‘What you suggest sounds to be heavy on cost. Three hundred men, twice as many mounts, and special equipment and I think I can assume that is just the beginning-’
‘Whatever it costs must be less than the talents we send as subventions to Kavadh.’
‘How long will you require?’
‘Perhaps a year of training. As to proof, that is in the hands of others. Only an enemy can validate what I believe.’
‘Many will see it as no more than a chance to enrich yourself.’
The response was too sharp to be addressed to an emperor, regardless of how high the speaker was held in esteem. ‘I hope that you are not amongst them!’
‘We are alone, Flavius, which is just as well, is it not?’
‘Forgive me, Highness, if I speak too boldly. It is not an accusation I can lightly accept for it besmirches not only my name but that of my family.’
The mention of that seemed to mollify Justin. At least it produced a wilful smile. ‘Did your father ever tell you of how we came to Constantinople?’
Decimus had, many times, but his son felt it politic to imply he had not and because he did so Justin began reminiscing; how they had fled a serious barbarian invasion of Illyricum, four stalwarts who thought they had the world at their feet, entering a city where the streets were paved with gold and one in which such paragons must both conquer and find wealth.
‘Not even lead did we find, Flavius. We encountered indifference and near starvation, for the people of Constantinople are not kind to strangers. Joining the army was a way to survive and, if I am now the only one left alive, it served us well.’
‘I found the same indifference myself when I came here.’
Justin stopped and looked back towards the Great Palace, at the cream stones of the outer walls and at the eastern end the earthquake-damaged dome of the church of St Sophia.
‘And who would have thought it would end like this? My wife and I say prayers every night for those we have loved and lost, but I tell you that your father holds a special place in mine. We were as close once as brothers.’
Seeing the eyes of the young man before him begin to well up, Justin added, to mitigate his obvious anguish, ‘Gather your men and horses, Flavius, and let us see if we can forge the weapon you describe.’
It took more than a year; there seemed not one member of the military or imperial bureaucracy inclined to aid him, quite the reverse. They set out to obstruct him by diverting the funds he needed or holding up his new equipment in the imperial arms factories, standing proof that most men of high rank were more concerned with their place and their own purse than with the needs of the empire.
Only when Justin interceded did matters improve, but the travails of one young man did not figure large in the cares of the state and when he appealed to Petrus he found him to be indifferent to the task upon which he was engaged and overdistracted by his private affairs. Still enamoured of Theodora, Petrus had removed her from her less than salubrious circumstances as an entertainer and more besides.
She and some of her companions were now accommodated in a wing of the palace well away from the imperial apartments and the Empress Euphemia, a lady now in poor health but still strong in her piety and never one to be inclined to welcome the less than chaste daughter of a circus acrobat into her presence.
Not that Flavius saw much of either; all of his time was now spent on the task at hand. The horses had been gathered and broken in, as had the men he needed, of a size and muscular ability to command exceptionally strong and often stubborn mounts. The armour and weapons were coming, if slowly, while ideas that had seemed sound at first needed to be modified, not least the bow used by his shock cavalry, the Hunnish model being refined to be more balanced in its construction.
Even with everything in place the training had to be instituted in the open fields outside Galatea, put to the test and refined to the point where every man in charge of a decharchia could both command his own men and act in concert with every other group, to either combine or act independently as circumstances demanded in response to a set of horn-blown commands. Time spent on the other side of the Bosphorus was rare.
The news of the demise of Euphemia, of a wasting fever, brought him hurrying back to Constantinople for the ceremonies of burial and attendance at the Masses said for her soul. It was a testament to her innate goodness and the many works of charity she had performed since becoming empress that he found not just a household in mourning but a whole city. He brought his new cavalry with him, to join in the parade that followed the catafalque to her place of interment, a spacious sarcophagus commissioned by Justin, his beautifully caparisoned men a wonder to the assembled crowds, who might have cheered on a less solemn occasion.
Naturally, Euphemia’s nephew was well to the fore amongst her mourners, just behind his parents and his uncle; more surprising to Flavius was the fact that he was accompanied by Theodora who, if she was overawed by the company in which she now found herself, managed to hide it well. He was sure he could see in her eye that she felt she was where she belonged.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
If Theodora had been a presence in the palace she had, up until now, been a discreet one. But from the day that the senate met in all its panoply — most guessed what was coming — she moved into the light. As soon as the necessary document was signed, Petrus, now to be known as Justinian in honour of his uncle, had married her, which meant on the day she observed to the anointing of her husband as co-Emperor and acknowledged Imperial Heir, Theodora was the sole occupant of the office of Empress.
The ceremony, albeit glittering, was relatively brief and entirely lacking in objections — that came as no surprise: it had been ever thus since the time of Augustus. The Senate never argued with the Imperator: they had only one recourse to action that would bring about change and that was bloody elimination of a man who always had soldiers to do his bidding.
There had to be speeches, first from Justinian promising to act for the good of all, to praise and reward virtue while bearing down on evildoing and deception. That he was not believed made no difference to the men who followed, to praise the sagacity of Justin in ensuring a peaceful handover of power while welcoming the elevation of his nephew as not just the continuation of a golden age but an opportunity to enhance and extend that rare occurrence.
Watching Petrus/Justinian was an entertaining game with which to stave off boredom as Flavius, heading the imperial guard detail, sought to discern behind that new imperial mask what the man was really thinking. If there was expression, it was so well hidden that a moving eyelash acted as evidence of feeling, even when men who saw themselves as rivals spouted paeans of praise that in their hypocrisy were grotesque.
The three nephews of Anastasius, who had some claim to the throne that Justin had occupied, were just as loud in their praises, with Hypatius speaking first, followed by his two cousins, Probus and Pompeius, who sought to outdo him and each other in grovelling. If anything indicated that all power in the empire issued from one source it was this fawning display; this trio, indeed everyone in the chamber, wanted positions from which they could enrich themselves and that could only come from imperial favour.
Vitalian excelled even them when it came to flattery, which led Flavius, once a soldier in his rebel army, to wonder how such a previously plain-spoken fellow could become so corrupted by merely spending a few years at court. He was, of course, motivated by the same concern, both for himself and his family; his two older sons now enjoyed the rank of dux in the two Phoenician provinces and had become prosperous because of it, while the youngest had been inducted into the Scholae Palatinae.