Ephiphaneia smiled a toothless smile. I recoiled from it as from a demon; seeing the baby still reminded me unbearably of her mother's fate. My own mother began to cry. I pushed past her, and past my daughter, calling loudly for wine as I went. I stayed drunk for two days and bedded three maidservants. Yes, a sin- two sins- but sins that pushed aside pain.
MYAKES
He was a man, Brother Elpidios, and not a perfect one. You'll notice he admits he was a sinner. I've known a whole great swarm of men, out in the world and here in the monastery, too, who, if you listen to them talk, never did one wrong thing in all their born days. Well, maybe so, but maybe not, too. I haven't heard of a whole lot of people walking on water lately. Have you?
No, I wasn't along on this trip to Sebasteia. I'd come down with a flux of the bowels, and for a while there I wondered if I was going to go the same way Constantine had. I ended up getting better instead, but I was flat on my back for more than a month.
I'll tell you something, though. If I had been along, I'd have arranged to put a girl in Justinian's bed. That was the medicine he needed, sure as sure.
Yes, I'm a wretched reprobate. God will punish me. No doubt you're right about that, Brother. God has already punished me in this world, and He has all eternity to do as He likes with me in the world to come.
But I don't have all eternity here. I don't know how much time I do have, but I'd doubt it's a whole lot. I'd like to hear some more of the words Justinian left behind, if you don't mind too much.
JUSTINIAN
I had peace with the followers of the false prophet, and had it on better terms than my father had managed to wring from them. Not only that, but Abimelekh faced yet another uprising against his rule. My judgment was that my eastern frontier was as safe as it would ever be. I called up the cavalry from the military districts of Anatolia and ordered the horsemen to cross into Europe, as my father had in his ill-fated campaign against the Bulgars.
I intended to campaign against the Bulgars, too, and sent their emissaries away empty-handed when they came to collect the tribute to which my father had agreed. But the campaign I had in mind would not merely put the Bulgars in their place; it would also deal with the Sklavenoi, some of whom were under the control of the Bulgars and some of whom, in their revolting freedom, plundered Roman settlements all on their own. The suffering the land south of the Danube had endured made that of Anatolia seem as nothing beside it.
As had my father and grandfather and great-great-grandfather before me, I took the field in person. If the soldiers would not perform well under my eye, they would never perform well. And the Sklavenoi were so barbarous, I was certain they could produce no leaders with the wit to stand against us.
They were also divided among themselves, each little Sklavinia existing in a state of squalid independence, as often at war with its neighbors as with the Roman Empire. Like a foolish man in a fight who covers up where he has been hit rather than trying to anticipate where he will be hit next, they (or at least those not dominated by the Bulgars, who had better sense) were not likely to come to the aid of one another.
I had been out to the Long Wall before, but no farther. Philaretos, the count of the Long Wall, greeted me at Selymbria, the town anchoring the wall to the Sea of Marmara. I had not seen him since Eudokia's funeral. "God grant that my granddaughter thrive," he said, "for she is all I have left by which to remember the girl."
"God grant it," I echoed, and said no more. He made the sign of the cross, thinking me pious. But what I meant was more on the order of, God had better grant it, for I intend to have nothing to do with it.
The Long Wall is different from that of the imperial city. Rather than alternating courses of brick and stone, it is built of hard, pinkish cement with chunks of brick embedded in the cement. It also, I must sadly say, differs from Constantinople's wall in its effectiveness, or lack thereof. Where, along with the protection of God, Constantinople's wall has kept the city inviolate since it was built, barbarians have repeatedly penetrated the Long Wall and plundered the suburbs it was meant to protect. Stretching more than thirty miles from the Sea of Marmara to the Black Sea, the Long Wall was too long to garrison adequately.
Still, though, it did offer the regions nearest the imperial city some protection. Passing beyond it, I felt I was leaving safety and entering land that, while nominally under the rule of the Roman Empire, was in fact detached from Romania. I aimed to make Roman rule real there once again, and nominal no more.
Had I wanted to push the army straight down the Via Egnatia, the military highway of the Romans for the past eight hundred years and more, I could have been in Thessalonike very soon. But I had planned a campaign, not a military parade, and so in search of Sklavenoi the army plunged off the highway and into the forested, sometimes marshy valleys that lay to the north.
I prayed at the church of St. Glykeria in Herakleia (or, as the antiquarians call it, Perinthos), and had my prayer answered the very next day, the army flushing out several little Sklavinian farming villages north of the town. The barbarians seemed utterly astonished at the presence of Roman soldiers in land they obviously believed to be theirs.
None of them spoke Greek. I had their headmen haled before me and asked them, "Would you sooner die or obey me?" I thought at first that my interpreter had suffered a coughing fit, but he was merely translating the question into their hideous, guttural dialect. Their answers were as full of choking, wheezing noises.
"They say they will obey, Emperor," the interpreter said.
"Good. I thought that would be a choice even a Sklavinian could understand," I said. "Since they say they will obey, tell them I am going to resettle their whole clan or tribe or whatever they call themselves in Anatolia. Tell them they can farm there and pay taxes to the fisc and furnish us with soldiers when we need them."
"Emperor, I can tell them they will farm," the interpreter said. "I can tell them they will give us soldiers. But I cannot tell them they will pay us taxes. Their language has no words for such things."
"What? They don't know about taxes?" I threw back my head and laughed. "Very well. Tell the poor barbarians what you can. They'll learn about the other soon enough. The officials of the fisc will give them detailed lessons, I have no doubt."
A small escort of Romans led the Sklavenoi down the Via Egnatia and then east toward Constantinople, whence they would cross into the empty lands of Anatolia. I allowed them no more than they could carry in their hands. Considering how little they had, I did not greatly deprive them.
The season being summer, the millet and barley in their fields were too far from ripe to feed my army. They did, however, have a good store of grain hidden in underground pits, as those familiar with their habits had foretold. We added that to our own supply, and our horses had good grazing in the fields.
It soon became clear that, although we had captured their villages, we had not sent all of the Sklavenoi off to the imperial city for resettlement. Some of them must have escaped into the woods and run off to warn their fellow tribesmen, for the next Sklavinian settlements we came upon were deserted, not only the people but also the livestock being gone.
I required no training in logic to realize the Sklavenoi from the abandoned villages were in turn surely letting more barbarians know we were on the march. A young officer familiar with the Sklavenoi, Bardanes the son of the patrician Nikephoros, confirmed my impression- not, I say, that it needed much confirmation. "Emperor, the next ones we meet will resist us," he said.