Harry Turtledove - Justinian

My father shrugged. Could the soldiers from the Anatolian military districts who said he ran away from the Bulgars have seen him them, they would have quivered in shame. "Akhilleus chose glory over length of days, or so the pagans say," he told Peter. "My family has a way of dying young- my father to a murderer, his father to consumption. My life may not be long, but already it has been full. Having saved the Empire from the followers of the false prophet and our holy Christian church, I leave the rest in God's hands."

Peter crossed himself, then bowed very low. So did I; I had never seen my father more worthy of respect. Holding faith in the face of pain is the hardest thing a man can do, and he did not merely hold it: it shone forth from him, as light does from a lamp.

The clamor in the hall got louder. "What shall I tell them?" Peter asked.

"Tell them I had an attack of stone. Tell them it has passed, and I am well again." My father smiled a thin smile. "All that has the advantage of being true. Tell them also that in most cases the stone does not recur."

From what Peter had said, that was not true. A physician, however, being able to do so little against illness, carries hope as a standard medicament. And Peter, with his big voice and bluff, blustering manner, was the perfect man to put forward what my father wanted everyone to believe. By the time he was done haranguing the servants and guardsmen out in the hall, they all sent up cheers and cries of thanksgiving to God that my father's trial had been so light and so fortunately ended.

Also in the hall, close to the door, stood my brother. Despite Peter's glib, fluent speech, Herakleios's face, always pale and thin, remained tight with worry. He knew illness too well to believe it could be so casually dismissed.

He looked a question at me. I nodded, as reassuringly as I could. After a moment, he nodded, too. I have always wondered whether he believed me.

My father's next attack of stone came halfway through the spring.

Those last four years of his life, Constantine wasn't the same man he'd been before. Better? Worse? I don't know, but different. Maybe some of it had to do with losing to the Bulgars. Up till then, he must have thought he was invincible. And why not? He'd beaten every foe he faced, and the Arabs seemed more dangerous than anyone imagined the Bulgars could be. So what happened with the barbarians likely had something to do with clipping his feathers.

But it wasn't only that Constantine didn't go to war with his neighbors any more. He softened, you might say: the bursts of temper he'd loose against anyone who got in his way- the same sort Justinian had and, from what I heard, the same sort Constans had had, too- they stopped coming.

Again, part of the reason for that may be that he didn't have to worry about his brothers any more. But more of it, I do believe, sprang from his being sick so much of the time. He suffered a lot from stone. From all I've heard, there's no worse pain a man can know. A woman in childbed, maybe, but not a man.

I must say I don't see the justice of it. Never have. He knew what he'd done. Justinian puts the words in his mouth: he'd saved the Roman Empire and reunited the church. And what did he get? Hell on earth and an early grave. No, I don't see any justice there.

What's that, Brother Elpidios? Who am I, to question God's judgment? Nobody at all- just an old blind man. And I don't question, not really. But I don't understand, either.

Between my father's first attack of stone and his second, I grew taller by the breadth of a couple of fingers, nor did my growth slow after that: I was entering my thirteenth year, and making the passage from boy to man. My shoulders thickened (though I have always been slim), my muscles hardened, I began to have more than down on my cheeks and around my private parts, and my voice, absurdly, was a boyish treble one moment and the next the deep note I have struck every since.

In the course of those few months, the world became a different place. My brother Herakleios was suddenly not just smaller than I but on the the far side of what seemed an unbridgeable chasm. My father and I, by contrast, constantly butted heads, as if we were an old ram and a young charging at each other in springtime. If he said it, I was certain it was wrong, for it came from his lips. And what I was certain of, I said- in no uncertain terms. He did not take kindly to that, something I understand better now than I did at the time.

And, like a young ram, I began to take notice of the ewes. I had known for some time what passes between man and woman, but when I was a boy it struck me as so absurd and unlikely that I could not take the notion seriously, though both my father and Myakes assured me it was true. Why on earth would any man want to do that, and why would any woman let him if he did?

Then one day, in a hallway in the palace, I walked past a serving girl who was carrying some freshly washed bed linen out to dry in the sun. Being still wet, the bedclothes had also wet her tunic, which clung to and revealed the shape of her breasts and nipples. I gaped at them, and my body stirred in a way I had not known before.

I stopped and stared after her. I had, of course, seen how women walk before that day, but I had never seen it till then. Perhaps noticing that my footsteps no longer sounded in the passage, the serving girl looked back over her shoulder. When she saw how I was looking at her, she smiled saucily, then turned a corner and disappeared.

That night (or was it the night after?- so many years have gone by, I confess I am not certain) I had a dream unlike any I had ever dreamt. Not surprisingly, the serving girl was in it. Somehow she was dry and wet, in her tunic and bare, all at the same time. I moved toward her\a160… and then I was awake, alone, in my bed in the darkness.

My nightshirt and the bedding were wet. I thought for a moment I had pissed myself in the night like a baby, but quickly realized it was not urine that had spurted from me. My body still glowed with the remembered sweetness. Wishing I could remember the dream of the serving girl in more detail, I rolled over and went back to sleep.

Oh, don't cough and splutter so, Brother Elpidios. Yes, of course I know it's Satan who sends such dreams, seeking to lead men away from virtue and toward sin and lasciviousness. But they are sweet while they last, as Justinian says, aren't they?- and this was his first one.

You say you don't think they are? Well, you can say what you like, Brother. God gave us free will, after all, didn't He? Aye, you can say what you like, but that doesn't mean you can make me believe it.

Is there going to be more of such filth? How should I know? When Justinian gave it to me, I never saw anything but the outside, and I'm not likely to set eyes on anything more than that now, am I? Do you want to stop reading? Your purity and chastity wouldn't be challenged then.

Ah, you think you can overcome any challenge you find? I'm glad to hear it, that I am. Read some more, then.

Am I laughing at you? Brother Elpidios, like I said, I'm an old blind man. Would I do such a thing? I'll keep all my snorts to myself from now on, I promise.

I had looked at the serving girl, and she had smiled at me. I wondered how to proceed from that point to the operation that, although it still struck me as preposterous, might in fact perhaps have had something to recommend it.

Before this time, as I have written, the only times I had anything to do with the serving women in the palace was when I wanted them to fetch me something or to take something away. Except for those times, I had, like any foolish boy, done my best to pretend they did not exist.