Daphne & Sebastian: Part One (Ravenna)

a novella of war, politics, theater, sports, and religion

Justinian and the members of his court (met open access)

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Sebastian

The countryside stretched out beyond an Italian villa snuggled up against the Adriatic Sea. The mountaintops in the distance enthralled Sebastian with the same dream that had brought him into the army: the resurrection of the old Empire, ruled this time from Constantinople rather than Rome, a resurrection for which Sebastian was adamant that he would be responsible.

The Western Empire had been dead for two centuries, but that situation would end with Sebastian.

He smiled at the thought.

By now Sebastian had fought in campaigns all over the Mediterranean. As a lowly soldier on the front lines, he had helped to vanquish many of Constantinople’s enemies in Palestine, Spain, and North Africa; now he was a general with an army of his own in Italy, the vast majority of that boot-shaped peninsula still controlled by barbarians. Mountains ran straight down the middle of Italy, hindering anyone seeking to subdue the whole peninsula, but Sebastian would find a way.

Sebastian knew the stakes of his presence in Italy. The present emperor supposedly had no interest in restoring Italian lands to Constantinople. The present emperor wanted only to maintain imperial lands and live out his life in peace. But Sebastian, as the general here with whom it would take anyone in Constantinople months to communicate, was determined to find any pretext he could to conquer the whole country on behalf of Constantinople. Already there had been reports of Gothic raids against farmlands falling under the formal control of the Empire. In the name of security, Sebastian would lead his army against the raiders and continue from there.

Each night, Sebastian fell asleep with dreams of battle.

Sebastian knew that if he were to succeed in conquering the whole of Italy, his army would return with him to Constantinople where he would take power from the emperor. Soldiers always followed the leader who delivered booty, and Sebastian’s campaigns in Italy were sure to deliver ample gold to Sebastian’s men. They would not even question him once he took them back to Constantinople with promises of pay raises to come from further conquests.

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Daphne

Daphne was a dancer and actress in Ravenna, the imperial capital in Italy and one of the only cities on the entire peninsula which the Empire still controlled.

Were the Gothic armies ever to conquer Ravenna, the imperial presence in Italy would come to an end: the port of Ravenna was Constantinople’s gateway into this whole region, as she knew from studying maps whenever she came across them.

She wouldn’t mind the passing away of the Byzantines – aside from the fact she would die or be enslaved during any conquest of Ravenna. For that reason alone she was on the side of the Byzantines. And yet the Christian authorities in Constantinople considered her whole profession to be sinful (on this point they disagreed with the thousands of imperial soldiers who passed through Ravenna and sought out women like her). Imperial authorities often turned a blind eye to the whole affair, because of which Daphne had been able to maintain her career largely in peace.

She had even established a form of independence: she controlled her own wealth; she made a comfortable income from the theater; she owned a small apartment.

Recently an enormous army had arrived in Ravenna and a new commander had installed himself in the palace. Daphne had heard about Sebastian and his ambitions of conquest: she was startled by how careless the man was to conceal these ambitions in a world where he could be called back to Constantinople for trial and execution at any moment. Each day she heard soldiers in the streets talking about “conquering Italy.”

Sebastian never outright said he wanted to be emperor, but there was no other reason, Daphne reflected, for him to want to conquer Italy. Italy, divided now between a multitude of mutually disdainful authorities, was simply a symbol of an Empire long ago destroyed. Rome – which had slipped in and out of Byzantine hands for decades – was a backwater at this point, and yet the Byzantines were willing to lose thousands of soldiers periodically trying to conquer that city.

How many soldiers was Sebastian prepared to lose in the conquest of all Italy?

“I should be in charge of all this,” she thought to herself.

She’d been blessed with a classical education by her father, now dead, killed by Byzantines when they were storming the city in which she’d once lived. Afterward she’d attached herself to one of the Byzantine soldiers and made her way to Ravenna. Now she was a Byzantine. Now she deployed her classical education in the theater, and over the course of years she had become independently wealthy: she was not just an actress, not just a dancer; she was a director with a strong command of Greek literature, something the soldiers who watched her performances completely lacked (at least until they’d finished watching a dozen of her plays).

She loved this role for herself: she felt as though she were a goddess protecting the Empire’s pagan heritage from the destructive impulses of the monotheistic Christians in Constantinople. Whenever the soldiers and townspeople enjoyed her productions, they were soaking up remnants of the very classical heritage which Constantinople was always trying to destroy. And yet the soldiers were too stupid to realize that they were betraying their faith by supposedly worshipping “demons,” as the Christian authorities in Constantinople labeled her gods and goddesses.

“We will put on a show for the new commander,” she said to her assistants, and she already had one in mind: Adonis and Aphrodite.

“I will play Aphrodite,” she emphasized.

She relished every opportunity to take the stage as a goddess.

A strange thought came to her: Sebastian is Adonis.

“I am a Goddess, and he is a mortal,” she thought. “That is why he cannot understand that the Empire’s presence in Italy is doomed, but I can. It is because I see. I see history.” And this thought, the thought that she saw history stretching out across centuries where men only saw little battles and opportunities for “glory,” left her almost woozy with stunted ambition. She looked down the streets at the filthy patrolling soldiers and thought, “Each of these men wants nothing more than to be the next Alexander the Great. All of them have forgotten that he conquered half the world only to drink himself to death and have his empire collapse.”

“The Empire will destroy itself,” Daphne sometimes told her confidants. “The Empire will never be satisfied with internal peace and stability. The Empire is infected with a need to restore the Empire – to conquer Italy, Spain, North Africa, Egypt, Palestine…. The definition of the Empire is the World, and these men hope to restore the entire World to imperial control.”

The more Daphne thought along these lines, the more she thought that she should be the one in charge of the Empire.

“I can save the Empire,” Daphne thought. “I can speak sense into it before it bankrupts itself.”

Daphne and the other actors practiced for weeks in preparation for the show.

Whenever she looked at herself dressed up as Aphrodite, a drive for power overtook her. Why, she thought, should a woman like me – educated in the classics, literate in Greek and Latin, talented on the stage, captivating behind the scenes – why should such a woman, one of the only such people in the world, remain forevermore as a director and actress in Ravenna, a city that was probably doomed?

She hadn’t dreamed of ambitions beyond “actress and director” – but now, having seen how men like Sebastian ran the world, she wanted to run the world herself. She knew how Sebastian would take power because she had studied history: he would lay waste to several cities and in exchange for copious booty his men would become undyingly loyal to him. He would funnel gold back to his allies in Constantinople and the political situation there would turn against the emperor, leaving Sebastian in charge by virtue of having the money bags. Then the cycle would repeat itself with some other fool until the Empire found itself bankrupt and Ravenna itself fell.

The Empire’s days were numbered and she knew it. Daphne saw how much gold the generals wasted trying to win back tiny outposts in Italy for no other reason than symbolism – “the restoration of Rome,” an absurd concept on everyone’s lips, and yet an addictive one in a world that had fallen into such violence and chaos.

And that violence would, Daphne was sure, swallow up Ravenna in due time. Even if Sebastian managed to conquer Italy, the cost in blood and treasure would leave the imperial armies critically weakened. New barbarians would arrive from the north and Italy would return to its divided and anarchical state. This was obvious to Daphne: why the insight evaded seemingly every soldier she’d ever met was a mystery to her, although “stupidity” was a candidate. The destruction of Ravenna might be months, years, or decades in the future, but its conquest was inevitable: with men like Sebastian in control, the Empire would send army after army into Italy, bleed itself to death, and be left with no choice but to abandon Ravenna.

“I have to escape Ravenna,” Daphne found herself thinking, and urgency overtook her.

If she were in Ravenna when Ravenna fell, she’d be raped and enslaved. All of this – her theater, her costumes, her dressing rooms, her stage – all of this would be destroyed, gone forever, and she wasn’t sure she’d be able to escape to a better situation like the last time a city she lived in had fallen to murderous invaders.

“Independence,” she thought. “How long can I maintain my independence now?”

She’d managed to live independently ever since she murdered the soldier who saved her so long ago when her father’s city had been besieged by the Byzantines.

Now, every time she practiced the graceful movements she imagined for Aphrodite, she found herself imagining Sebastian in the theater.

Would he come to the show, or would he avoid the theater like so many commanders did? “The really Christian ones,” she thought with exhaustion. “They avoid the theater and tolerate it for the entertainment of the men.”

What about Sebastian, the man who could take her to Constantinople, a city with walls so high and strong it could never fall?

Somehow, seeing all these jubilant soldiers and feeling the energy that coursed through the streets, she had confidence Sebastian might be able to do it: conquer Italy. Holding Italy after such a bankrupting operation was a different item, but by the time Ravenna fell, she’d be in Constantinople with Sebastian.

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Daphne with Sebastian in the palace

Sebastian wanted Daphne the moment he saw her walk nearly naked onto the stage in her performance of Aphrodite. Here she was, right in front of him, breaking the law, showing off her body, arousing the whole audience, and Sebastian knew what he should do: cut her down, execute her, cleanse this city of sin.

But Sebastian did not care about sin. Sebastian cared about political power. And shutting down a woman like Daphne, who so clearly aroused the passions of all his soldiers during her theatrical performances, was not a good political move.

He summoned Daphne to the palace the very next day.

He waited until daytime for the sake of propriety: officially, he was questioning Daphne in order to uncover crimes against God committed in her theater (which was connected with an enormous brothel that made good money after every performance). Unofficially, he was desperate to hold her naked body in his arms, and when he thought about her the urge for sex clouded his mind.

When Daphne entered the office attached to Sebastian’s quarters in the palace, Sebastian was startled by her confidence in the face of his divine authority. She sat slouching in the chair across from him, and she was perfectly still, not fidgeting or moving at all, simply staring at him as if to say, “So, you sent for me?”

“So,” Sebastian heard himself say, “I sent for you.”

She raised an eyebrow and titled her head as if to say, “no shit you sent for me.”

But she didn’t say anything. She simply sat there in her slouched, relaxed position, waiting. Sebastian glanced quickly at the swords he had displayed on the wall – exotic items with jeweled handles which he had stolen from the cities he had helped conquer and from the men he had killed – and he wondered how Daphne sit there without feeling afraid. He could have her executed right now for her crimes, he thought.

“God is not pleased with what takes place in your establishment,” he said.

“Interesting,” Daphne immediately said. “And why is that?”

“You promote paganism, Daphne,” Sebastian said, and she finally reacted: she jumped a little when he said her name, as if this were unexpected. “You teach the soldiers about the old gods and goddesses, each of whom our bishops tell us were demons. You worship demons.”

“I see,” said Daphne. “And yet many of your saints are based upon our demons.”

Sebastian frowned. He knew this was true.

“If we’re talking demons, you can call me Aphrodite,” Daphne said.

They sat there staring at one another for a moment. Sebastian was intoxicated with the memories of her body on the stage in that performance. He watched as Daphne’s eyes left his own and dashed with interest to the map behind him.

This was Sebastian’s favorite map for it showed the whole Mediterranean world he would win back for the Empire one day, and once Daphne’s eyes were on that map, she shifted from a slouched position to leaning-forward, as if straining to read the text on the wall.

“An actress who can read,” Sebastian said mockingly.

She glared, but not at him. She glared at some unspecified location on the map.

“Have you ever seen a map before?” Sebastian suddenly asked with a snicker.

He had to remind himself of just how rustic and uneducated women like this could be. They lived, he thought, for the drug-fueled orgies they ran after their theatrical performances. “Ever?” he asked.

Now Daphne did look at him. “Yes,” Daphne said, and she told him everything as if she were interviewing for an apprenticeship in her theater. She told him about her father and the classical education he gave her. She rattled off the names of a dozen former Roman provinces and even included the years in which they had fallen, offering Sebastian a timeline of imperial collapse. “I can see all the places you’ve been, Commander. Spain, Palestine, Carthage, all the old Roman provinces. My guess is that you have a scheme in which you will be the one who conquers all these places. You hope that your name will be in all the history books as the man who resurrected the Empire. Ultimately I would guess that you plan to then use this glory to overthrow the emperor himself and install yourself in his palace back in Constantinople.”

Sebastian jumped up from his seat and rushed toward the hallway. He poked his head out; only two trusted guards were there.

One had to stay vigilant: the emperor had spies everywhere, and Sebastian knew he had not been nearly careful enough in his communications.

He closed the door and returned to his desk, but this time he did not sit down. He stood near the desk, his back to Daphne. He stared at the map while his heart slowed down.

“I guess it’s true then,” said Daphne, and then she giggled at him.

“How dare you,” he said, turning back to look at her. “How fucking dare you.”

“I can help you,” Daphne said, shutting off the giggling and looking seriously at him.

“Help me? How? Are you going to fight?”

“I can advise you,” Daphne said. “I know history. I know geography. I know politics from all the histories I read when my father was teaching me. I know everything. How do you think I knew all that about you? The emperor is not the only one in Ravenna with spies.”

“You think attaching myself to a whore,” he spat, “would be good for me politically?”

“So you admit it!” she laughed. “You have political ambitions!”

“Silence!” Sebastian shouted at her. “I could have you killed this moment.”

“You love that, don’t you?” Daphne said. “You love that you could have me killed. Well, I don’t care about that. What I care about is what’s going to happen if you run the Empire into dust by handing out all its gold to the soldiers whose support you’ll need as emperor, which is what you are going to become.”

“With you by my side, apparently,” Sebastian said. He tried to make the pronouncement sound sarcastic, but he felt too much excitement at her certain declaration — you will become emperor — and he was intoxicated.

“Yes,” Daphne said. “Marry me.”

“Marry you?”

She stood up from her seat.

He glanced briefly at the shape of her breasts through her dress.

“Yes, Sebastian,” she said. “Marry me. I will advise you. I’ve studied every moment in the Empire’s history where crisis predominated. I can advise you. I can help you.”

Sebastian was angry at himself for not having adequately informed himself about this woman before calling her to his quarters. He was the next Alexander the Great! the next Julius Caesar! the next fucking Constantine! He was the Restorer of the World.

“You want to be like Aurelian, Restorer of the World, but what happened to him?” Daphne asked.

Sebastian was dumbstruck by the question.

“You don’t know who Aurelian is?” Daphne asked him. “You aren’t serious.”

Sebastian muttered to himself, then turned his back to her.

“Most soldiers I talk to know who Aurelian is,” Daphne clarified.

“I know who he is!” Sebastian exclaimed.

But she simply walked up behind him, her breath right on the back of his neck, and she pointed with her finger to the Balkans on the map. “Go back five hundred years. He came from Illyria,” she explained to her dimwitted student, “during a time of major crisis in the Empire, a time when the Empire had 25 emperors in 50 years. He restored stability and called himself the ‘Restorer of the World,’ as you dream to be.”

“That’s exactly right,” Sebastian said, feigning some knowledge of Aurelian, this man whose named he’d heard only vaguely. Her body was close to his own and his thoughts were disorganized. “I am the next Aurelian,” he blurted at her.

“Do you know what happened to him?” she asked. “Of course you do. You’re a man. You are educated and you know what happened five hundred years ago.”

He turned to glare into her eyes, but as he did so his nose brushed up against her cheek and she backed away. How had she dared get so close to him? He wanted her to return to him, to press her whole body against him. He was flaming hot for her now.

“His soldiers murdered him,” Daphne said. “What’s going to happen when you run out of gold to hand out to your men? You can’t conquer forever. You have to stabilize the internal situation in the lands the Empire already has, and yet you only dream of conquest. You should be dreaming about sound fiscal management. I guess I’m a businesswoman; that’s why I think about such things. I own a whole theater company. You’re a conqueror, but you need to be something more than that to rule.”

“You don’t understand the dynamics so well,” Sebastian said, relieved by the chance to pivot toward a topic about which he knew something. They both stood there, face to face, with a few feet and the whole Mediterranean World between them on the wall. “Conquest is the only way to keep these men loyal. They demand booty.”

“No, it’s not, and this is why I say you should marry me and let me become your adviser,” Daphne said. “With a proper tax policy and sound fiscal management, the Empire already has the resources it needs to maintain a defensive army. There have been times, the Pax Romana comes to mind from the first century, when the Empire was almost completely at peace. Don’t you realize: the Empire you want to restore did have a time when for many, many decades, it fought hardly any major wars at all?”

Sebastian hesitated. “My men need conquest. These are the conditions of the time.”

“That’s fine,” Daphne said. “Go ahead, conquer Italy, a peninsula with a mountain range running down the middle, see how long you can hold it.”

“Conquering Italy,” Sebastian said carelessly, “is the only way I can take the throne.”

“Then conquer Italy, stop at Italy, take the throne, and after that we build internal stability.”

Sebastian laughed. “I see that you’re flexible.”

“Very,” Daphne said, raising an eyebrow at him and stepping forward.

“And how do I maintain my reputation if I am married to a harlot?” Sebastian asked. He backed away from her. He considered himself to be a man in control of his passions, and despite his desire for her, he would stay calm and collected.

“By dominating on the field of battle,” Daphne said immediately. “If you dominate on the field of battle no one will question your choice of wife.”

It was clear she had prepared for this confrontation. Could she be a spy? If she was, Sebastian was already a dead man.

“And if the emperor hears about this marriage? Calls me back for an investigation into my relations with pagans?”

“I will be baptized,” Daphne said. “I will be a Christian as far as the emperor is concerned.”

Sebastian admired her now.

Within days, Daphne was baptized and the two were married at a small church in Ravenna.

Afterward, Sebastian began making plans for the conquest of Italy.

Daphne turned her position at the theater over to a close friend who’d been with her from the beginning. She had wanted to maintain her position at the theater, but she understood that from a political perspective the wife of the commander could not be walking nearly naked onto stages in Ravenna. Nor could the wife of the commander be participating behind the scenes in the theater. She was a Christian now, she laughed to herself. She was attached to Sebastian now; she needed him to prosper so she could prosper. She became a regular fixture at the Commander’s many meetings, and the men there learned to respect her: her advice was always shrewd and calculating, and soon they were seeking her out.

“What do you want, really,” Sebastian asked her one night in bed, “more than anything?”

She thought for a moment. She’d hardly seen any of the world, and now she was married to a man who might become Emperor of the Byzantines.

“I want to walk the indestructible walls of Constantinople,” she said.

Sebastian kissed her and smiled. “We will walk those walls together.”

Even so, there were among Sebastian’s men some persons who did not believe that Daphne should have such a prominent place in their commander’s court.

END PART ONE