How does it compare to what, Brother Elpidios? I tell you frankly, I don't know. Sorry I can't tell you, but I've never found out, nor been curious, if you really want to know. Eh? What's that? No, of course the abbot doesn't have to know you asked the question. Nothing wrong with curiosity, I sa y. If you weren't curious, you wouldn't be reading Justinian's book, isn't that right, Brother?
Yes, you can read some more now, if you've a mind to. When you read, I hear his voice inside my head. Isn't that strange? I remember it changing, just as he says.
JUSTINIAN
Not only did I seek out Irene whenever I found the chance, I also got in the habit of going around with a sweet bun or two from the kitchens. Having caught one fish with that bait, I went angling for others- and my luck, while not perfect, was good enough to make me a happy, or at least a sated, young man. Though the first lesson teaches most of all, I learned a good deal afterwards, too.
That was a happy time for me, that little stretch of years beginning my manhood: the happiest time I have ever known, save these past few years when I have found revenge a pleasure surpassing the love of woman, as the Psalmist said with somewhat different meaning to the words.
My father had the peace he desired, the peace he had bought and paid for. He took great delight in it, in spite of, or more likely because of, his growing bodily infirmity. Gout and stone continued to wrack him, though he was, or should have been, still in the prime of life, and he pissed blood after some of his attacks.
His physician, Peter, muttered darkly at that symptom, but Peter, I was discovering, was given to dark mutters at any excuse or none. A man's body can go wrong in so many ways, and God has given us knowledge to fix so few of them, that anyone choosing the physician's trade, if not a bit mad merely for entertaining the desire, will be driven so by the frustrations of his craft.
And yet… I touch my nose and I remember that not all the doctor's art is useless, or not entirely so.
In sickness and in health, as I said, my father maintained peace, both with the Empire's neighbors and within the church. This latter required some effort, for, as we learned a couple of years after the fact, when the bishops of Rome translated the acts of the sixth holy ecumenical synod into Latin for the benefit of the westerners too ignorant to have learned Greek, in the anathemas they mentioned Pope Honorius but deleted his title, so as not to have to acknowledge his heresy to that part of the world administered by the see of Rome.
On hearing that, I grew furious. "You ought to order the exarch of Ravenna to send troops down to Rome and force the pope to tell the whole truth," I said to my father.
But he shook his head. "For the sake of preserving the work of the synod, I shall practice economy here," he said.
Economy is the term theologians use for overlooking differences without doctrinal import. Without it, I suppose, there would be endless friction in the church, as if sand were poured into the gearing of a waterwheel. But too great an exercise of it countenances heresy.
I said as much to my father; I was at the age where I challenged him more freely than I had. He shook his head again. "The anathema against Honorius remains. He is who he is, and burns in hell for what he did, regardless of whether they give him his proper title."
I could not sway him, though I said, "Surely the pope who gave the order for this lie after sending bishops to the ecumenical synod will also burn in hell."
"Agathon, the pope who sent bishops to the synod, is dead, and facing the decrees of a judge greater than I," my father answered.
"His successor, then," I persisted. I had not heard that Agathon was no longer among men, but then Rome, being at the very edge of the Empire, seldom drew my notice.
And my father said, "His immediate successor, Leo, has also suffered the common fate of mankind. The new bishop of Rome, a certain Benedict, has in his brief time been a good enough man on the whole- one more reason to stay quiet about the way the anathemas were translated."
And, indeed, Benedict and my father exchanged a couple of cordial letters, my father writing in Greek, which the papal secretaries could render into Latin for the bishop of Rome (I hoped more accurately than they had the anathemas), and the pope in Latin, which, despite its being little used in these parts save in the army and, to a lesser degree, among lawyers, we managed to puzzle out.
One day my father summoned me and my brother Herakleios to the metropolitan's church near the palace, a crumbling wreck of a building seldom used for anything. I went unwillingly, for the summons meant I could not keep an assignation I had made with some girl or another: at fifteen, which I was then, you feel your life will be blighted forever if you do not dip your wick on the instant. But, had I disobeyed my father, I knew perfectly well what sort of unpleasant things would have happened to me, and so, though unwilling, I went.
I was surprised to find not only my father but also George, the ecumenical patriarch, awaiting Herakleios and me. I was even more surprised to find Theoktistes the barber waiting with them.
"What's this, Father?" I asked. "You're not making us into monks, are you?" Herakleios laughed at that- one of the few times I remember making him laugh- but I wondered if I was joking. Had my father decided for some secret reason of his own to be rid of us, what easier way than shaving our heads and clapping us into a monastery? Monastic houses are easy to enter, but hard to leave.
But my father shook his head. "No, hardly," he said, and I relaxed. He went on, "The bishop of Rome, this Benedict, has asked if he might become your spiritual father, and I have agreed." He made the sign of the holy cross. "A man can never have too many prayers in this world, and those from a good and pious man will surely be effective. As a token that I do agree to this spiritual adoption, Justinian, I will send him a lock of your hair, and one of yours, too, Herakleios."
That explained why Theoktistes was there, then. George the patriarch, who was present in lieu of the pope, prayed while Theoktistes snipped a lock from where my hair grew long behind my ears and then did the same with my brother, whose hair was several shades darker than mine. The barber wrapped my hair in a square of red silk, Herakleios's in a square of green, and handed them both to my father.
"Well done," my father said, as if Theoktistes did not make his living trimming hair. "I shall have the artisans fashion a container suitably fine for such a rich gift, and send it on to the pope in Rome. May his prayers sustain both of you as the blessing of the bishops of Rome have helped me since I decided to convene the ecumenical synod and restore and renew the orthodox faith."
"May it be so," Herakleios and I said together, both of us crossing ourselves. Alas! God, Whose judgment in all things is beyond the ken of mere men, chose for His ineffable reasons not to grant my father's wish.
My brother Herakleios died three months to the day after Theoktistes cut the locks from our hair. When he fell ill, no one, not ever Peter the physician, was much concerned; over the years, he had shown he fell ill at any excuse or none, and always managed to recover.
But not this time. I hardly remember the earliest course of his illness; at most, I would have thought something like, Mother of God, has the little wart caught another cold? He milked his diseases for all they were worth, and I often wondered whether he was as sick as he made himself out to be, or if he was faking to get sympathy he did not deserve.
After a couple of days, neither I nor anyone else thought he was faking. His fever rose till his face looked and felt like red-hot iron. He coughed and coughed and coughed and would not- could not- stop. Weak lungs had been the death of our great-grandfather, and they were the death of Herakleios, too. Peter did everything he could, with poultices and plasters and fomentations smelling tinglingly of mint, but to no avail. After raving in delirium, Herakleios slipped into a sleep from which he never wakened. He had just reached his tenth year.