If Justinus slept in the surroundings of a hermit, the rooms from which he exercised his responsibilities reflected more the position he held, a set of sumptuous apartments that controlled access to those of the imperial couple. While care had to be taken not to offend powerful officials, he always made sure they understood his function, which was to keep Anastasius and his ailing wife, the Empress Ariadne, safe from harm.
To do that he had to earn and keep their trust, a problem when he thought Anastasius often ill advised and one particular plank of their policy totally misguided. It was a subject to be avoided, for not adept at telling falsehoods, Justinus might be forced into an honest reply if asked for an opinion.
‘Highness.’
Justinus bowed as he presented his emperor with the overnight reports of disturbances in the city, the first personal duty of the day, not that Anastasius would read them; nor could Justinus recite them to him, for that, reading and writing, was an area in which he utterly lacked the skill. The nephew on whom he depended being absent he presented a summary given to him by a literate servant, though there was very little to report from that sent in by the praefectus urbanus; the previous night Constantinople had been quiet.
‘A dispute in the docks between sailors from Alexandria and others from Latakia, a few wine shops destroyed and heads broken, but no reported deaths.’
The old man nodded, which upset the barber trying to dress his hair, not that the fellow let his irritation be known to the subject of his attentions; Justinus picked it up because he saw the eyes flash for a second. Like all functionaries he cared only for his own role in palace life; it mattered not to him that a fear of riot was a constant in the mind of the emperor and with good cause. The capital was a feverish melting pot of many races and, though underground, any number of outright criminals as well as creeds that refused to adhere to official edicts on religion.
Anastasius himself had experienced how dangerous this could be, and all due to, as was the case in Thrace, his stance on religion. He had, in the year ’12, been massively troubled by uproar, had seen his statues cast down as well as those of his predecessors, the homes of his relatives set on fire, and the disturbances only snuffed out when he offered himself before the febrile mob in the Hippodrome and proposed he stand aside if they put up another candidate. Fickle as ever, they cheered him to the heavens!
Then there were the factions called the Greens and the Blues, originally supporters of the rival teams of charioteers, now more a pair of groupings representing different parties in the city. Loosely they were low-class mobs controlled by either the old Greco-Roman aristocracy or the bustling merchant class. The leaders would happily bring their supporters onto the streets in pursuit of some policy that suited their interests, naturally opposed by the other side which had them engaging in an endless ritual of tit-for-tat and bloody violence.
With the members of these factions numbered in their tens of thousands no one could be sure the troops quartered in the city were numerous enough to contain the danger – they were certainly too few to crush either community – and emperors were frequently obliged, like Anastasius, to appear before the mob in the Hippodrome to placate them over a policy inimical to their interests. Often it was politic that they should consider fleeing the capital and more than one emperor had faced being deposed; God help the man who aspired to rule who did not have some kind of approval.
‘Enough.’
Anastasius issued this command in a voice as soft as the wave of his bejewelled hand, which was sufficient to send packing the man attending to his hair. Another command cleared the chamber of others waiting to attend upon him, which made Justinus curious, for it implied that his master wished to converse with him without being overheard. As an extra precaution he spoke in the Illyrian dialect common to both, Anastasius being a native of Dyrrhachium on the Adriatic coast.
‘You have seen the reports of how matters fare in the Diocese of Thrace.’
‘I have had them relayed to me, Highness.’
‘You know Vitalian as well as any man in my service, Flavius Justinus, do you not?’
The use of the full name had the commander of the guard stiffen, for it seemed too formal. He did indeed know Vitalian, for he had served under the general during the recent Persian War and helped him to put down the Isuarian risings that had plagued the early years of the present reign.
‘I need to be aware,’ Anastasius continued, his voice still low and even, ‘before I attend the council, if the threat he presents to us is real or sham.’
There were always times in the life of a court official, and Justinus was that, when a choice had to be made as to whether to be truthful, as against others, or whether it was more prudent to tell the emperor what he wanted to hear. No position was safe; every appointment was in the imperial gift and could be removed at a stroke, albeit such an action in certain cases was not without risk to the emperor: some men were too powerful to just dismiss, and if a ruler wanted to be sure of success it was safer to kill the person in question, sometimes including his family.
‘General Vitalian is not a man to issue a false challenge.’
‘A threat, then?’
‘I would say it would be wise to treat him so.’
What he could not say was that the policy enacted to give him cause to rebel was foolish, doubly so when Vitalian, a committed Christian and strong in his support for Chalcedonian beliefs, commanded the only decent-sized force of soldiers on the European side of the capital. Added to that, camped as he was in a region that supported his views on dogma, he would have no trouble in recruiting others to his banner.
‘Given the difficulty that Vitalian is creating, I cannot see it as wise to alienate what support we enjoy on the Danube border.’
Justinus now knew why Anastasius had cleared the room and spoke in dialect, this being a subject that when discussed, his guard commander had requested be overheard by no one. He also suspected he knew what was coming.
‘Given the possibility of serious disturbances, I suggest that you give instructions that the commission headed by Petrus Sabbatius is to be recalled for the time being. He will not have got far I suspect. Dealing with the complaints of your old comrade …’ That got another waved hand, until Justinus provided the name. ‘Belisarius will have to wait.’
‘We are all yours to command, Highness,’ Justinus replied, making sure that whatever anger he felt was well concealed.
‘Be so good as to call back in my attendants.’
Which was, without the need to say so, a dismissal.
CHAPTER TEN
If sleep brought welcome relief and restored both Flavius and Ohannes it did not bring comfort, but they had a whole day with enough of that fisherman’s catch remaining to feed themselves and to begin to think how to proceed, which would not be easy. That did not become any more simple after a second peaceful night, when the only threat came from others fishing too near the shore for comfort. Daylight brought back to the fore the real concerns.
To camp on the northern bank of the Danube for any time without their presence being observed was impossible; even in deep woods they would be seen by someone and that was if they stayed still, not an option if there was a need to hunt and fish in order to eat. They would be spotted, too, from the river trying to tickle their supper, for they lacked the means to cast a line. Snares would have to be set and a certain amount of movement had to be undertaken to put those in place, as well as to seek out larger creatures.