Harry Turtledove: Justinian

When he interrupts the son of the Emperor of the Romans, even a man of ostentatious piety has gone too far. The ecumenical patriarch George said, "Reverend Polykhronios, surely you forget yourself. We who have gathered here at the Emperor Constantine's urging-"

"The truth!" Polykhronios all but screamed. He pointed to the memorial, which I still held. "Set those holy words on a dead man's chest and he will live again, just as Lazarus did when Christ called, 'Come forth!'\a160"

He could not have cause greater commotion among the assembled bishops had he set fire to the great church. Some shouted that he was a fool, others that he was a madman. But still others, including a surprising number who till that time had seemed warm in their support for the doctrine of the two wills and two energies, shouted just as loudly in support of Polykhronios. One of them pulled the beard of a man who had remained loyal to that doctrine. His victim hit him in the pit of the stomach. They fell to the floor together, kicking and clawing at each other in what looked like a death struggle.

"Order!" I cried. "Let us have order!" That seemed to be only the first fight to break out of many that were simmering. What would my father do to me if, at a session over which I presided, the holy ecumenical synod degenerated into brawling and riot, making him a laughingstock not only throughout Christendom but also to the Arabs? Some lessons I did not want to learn. "Order!" I cried again, but my voice was still a boy's, high and shrill. They did not heed me.

I glanced back to the excubitores in mute appeal. Thank God, there behind my left shoulder stood faithful Myakes. His eyes asked a silent question. I nodded- desperately, I suspect.

"Order!" he and his comrades yelled together, a deep roar that cut through the bishops' bickering like a knife slicing cheese. The guardsmen slammed the butts of their spears down on the stone floor, so hard I hoped they did not crack it.

For a moment, I had silence. Into it, I said, "I do not think Polykhronios can do what he says he can." That threatened to start the hubbub anew. I looked back at Myakes again, and again he and his fellow excubitores struck their spears against the floor, which bought me another brief, tenuous stretch of quiet. I went on, "Let him prove it, if God grants him the ability." I pointed to him. "If the dead man does not rise, will you admit the doctrine of the one will and energy is wrong?"

"He will rise," Polykhronios declared, so confidently that I wondered if he knew exactly whereof he spoke.

George the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople, whose church that of the Holy Wisdom was, said, "No corpse shall defile and pollute this shrine."

One of the excubitores shouted out, "Take the stiff to the Baths of Zeuxippos! He'll come clean there, by Jesus!"

Whoever he was- I could not tell- he brayed laughter like a donkey. The rest of the guardsmen laughed, too. But Polykhronios cried, "Yes, to the Baths of Zeuxippos!" and in a moment all the assembled bishops had taken up the cry. And to the Baths of Zeuxippos we went.

I didn't mean it for anything but a joke, Brother Elpidios. How was I supposed to know they'd take me up on it? So Justinian never knew I was the one who yelled, eh? I didn't think he did. When you get right down to it, I'm glad he didn't.

Did I think Polykhronios could raise the dead? I tell you this, Brother: he surely thought he could. I'd never heard anybody claim that before. Matter of fact, I've never heard anybody claim that since. If he could do it, I wanted to be there to see it happen, you had best believe that.

Though rebuilt after a fire in the reign of my namesake, a century and a half before the time of which I write, the Baths of Zeuxippos, between the palaces and the hippodrome, are far older than that; they were built by the Emperor Septimius Severus, more than a hundred years before Constantine the Great accepted Christianity and transformed Byzantium into Constantinople. I mention this because the baths were ornamented in pagan style, with eighty statues of philosophers and poets and even figures from their false mythology. Many of the bishops drew back in dismay on seeing them, some making the sign of the cross.

George the patriarch of Constantinople also crossed himself, but more as a gesture of peace than as one intended to turn aside evil. "They are but memories," he said.

And, to my surprise, Polykhronios agreed. "As Christ cast out demons, so shall the words of His pure and holy faith protect us against any lingering wickedness here," he said, holding the memorial before him like a shield.

We then had some little wait while the excubitores went into the city to find the body of someone newly dead. Polykhronios, I regret to say, showed no interest in using the baths for any but his own purposes. In the warm, steamy air within the bathhouse, his sharp stink seemed stronger than ever. Arculf bought a handful of chickpeas fried in olive oil from a vender for a copper or two and popped them all into his mouth at once, so that his cheeks puffed out like a squirrel's.

Presently the guardsmen returned, carrying the linen-wrapped body of a gray-bearded man who looked to have died of some wasting sickness, for he was skeletally lean. The aromatic odors of the wine and spices with which he had been washed fought against Polykhronios's reek.

Behind the excubitores came the fellow's kinsfolk, now wailing and beating their chests and pulling their hair, now looking hopefully to Polykhronios. "Make him live!" they cried. "Make Andreas live again!"

"Live he shall," Polykhronios said. A woman whose lined face bore the stunned expression of one who has lost someone dear- Andreas's widow, she proved to be- fell on her knees before him and kissed his dirty feet.

The excubitores laid the corpse on a silver table that at other times might have held casseroles of fish, cheese, and vegetables, or perhaps salt pork and cabbage cooked in fat, along with fruit and honey cakes for the pleasure of the bathers.

Polykhronios was about to set his monothelite memorial on dead Andreas's chest when another delay ensued: a runner came hotfoot from the palace ordering that he do no such thing until the Emperors Constantine, Herakleios, and Tiberius got there to witness the promised miracle.

By the time their sedan chairs arrived, the excubitores had to use spear shafts to clear a path by which they could approach the makeshift bier. Word of what Polykhronios intended had spread quickly through Constantinople, as rumors have a way of doing, and throngs of people, many of them arguing the theology of monotheletism with as much sophistication as the bishops of the ecumenical synod, gathered in the Baths of Zeuxippos to learn whether Polykhronios could do as he said.

My father limped in leaning on a stick, with his foot bandaged; his gout had been plaguing him again. In spite of that, he was making ready to attack the Bulgars when the weather grew more certain. He took his place by the patriarch of Constantinople. My uncles, by contrast, ranged themselves with Makarios of Antioc h and his followers. Nothing would have made them gladder than having Polykhronios vindicate the first Herakleios's dogma.

"Go ahead," my father told the man who claimed he could raise the dead.

Polykhronios bowed and, stepping up to Andreas's corpse with portentous stride, set his memorial on its chest. Everything in the bathhouse was silent as the tomb, save only a long indrawn breath from the dead man's widow.

Andreas did not move. He remained as he had lain since the excubitores set him on the silver table. "Live!" Polykhronios told him. But his eyes did not open, his chest did not begin to rise and fall, his pale, still, waxy features did not grow ruddy with vitality. In a word, he remained dead.