Not to stretch the tale unduly, the fleet turned out to have sailed too early in the season for its own safety. A storm blew up on the Black Sea the day before the fleet would have made port at Phanagoria. Theophylaktos survived, but several ships went down and more than three hundred sailors drowned.
This news I gained from Makarios, the merchant captain who the fall before had brought me news of Theodora's confinement and the birth of Tiberius. He had got to Phanagoria ahead of my fleet, escaping the storm, and set out after the survivors limped into that town. After recounting the unfortunate tale, he added, "The tudun of Phanagoria also told me to give you a message from Ibouzeros Gliabanos."
"Did he?" I said, amused. "Go ahead." I expect it to be a warning against killing any more officials the Khazar khagan had sent out to govern the cities he ruled.
But Makarios said, "He told me to tell you two or three ships would have been plenty to bring your wife back here to Constantinople. He says you didn't need to throw so many men away doing that. Did you think you were taking her by force?" He held up a hasty hand, as well he might have. "These are his words, Emperor, not mine. All I'm doing is delivering them."
"I understand that," I said. "I am not angry at you. But the Khazars will pay for their insolence. All the cities up there will pay for what they did to me. If I were you, Captain Makarios, I'd trade along the southern coast of the Black Sea, not the northern one. Once I am through with those towns, they will have little to trade."
"Thanks for the warning, Emperor," he said, but I could tell by the way he said it that he did not believe I intended my words to be taken literally. He having brought me good news, I hope his business has not suffered in the subsequent years of my reign.
Two months and more passed by before Theophylaktos and the ships of his fleet still floating returned to the imperial city. I bore the delay with such patience as I could, knowing from my own experience how long news and people took to travel across the tremendous breadth of the steppe.
At last, though, a messenger brought word that the fleet was pulling into the Golden Horn, whose harbors were closest to the palace at Blakhernai where I still dwelt. Hurrying up to the roof of the palace, I saw the ships with my own eyes. On one of them would be my wife and son, although they were not so near as to let me make them out. I called orders to the servants and departed.
The fleet was just tying up at the docks when I rode up on a bay gelding: a much handsomer piece of horseflesh than the Bulgar pony aboard which I had come down to Constantinople, even if lacking in both intelligence and endurance by comparison. As I hurried down the pier toward Theodora and Tiberius, I prayed they had had a smoother voyage on the Black Sea than my last one.
"Justinian!" A familiar voice made me spot one waving hand among many. I waved back to my wife, who held up my son for me to see.
I stared and stared at the child of my flesh, he who will succeed me when that flesh is subjected to the common fate of all mankind. He was plump and reddish and, like his mother, had a full head of dark brown hair. After noting these characteristics of his, I noted one of my own: intense surprise that I could view a child of mine without being filled with anger and hatred, the only emotions suffusing me whenever I set eyes on my daughter Epiphaneia.
Sailors having extended the gangplank from the ship to the wharf, Theodora left the vessel and entered the imperial city. "Justinian, here is your son," she said in Greek that showed she had been practicing with merchants or priests during her sojourn in Khazaria, and she handed Tiberius to me.
My hands were unpracticed at holding babies. Tiberius cared not at all. Seeing me smile at him, he smiled back, enormously. I laughed, and so did he, a baby's squeal of joy unadulterated. Whatever his elders might have thought, he cared no more about my nose's being less that it might have than he did about the unpracticed fingers out of whose grip he tried to squirm. His sublime indifference to my features would of itself have sufficed to endear him to me.
Then, continuing to hold him in the crook of one arm, I turned and used the other to wave out to Constantinople, imitating my wife's diction as I did so: "Theodora, here is your city." I could not resist adding, "Is it not almost as grand as Phanagoria?"
Taking a wifely privilege, Theodora stuck out her tongue at me. "You told me stories about Constantinople," she said. "I thought you were as big a liar as a bard who sings songs to my brother the khagan. Now I see you did not tell the truth because you did not say enough."
"Tervel the Bulgar told me the same thing," I answered. "His ambassadors would come back from the Queen of Cities and say what they saw, and he would not believe them. When he saw for himself, he too knew they had been keeping much to themselves."
"I want to see all of this city," Theodora said. "If it is mine, I need to know it."
"Soon you will see the most splendid pearl in the necklace, when I crown you Augusta and Tiberius Emperor in the church of the Holy Wisdom," I said, pointing southeast to show her where in the city the great church lay. Because of its height, the exterior of the huge dome was visible from most of Constantinople, though no one, viewing only the exterior, could gain the smallest inkling of the magnificence housed within.
After we had stood talking for a little while- and after Theophylaktos had got down on his hands and knees, not to prostrate himself before me but to kiss the tarred, gull-dung-smeared timbers of the harbor belonging to his native city in thanksgiving for having come home safe at last- a commotion at the foot of the pier made me look in that direction. Approaching amidst a considerable retinue was a litter carried by bearers with eagles embroidered on the chests of their silk tunics. The walls and even the handles of the chair were gilded; silk worked with golden threads curtained the windows.
Theodora's eyes, already wide, grew wider. "Who rides in this- thing?" she asked. Her Greek, though much improved, had no words for what she was seeing.
One of the attendants opened the door to the litter. The woman who descended wore robes very much like mine. "Come with me," I said to Theodora. "I'll introduce you to my mother." Word of my wife's arrival must have reached the grand palace almost as soon as it got to me.
My wife inferred a good deal from my tone. Quietly, she asked, "You and your mother do not like each other?"
"Not always," I answered, as quietly. "God willing, you and Tiberius will make a difference." That, after refusing my mother's urging to remarry, I had wed a barbarian princess had made a difference, and not a good one. But a grandson would set no small weight in the other pan of the scale. Raising my voice, I said, "Mother, I present to you my wife, Theodora, who shall be Augusta, and my son Tiberius, who con tinues our line. My wife, I present to you my mother, the Augusta Anastasia."
Politely, Theodora inclined her head. "I greet you, mother of my husband," she said. The words were Greek, but I got the idea she was translating them from Khazar ceremonial.
"Welcome to Constantinople," my mother said, and then, more warmly, "Welcome home." She held out her arms. "Let me see your son."
She knew how to hold an infant, having gained experience with me, with my brother Herakleios, and, now that I think on it, with Epiphaneia as well. She smiled down at Tiberius, and he up at her: he would smile at anyone who smiled his way. He made the sort of noises infants make when they are happy. And then, his grandmother still holding him, he pissed himself.
I thought she would be annoyed. She started to laugh. "These things happen," she said, and turned a thoughtful eye my way. "They happened with you." To Theodora, she added, "He is a handsome boy."