He and Stephen the Persian both bowed their heads. I having made the decision, they went forth and put it into effect. They were good at what they did; I would not have set them in their places had they been anything but good at what they did. From that day forth, money came into the fisc in quantities adequate to make up for the tribute the deniers of Christ were no longer paying.
But oh, how the grandees screeched to have to pay their share to the government that not only kept them safe but kept them rich! By the petitions flooding in to me, by the complaints from those nobles bold enough to beard me in person, anyone would have thought the whole of their wealth was being confiscated, not just that part necessary to preserve the whole.
Some of them, as Stephen had warned me, did worse than carp. These vicious fools I detected in good time, having a fair number of spies of all descriptions scattered about the imperial city. Some of them I ordered mutilated, following Theodotos's suggestion. Others I simply cast into prison, along with the insolent guildsmen and with Leontios. Occasionally, to show my mercy, I would release one or two. The rest simply stayed where they were. Fewer people missed them, I am certain, than they imagined would be the case.
They found company in their prison cells, too, for, men being sinful and imperfect creatures, not all found themselves able or willing to obey the canons set down by the assembled bishops of the fifth-sixth synod. Those who persisted in lewd practices or in the demonically inspired customs of the pagan past deserved punishment no less than those who sought to conceal their wealth- and what they deserved, they received. If I could make it so, Constantinople would be a moral city.
I also had in mind that Constantinople should be a safe city: safe for me, I should say. To that end, my spies watched not only those still free and able to make mischief, but also some of the prominent personages in prison. One of these fellows, a converted Jew named George, brought me word of Leontios. "He has two suspicious characters who visit him all the time," the spy reported.
"Assume anyone who wants to visit Leontios is a suspicious character and go on from there," I answered, to which George, who himself looked like a born conspirator, nodded emphatic agreement. I added, "Who are these people, anyway?"
"One is a monk, a certain Paul, from the monastery of Kallistratos," George said, "and the other a former officer, also now a monk, called Gregory the Kappadokian."
"The plain monk I don't much care about," I said. "Even Leontios is entitled to prayers for the benefit of his soul. In fact, considering the state of Leontios's soul, I daresay he needs more prayers than most other people I could name. But tell me more about this Gregory, who was once a soldier. He may still remember his old trade."
"Right now, Emperor, I don't know any more." George looked crafty, an expression that, by the way the lines on his face fell into familiar patterns, he frequently assumed. "But I can find out."
He sent me a written memorandum a few days later. Gregory the Kappadokian turned out to have been a kleisouriarch, an officer in charge of defending a mountain pass against the Arabs, and had served under Leontios in a couple of his campaigns. More reports on him trickled in over the days and weeks that followed. He seemed to have been a good if unspectacular soldier before donning the monastic robe, and to have no intimate ties to Leontios save their common service: he had no relatives married to any of Leontios's, nor did Leontios owe him money. For that matter, he did not owe Leontios money, either.
I considered flinging Gregory into prison, too, by choice into the cell next to Leontios's so they could talk with each other to their hearts' content. In the end, though, I forbore. But for his continued friendship with a former commander, Gregory appeared to be an utterly ordinary fellow. And Leontios, imprisoned as he was, could hardly threaten me. Reasoning so, I let Gregory stay free and keep on visiting him.
I would not be so naive today.
Before the campaigning season ended that year, the Arabs sent several raiding parties into Anatolia. They did this, I gathered, every year no truce was in force between them and us. These raids, though not large, penetrated deeper into our territory than the followers of the false prophet usually managed to do. I did not take long to find out why: Sklavenoi from the special army were guiding the Arabs through the territory that had once nurtured them.
Receiving that news, I rounded on Myakes. "If I had been sorry about slaughtering the Sklavenoi, I wouldn't be any more."
Infuriatingly, he shrugged. "I don't know about that, Emperor," he said. "You took vengeance on them, and now they're taking vengeance on you. How is one any different from the other?"
"How?" I exclaimed. "I'll tell you how! I am Emperor of the Romans. They are a pack of wretched barbarians. Now do you see?"
All he did was shrug again. In his quiet way, he could be, and often insisted on being, a difficult man. Having been accustomed to his stubbornness from boyhood, I tolerated it in a way I would not have from a more recent acquaintance.
Dismissing him, I summoned a scribe. The man poised reed pen over papyrus to take down my words. "This order is to go to all Roman military commanders in the east," I said, and the scribe nodded. I drew a deep breath before continuing, "Let any Sklavinian traitor captured in the company of Arab raiders within Romania be burned alive as fitting punishment for his treachery. Let there be no appeal from or reduction to this sentence. Let the barbarians be filled with fear so that they no longer abet such debased acts of brigandage."
The chancery having prepared sufficient copies of the order, couriers on fast horses sped it to the military district of the Armeniacs and to that of the Anatolics, the two most likely to be concerned with it. Before the end of the campaigning season, I received several most gratifying reports of incinerated Sklavenoi.
I summoned Myakes and read to him a particularly fine one. "Isn't that splendid?" I said. "Reading it, I can almost hear the Sklavinian's shrieks, almost smell the meat roasting on his bones. This Bardanes who would sooner be called Philippikos has the makings of a first-rate officer. I aim to promote him for the excellent service he's given me."
"If I were you, Emperor, before I promoted him I'd check to see if he ever really did cook any Sklavenoi," Myakes answered stolidly. "Anybody can tell a good yarn. There's people out on the streets of the city who make their living doing nothing else but- and I'm not even talking about lawyers."
I snorted. "I think you've been jealous of Bardanes since he spotted that Sklavinian breathing through a reed."
"You're the Emperor. You can think whatever you like," Myakes said. "Me, what I think is, that story sounds too good to be true. And when a story sounds too good to be true, it usually is."
That made me thoughtful. I have already remarked on several occasions that the worst curse of being Emperor is hearing what people want you to hear, not what is true. If Bardanes Philippikos was sending me fancy stories about how many Sklavenoi he had given over to the flames so as to make himself look good, I needed to know as much. And if he had, he would be a long time regaining my confidence, if ever he did.
The Roman Empire has spies among the Arabs. The followers of the false prophet, worse luck, also have spies in Romania. And the Emperor of the Romans has spies of his own, whom he can send forth to examine the deeds not only of foreign foes but also of enemies and potential enemies closer to home. I sent out two of these men, neither knowing of the other, to learn whether Bardanes had done as he claimed.