They cheered, loud and long. They dared do nothing less. Some of them, no doubt, were examining their memories and their consciences, wondering if I could learn they had cheered my overthrow ten years before. They had been fools to cheer then, but were not so foolish if they wondered thus. I intended trying to learn exactly that. When vengeance is God-ordained, it must be thorough.
"I have conquered," I repeated, and then made my voice go hard: "No thanks to you, no thanks to any Romans, that I have. My one true ally was Tervel son of Asparukh, khagan of the Bulgars. Upon him, then, I confer the rewards you Romans might otherwise have claimed. Attend me, Tervel!"
Clad in a plain white tunic, the khagan joined me on the platform. He stared out in wonder at the multitude there to witness his aggrandizement. In a soft voice, he said, "I have never seen so many people gathered together in one place in all my life. How do you feed them all?"
"We manage," I answered, and raised my voice once more: "People of Constantinople, I now raise Tervel the Bulgar to the rank of Caesar, in recognition of his services to me." Theophylaktos the eunuch draped an imperial robe, glittering with pearls and gems and golden threads, around the Bulgar's shoulders.
Tervel grunted in surprise. "This thing is as heavy as armor." He looked down at himself. "Prettier than armor, I will say." He smiled.
With my own hands, I set on his head the crossless crown of the Caesar. "Behold Justinian Emperor of the Romans and Tervel Caesar!" I shouted to the gaping mob. "We are friends and allies, joined against thieves and robbers."
With one accord, the people prostrated themselves before the two of us, men, women, and children alike, so that we saw only their backs and the napes of their necks. A headsman would have had an easy time of it, striding through the crowds lopping heads as a farmer with a scythe cuts down wheat. Most of them, I daresay, deserved nothing better.
"Arise!" Tervel shouted in a great voice, his first- and last- command as Caesar. The people hastened to obey. Some of them shouted the acclamations traditional upon the accession of a Caesar, wishing him many years and good fortune. Those acclamations sounded thin, though, and not only because of going so long unused as to be half-forgotten: some Constantinopolitans, I thought, did not care to lavish such praise on a barbarian.
I had no great delight in doing as I did, but, having begun it, did it as thoroughly as I could. "When Tervel Caesar returns to his own country," I told the people, "we shall honor him with many presents: gold and scarlet-dyed skins and pepper." Such are the presents that have pleased barbarians for hundreds of years. Tervel proved no exception to the ancient rule, puffing out his chest and looking pleased.
The people cheered, which made him even prouder than he had been. I hid a smile. He thought they were cheering his rank and my munificence. Knowing the city mob as I do, I knew also that what delighted them most was the announcement that he would be leaving Constantinople for his homeland.
That announcement delighted me less than it did the mob. Tervel's having a country of his own, a country carved out of Roman territory, remained galling a quarter of a century after the Bulgars, humiliating my father, established themselves south of the Danube. To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven, says the Book of Ecclesiastes. For now, Tervel remained my friend and ally. Later\a160… later would be a different season.
A few days later, the khagan rode north, his saddlebags nicely heavy with gold, bulging with skins, and packed with pepper. The latter he reckoned as much a marvel as anything else he found in Constantinople. "It bites the tongue!" he exclaimed, on my serving him a kid roasted with peppercorns. The sharp flavor made him drink immoderately, a benefit he also appreciated.
I having kept my promise, he kept his as well, and restrained the Bulgars from plundering as they rode north. And why not? He had made more profit dealing with me than he could have got by stealing from me. That he kept his pledge by withdrawing peacefully also helped me secure my hold on the heart of the Roman Empire, no small matter with Apsimaros still at large. Rumor said he had sailed up toward Thrace, but rumor was not enough. I wanted the usurper.
But Apsimaros was not the only illegal ruler about whom I concerned myself. One of my first actions on returning to the imperial city was to order Leontios's guards not to tell him I had reclaimed that which was mine. Tervel having departed, I went in full imperial regalia to the monastery of Delmatos and commanded the usurped usurper brought before me.
"Down on your belly before the Emperor of the Romans!" my excubitores shouted, and Leontios prostrated himself in his filthy tunic. The prison stench came off him in waves.
"Rise," I said.
Clumsily, he got to his feet. Not only was he covered with dirt, but his shaggy, unkempt hair and beard, which had had only a light frosting of gray ten years before, were now snow but lightly dusted with soot. In the center of his broad face was a broad hole. The executioner had done a more thorough job on him than on me, which disheartened me not in the least.
Imprisonment having done nothing to quicken his wits, he stared at me some little while before saying, "You're not Apsimaros," and following that a moment later with, "You're someone else." Finding he remained not only fatuous but also redundant made me laugh out loud. A frown turned his features even uglier than they had been before. "I know your voice, don't I?"
"I should think you would, Leontios," I replied. "Or shall I call you Leo, the Lion?" I shook my head. "No. No one else did."
His eyes went wide, but not so wide as the hole where his nose had been. "Justinian!" he exclaimed, and made the sign of the cross, as if he had seen a ghost. "But it isn't- you can't- you aren't- you've got-"
I affirmed every one of his incoherent denials: "It is I. I can rule. I am Emperor. I've got a nose." I smil ed at him. "You look remarkably hideous without one."
"Kyrie eleison," Leontios gasped, turning pale beneath his grime. "Christe eleison."
"God and Christ may have mercy on you," I said, "but I shall have none, and, since that is at God's command, my own guess is that the demons in hell will torment you through all eternity: what you deserve, for raising your hand against the Emperor of the Romans."
"I spared your life," he said. "I did not kill you."
"You did not think you needed to kill me," I told him. "The lesson I draw from that is not to make such mistakes myself. Having lost your nose, you shall lose your head as well." I gestured to the guards. "Take him back to his cell. Now, instead of every day being the same as the one before and the one after it"- a condition I knew all too well from my weary years in Kherson-"he has something to look forward to."
The guards laughed. Myakes laughed. I laughed. Leontios, the humorless wretch, failed to see the joke.
A few weeks after my return to the imperial city, a messenger still stinking of horse sweat dashed into the Blakhernai palace, shouting, "Emperor! Emperor! We have Apsimaros!"
Although normally reckoning highly important the dignity of my office, on that glad occasion I took no notice of it whatever, letting loose a whoop of delight that made the tax official with whom I was talking jump in alarm. "Is he alive or dead?" I demanded. "Where was he taken?"
"Up in Apollonias, on the coast of Thrace," the messenger answered- rumor, for once, had spoken truly. "He's alive- in chains and on the way down to the imperial city. What happened was, he paid for lodging up there with a nomisma that had his own face on it. The tavern keeper recognized him and gave the word to the city garrison-"