As I had been with Leontios and Apsimaros, I was eager to speak with Herakleios, who had been the last man in arms against me. Barisbakourios led him before me; though not so decked in chains as Apsimaros had been on reaching Constantinople, Herakleios wore manacles that clanked when he went down in an awkward prostration. "You know what I will do with you, of course," I said as he got to his feet once more.
"You'll kill me some kind of way," he answered. "I don't doubt that for a minute." He had a guttural accent like his brother's and resembled him in bodily appearance, too, being tall and slim and lighter in complexion than most Romans.
In a couple of sentences, he also proved he had a good understanding of the way the world works. "You're right," I said. "You deserve nothing less."
He had courage. His shrug made the manacles clank again. "I hope you have the courtesy to make it quick," he said. "I wasn't the one who overthrew you. All I did was try to keep my own brother on the throne. I lost, and now I'm in your hands."
It was not begging. It was nothing like begging. He might have been reminding me of an appointment I had next week. Never before, never since, have I seen a man discuss his fate so dispassionately. His calm words swung me toward agreement where tears and histrionics would have earned him an ending opposite that which he craved. "Fair enough," I told him. "You'll not suffer."
"For which I thank you," he said, and then, still dispassionately, continued, "I never would have guessed you'd pull this off."
"God was on my side," I told him, to which he had no answer. I asked him a question about which I had been wondering since my days up in Kherson: "Is your name truly Herakleios, or did you change it when your brother changed his?"
"Herakleios is the name my mother gave me," he replied. "Had we both changed at the same time, he would have become Herakleios and I Tiberius. I was named for your- great-grandfather, is it?"
"Great-great," I said.
"Your great-great-grandfather, then, the famous Herakleios who saved the Roman Empire. My brother wanted to do the same thing." He raised an eyebrow; as I have noted, he kept his sangfroid in the face of death remarkably well. "You will admit, the Empire needed saving after three years of Leontios."
I shrugged. "Your brother became my enemy the instant he had the crown set on his own head instead of recalling me after he cast down Leontios."
"How could he?" Herakleios sounded honestly curious. "Your nose was lopped. I see you have had it repaired- you must have found a very clever surgeon- but I do not think you had done that back in the days when my brother first became Emperor of the Romans."
In that he was of course correct. But he was also my prisoner, under sentence of death, and I, not his brother, Emperor of the Romans. Nothing required that I answer him. Rather than doing so, I gestured to Barisbakourios, who in his turn gestured to the men under his command. They led Herakleios away to await his fate. To his credit, he did not tax me about the inconsistency he had exposed.
News spread rapidly of my return to Constantinople and my reassumption of the imperial power stolen from me ten years before. In Thrace, the pursuit first of Apsimaros and then of Herakleios brought word of my arrival to every town and village. In Anatolia, the officers I sent out to take over for any suspected of retaining their loyalty to the previous usurper let the soldiers and peasants know I was firmly in command in the imperial city.
I also sent messengers announcing my return to Oualid in Damascus, the new miscalled commander of the faithful having succeeded the accursed Abimelekh only a few months before I regained the throne. Merchant ships took the news to Alexandria, to the Phoenician cities- and to Kherson and Phanagoria.
Not long before autumn storms made travel on the Black Sea too unsafe to contemplate with equanimity (although, as I knew from horrifying experience, deadly storms could arise on that sea at any time), a merchant vessel from Phanagoria came down to Constantinople. Its captain, a certain Makarios, sought an immediate audience with me. On my servitors' learning he bore a message from Theodora, his request was granted at once.
After prostrating himself before me, he said, "Rejoice, Emperor, for your wife has borne you a son, and both were well, the latest report I had before sailing."
By then, I had grown accustomed to rewarding men who brought me good news. "Half a pound of gold for Makarios here!" I called out. The sea captain bowed himself almost double. A eunuch scribbled a note on a waxed tablet, thereby insuring the command would be remembered. "Has the boy been baptized?" I asked Makarios.
"Yes, Emperor, he has." Regardless of whether he had just become a richer man, Makarios suddenly looked apprehensive. He coughed a couple of times, nerving himself to continue. At last, he did: "Emperor, he was baptized as Tiberius."
The throne room grew very quiet. Courtiers and excubitores stared at me, wondering how I would respond to that. Well they might have; though Tiberius was a name my family used, it was also that which Apsimaros had ruled. Putting those two facts together, I thought I understood how and why the name had been bestowed. "Tell me," I said to Makarios, "did Ibouzeros Gliabanos have a hand in naming the baby?"
"Why- yes, Emperor." He sounded astonished. "How could you know that?"
"Because my dearly beloved brother-in-law the khagan of the Khazars was, is, and always will be a trimmer. He could not have known I had beaten the usurper when the boy was born, could he?" I asked. Makarios shook his head. I went on, "Had I lost, the name would have pleased Apsimaros, since he stole it himself. And it\a160… suits me well enough." I wondered if my uncle Tiberius still lived. I had not bothered to find out about him and his brother Herakleios. Come to think of it, I have not bothered to find out about the two of them to this day.
Makarios said, "Emperor, I am to tell you that your wife misses you and longs to come to Constantinople and lay your son in your arms."
"I miss her, too," I answered truthfully. "Her confinement being safely past, I shall send a fleet to Phanagoria- or to Kherson, if she'd rather; let the rich men there sweat to see the Augusta pass through on the way to the imperial city, after they tried to murder me- to bring her back to me. They can sail tomorrow, or I will know the reason why."
"Emperor, I beg your pardon, but you'd do better to wait," Makarios said. "I count myself lucky to have got here without bad weather. It's late in the year, it truly is."
"If I command the fleet to sail-" I began.
Makarios dared interrupt me: "Only God commands the weather, Emperor." Courtiers gasped. Since I had already executed a good many who opposed me, they thought the sea captain likely to be next. And killing him would have saved the fisc half a pound of gold.
But I refrained. The only thing I said was, "I hope that Cyrus has heard of my successful return, so he can come to Constantinople from Kherson this season."
"I don't know the man, Emperor; I'm sorry," Makarios said. "But the ship that brought the news to Phanagoria had touched at Kherson first, so I expect he knows about it, whoever he is."
"No one of any particular importance," I said. "He's only the man I've picked as the new patriarch of Constantinople."
"If he's no one in particular, who knows whether-" Makarios abruptly fell silent, hearing all of what I'd said, not the first part alone. I dismissed him and then dismissed him from my thoughts; that I can dredge his name from my memory as I write these words surprises me.
Cyrus, as chance would have it, arrived in Constantinople a few days later with a harrowing tale of tempest survived on the sea. Since I had my own story of that sort, the two of us traded them. That done, I summoned him to supper, at which time he said, "Emperor, you honor me beyond my deserts by raising me to the patriarchal throne."