Justinian (42 page)

In a dungeon deep in the bowels of the Praetorium, the remaining two conspirators in manacles – Marcellus being the one who had died by his own hand – stood before the seated prefect. The room's other occupants were a dozen
vigiles
, and a
carnifex
or torturer, who stood beside a table on which, like a set of surgeon's instruments, was ranged the grisly tool-kit of his trade. In a corner, an array of rods and pincers projected from a glowing brazier.

‘Just tell me all you know,' said Procopius in pleasant tones. ‘You'll talk anyway – eventually. So why suffer unnecessarily?'

Both men remaining silent, the prefect nodded to the torturer. The man approached the pair, bearing in gloved hands an iron rod with white-hot tip. This was applied to the backs of the prisoners, these being restrained securely in the grip of burly
vigiles
. A sickening stench of burning flesh filled the dungeon. Ablabius remained silent, blood dripping down his chin from where he had bitten through his lower lip, but Sergius screamed aloud in agony. ‘No more!' he sobbed, as the iron was withdrawn. ‘I'll tell you everything.'

It all came out: the announcement to be made that the emperor was dead; the part to be played by Sergius' two officer friends in persuading a section of the Palace Guards to back the coup; the information that Belisarius himself supported the conspiracy. All this was confirmed when the two officers in question were arrested and interrogated. (Horatius meanwhile had disappeared – provided with a bag of
solidi
and instructed to escape.)

Disdaining flight (suggested by his friends) as admission of complicity in the plot, Belisarius indignantly refuted before the Council the ‘evidence' produced against him. Nevertheless, he was judged guilty and, though his life was spared in consideration of his forty years of loyal service, he was put under house arrest, and his wealth confiscated. However, no hard proof emerging that he was involved in the conspiracy, the following year Belisarius was released and restored to favour. Too late; his heart broken by grief and resentment, the great general – perhaps the greatest Roman general of all – died a few months later.

Shock and sadness over what he perceived as betrayal by his oldest friend changed to remorse and bitter self-recrimination on Justinian's part as he came at last to see that Belisarius was no traitor, but the innocent victim of malicious rumour.

Revenge, as a Greek philosopher once said, was indeed a dish best eaten cold, reflected Procopius as, lauded and heaped with honours by a grateful emperor, he basked in his new-found reputation as the saviour of the monarchy.

*
Civic dignitaries. The plot was investigated in 560, but the case fizzled out for lack of evidence. None of the mud stuck to Peter himself, for we find him in post as Master of Offices throughout that year, and in 562 negotiating a Fifty Year Peace with Persia.

*
Horace,
Odes
. ‘It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country.'

Nothing is lost; destruction is only a name for a change of substance

Lucretius,
On the Nature of Things
, c. 50
BC

The funeral, as befitted one of the best prefects Constantinople had known, was a grand and solemn service. A moving eulogy, delivered by Paul the Silentiary,
*
paid tribute to a distinguished public servant who had graced the world of scholarship and letters with his great
History of the Wars of Justinian
, having himself taken part in many of the campaigns he wrote about so eloquently. Above all, the Roman world owed an incalculable debt to one who, only a few short months before, had, by his expertise and boldness, foiled a monstrous plot to assassinate the emperor. All Constantinople had, it seemed, turned out to pay its last respects to the great Praefectus, as the cortège proceeded from the Praetorium to the Church of Saint Irene, where the body of Procopius was laid to rest.

Returning to the Palace, Justinian retreated to the garden where he and Theodora had first met and which, increasingly, had become a place of refuge where he could be by himself with his deepest thoughts. At last, he was quite alone, the emperor reflected sadly. In turn there had been taken from him: first Theodora, both cornerstone and central pillar of his life; then Belisarius, the friend and faithful servant he had wronged; and now, Procopius – whom, in some ways, he had loved like the son he had never known. Were all things transitory, he wondered, with loss and change the only certainties? All his life he had striven to establish good things that would endure: a Roman Empire that would last forever, serving to implement God's Plan for the light of civilization and True Faith to shine in time throughout the world; laws that would guide men's conduct down the ages; great buildings of a design and structure to defy the ravages of time . . .

But perhaps it had all been for nothing. Everywhere, blind, uncaring forces seemed to be threatening all he had achieved. Ferocious Lombards were already casting greedy eyes on Italy, ravaged and weakened by
twenty years of war; Slavs, Bulgars, and now this new threat from the East, a race more terrible even than the Huns – the Avars – menaced the Danube frontier. His attempts to forge religious unity between East and West – Monophysite and Chalcedonian – had foundered on the rocks of ignorance and stubborn wilfulness. When he passed away (and, at eighty-one, that time could not be distant, Justinian reminded himself), would all that he had worked for fade and vanish also, as ripples from a pebble cast into a pool were briefly seen then disappeared? Was his new-found interest in Aphthartodocetism – the doctrine that held Christ's body to be incorruptible – merely a reflection of a longing for assurance that some things did not change, were immutable and permanent? Insidiously, a terrifying thought slid into the emperor's brain. What if the very faith he had striven all his life to understand and serve were nothing more than empty superstition?

In the midst of these gloomy cogitations, Justinian was interrupted by a servitor bearing a book – not an old-fashioned set of papyrus rolls or
volumina
, but one of the newer kind with parchment
paginae
.

‘In his Will, Serenity, the prefect stated that he wished you to have the first copy of his final work.' Bowing, the man handed the
codex
to Justinian, then departed. Inscribed in gold on the beautiful calf-leather binding was the title –
Secret History
. Welcoming this distraction from his mood of sombre introspection, the emperor opened the book and eagerly began to read . . .

‘Justinian's family was illiterate, boorish, descended from slaves and barbarians . . . he [Justinian] was the son of a demon . . . Justinian's senseless wars and persecutions . . . during his reign the whole earth was drenched with human blood . . . without hesitation he shattered the laws when money was in sight . . . was like a cloud of dust in instability . . . never paused for a thorough investigation before reaching a decision . . . was never able to adhere to settled conditions, but was naturally inclined to make confusion and turmoil everywhere . . . while Justinian ruled no law remained fixed, no transaction safe, no contract valid . . . an evil-doer and easily led into evil . . . she [Theodora] could win over her husband quite against his will to any action she desired . . . she would lie with all her fellow diners the whole night long; when she had reduced them all to a state of exhaustion she would go to their menials, as many as thirty on occasions, and copulate with every one of them, but not even so could she satisfy her lust . . .'

With a cry of horrified disgust, Justinian dropped the book, unable to read on, each poisoned phrase seeming like a dagger-thrust to the heart.
From what deep well of resentment had issued this astonishing outpouring of hate and malice? Shaken to the core of his being, Justinian felt, not anger – only sorrow, hurt, and incomprehension that a man he had always regarded as a friend, should see him (and Theodora) in such a baleful light. A black depression settled on the emperor, from which, for many days he was unable to be roused.

‘Serenity – Tan-Shing, the Chinese sage I told you of is here,' announced Paul the Silentiary, standing at the entrance of Justinian's
tablinum
. ‘Shall I admit him?'

‘Let us receive him by all means, Paul,' replied the emperor with a wan smile, ‘though I doubt that anything he has to say can lift my spirits.'

The silentiary ushered into the emperor's study, an elderly Chinese, upright of bearing, with a keen, good-humoured face, and clad in a saffroncoloured robe. He seated himself at the emperor's invitation.

‘I am told your mind is troubled,' the visitor declared in perfect Greek. ‘Excuse my bluntness, Serenity; unlike most of my countrymen I never learned the art of how to be discreet. To me, a spade has always been a spade, never an agricultural implement. Some members of your household – who shall be nameless, by the way – out of concern for your well-being have asked me to make contact with you. So, here I am. To help in any way I can.' And Tan-Shing gave the emperor a beaming smile.

‘Some members of your household,' thought Justinian, touched rather than offended by what others might interpret as presumption. That would include Paul the Silentiary and Theoctistus his physician, functionaries in whom solicitude for their employer transcended efficient performance of their duties. Clearly, some attribute possessed by this stranger had impressed such men sufficiently to make them send him here.

‘Well, Tan-Shing,' replied the emperor, ‘I appreciate your offer. But if even my physician cannot cure my – sickness of the spirit, let us call it – I can't see how –' Close to shameful tears, Justinian trailed off, moved that there were some who cared sufficiently to wish to help him, but oppressed by a terrible sense of hopelessness that nothing anyone could do would avail. With an effort, he pulled himself together and said with forced brightness, ‘Your Greek is excellent. I had feared we might have need of an interpreter.'

‘I have several tongues, Serenity. Apart from my native Mandarin, I speak Hindustani, Urdu, Persian, even Greek, as you were kind enough to mention. You see, in a past life, before I became a wandering monk, a
Seeker after Enlightenment, I was a wealthy merchant who travelled the Silk Road many times.'

‘Enlightenment – what is that?'

‘It is not easy to define, Serenity. True Enlightenment can only be experienced rather than expressed in words. We who seek to find it, think of it as a mystic vision of the Truth, the All, the Infinite, the Transcendental – there are different words. It is to be attained through meditation and self-discipline, involving ultimately the annihilation of the Self in identification with the Soul of the Universe. The state of mind when this is achieved is called Nirvana. The
Saddhus
– the holy men of India – seek Enlightenment via a particularly ferocious form of ascetisism. Lord Gautama,
*
who lived a thousand years ago, prescribed a gentler way, one based on meditation and inner holiness through correct behaviour. His is the Path that I myself attempt to follow.'

‘This is all most interesting,' said Justinian, who had indeed found the other's discourse fascinating. ‘Your words remind me of our own Desert Fathers – Antony, Jerome et al. – who sought through abstinence and contemplation to find communion with God. However –,' he smiled at the sage and shook his head in mild puzzlement, ‘I can't quite see how any of this applies to myself.'

‘I am about to embark on a pilgrimage, Serenity. To the Church of Saint Michael, at Germia near Ancyra
**
in Galatia. You see, the Path does not require you to be an adherent of any particular religion or philosophy over another. The priest at Germia, Father Eutropus, a most remarkable man, has gathered about him a dedicated following of . . . seekers after Truth, I suppose you could call them, who engage in contemplation and religious discussion. It's not officially a monastery; there's no formal organization as such. Basically, it's a loose community where minds can stimulate and react with other minds, perhaps thereby to reach a deeper understanding of the Nature of God. I confess to having a great curiosity to experience for a time the way of life at Germia.' Tan-Shing paused and regarded Justinian earnestly. ‘Why not come with me, Serenity?' he urged. ‘Germia may not provide an answer to your problems, but at least it could perhaps enable you to see things from a fresh perspective – which could only be a good thing, surely.'

One month later, having travelled three hundred miles due east from Constantinople, Justinian and Tan-Shing – the former on muleback, the
latter, aided by a sturdy pilgrim's staff, on foot – forded the Sangarius river and climbed up into a beautiful plateau of rolling grassland, stippled with flocks of sheep and herds of goats. Two further days of easy travel brought the pair to Saint Michael's Church, an imposing multi-domed edifice in the midst of outbuildings surrounded by cultivated plots.

As they approached the complex, Justinian reflected on the journey (in the course of which, as ‘Brother Martin' – a wandering monk, clad in a simple habit, he had never once been recognized). Tan-Shing had proved an ideal travelling-companion: silent when Justinian wished to be alone with his own thoughts, cheerful and talkative at other times, well-informed on a multitude of subjects, including the religious and philosophical systems as well as the literature of China, India, Persia and Rome. He was also endlessly resourceful when it came to finding lodgings for the night, supplementing their diet from Nature's bounty, or haggling for foodstuffs in local markets. From the sage Justinian learned more about the Way suggested by Lord Gautama (the goal of which seemed to be the transcending of Self, linked to ultimate escape from an endless cycle of rebirth), and the ‘noble eightfold path' which its disciples sought to cultivate: right views, right aspirations, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindedness, and – most importantly – right rapture. Whether it was the Chinese sage's stimulating company, the healthful open-air lifestyle (so different from the sedentary Palace routine of receptions, ceremony, and administration), or the changing landscapes that each day's travel brought, or by a combination of all of these, by the time the journey neared its end, Justinian was – he acknowledged to himself – in a calmer and happier frame of mind.