with mock severity. The choirboys, high spirits coming to the fore on being released from rehearsing the paean for the new emperor, desisted from larking about. They were inside the vast church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. ‘That wasn’t bad,’ the choirmaster conceded. ‘Not bad at all.’ The choirboys grinned at each other smugly. ‘Not bad’ was high praise from their preceptor. ‘Early night, remember; tomorrow’s the big day. Off you go, now.’

‘Listen!’ called one chorister urgently, holding up a hand for silence. ‘I think I heard someone calling.’ All froze, straining their ears.

Faint but distinct, there came a muffled cry from the direction of the apse, ‘Help me, for pity’s sake!’

‘It’s coming from the sarcophagus,’ whispered one of the boys.

The group hurried to the great marble tomb resting on its catafalque where, only the day before, Zeno had been laid to rest. From within, the cry — desperate, terror-filled — was repeated.

‘We’ll get you out, Serenity,’ called the choirmaster, placing his mouth to the crack between the lid and the walls of the great stone coffin. ‘Can you hear me?’

‘Yes, yes!’ came the reply, charged with anguished hope.

‘I’ll get help, Serenity,’ the choirmaster assured the imprisoned emperor, after he and the twelve boys had vainly tried to shift the massive lid. Clearly, nothing short of a team of workmen armed with crowbars and lifting-gear was going to move that heavy slab. ‘Try to stay calm — you’ll soon be out of there.’

Dismissing his charges with a strict injunction not to breathe a word to anyone, the choirmaster hurried to the palace.

‘The poor man!’ exclaimed Anastasius in horror. The Master of Offices had repeated the choirmaster’s news to him and his bride-to-be, Ariadne — not, after all, Zeno’s widow, but, it transpired, still his wife. Aged sixty-one, an undistinguished if conscientious palace official, Anastasius had, for want of a more suitable candidate, been chosen to succeed Zeno, who had expired (it had been thought) suddenly, following a massive stroke. ‘We must get him out at once.’ He turned to the Master of Offices. ‘Summon the palace masons.’

‘Wait,’ said Ariadne. A woman of overweening ambition and iron will, she had agreed to marry Anastasius in the event of Zeno’s death, expected since the emperor’s being taken gravely ill, some weeks before. Such a wedding between May and December was acceptable to both, allowing, as it did, Ariadne to maintain her imperial status and Anastasius to inherit royal lineage through marriage to the emperor’s widow. The arrangement was not without precedent. Zeno himself, an Isaurian outsider, by marrying Ariadne, daughter of the emperor Leo, had thereby acquired membership of the royal line, as had Marcian, forty years ago, by marrying the Augusta Pulcheria, sister of Theodosius II.

‘Think carefully,’ continued Ariadne. ‘What would be the consequences were my husband to be resurrected? You, Anastasius, would of course relinquish any claim to the purple. Worse, you would be marked for death — or blinding, at best.* The throne can prove a damnosa haereditas. Through no fault of your own, you would have become a rival for the diadem, a potential usurper who must be eliminated. Such, unfortunately, have always been the rules of the imperial game. As for myself, it’s no secret that my marriage to Zeno has been one strictly of convenience; his death means little to me. Were he to return, his days would anyway be numbered, given his health of late.’ She looked hard at Anastasius. ‘But you, alas, consigned to prison or condemned to die, would no longer be my suitor. I confess I value my role as Augusta too much to relinquish it willingly.’ Addressing the Master of Offices, she continued, ‘You too, Magister, should have a care. Implicated, as inevitably you would be, in what, I imagine, might become known as “the Lazarus Affair”, you would be tainted by association and suffer a fate similar to Anastasius’. All totally unjust and unreasonable, of course; but that’s what would happen.’ She looked enquiringly at the two men. ‘Well?’

‘Your silence implies consent that we take no steps to liberate my unfortunate husband,’ Ariadne pronounced when, after a lacuna lasting many seconds, no one had spoken. ‘Good. This, then, is what we do. In case he should start circulating awkward rumours, that choirmaster must be told that Zeno was rescued, but unfortunately succumbed to shock. The cathedral must be locked immediately, for, let us say, a week. Long enough for. .’ She paused, and shrugged. ‘Even though it means postponing the coronation, it will be easy enough to fabricate a convincing reason — urgent repairs to a weak wall, say.’

‘It’s done, Serenities.’ Via a silentiarius, the Master of Offices set in train the machinery for closing the cathedral.

‘It’s monstrous — monstrous,’ whispered Anastasius, his mild face furrowed in distress.

‘Dreadful,’ concurred the Master of Offices. ‘But have we any choice? Of course, we may not be able to keep a lid on things. There’s no way of guaranteeing that those choirboys will keep quiet.’

‘Isn’t there?’ murmured Ariadne. ‘We can take steps to ensure their silence.’

‘Enough!’ roared Anastasius, suddenly red with uncharacteristic fury. ‘Good God! This is Constantinople, not Ravenna — let us behave like Romans, not barbarians. With the utmost reluctance, Augusta, and to my eternal shame, I am prepared to go along with your proposal as to Zeno. But I draw the line at anything more. If I hear that one hair of those boys’ heads has been harmed. .’ He glared at the empress.

‘Oh, very well,’ conceded Ariadne. ‘Even if the story gets out, it probably won’t matter much.’

‘How so?’ objected Anastasius. ‘Zeno’s been a most effective emperor. The way he’s played off the Goths against each other has been masterly. And at last, by persuading Theoderic to go to Italy, he’s finally got rid of the barbarians. He’s succeeded, where every other emperor since Adrianople has failed.’

‘True, no doubt. But there’s one thing you’re forgetting: Zeno’s an Isaurian.’

Ariadne had a point, Anastasius admitted. The inhabitants of Isauria — wild mountain tribesmen, always ready to raid their neighbours or rebel against the government — were deeply unpopular with almost all East Romans. Sadly, the reaction of those same Romans, should they learn of Zeno’s fate, would more likely be indifference than consternation.

When he heard the distant, muffled clang of the church’s great bronze doors closing, Zeno knew no help was going to come. Alone, in the blackness of the tomb, despite having abandoned hope, the emperor began to scream. .

* Serious disfigurement was held to debar accession to the purple. Hence blinding, or amputation of the nose, was sometimes inflicted, as an alternative to execution, on those deemed unacceptable as Eastern Emperor.