"God bless you, Emperor," he said. "I pray that-"
I cut him off. "Instead of executing you, I shall have you blinded and exiled to the regions of Pontos." Having listened to Cyrus, I knew how dreary a place it was. Without his sight, Felix would find it drearier still.
He coughed and spluttered. I might have let him keep his life, but nothing that made it worth living. "Please, Emperor\a160…" he managed at last.
"Take him to the kitchens," I told the excubitores. "The executioner will be waiting for us." The guardsmen hauled Felix to his feet and herded him down the passageway. I followed, curious to witness the process the executioner had described for me earlier in the day.
In the kitchen, the cooks were curious, too, crowding around the executioner until he had to shoo them back to give himself room to work. Among the cooks was Helias's black slave John, who looked like a shadow of the men of normal hue.
"All ready, Emperor," the executioner said on seeing me come in behind the prisoner.
"Then go ahead," I said.
He had the excubitores stand Felix next to a high table where the cooks did their mixing and kneading. While the traitorous bishop of Ravenna dolefully waited, the executioner picked up a long wooden peel and thrust it into the oven in which my daily bread was baked. Instead of drawing forth a loaf, however, he took out a silver bowl that had been heated almost red-hot. Handling the peel as skillfully as any baker, he set the bowl in front of Felix, who tried to recoil from its heat but was prevented by the guards.
The executioner poured a jar of hot vinegar into the bowl. A great cloud of noxious vapor rose from it. Into this vapor the executioner had the excubitores bend Felix's head. He himself, w ith the skill he had learned as part of his trade, forced the recalcitrant bishop to open his eyelids, so that the surface of his eyeballs was exposed to the caustic fumes. Felix howled like a wolf and did his best to twist away. He could not.
After what the executioner judged sufficient time, he let Felix lift his head from the fumes of the boiling vinegar. Felix's whole face was red, as if scorched. His eyes looked as if the executioner had scraped their surface with a file, or perhaps as if they had been rubbed with sand, as a mason will sand down marble to make it smooth. But they were not smooth: on the contrary. I could tell at a glance Felix would not see again.
"Well done," I told the executioner. "Just as I desired." Felix would have been weeping, I think, but no tears flowed from his eyes, which were horribly swollen along with being blistered and abraded. To the excubitores, I said, "Take him to the harbor and put him aboard the ship waiting there to take him to Amastris." Which place, from what Cyrus had said, was as close to living death as made no difference. "He shall never trouble Ravenna again." And off into exile Felix went.
MYAKES
And, a few years later, Brother Elpidios, back from exile Felix came. Once Justinian was cast down, he got his bishopric back, even if he was blind. And do you know what, Brother? He spent a few days at this very monastery before he sailed on toward Ravenna.
I'd only been blind a couple of months myself then. We spent a deal of time talking, he and I did. He told me some useful things, because he'd had longer to get used to it. He'd found, same as I was finding, being in a monastery helps. You go to the same places every day, do the same things. And you don't usually have to fret about where this or that is, because you don't own this and you don't own that, either.
No, I don't know what sort of bishop he made once he got to Ravenna again. I never heard a word about it. Ravenna's a long way from here. For all I know, he might still be bishop. But I'll tell you, Brother, if I've found anything in all these years, it's that I don't know much.
Not long after I blinded Felix and executed the rest of the rebels from Ravenna, Helias came up to me and said, "Emperor, may I talk with you for a little while?"
"What is it?" I asked. By his manner, I judged it was a matter of some importance- and of some delicacy, too.
"Emperor," he said, taking a deep breath, "I don't quite know how to tell you this, but I fear Leo is plotting to steal your throne from you."
If he had thought to gain my attention, he had succeeded. "Do you?" I said. "Why do you think that?"
"It only stands to reason," he answered. "He's too clever for his own good by half, and he's always going around snooping into other people's affairs. I don't like the way he watches me out of the corner of his eye, either."
"All that is as may be," I answered, "but I must tell you that I am glad Leo is diligent in my behalf. I want those who serve me to give me good service. If I have only fools to do my bidding, I shall be in great danger."
"But a clever man will serve himself while claiming to serve you," Helias said.
"You have given me no evidence whatever that Leo is plotting against me, though," I told him. "I cannot condemn him for doing his work too well. If you have any evidence, I will hear it. Until then, do not trouble me with this charge."
Helias bowed and went away. A few days later, a patrician who was called Mauros on account of his extremely black beard came to me with a similar accusation, and with a similar lack of evidence as well. On questioning Mauros, it became clear that he had not plotted his charges along with Helias, but had made them independently.
That two men should devise identical indictments of Leo, neither knowing what the other was doing, made me more concerned about the young spatharios from near Mesembria than either accusation would have on its own. Accordingly, I summoned Myakes and asked him what he thought about Leo.
I had not told him why I sought his opinion. After his usual pause for thought, he replied, "Emperor, if you're asking me whether I like Leo, the answer is no, not very much. But if you're asking me whether he's good at what he does, why, you'd have to be blinder than Felix to say no."
"Yes, I know he's good at his job," I said. "Is his job the only one with which he's concerned?" Seeing that Myakes did not follow, I spelled it out, alpha-beta-gamma: "Does he want mine?"
"Ah, that's what you want to know," he said, enlightenment quickening his features. He thought some more before going on, "If he does, Emperor, I haven't seen it. If I had, I'd tell you in a heartbeat- you know that. If I had, I'd have told you already- you know that, too."
Since he was correct, I thanked him and sent him on his way. No more than two weeks afterwards, the patrician Stephen warned me Leo aspired to my place. Again, I questioned him. Again, he had no solid proof. His claim was unconnected to those of Helias and Mauros, as best I could determine. I dismissed him as I had dismissed them.
His words, however, combined with those of Helias and Mauros, sent me to watching Leo more closely than I had before. In nothing that I saw, in nothing that my privy agents discovered, was the slightest hint of disloyalty. What those agents did discover, however, was an enormous gift for dissembling. Thus, while married, Leo maintained no fewer than three concubines in different quarters of the imperial city, each of them convinced he cherished her alone, as was his wife.
A man capable of such deception was also capable of hatching and nursing plots against me, plots difficult of detection. That he had not done so (or that I had not detected him doing so) proved little. I began to cast about for ways I could be certain his undoubted abilities were used for my benefit rather than to my detriment.
Thanks to the workings of divine providence, such an opportunity was not long in coming. Beyond the northeastern reaches of Roman Anatolia lie the mountains and valleys of the Caucasus. Some of the peoples of this region favor Rome, some incline toward the Arabs' miscalled commander of the faithful, while most back whichever side has given them more presents most recently.
Among the most consistently pro-Roman tribes in the Caucasus is that of the Alans. The followers of the false prophet, however, had recently extended their influence over the Alans' neighbors, the Abasgians. Fearing they would be next, the Alans sent an envoy to me, seeking aid against their neighbors, who now had Arab soldiers alongside them.
"I know the very man to lead your resistance against the deniers of Christ," I exclaimed. "I shall give you my own spatharios, Leo, who by his nature is well suited both to war and to complex bargaining." I spoke with vehemence enough to impress the Alan greatly, nor was I telling him anything less than the truth. "With him I shall send the sum of five thousand nomismata, that he may hire soldiers or make bargains"- a euphemism for pay bribes-"as he sees fit."
"God bless you, Emperor!" the Alan exclaimed. "You have given me and my prince more than we dared expect."
"Leo shall sail for Phasis, the Black Sea port onto which your country opens, no later than next week. I am confident he will do great things for you."
If Leo suspected he was being banished, he gave no sign of it. "I'll tie their tails in knots, Emperor," he said. "Send me after them. I haven't been on that side of the world since I was a little boy, and never up in those mountains." He smiled. "I hear the women in the Caucasus are pretty, too."
"Business before pleasure," I said sternly.
"Oh, of course," he answered, as if surprised I could have thought anything else. "But if pleasure comes along, I won't send it packing." Given his philanderings here in the imperial city, I believed him.
He sailed for Phasis a few days later, along with the Alan envoy and the gold. In due course, he reached the town on the eastern shore of the Black Sea and wrote to me that he was going into the interior of the country there, leaving the money behind so that it would remain safe until such time as he decided exactly how it might best be disbursed.
Having heard that much from him, I put him out of my mind. The Caucasus being so remote, his success, if he found some, would be gratifying but not vital, while his failure would not send an Arab host storming toward Constantinople, as had happened in the days of my youth. I wondered if he would prove as ingenious as he appeared.
And then, a few weeks later, Helias brought before me a little old wrinkled man who stank of leather. "Emperor, this is Theodoulos, the bootmaker who fashions the imperial footgear. Tell the Emperor what you've told me, Theodoulos."
"Yes, yes," Theodoulos said- thickly, for he had only a few teeth. "This Leo, this spatharios"- a word on account of which he sprayed me with spittle-"he came into my shop, and he asked me, he did, he asked me\a160…"
"What did he ask you?" I demanded.
"Yes, yes, that's right. He did ask me," Theodoulos said. "He asked me, he did, all right-"
"The dye," Helias prompted.
"No, no, not ready to die yet," Theodoulos said, though at that moment he was closer to dying than he knew. But then, somewhere in the darkness of his wits, a lamp was lighted. "Oh, the dye. Yes, yes. Leo, he asked me, he did, what dye it was I used to get just that shade of, shade of, shade of, of red on the imperial boots."
"Did he?" I said. "He had no business asking you that." That shade of red is reserved for the Emperor alone. Had Leo not been interested in becoming Emperor, it would not have concerned him.
"Emperor, you should recall him and strike off his disloyal head," Helias said.
"I should like to recall him and strike off his head," I answered, "but, if I should, do you think him more likely to come back to the imperial city or go over to the Abasgians?" Helias's face told me what he thought. Thinking the same thing myself, I went on in meditative tones: "A man with his gift for intrigue could severely trouble the Roman Empire."
"That is so, Emperor," Helias admitted, "but will you let him go free and show others closer to home a man can prosper through treason?"
"He shall not prosper," I said, and then again, in an altogether different, almost startled, tone of voice, "He shall not prosper."
"What will you do?" Helias asked me.
"That is my affair," I answered, not wanting him to get a glimpse of the way my mind worked: though dispraising Leo's disloyalty, he might have some of his own. To Theodoulos, I said, "Half a pound of gold to you for what you have told me of Leo."
"God bless you, Emperor," the bootmaker exclaimed, and prostrated himself again.
Dismissing him and Helias, I called for a secretary. The man having arrived, I dictated a letter. When I had finished, I said, "I shall want a fair copy of that before noon, so that I can sign it. It must be on a dromon bound for Phasis this afternoon."
"Yes, Emperor," the scribe replied. "Of course, Emperor." He knew perfectly well what would happen to him did he fail. But, being employed to write, write he did, and I affixed my signature in the scarlet ink reserved for the holder of the imperial dignity. A courier on a fast horse took the letter to the harbor and stayed there until with his own eyes he had seen the dromon depart.
It returned to this God-guarded city within three days of the time I had reckoned to be the fastest possible. Its captain, a weatherbeaten veteran named Agapetos, hastened to the Blakhernai palace as soon as it tied up at one of the quays along the Golden Horn. On being told he had come, I summoned him directly into my presence and even forgave him the time-wasting ritual of prostration. "Tell me at once whether you have accomplished the task I set you," I said.
"Emperor, I have," Agapetos answered. "The gold the spatharios Leo left behind in Phasis was still there. Obedient to your command, I took charge of it and have returned it to Constantinople. Even as we speak, it is being carried back to the imperial treasury."
"Splendid," I said, and then again, "Splendid. Pharaoh of Egypt set the Israelites to making bricks without straw, and an ambassador without money is as useless as a brick that has no straw. The native tribes of the Caucasus will surely complete Leo's ruination."
"Yes, Emperor." Agapetos did not ask why I wanted Leo ruined. That was not his affair, and he knew it. He made the perfect sort of servant for me: he did exactly as he was told, he did it well, and he never, ever, asked why.