Justinian (39 page)

‘Fascinating, truly fascinating,' enthused Justinian. ‘There's just one small detail you've omitted though. While the Empire has no dearth of mulberry plants, the silkworm moth is not a native species, and is nowhere to found inside our realm.'

‘A want which can be rectified,' said Father Hieronymus, beaming at the emperor and tapping the side of his nose. ‘Suppose Father Antony and I were to travel to China, smuggle out silkworm eggs, then bring them back into the Roman Empire – would you be interested, Serenity?'

‘Would I be interested! But won't smuggling out the eggs be hideously dangerous? Their silk industry is bound to be a jealously guarded secret. I shudder to think what your fate would be if your theft were to be discovered. Their methods of execution can be, let us say, inventive.'

‘We have thought of a means of transporting the eggs, Serenity, which virtually eliminates the risk of detection,' put in Father Antony. ‘Examine, if you will, our walking-staves.' And he held out his long, stout staff of ash. ‘See, Serenity, the top unscrews, revealing the inside of the staff to be hollow – the perfect receptacle for concealment of the eggs. When the top is screwed back on, the join is undetectable.'

‘Brilliant,' breathed the emperor, shaking his head in admiration. ‘What can I say? If you are willing to undertake this mission, Rome will be eternally in your debt, and your reward commensurate. Now, for your journey you will need –'

‘There's something else we could bring back with us from China,' broke in Father Antony excitedly, ‘something whose importance, I believe, far exceeds even that of silk.'

‘Be quiet, fool!' hissed Father Hieronymus savagely. ‘You do not interrupt an emperor.' Turning to Justinian, he declared, ‘A thousand pardons, Serenity. He has an obsession that makes him forget his manners at times.'

‘Let us hear him, anyway,' responded Justinian with a patient smile. ‘Obsessions can be interesting.' Turning to Father Antony, he went on in courteous tones, ‘Pray continue, Father.'

‘The Chinese have a means of reproducing books,' said Father Antony eagerly, ‘that does away with the tedious and time-consuming labour of copying each page. Using a sharp tool, a page of writing is carved, in reverse, onto a block of pear-wood, the field being removed, leaving the letters in
high relief. The block is then smeared with ink and pressed onto a sheet of a material similar to our papyrus, but finer and less brittle. When the block is removed, lo and behold – there is the page perfectly reproduced! The process can be repeated an infinite number of times, thus making the dissemination of knowledge cheap, and available to all with the ability to read. Think, Serenity,' the monk continued passionately, ‘– Holy Writ and the writings of the Christian Fathers such as Augustine, Eugippius, and Salvian could become available to millions throughout your Empire and beyond, who otherwise could never afford to read them!'

‘An intriguing idea, certainly,' declared Justinian. ‘My own seal performs a function not dissimilar, many times a day. I have one objection, though. If I were to allow your Chinese invention to be adopted, many thousands of skilled copyists working for the book-dealers, to say nothing of the clerks in the imperial chancery engaged in reproducing promulgations, would lose their livelihoods. I would not have that on my conscience. At the present time, a book is a rare and precious thing. Perhaps it should remain so, especially if it deals with matters of Divinity. Now – preparations for your journey,' he went on briskly. ‘Where were we?'

‘Well, we did it!' Father Antony declared, as the two monks looked back at Jiayuguan, the imposing gateway at the end of China's Great Wall, ‘the mouth' that marked the western limits of the Celestial Kingdom.

Thus far, the mission had proceeded without a hitch. The year-long journey to China, in the train of an ambassador of the Son of Heaven, had been tedious but safe, the task of collecting the precious eggs requiring only vigilance and caution. Two holy men from Rome's distant Empire aroused respectful curiosity but not suspicion. Now, beyond the security of an ordered state, they were faced with an arduous odyssey through harsh terrain, beset with perils from brigands and wild beasts, until they reached the Persian frontier and civilization once again. After that, the remainder of the journey through the well-policed Empire of the Shah-an-Shah to the Roman ports on the eastern Euxine coast should be smoothly uneventful. Meanwhile, being part of a small caravan of merchants bound for Persia with a freight of spices, jade and silk offered a measure of security. To defray expenses, they could draw on generous funds supplied by the imperial Treasury – the beautiful gold coins of Justinian, recognized as international currency everywhere, from Beijing to Britannia, from Gaul to Zanzibar.

The first stage of the journey, on the western fringes of the Gobi Desert, lay through a dreary tract of red earth seamed with gullies and pimpled
with low, stony hills. After several weeks, this arid emptiness gave way to scanty pastureland: a corridor of tawny steppe running between the Tien Shan – ‘the Heavenly Mountains' to the north – and to the south the feared Taklamakan, the desert ‘You Enter and Never Return' in the language of the Uighur, the wild, nomadic local people.

The journey of Fathers Hieronymus and Antony from Jiayuguan to Constantinople

The days passed in a blur of repeated rituals. First, after a scanty breakfast of dried apricots and leathery strips of dried mutton, loading up the camels – evil-tempered, shaggy brutes with two humps; then, several hours plodding through steppeland relieved occasionally by stands of pine or willow, the haunt of wolves and wild boar; a midday meal followed by an extended rest period against the hottest part of the day; and another march in the late afternoon till camp was pitched an hour before the setting of the sun.

There were occasional breaks in the monotony of the journey: stopovers at the towns which punctuated the Silk Road – Turpan, Korla, Kuqa, Aksur, each with its colourful market filled with noisy crowds, and traders selling everything from spices and harnesses to rock salt, skins, and cummin. Once, they witnessed a game of
buzgashi
– a ferocious tussle between mounted herdsmen for the carcass of a sheep.

At last they came to the oasis town of Kashgar, where the route divided – one path leading north and east for Samarkand and Persia, the other south for India. Taking the northern route, the caravan struck up a treeless valley into the Pamir Mountains, a bleak wasteland of barren crags and stony defiles, dominated by the distant, towering mass of Mush-taq-ata
*
, its snow-clad peak soaring above a tangle of saw-toothed ridges. Here, animals had grown huge as a defence against the cold – outsize yaks, sheep with five-foot horns, a dread species of enormous bear.

One night, the caravan, camped on an alluvial plain beside a glacial lake, was disturbed by a commotion in the camel lines. Rushing to the spot, the merchants were confronted, in the flickering light of the camp fire, by a horrifying sight – a bear of vast size attacking the tethered beasts, two of them reduced to shredded corpses. Standing on its hind legs, the creature, jaws agape revealing rows of vicious fangs, reared high above the terrified camels; even as the merchants looked on in helpless horror, another beast was clubbed down, half-decapitated by a blow from the monster's paw armed with razor claws. Breaking loose, the remaining camels charged off into the night, their frantic braying fading at last into silence.

The bear now turned its attention to the men who, retreating to the fire, managed to fend off its furious lunges with blazing brands. At last, as though satisfied with the carnage it had wrought, the creature abandoned its attack and lumbered on its way.

In the morning, the shocked and devastated merchants recaptured three of the six fugitive camels (of the others two had fallen into a gully and broken their necks; the third was never found) and recovered what could be salvaged of their scattered merchandise – much of which was damaged beyond repair. Cacheing this, they bade farewell to the two monks and sadly turned their faces to the east, intending to return when they had built up another caravan in China.

The two monks now faced the daunting prospect of crossing the high Pamirs alone. Weeks later, starving, exhausted, and suffering from frostbite, they staggered into Samarkand as penniless beggars, having been relieved en route by bandits of their funds (but fortunately not their staves). In the bustling metropolis they were able to join another caravan bound for Persia, their medical skills enabling them to earn their passage money. The remainder of the journey, through Transoxiana, Turkestan, and Persia to the Euxine coast where, at the great new Roman port of Petra Justinianopolis
*
they took ship for Constantinople, was uneventful. A year almost to the day since leaving China, they disembarked at the quayside of the Golden Horn.

The mission proved an unqualified success. Under the close and expert supervision of the monks, the eggs were hatched at the proper season by the heat of dung, and a thriving industry was rapidly established, soon producing silk of a quality to equal China's, but costing infinitely less than the imported cloth.

*
The Indian navigator.

*
Ceylon/Sri Lanka.

*
Mount Kongur.

*
Formerly just Petra, it was renamed and extended after being captured from the Persians, who had occupied Lazica. (See Chapter 23.)

With this sign, you shall conquer

Message accompanying a vision of the Cross, which appeared
to the emperor-to-be, Constantine, before his victory over
Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge, 312

At Damian's wine shop in the harbour area between the Bosphorus and Golden Horn, the talk was all about a terrifying crisis that had suddenly, it seemed, blown up out of nowhere. A barbaric horde of mounted nomads originating from the steppes of Central Asia had crossed the frozen Danube, swept through the Balkans into Thrace, looting and killing as they went, smashed through the Long Walls
*
(damaged in a recent earthquake), and were even now advancing on the capital itself. Daily, panic-stricken refugees crowded into the city, creating a major problem for the authorities to lodge and feed them, and sapping the morale of the citizens.

‘They say the Huns have crossed the river Athyras,' declared a burly coppersmith. ‘Christ, that's less than twenty miles away.'

‘They're not Huns, you know,' corrected a youth from the University, ‘slumming it' in Damian's with some of his fellow students. ‘They're Kotrigurs – led by one Zabergan, their chief.'

‘Same difference, mate. Slant-eyed yellow bastards, with these ruddy great pigtails down their backs. They eat Roman babies for breakfast, so I've heard.'

‘And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death!' bellowed Scripture Simon. ‘And Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with –'

‘Shut it, Simon,' sighed the bartender. ‘There's a noggin on the house with your name on it – but only if you keep your trap shut.'

‘What's the emperor doing about it – “Cottigers” did you call them?'
grumbled a pot-bellied carpenter with sawdust in his hair. ‘That's what I'd like to know.'

‘Nothing, chum,' commented a brawny porter. ‘Bloody nothing. Oh, he can sort out Italy and Africa but when it comes to us poor sods at home – doesn't want to know, does he? Too taken up with this latest religious wheeze of his to bother about the likes of us.'

‘Aphthartodocetism – that's the new doctrine you're referring to,' pronounced the student, smirking knowingly at his friends.

‘Aphtha –; what the hell's that when it's at home?' growled the porter.

‘Aphthartodocetism holds that the body of Christ was incorruptible – ergo, His sufferings were only apparent.'

‘Well!' exclaimed a floury-armed baker. ‘Sounds to me like something the Patriarch'll take a dim view of –
very
dim indeed, I'd say.' Sensing from the interested hush that he had the floor's attention, the man went on portentously, emphasizing points with an admonitory finger. ‘According to Chalcedon, Christ is both human
and
divine. Strikes me that this Apartho-whatever stuff is suggesting He's only got the
one
nature – which puts it squarely in the Monophysite camp. Looks like His Serenity has screwed up badly over this one.'

Keen amateur theologians, like all Constantinopolitans, the patrons of Damian's immediately became engaged in passionate debate about the merits or otherwise (mostly otherwise) of this latest theological dogma, which seemed to have about it an exciting whiff of heresy . . .

Seated as usual at his desk in his
tablinum
, Justinian racked his brains as to how best to tackle this appalling business of the Kotrigurs. No sooner had he finished the momentous task of restoring the West to the Imperial fold, he told himself, than the Danube frontier – despite being reinforced with a line of massive fortifications – started springing leaks, allowing a seemingly endless tide of barbarians to come flooding in. If it wasn't Bulgars it was Slavs, if it wasn't Slavs it was Utigurs, if it wasn't Utigurs it was Kotrigurs. These last two – fierce Mongol tribes related to the Huns – he had managed, in time-honoured Roman fashion, to play off against each other for an extended period. Now, however, they seemed to have patched up their differences, resulting in the present crisis. With all Roman armies away in Italy or the east, the problem of how to defend the capital was acute. Also, it was becoming personally embarrassing. As ‘Little Father to his People', an emperor was expected to ensure protection for his subjects in times of peril. Should he, Justinian, be found wanting, his status as
God's Appointed would inevitably be called in question. Meanwhile, the one man who might have been able, if anyone could, to deal with the situation, was absent. Belisarius, now retired, was nowhere to be found, and had left no word as to where he could be contacted . . .