Crawling past this door, I rolled over onto my back, using my legs to push up against the boards. Had it been latched, I would have attacked it with the pry bar. But it swung back easily. I stood upright, savoring that position, and looked around to get my bearings. Considering how far we had come in the blackness, my reckoning proved quite good. We were about a bowshot inside the inner wall, and considerably less than that distance from a large cistern. As well I had found the doorway, I thought.
"Anyone trying to find out what that noise was?" Myakes hissed from inside the pipe.
"I can't see anyone," I answered. "Pass me the rope. I'll make it fast to one of the hinges here, and we can all climb down."
"No. I have a better idea," Myakes said. "Moropaulos is a big, strong fellow. Let him hold the rope while the rest of us go down. Then he can tie it to a hinge and climb down himself. That way, we only have to trust the old iron once, not seven times."
His plan indeed being better than mine, we adopted it forthwith. The rest of us crawled up onto the top of the aqueduct. Moropaulos stood in the doorway, the better to brace himself. I had intended to be first man down, but Myakes again took the lead from me. I do not know to this day whether he was testing Foolish Paul's strength or making sure no opposition waited below.
Whichever it was, he soon called, "All's well, Emperor. Your city's here waiting for you."
I went down hand over hand, having first wrapped the rope around my leg and over the top of my instep to give myself some additional purchase should a hand slip. A minute later, I stood in an unpaved alleyway in Constantinople, a stone's throw north of the Mese. "I've returned," I whispered, as if saying it was what made it true.
Leo descended next, then Stephen, Barisbakourios, and Theophilos. Foolish Paul's feet were a man's height above the ground when the iron hinge to which he'd tied the rope tore free of the cement and bricks under his weight. He landed with a thud and a shout, the rope streaming down after him. He scraped one knee- through all our knees were already raw from a longer crawl than ever we had done as infants- but, praise God, was otherwise unhurt.
I looked at all my companions in the moonlight. The pale radiance sufficed to show how filthy and tattered they were, which doubtless meant I was filthy and tattered as well. Seven men to overthrow the greatest city in the civilized world! One of the pagan dramatists of Athens wrote a play about seven men against a city, but I recall neither the playwright nor the city the seven men opposed.
"We'll go to the Mese," I said. "We'll find a fountain on a street corner and clean ourselves as best we can. Then we'll go to the grand palace. We'll get inside any way we can, and then we'll slay Apsimaros." With my rival dead, I reasoned, no one would oppose my reassuming the throne rightfully mine.
No one moved. I barked at my followers. Barisbakourios said, "Emperor, this is your city. We don't know which way to go." He kept looking around, even here down on the ground. "I don't think I believed all your stories of the imperial city, the ones you'd tell back in Kherson. But you meant them, didn't you?"
"Of course I did," I answered, setting out for the chief boulevard of the city. Myakes strode along beside me, Constantinople also being familiar to him. The others, even Leo, followed slowly, cautiously, as if on the verge of being overwhelmed by the size and magnificence of the city through which they walked.
They exclaimed in wonder at the length and width and paving of the Mese, and at so many people being on the street at an hour well past midnight. We were a large enough group to deter robbers, and also large enough for others to think us robbers and depart in haste. Grimy as we were, a couple of whores came up to us. They hissed curses at me when I sent them away; we lacked the time for even the most pleasant distractions.
While we were splashing water on our faces at a fountain, a squadron of horse came riding along the Mese toward the walls, their harness jingling. When the light from the torches they carried fell on us, their leader called, "Here, you men! Who are you?"
Had I listened to reason, I should have either fled or lied. If reason spoke to me, I heard nothing. At last back in my beloved city, I drew myself up proudly and said, "I am Justinian, Emperor of the Romans, the son of Constantine son of Constans son of Herakleios Constantine son of Herakleios. Who, sir, are you?"
The officer's chin dropped to his chest. So did Myakes'. Leo, I remember, clapped his hands together, once, twice, admiring my audacity. Had the officer and his soldiers been perfectly loyal to the usurper, they could have cut me down where I stood. The fellow's mouth worked. When he spoke, though, he gave no order to attack, instead whispering, "Holy Virgin Mother of God."
"I have returned to take back my throne," I said, and drew my sword. "Will you stand by me, or will you fight?"
Smashing a lump of quicksilver with a hammer could have created no greater scattering than did my words. A couple of the riders wheeled their mounts and galloped back toward the palace, crying, "Justinian is in the city! The Emperor is in the city!" They might have thought they were warning Apsimaros, but, by those cries, their hearts knew who their true sovereign was.
Others galloped away down side streets. Few of those said anything at all. My guess was that they aimed to sit out whatever turmoil sprang into being as a result of my sudden and unexpected arrival, then obey the orders of whoever finally seized control of the throne. Still others, that astonished officer among them, rode forward on the route the whole squadron had been taking. They too shouted my name, and some of them, intending to do so or not, also shouted that I was Emperor.
And eight or ten men did not ride off in any direction. Bowing in the saddle to me, one of them exclaimed, "Command us, Emperor!"
Over the long years of exile in Kherson, Myakes had rehearsed for me many times how Leontios and his henchmen had seized control of the imperial city the night I was overthrown. Now I could imitate the blow that had toppled me. "Ride through the streets of the city," I told the horsemen. "Shout my name. Raise a great commotion. Let everyone know I have returned and I am in the city. Tell anyone who wants to help to do as you are doing and rouse the people."
"Emperor, we will!" they declared as one man, and they rode off in all directions, shouting my name at the top of their lungs.
"What now, Emperor?" Myakes asked.
"First the palace," I answered. "Once we lay hold of the usurper, the game is ours. Then we seize Kallinikos." Hungry anticipation filled my voice.
We trotted along the Mese toward the palace, which lies close by the sea. As we moved, confusion spread all around us. People spilled into the street, many of them still in their nightshirts. More and more of them began shouting my name, some in disbelief, others in delight. We ran on.
Had the soldiers on the wall united against me, I still could have been thwarted. But some of them favored me while others did not, the result being that no one did anything. They did, I will say, maintain their watch against my Bulgar allies, that being a matter of most elementary prudence.
My comrades, all save Myakes, to whom the splendid buildings and plazas and monuments adorning the Queen of Cities were familiar, exclaimed again and again at them. They exclaimed at the column of Markianos, at the church of St. Polyeuktos on the other side of the street, at the Praitorion, at the round Forum of Constantine, at the church of St. Euphemia and the bulk of the hippodrome beyond it. I exclaimed at the hippodrome, too- in hatred, having last seen it when my blood spilled into the dirt there.