But Kosmas told the Indian prince, "Both rulers are here. By their coins shall you judge them." The Persian's silver was not bad in its way, but could not stand comparison to the gleaming Roman nomismata. And so the prince rightly judged the Emperor of the Romans mightier than the Persian King of Kings.
"One thing concerns me," I told Cyril. "These drawings are large"- each was broader than the palm of my hand-"but a nomisma is small, scarcely the width of my thumb. Will you be able to reproduce them accurately in that cramped space?"
He drew himself up, the picture of affronted pride. "Emperor, my work satisfied your father, and it has always satisfied you up to now. Do you think I would do anything less than my best when making an image of our Lord?"
"I'm sorry," I said, one of the few times- in fact, thinking back, the only one I can remember- I ever apologized while sitting on the imperial throne. "How soon can you strike examples to show me?"
Cyril got a faraway look in his eye. "I would say three days, Emperor, but, like I told you, I want this to be my very finest work. Will five days do?"
"That will be fine," I said, having expected some considerably longer time. Looking back, I should have known better, for some of the coins the palace servitors threw to the crowds of Constantinople at my coronation bore my image, not my father's. The engravers could, at need, work very fast indeed.
And Cyril proved as good as his word- in fact, one day better. When he handed me the first five nomismata he had struck, I brought them close to my face and squinted at them, hardly believing he had managed to include so much in so small a compass. I could make out the individual hairs, long and flowing, on Christ's head and in His beard and mustache; I imagined I could read (though in truth I could not) the words on the book He was holding. On the reverse, my own image was also impressively detailed, down to the three jeweled pendants dangling from the fibula that held my chlamys closed.
I passed one of the nomismata to Myakes, saying, "Tell me what you think of this."
"I always think well of gold, Emperor," he answered with a smile, which I knew to be true, though he was not madly greedy for it as some men are. I had given him the coin with the side upward that showed me standing and holding the cross. He looked at it, nodded in a businesslike way, and turned the nomisma over. He studied the image of our Lord in silence for some little while, so long that I began to wonder whether he had caught some flaw I missed. Then, softly, he said, "Ahh."
My gaze went to Cyril. His expression was the one he might have worn had some beautiful woman come up to him and begged him to take her to his bed that very instant. With the possible exception of something like that, no artisan could have got higher praise than Myakes' murmur of awe had just given him.
To Myakes, I said, "Keep that coin for yourself." I gave Cyril back the other four nomismata. "And you keep these. You did everything I wanted my coinage to do, and did it better than I imagined it could be done."
"I thank you, Emperor, for letting me turn my wits loose and not ordering me to do the other," he answered, "and I thank God for letting my wits come across this idea- for putting it in my mind, you might say. He knows how to watch over His faith better than any of us does, I expect."
"You might as well be a bishop," I told him.
He held up his scarred, callused hands. "I'm better at what I do," he said. "Maybe one day, when I'm too old to use the awl and the punch and the chisel and the hammer as I should, I'll seek the quiet of the monastery. But not yet."
"Good enough," I said. "You can make me more splendid coins, then." He nodded, almost- although not quite- as happy as he had been when Myakes' involuntary, startled praise turned him to a bowl of barley mush.
I looked out at the bishops, each in his finest vestments, who had come to this God-guarded and imperial city at my urging. "You are agreed, then, holy fathers, that these canons complete and perfect the work of the last two ecumenical synods?"
"Emperor, we are," they chorused as one.
"Then let my signature and yours on the canons of this synod be proof of that." And, so saying, I dipped a pen into a jar of the crimson ink reserved for Emperors alone and set my name on each of the six copies scribes had prepared of the canons: one copy for the imperial chancery, and one each for the patriarchs of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.
Paul the ecumenical patriarch affixed his signature next after mine, leaving a blank space on each parchment wherein Sergios, the pope of Rome, might set his name. After him came the three patriarchs whose sees still unfortunately groan under the heel of the Arabs' miscalled commander of the faithful.
And after them I had the pleasure of summoning John, the bishop of New Justinianopolis, who had been translated with his flock from Cyprus to Bithynia. His signature went immediately below those of the patriarchs. "Thank you for the honor you show me and my new city, Emperor," he said, bowing.
"I take great pleasure in seeing you here," I answered, and we beamed at each other. He might have been foolish, but our thoughts now ran in the same channel.
After John, the rest of the bishops who had attended my fifth-sixth synod queued up to sign the canons to which they had agreed. As more than two hundred had come to the imperial city, and as each man had to write his name half a dozen times, the ceremony took some time.
Among those signing their names were George and Daniel, who regularly represented Pope Sergios in Constantinople, and Basil of Gortyna whose see, as I have said, fell under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the see of Rome. George and Daniel signed without hesitation, as I saw with my own eyes. Bishop Basil also set down his name, but, having done so, said, "Emperor, I fear the holy pope will find some of the canons here hard to bear."
"If he knows what is good for him," I said, pitching my voice so all the assembled bishops could hear, "he will give his assent, and waste no time doing it. I have great things in mind in the east, and have no intention of wasting my time enforcing discipline on a barbarous, backwoods province like Italy. If the bishop of Rome withholds his signature, he shall be punished quickly and severely."
The bishops from within the heartland of the Roman Empire nodded, knowing they had to accommodate themselves to their sovereign's wishes. Of the far smaller number of western bishops, some looked alarmed, others indignant. The latter, I suppose, failed to remember how my grandfather, as other Roman Emperors had done before him, had used the exarch of Ravenna to seize a pope who flouted his wishes and send him off to imprisonment, exile, and torture. Although not eager to do such a thing, I aimed to if Sergios decided to be troublesome. Having him inflame dissent and argument was the last thing I needed when I was about to go to war against Abimelekh.
Leontios's broad, earnest face puckered into a frown. "Emperor, your father would never have done a thing like this," he said. "I fought the Arabs a lot of times for him, but he would never have done anything like this."
He had not lost his habit of repeating himself, but that was not why I glared at him. I had, by then, been Emperor of the Romans for seven years. Being told what my father would have done rankled. "He is dead," I answered, my voice cold. "I choose war against the followers of the false prophet, not this odious treaty of peace, which they have violated and under which the Roman Empire suffers. I thought of you to command my army and chast ise them as they deserve. You have succeeded against them before. Are you afraid you cannot again?"