"I've been giving you watered wine," Myakes said. Stout fellow, he was probably the only reason I had not gone before the judgment of all-powerful God some days earlier. Now he got to his feet and hurried out of the chamber where I lay. From the other beds nearby, I realized this was not a monastic cell, but the xenodokheion attached to the monastery. None of those other beds had anyone in it. In Kherson, guests were few and far between.
I had made it up to one elbow by the time Myakes and a monk came back into the xenodokheion. The monk carried an earthenware bowl on a wooden tray. I had already resigned myself to fare far rougher than the tender viands I had enjoyed back at the palace, and was expecting something like barley porridge. That, however, was not what the aroma rising from the bowl suggested. I pointed to it, asking, "What's in there?"
"Fish stew, Justinian," the monk answered. How could I upbraid him for failing to use my proper title when, out of charity, he was feeding me?
"It smells wonderful." With no small effort, I sat up straight. My head swam, but I did not let myself topple over. He handed me the bowl, and a wooden spoon wherewith to eat from it.
The stew was hot and salty and rich. The fish in it was either dried or salted, but I did not care, feeling myself restored with every mouthful I swallowed. The salt stung my wounded mouth, but I had lately known worse hurts than that. I did not look up from the bowl until it was empty.
"Thank you," I said to the monk then. "That may be the most delicious meal I've ever eaten."
"God bless you for your kindness in saying so," he replied, sounding not merely surprised but astonished. At the time, I did not understand. Before long, I did. The first bowl of fish stew I ate was surely made with the ambrosia of the pagan gods for a spice. The fifth bowl- no different from the first- tasted good and sated my hunger. The fiftieth bowl- no different from the first- I ate with resignation rather than relish. By the time I ate the five hundredth bowl and then, I think, the five thousandth- no different from the first- I loathed it with a loathing I had thought reserved for an unloved wife. But, in Kherson, eating all too often meant eating fish stew.
I spent nine years in Kherson. The monk, I found later, had lived his whole life there, and he was not a young man. I daresay he had had a surfeit of fish stew by the time he finished cutting his milk teeth. No wonder he was startled to discover anyone with a good opinion of it.
"Wine?" I asked.
"I shall bring you some," the monk said.
When he returned, it was my turn to be surprised. The wine, sweet, fruity, was an excellent vintage, and not one with which I had previously been familiar. "Where does this come from?" I wondered aloud. "I have never drunk of it in Constantinople."
"We make it here; the hillsides are suited to the grape," the monk answered. "We make it mostly for ourselves. It is not a famous wine, so shipping it far across the sea does not pay."
I drained the wooden cup he had given me, wishing for more. Over the long years that followed, I drank a great deal of the sweet red wine of Kherson. Unlike the stew of salted fish that seemed the characteristic local food, it never bored me. But then, the most the stew brought with it was a bellyache. The wine, if drunk in sufficiency, brought oblivion. To an exile in Kherson, oblivion was sometimes the most precious gift God could grant.
I did not know then I would spend so many years away from the imperial city, for I did not fully understand how isolated from the rest of the civilized world- or perhaps I should simply say, from the civilized world- Kherson was. My thought then was to heal, to raise a force, and to return to Romania to cast down Leontios. In the bright glow of returning awareness, it all seemed very easy.
Intending to ask for another cup of wine, I found myself yawning instead. Was the vintage of Kherson so strong? No, I was weak, and had not realized how weak I was. However much I wanted to remain sitting, I could not. As a man will after waking from a fever, I quickly fell back to sleep.
"He's going to make it," I remember Myakes saying. Of course I am, I thought, and thought no more.
When my eyes came open again, it was night. Somewhere not far away, a single lamp burned, so the chamber in the xenodokheion was not absolutely dark. I remembered at once where I was. I also realized at once I was stronger. This is not to say I was strong; a boy whose beard had not yet sprouted could easily have laid me low. It is a measure of how near heavenly judgment I had come.
Beside me, someone was snoring. At first, I thought it was a carpenter sawing through a thick log. I had no trouble picking out the rhythm: push-pull, push-pull, push-pull. But the fellow was no carpenter, and had no saw. It was only Myakes. I wondered how little sleep he had got while I lay in feverish delirium. Having served me so well through that, he deserved to recover now.
Next to his pallet lay a stout cudgel. Leontios's men had robbed him of his sword, and he must have had neither chance nor money to get another since arriving at Kherson. But he aimed to protect me as best he could, and a club was better than nothing.
I sat up. It was easy, this time: I was stronger. Myakes might have fed me as best he could, but he hadn't fed me much. One real meal counted for more than whatever he'd managed to spoon into me while I lay delirious. And, encouraged by how easily I had succeeded in sitting, I stood.
During the time when I was out of my head with fever, someone seemed to have stolen my legs, replacing them with half-baked dough that wanted nothing so much as to buckle under my weight. I swayed like a ship on a tossing sea. No doubt I should have been wiser to lie down again, but that would have been as much as admitting defeat. Besides, I needed to piss.
Breathing hard, I looked around for a chamber pot. The mere act of breathing felt different after my mutilation, and not only because the wound, while beginning to heal, still festered. Air seemed to strike the interior of my body too soon, so that it felt harsh and raw even when it was not. And, when I exhaled, my breath no longer came down over my mustache and lips, something I had not noticed with the topmost part of my mind until its absence brought it to my attention.
Spying the pot at last- one lamp was not enough to illuminate so large a chamber- I made my way toward it. Myakes and I being the only ones in the xenodokheion, the monks could have placed it near us, but had not done so, I suppose for no better reason than that they had not thought of it. They were there to give their guests food and shelter, not convenience.
Standing had been hard. Walking was harder. I thought I would fall over at every step; I have had a far easier time managing while drunk. Stooping down to pick up the chamber pot was also anything but easy. But I managed to ease myself without getting the floor too wet, then returned to bed.
Myakes had not wakened when I rose, but the rustle of straw under my body as I lay back down made him open his eyes. Glancing my way, he saw I too was awake. "You all right, Emperor?" he asked.
"With this for my palace, how could I be anything but delighted?" I answered, startling a grunt of laughter out of him. Then I responded to what he had really meant: "I'm better than I was, at any rate. I walked across the room and back just now." I spoke with some small pride, as if I were Pheidippides still alive after having run from Marathon to tell the Athenians of their victory over Xerxes.
"Eat and sleep and rest- that's what you've got to do for a while," Myakes said. "Once you have your strengt h back, you'll-" He broke off. My likely future must have looked bleak to him.
Not to me. "I'll go back to the imperial city and reclaim my throne," I declared. "How long can Leontios last as Emperor? He's a joke, and not a funny one."