My mother took Epiphaneia from the midwife. The baby made noises that put me in mind of an unhappy kitten. As the midwife had, my mother held her out to me. "Take your daughter," she said.
But I backed away as if she had offered me a viper. "No," I said. "If it weren't for her, Eudokia would be, would be\a160…" Then I felt myself start to cry, although I had not willed it. I tried to stop. I could not. I stood there in the hallway, tears streaming down my face, my hands balled in useless fists at my sides.
My mother gave the midwife back the baby. She took me in her arms. We clung to each other and wailed to a Heaven that had proved itself deaf to us. My brother, my father, my wife, all young, all stolen from me in the span of four years. To this day I pray God forgives me for the blasphemies I loosed against Him in the madness of my grief.
The door to the chamber where Eudokia had died opened once more. Out came the ecumenical patriarch, looking as grim and mournful as Peter the physician had. Thinking back on it, seeing the man's face once more in my mind, I recall that the patriarch was Paul, not Theodore, who had suffered a fit of apoplexy and expired while conducting the divine liturgy a little more than a year after I restored him to his throne: not the worst way for a bishop to be called to God.
Paul must have heard my vain, useless, senseless railing against the Lord of all. Being a kindly man, he forbore to mention it, saying only, "Because of her great virtue, your wife is surely in heaven even as we speak." He made the sign of the cross.
I remembered myself enough to do the same. "I am glad you were here to give her unction," I said.
"As I am," he said gravely, "even if I was summoned for another purpose." He turned to the midwife and pointed to tiny Epiphaneia. "But you are blessed with a fine and, God willing, healthy daughter to remind you of her."
"Get out!" I shouted. Had my mother not restrained me, I would have set on him. But she held me back, and Paul, shock and fear both on his face, half staggered away from me. "Get out of here!" I cried again. "I never want to have anything to do with her- never, do you hear me? She killed my wife. She killed Eudokia. If it weren't for her\a160…" I dissolved in tears once more.
Paul crossed himself again. "You are distraught, Emperor," he said, which was certainly true. "When you are more fully yourself, I trust you will change your mind. You cannot blame the child for what is surely God's will."
But I did blame Epiphaneia, and I never changed my mind. I could not stand to be near her; she reminded me too much of what I had lost. And even the marriage I eventually tried to arrange for her was as much a punishment, a revenge, as anything else.
Having already written overmuch in these pages of funerals, I shall say little here of Eudokia's. She was laid to rest in the church of the Holy Apostles, in a sarcophagus of rose-pink marble. May God have had mercy upon her. If I am lucky enough to be forgiven the many sins staining my soul, I shall see her again in heaven.
With Eudokia I buried, I think, a great part of my own youth. It is, I daresay, no coincidence that shortly after this time I summoned to the palace Cyrus the engraver and ordered him to mint nomismata of a new type, showing me as the man I was rather than the beardless youth I had been. The portrait he produced for these new nomismata had all his usual skill. I approved it, and the goldpieces were duly struck. Yet it left me dissatisf ied in a way I could not define even to myself. I was searching for something else, but would not find it for another couple of years.
MYAKES
Well, Brother Elpidios, I have to say Justinian is right when he talks about himself so. Up till Eudokia died, he could be playful every now and again, but not afterwards, not for years and not until a lot of water had flowed under the bridge. When he lost her, he lost something special, something he couldn't find anywhere else.
Me, Brother? Yes, I liked Eudokia pretty well. Can't say I was what you'd call close to her. That wouldn't have been fitting, not with another man's wife. But she treated me- she treated all the excubitores- like flesh and blood, not like part of the furniture. She was a soldier's daughter herself, you'll remember. That probably helped.
What? Did I upbraid and exhort Justinian to pay poor Epiphaneia more heed? You don't upbraid and exhort the Emperor of the Romans. I mentioned her once or twice. Every time I did, he gave me a look fit to freeze my marrow. I'm not stupid. I got the idea, and shut up.
Emperor of the Romans though I was, the world did not stop turning because of my sorrow. Abimelekh eventually responded to Mansour's question. Paul the magistrianos brought me that response, along with Mansour's graceful expression of consolation and condolence, which I listened to although I did not much want to hear it.
"Mansour says Abimelekh says he will accept a partial resettlement of the Mardaites\a160… provided it includes at least twenty thousand men of fighting age," Paul reported, his tone going from sympathetic to cold and sardonic in the space of a sentence.
"Good heavens," I said, "he wants us to take away the substance and leave behind only the shadow. I doubt the Mardaites have more than twenty-five thousand men under arms all along our border with the Arabs."
"Exactly so, Emperor," the magistrianos replied. Had I not been Emperor of the Romans and he, like everyone else within the Empire, my servant, I have no doubt that, instead of agreeing, he would have said I told you so.
"He asks too much," I said. "He is the one who wants this treaty, not I. Tell Mansour the war goes on if that number does not come down." Paul bowed and departed. I had no doubt he would convey my words exactly as I intended, for I meant every one of them. I was ready- I was more than ready- to hurl Leontios into Armenia once more. If Abimelekh wanted to avoid more war, he could meet my terms.
And the numbers did come down. Paul and Mansour haggled like a couple of old women trying to get the better of each other over the price of a sack of beans. At last, Paul came to me, reporting, "He is down to fourteen thousand, Emperor. I had hoped for twelve, but-"
"Tell him twelve thousand or war," I said. "If you hoped for that, we shall have it."
And we did have it. Faced with that bald choice, Mansour capitulated. Paul and Mansour having drawn up the terms of the treaty, I signed two parchments in scarlet ink and affixed my seal to each of them. Paul then accompanied Mansour to Damascus, where Abimelekh, observing virtually the same ceremonies I had, also signed and sealed both copies of the treaty. He kept one and sent the other back to this imperial city with the magistrianos, to whom he had shown every honor while Paul was in Damascus.
Also accompanying Paul on the road back from Damascus was the first year's payment of the new tribute: fifty-two thousand gold nomismata, more than seven hundred pounds of gold. Some of the coins were old Roman mintings, dating from before the days when the Arabs stole Syria and Palestine and Egypt from us. Some were newer, obtained from us in trade. And some were their own issues, imitating ours. But all were of the same weight and purity, as the treaty had specified. Seeing them, I felt like Midas in the pagan myth.
The treaty having been completed, both Abimelekh and I sent messengers to the chieftains of the Mardaites, ordering them to assemble at Sebasteia, in the eastern part of the military district of the Armeniacs, for resettlement. Several of the messengers did not return. Some of them were returned to officials of the misnamed commander of the faithful and to my own officers- in pieces. The Mardaites were convinced the orders they had received were a trick on Abimelekh's part to lure them from their mountain fastnesses and destroy them. And, I daresay, had the Arab thought of such a ploy, he would have used it.