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.
Paul the magistrianos and several of my other advisers were almost jubilant on account of the Mardaites' intransigence: if my plans failed, they would regain lost influence. But I did not intend to fail. Summoning Paul and the others, I said, "I will travel to Sebasteia myself. If the Mardaites know I am there, they will not be afraid to go there themselves. Let word of my journey go forth."
Word went forth, and, in due course, so did I. Up till then, I had never traveled far from Constantinople. Oh, I had been out of the imperial city now and again, once or twice visiting Philaretos by the Long Wall and often crossing the Bosporos to hunt in Asia, but my life had revolved around the palace, the court, and the city.
I was anxious to leave for more reasons than one. Not only did I want to see more of the Empire I ruled, but I was also eager to leave Constantinople behind for a while, to escape the memory of Eudokia. And so, riding my own horse rather than traveling in a cart or horse-drawn litter, I set off across Anatolia for Sebasteia.
Until you have seen more than your own home, you do not understand even that home, for you have nothing with which to compare it. So I discovered in this journey. I knew Constantinople was the greatest city in the Roman Empire. Knowing that, I expected other cities to be very much like the city, but smaller. It was not so, I saw. Most of the towns along the way to Sebasteia were hardly more than fortresses, strongpoints from which to defend the local countryside. Ruins around the walls said many had once been more than that, but how can a town survive, how can its hinterland feed it, when it is continually oppressed by war, as the towns of Anatolia had been since the Persian invasions in the reign of Phokas a long lifetime before?
So much of the countryside, both in the coastal lowlands and in the plateau that makes up the heart of Anatolia, was also all but empty. Save for the soldiers settled on the land in the military districts in exchange for their service in time of need, broad tracts of what should have been good crop- and pastureland had no farmers or herders on them. Who would want to, who would be mad enough to, work land that would surely be despoiled by an invader in a few years' time?
But the land needed to be worked, for the sake of the towns and for the sake of the fisc. The Mardaites whom I would meet in Sebasteia would not be nearly enough to fill these broad territories, and, in any case, I had more urgent need for them in Europe. Still, I resolved that, if ever I had more folk to resettle, I would put them in Anatolia.
Sebasteia lies just north of the Halys River, a dusty fortress of a place much like the other dusty fortresses I had seen. But when I was riding down the road from Sebastopolis and Siara and first drew near Sebasteia, I cried out in wonder, saying, "Have they given their fields over to flowers?" For the precincts surrounding the town were awash with bright colors, reds, and blues and golds and greens, as splendid a sight, and as unexpected a splendor, as I have ever found.
They were not flowers. They were, as I discovered on coming closer, the tents of the Mardaites. Twelve thousand warriors and their families are not just an army; they are a city. And all that city did me honor as I rode through it, men in white robes and others in rusty mailshirts prostrating themselves in the dirt and shouting my praises in Greek, in Arabic, in Armenian, and Persian, and, for all I know, in other tongues as well.
Sebasteia's garrison had been beefed up by summoning some of the soldiers off their fields in the Armeniac military district. Even so, the local commander, a certain Basil, was nervous. "They outnumber me, Emperor," he said. "They outnumber me by a lot. If they want this place, they can take it."
"Why on earth would they want it?" I said, very much as if I meant it. "The only reason they have come here is to meet me before they resettle them. We'll invite the chiefs into the city and feed them full of wine and mutton. We'll feed the warriors full of wine and mutton outside the walls, and give their brats candied figs. Everyone will stay happy, and then, a few at a time, everyone will start on the long road west. No one will even think of doing anything else."
He gave me an odd look, one I did not fully understand until later. I did not realize then how, while I took intrigue utterly for granted, having grown to manhood at its very heart, the court, others, especially others far from Constantinople, had to have things spelled out for them. Very well: the Mardaites could, if they so desired, take Sebasteia. We could do nothing about that, not in a military sense, for the time being. The key, then, was making sure they did not so desire- that, in fact, the idea of taking Sebasteia never so much as entered their minds.
How to do that? But putting extra men on the walls, by having the garrison prepare to sell its lives dear if attacked? What better way to show the Mardaites our secret fear, to plant the idea of attacking in their minds when it might not even have been there before? They were warriors; they could smell weakness.
We gave them nothing to smell. By proceeding as if everything was perfectly normal, we made certain everything stayed perfectly normal. I got drunk with their chiefs, and listened to stories of throat-cuttings and town-burnings all along the border, mostly told in a vile Greek I had trouble following. Even when I could not follow, I kept smiling, and promised them many throats to cut and many towns to burn in the places they were going. I promised no one would collect taxes from them for five years. I promised myself I would make sure the wine was better at the next such carouse, but the Mardaites did not need to know about that.
Band by band, a few hundred at a time, they set out west along the highway back to Constantinople. By the time four or five bands had departed, the ones who were left were a far smaller threat to the town or the garrison. Basil looked at me as he might have at a wizard. I looked at him with something like pity, doubting any chronicler would ever remember his name.
I soon headed west across the same highway myself. When in the course of my journey I came to Ankyra, about halfway between Sebasteia and the imperial city, I passed the night in the fortress there. Indeed, the capital of the military district of the Opsikion is little more than its fortress these days: the citadel, a strong rampart with pentagonal towers, sat on its hill overlooking a bathhouse, grand public buildings, several churches, and many, many houses- all dusty ruins, destroyed first in the Persian invasions and then in the onslaughts of the followers of the false prophet. As at so many stops on my journey, the contrast between what had been and what was now saddened me.
At the feast that night, a black-haired serving girl made certain my wine cup was never empty. When, wobbling as I walked, I went back to the chamber in which I was to sleep, I found her waiting under the covers for me. I started to order her out of the room, having had no congress with women since Eudokia died.
Before I could speak, though, she flipped back the blanket, the flickering lamplight showing she was naked. "Come," she said. "It is only a night." Her accent, absurdly, reminded me of Myakes'.
Had I had less to drink I think I should have sent her away, her abundantly displayed charms notwithstanding. But "wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging." My lust raged in me, and I had not the will to withstand it. Throwing off my robes, I got into the bed as naked as the girl and took her with the light still burning.
She was gone when I woke the next morning. My head pained me, as did my conscience, fornication being a sin in the eyes of God. But, oddly, along with the guilt I also knew a curious sense of release, as if I had taken a long step toward accepting that Eudokia's death was in the past, and irrevocable.
Those two feelings warred in me until I returned to the imperial palace. No sooner had I arrived than my mother thrust Epiphaneia in my face, exclaiming, "See how much she has grown while you were gone? See how she can smile now? Smile for your father, little pretty one."
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.