Harry Turtledove - Justinian

No, poor folk don't have anything that fancy, of course, but they do live in stone houses or ones made of baked brick. Some of 'em just have rooms in big buildings, four or five stories high, they put up so they can crowd more people into the same space. You won't see anything like that anywhere else, either.

The main streets are all cobblestoned, so you can use 'em in any weather. That's not so in the alleys, I grant you, but still. How many times have you gone outside in the rain and sunk up to your backside in mud? A good plenty, I don't doubt, same as me- same as anybody. But you don't have to, not in Constantinople. Not all the time, anyhow.

And the things you can buy! Let me tell you, Brother Elpidios, along the Mese there's everything your heart could desire. There are shops that sell frankincense and myrrh from down in Arabia, and others that sell amber from way up north somewhere- God must know where the stuff comes from, but I don't, not exactly. There are coppersmiths and jewelers and potters and leatherworkers and candlemakers and oil sellers and boatbuilders and fishermen and weavers and tailors and cattle drovers and wool dealers and butchers and bakers and glassblowers and scribes and.. and I don't know what all. Everything!

What's that? You can find people who do those things in every town? You can find one or two, maybe, most places. In Constantinople, there are dozens, sometimes hundreds, of people who have the same trade, so you can pick exactly the one you want, the one who does your kind of work at your kind of price (or who's sly enough to make you think it's your kind of price, anyhow).

And you will find trades at Constantinople you won't see anywhere else. Silk weavers, for instance, and the dyers who make the purple for the Emperor's robes. There's always the stink of rotting sea creatures round their shops, but you can buy the meat from the murexes for cheap, because they don't use most of it. Take 'em to a tavern for the cook to fry up in bread crumbs and olive oil, and they're as tasty a little supper as your heart could desire.

Oh, the taverns! If you had gold in your pocket, you could drink with the lords of the city, so you could, and the places they'd go were near as fancy as their houses, don't you doubt it for a minute. Some of them liked buying excubitores drinks; they hoped we'd tell them things about the Emperor. Gossip in Constantinople's like nowhere else, too. Anybody who let his mouth get ahead of his wits didn't last long, though. Things went down from there, too, down to dives nastier than I've ever seen anyplace else, dives where the wine was vinegar and the beer was mule piss- and piss from a sick mule, at that. Some folks, though, don't go to a tavern to talk. They go there to drink. Vinegar and mule piss will get you where you want to go, if that's all you've got in mind. Like I keep saying, something for everybody.

Girls for every price, too. No, I don't remember how fancy a wench it was who said a bishop put a loaf in her oven. A bishop, though, you'd think he'd want something choice along those lines, wouldn't you? Yes, of course I mean if he was sinner enough to want anything along those lines at all. You could find 'em- if you were looking- in taverns, or strolling along the Mese (after all, they were for sale, too), or in brothels, too, of course. Some of 'em ended up marrying well; some saw the light and went into convents (Eh? God bless them? Of course, God bless them- did I say anything different?); some just got old and ugly. Some weren't that young and weren't that pretty to start with. They couldn't charge as much, unless they did things none of the others felt like doing. Oh, sure enough, a young man with a little gold- or even a little silver- in his belt pouch could have himself quite a time, that he could…

Aye, if I hadn't had my eyes burned out, I'd likely be a sinner still. I make no bones about it. All things work for good in the end, is that what you said there? I won't argue, Brother Elpidios. How could I argue with the likes of you?

A couple of months after the end of the sixth holy ecumenical synod, my father suffered his first attack of stone. I learned of it when my mother, at most times a quiet woman, let out a shriek at dawn one morning that had everyone in the palace rushing toward the bedchamber she and my father shared.

Because the rooms holding my bed and Herakleios's were close by that of my parents, I was among the first into the imperial bedchamber, and what I saw there made me slam the door in the faces of those who came more slowly, including my own brother. My father lay senseless on the floor; a shattered chamber pot close by had spilled a night's worth of piss over it and over his tunic.

Even as I turned back from the door, he groaned and sat up, one hand going to the small of his back. His face was pale as parchment. "Mother of God, help me," he said in a voice not his own, and then, wonderingly, "She has helped me- the pain is gone." He got to his feet and, though he swayed a little, did not seem on the point of falling.

"What happened?" my mother demanded. Her nightgown was wrinkled from sleep, her fair hair wild around her head. I could not remember the last time I had seen her anything but perfectly robed and coiffed.

"I woke up, perhaps half an hour ago," my father answered, plainly explaining as much to himself as to her and me. "At first I thought it was the gout again, but the pain lay here"- he touched his back again-"not in my foot. It moved- slowly." He ran a hand down his back, toward the bottom of the cleft of his buttocks. Even the memory of the pain made sweat bead on his face, though the bedchamber was cool. "It felt- it felt as if there were a torch soaked in liquid fire burning inside me, all the way down. I got up to make water, hoping to squeeze the pain down further, and- I woke up on the floor." Suddenly noticing his tunic was soaked and dripping, he let out a hoarse cry of disgust.

At that moment, someone rapped on the door, a loud, peremptory knock that cut through the Babel out in the hallway. "Let me in, curse it!" a man- presumably the fellow who had knocked- called in a loud, deep voice. "How the devil am I to attend my patient with him on one side of the door and me on the other?"

I looked a question to my father. He nodded, saying, "Let Peter come in- but no one else, mind you. A physician will do me no harm, though he probably won't do me much good, either."

I opened the door a palm's breadth, repeating my father's command as I did. In spite of it, the forward rush almost overcame me: it was as if a besieging army had broken in the gate of a city. But a big, burly man with a thick black beard threw a couple of judicious elbows that doubled over the men just behind him. Peter got in, then helped me shut and bar the door once more before anyone else could follow.

That done, he turned to my father and, as ceremony required even under those circumstances, began to prostrate himself before him. When my father waved for him not to bother, he said, "Tell me your symptoms." My father did, in words almost identical to those he had used with my mother and me. Peter listened attentively, then said, "You passed a kidney stone, Emperor. What you felt was it moving from your kidney down to your bladder. It may stay there, or you may pass it out of your body sometime in the next few days when you make water."

"Will I get more of them?" my father asked. "One, let me tell you, was enough for a lifetime."

"Everyone who suffers from stone says the same thing. Thank God, if you care to, that yours passed quickly instead of lingering for hours or even days," Peter said. My father shuddered. The physician went on, "Will you get more?" He spread his hands. "God alone knows. I pray you don't." He hesitated, then said, "Suffering from stone, Emperor, along with your gout, is not the best of signs."