– fought the sea battle, and was defeated. Indeed, he was almost killed. The Arabs boarded the imperial flagship. One brave soul there stripped the robe from his back and pretended to be him, while another helped him get across a narrow stretch of sea stained red with Roman blood to a dromon not under such fierce attack. Both those heroes died, but Constans came back safe to Constantinople.

The Arabs might have moved against the Queen of Cities then, but they fell into civil strife. In the fourth year of my father's reign, though, the deniers of Christ readied a great expedition, and in the spring of his fifth year they came.

We Romans had not been idle. My father, learning of the Arabs' preparations, ordered our shipwrights to work straight through the winter, building and refurbishing the vessels upon which, along with the great walls of Constantinople, our safety depended. On learning the foe's fleet had set out from Kilikia, where it had wintered, and was bound for the imperial city, he and his brothers- the two junior Emperors, Herakleios and Tiberius (my uncles, in other words)- decided to hearten the workmen and sailors at the Proklianesian harbor, and they took me with them.

When I think back on it, I am astonished by how much I remember of the day: the sights, the sounds, most of all the smells of fresh-cut wood and rope and pitch. Perhaps I should not be surprised. Till then, I had spent most of my time with my mother, the Empress Anastasia, and with the women of the palace. Now I was decked out in miniature robes of deep crimson- for I was a prince myself- and borne along in a sedan chair right behind those my father and my uncles rode. I kept peeking out through the curtains to see as much of the city as I could.

The Proklianesian harbor lies on the southern side of Constantinople, just east of the harbor of Theodosios, the largest of the city's anchorages. It is not a harbor for merchantmen or fishing boats: war galleys lie there.