Theophano : the crusade of the tenth century : a novel

By Frederic Harrison

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Title: Theophano
        the crusade of the tenth century : a novel

Author: Frederic Harrison


        
Release date: July 4, 2026 [eBook #79024]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1903

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79024

Credits: Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THEOPHANO ***






  Theophano

  The Crusade of the Tenth Century


  A Novel


  By Frederic Harrison



  New York and London
  Harper & Brothers Publishers
  1904




  Copyright, 1903, by HARPER & BROTHERS.

  _All rights reserved._

  Published October, 1904.




  Contents


  CHAPTER

  I.  The Boy Basileus
  II.  The Warden of the Eastern March
  III.  The Betrothal
  IV.  The Young Augusta
  V.  The Dying Emperor
  VI.  The Coronation
  VII.  The Confession
  VIII.  The Sacred Palace
  IX.  The Muster of the Crusade
  X.  The Conquest of Crete
  XI.  The Storming of Chandax
  XII.  Digenes and Fatima: Roman or Saracen
  XIII.  The Caliph of the West
  XIV.  The Conquest of Aleppo
  XV.  Empress and Chamberlain
  XVI.  Cæsar at the Rubicon
  XVII.  The New Basileus
  XVIII.  Emperor and Patriarch
  XIX.  The Saracen Peril
  XX.  An Emperor's Day
  XXI.  Islam and Cross
  XXII.  The Stars in Their Courses
  XXIII.  The March on Antioch
  XXIV.  Love and Falsehood
  XXV.  Love and Troth
  XXVI.  Old Rome
  XXVII.  Old Rome and New Rome--Rivals in Empire
  XXVIII.  Basileus in Council
  XXIX.  The Rising Storm
  XXX.  The Last Campaign
  XXXI.  The Last Agony
  XXXII.  Clytemnestra
  XXXIII.  Retribution




  Theophano: The Crusade of
  the Tenth Century



I

The Boy Basileus

Towards the close of the long reign of Constantine Porphyrogennetus,
seventh of that historic name, a hunting-party from the royal capital
of Constantinople was occupied in chasing the wild boar on the slopes
of Mount Damatrys on the Asian side of the Bosphorus.  This mountain,
now called Bulgarlu, lay a few miles eastward of Chrysopolis, the
modern town of Scutari, opposite the Golden Horn.  In the middle of
the tenth century of our era, when this story opens, the view from
the mountain on the Asian side of the Bosphorus was, indeed, very
different from that which delights the traveller to-day, but it was
hardly less beautiful in its exquisite union of wood, sea, rocky
headland, stately towers, and domes.

The sun was hardly risen over the eastern hills in a fresh morning of
spring--it was the year of our Lord, 956--when a body of huntsmen,
some on foot and some on mountain-ponies, were seen hastily emerging
from the dense copse of the forest in the early dawn.  Clothed in
short, leather jerkins and banded leggings, with close skull-caps,
some carried lances, some bows and arrows: three held in leash
powerful hounds, and others were bearing stout nets and poles.  They
were evidently returning home in haste and with anxiety painted in
all their movements.  A mounted man of some authority now pushed his
way to the front and bade them seek for the nearest house where help
and shelter could be obtained.  Coming at last to a woodman's
half-ruined hut, he struck his hunting-spear thrice against the rude
door of the hovel, and imperiously asked if any man was within.  A
scared, half-clothed old man unbolted the entrance, and stood with
bare head, trembling before his questioner.

"Which is the nearest house wherein a wounded man can be sheltered,
and who in this place has any art in stanching a flow of blood?"
called out the horseman.

"St. Michael save us!" cried the old dotard; "has fighting begun in
sight of the Sacred Palace itself?"

"Tush, old fool, there has been a hunting accident, and a noble youth
is now bleeding to death!  Where, I ask again, can we find him
shelter and a leech?"

"The house there of Craterus, the Laconian, at the first turn of the
path below, sometimes gives shelter and accommodation to belated
travellers at need," quavered the terrified hind.  "And his daughter
has a gift for tending poor folk in sickness, and has been known to
set a bone and bind up a broken head."

As he spoke, a small party of men in hunting-garb emerged from the
dense copse and cautiously descended the mountain-path.  They were
bearing some burden on a rude litter, formed out of the stout poles
and heavy net used to entangle the wild boar in the run from his
lair.  As they came down, it was seen that their charge was a tall
and graceful youth, half wrapped in his hunting-cloak, deeply smeared
with blood.  He was not dead, but ghastly pale and almost insensible.
His beautiful head, that might have served for a marble Antinous, lay
white and motionless on a pillow of purple silk.  On each side of him
rode a horseman of noble bearing and athletic frame, both turning
their eyes with a look of anxiety and pain from the fainting youth to
each other, and then looking out along the path beyond.  Close beside
the litter walked another man, grasping with all his force the thigh
of the wounded youth, and striving to stanch the blood that oozed
from it with a folded cloth.

Guided by the horseman in front, they soon reached the house of
Craterus, whom they succeeded in rousing from his bed with his
household.  It was a long, rambling edifice of no pretension without,
but with an air of space and comfort within that no chance visitor
would suspect.  Craterus led the bearers and attendants to a spacious
chamber in the rear of the house, where the youth was laid softly on
a couch, and the old man bade his servants to summon his daughter and
her maid with bandages to bind a wound.  The master himself, with his
snow-white beard, his delicate features, and lofty forehead, might
have stood for some bust of an Attic poet had not his singularly
handsome face been marred by keen, roving, and somewhat sinister
eyes.  With foxlike glances he scrutinized the youth and his
companions, while actively busying himself with all that he could
devise to save the sufferer's life.

At this moment there entered a girl closely veiled and shrouded in a
long, loose wrapper, attended by her old nurse and a younger maid,
bearing bandages and surgical appliances of a simple kind.  The girl
herself was so much concealed by her draperies that little of her
could be seen, except some mysterious beauty like that of the veiled
Isis; for her full wimple betrayed nothing but the perfect features
of a Greek goddess, with lustrous eyes of deep sapphire.  The old
nurse removed the coverings from the limb of the youth, as he lay
white and unconscious from loss of blood, and her trained hands laid
bare the wounded thigh and leg which, but for the gash caused by the
tusk of the boar, was of the faultless symmetry we see in the Hermes
of Olympia, even as it left the chisel of Praxiteles.  The maiden
bent over him in pity and tenderness, and formed a group as if it
were Aphrodite as she hung over the wounded Adonis.  The nurse,
directed by her, and aided by the nervous arm of the attendant, whose
thumb so long had closed the wound, succeeded in passing a rude but
effective tourniquet round the femoral artery, and having checked the
pumping of the blood downward, they dexterously bandaged the gaping
wound.

A breathless silence ensued as they stood around with restoratives
and strong scents and endeavored to restore consciousness to the
youth.  At last, a faint tinge of color returned to the marble
cheeks, and his lips moved again in inaudible murmurs.  Craterus
moistened his mouth with a draught of strong Samian wine, in which he
had mixed some aromatic spices of the East.  With a prolonged sigh at
length the boy again opened his eyes, and a faint smile played round
his blanched lips as he murmured: "Let not my father know, but carry
me to my own lodging before the news be abroad."

Slowly the wine and drugs that Craterus administered in measured sips
began to tell on the splendid constitution of the athletic youth who
was in the highest training of body.  He held low converse with his
two chief attendants while Craterus, his daughter, and her women
withdrew to the end of the chamber.

"Where am I?  Who are these?  Whither are you bearing me?" he asked,
in a faint whisper; and, turning his head, he perceived the master of
the house and the women behind him.  Then the young sufferer's eye
caught sight of the veiled girl, whose close draperies seemed but to
increase the grace of her figure.  He saw her lustrous eyes beaming
on him, as he lay, in pity, wonder, and admiration.  In all his
wanderings after beauty he had never in his life beheld such eyes.
The fire, the passion, the profound mysteries they betrayed shot down
to the marrow of his bones, and he sank back amazed and thrilled,
exhausted with the spasm of enjoyment it had caused him.  "Let me
thank her who has dragged me from the jaws of death," he murmured;
and with a feeble sign of his outstretched finger, as if he had been
summoning a slave, he beckoned to the girl to approach.

He took her fingers in both of his own weak, cold hands; and, looking
into her eyes with rapture, he said: "Who art thou that hast saved
me?  Is it some angel that follows Our Lady in heaven above, or,
rather, I think, an oread from the train of our huntress Artemis.
Complete my cure, and restore me to manhood by bending down and
kissing me, as our poets say Artemis on Latmos would kiss her
Endymion."  And he drew her down till her lips touched his; and
before she could speak he had slipped a ring into her hand,
whispering: "Yes, we shall meet again!"

Craterus, who had but imperfectly noticed this scene, now advanced to
his daughter, saying: "Anastasia, my child, withdraw now to your
chamber with your nurse; you may safely leave the wounded youth to
us, and we will send for you if need arise again."  In fact, the
potions of Craterus and the bandages of his daughter were now doing
so much to restore the strength of the young patient that his
companions agreed with the old man that all immediate danger to life
was passed and that he might safely be transported home by water.
The patient himself insisted--and that in a tone of imperious
command--that he should be forthwith carried to his barge and
conveyed across the Bosphorus to Constantinople before the city was
astir or rumors of his accident were bruited abroad.  With great care
and adroitness the bandages were again tightened over his thigh; he
was supplied with fresh restoratives and draughts of wine, and
carried to the shore in the litter constructed out of the hunting net
and poles.

As the party descended the hill-side, it was closely watched by
inquiring eyes from the house into which it had entered so suddenly
and with so much mystery.  Neither Craterus nor any of his people had
been able to learn the name or rank of the young huntsman,
notwithstanding all their inquiries and the most curious search.  All
they knew was that some young sportsman from Constantinople had
arrived in a barge the evening before, and had spent the night in the
mountain forest in pursuit of wild boar.  Just before dawn the pony
of one of the hunters had fallen in a hole and thrown its rider, who
had been deeply gashed by the boar, even in the act of spearing the
brute to death.  Neither names nor particulars of the party could be
obtained, but suitable rewards had been left for the help and
accommodation afforded them.

Breathless, behind the wooden lattice-work that formed the blind of
her chamber, Anastasia watched the litter as it was borne down the
path, and she fancied that she caught sight of a kiss wafted towards
her window when the fingers of the helpless youth were faintly raised
to his lips.  From his own doorstep, also, Craterus saw the cavalcade
disappear; and, as his foxlike eyes watched every detail of their
dress and trappings, he shook his head and murmured that "It might
bring him good, but it was wiser to keep silence and be careful what
he did."  As he slowly withdrew to an inner room he found his
daughter waiting for him with eager looks, and ready to ply him with
questions and suggestions.  "Who was the wounded youth?--what did her
father think he could be?--how came they to bring him to his
house?--what did they say when they left?"  These, and such
questionings, the girl poured upon her father, who showed little
inclination to answer her inquiries, even if he had known more than
he did.

"Nay, my child, I have no means of satisfying your curiosity.  They
somewhat peremptorily declined to give me any kind of information,
bidding our servants keep silence as to their visit, on pain of some
harm to them if they pressed their inquiries.  They told me that the
youth was a gallant of the city, whose accident was not to be made
known, lest it should alarm his parents, and they might prevent his
following such dangerous sports."

"And why, my dear father, may I ask, why were you in such haste to
bid me leave the chamber, even while the fair youth was still in need
of our skill and comfort?  We would gladly do our best for so gentle
and comely a patient."

"Gentle and comely enough, my child, I do not deny, but you must try
to forget him and his accident, for certain it is that you will never
see him again, nor know his name or his rank."

"I am not so sure of that," she murmured softly to herself, as she
fingered the precious ring which her father had failed to see given
when she had stooped over the youth on his couch.

The keen eyes of the old man had noticed an expression on his
daughter's face, and he rejoined, in an impressive tone, "Anastasia,
my only child and dearest hope, I charge you to remember what we are
now, and whence we came.  This youth, for all his gentleness of
speech, is proud and wild.  He is evidently some slip of a wealthy,
perhaps of a noble, family, and since he conceals his name and rank
there is a mystery, if not a mischief, in his life.  Be he what he
may, he is wholly beyond our sphere.  We shall never fall again in
his way, and he would treat us with contempt if we did."

"Father," said the girl, proudly, her luminous eyes aglow with light,
"have you not often told me of the race we spring from, and of the
blood of heroes that I inherit from my sainted mother?"

"True is it, Anastasia, O thou glorified image of my dear departed
wife; thou hast, indeed, the blood of kings of Lacedæmon in thy
veins, as thou renewest the beauty of the goddesses of Greece.
Fallen as I am now in estate, despoiled of my patrimony by the
corsairs of Saracens from Africa, I cannot forget that I was born of
noble race and am the equal of those minions there across the strait.
In wedding your mother I rose to a height above them.  She came from
Lacedæmon, and could trace descent from the ancient kings of Sparta,
who, crushed, plundered, and slain, as they have been for a thousand
years by Romans, by Goths, by Armenians, Slavonians, and Isaurians,
have maintained the purity of their blood.  Cherish it in thy memory,
my child, that my Anastasia comes of the royal stock which produced
such heroes as Lycurgus, Leonidas, Agesilaos, and Lysander.  When I
laid thy mother to rest in the last remnant of her paternal estate by
the banks of Eurotas, I swore by the Mother of God that I would keep
her daughter worthy of her and worthy of the heroes from whom both
were sprung.  Have I not done so, my child--have I not taught thee to
hold thyself higher than these barbarians of Thrace and Anatolia?
Nay, have I not taught thee to distrust the whining of their dirty
priests and crazy hermits, and to cherish the purer fancies of our
older faith, the inspiration of Apollo, the insight of Athene, the
grace of Aphrodite?  Thou knowest also the inner meaning of these
primeval creeds, as expounded in the mysteries of Mithras and the
Phrygian Mother."

"Would that thou hadst sworn by the Pallas of the Parthenon," his
daughter broke in, "rather than by these idols worshipped by the mobs
in the city.  But am I not worthy then to mate with the son of the
Autocrator himself, if Athene were to turn his eyes upon me so that
he desired me for his wife?"

"His wife?--silly child, put away such absurd and unwholesome dreams.
The Basileus, or the least minion of his court, would no more think
of taking thee to wife than he would take the meanest scullion in his
kitchen.  No, girl, he would take thee for his plaything for a day,
for a week or two, till he flung thee to some parasite of his own
like a cast-off shoe.  Wife! wife!" shrieked the old man--"say rather
toy, lap-dog, slave--not wife!  Shall the daughter of Craterus the
Spartan, the descendant of a hundred kings, born of a mother compared
to whom the blood of these Augusti, children of Basil the stable-boy,
is ditch-water--shall she enter the harem of these vicious mongrels
who cringe round the Sacred Palace?  Never! my child, I would rather
see thee dead.  Thou art above them in godlike race as thou art in
godlike beauty, thou child of Helen of Troy, more like to her than
ever yet has been any of her children since.  This lad, whoever he
be, though not fit to be thy slave, is far above thee in legal rank,
as he certainly is above thee in fortune.  Think of him no more.
Thou wilt never see him again.  And if thou didst, it would be to thy
ruin."

Anastasia was not wont to discuss matters with her father when he had
mounted his high horse about the kings of Sparta and the illustrious
ancestry of her mother, whom she had almost forgotten.  Still less
did she take very seriously all his extraordinary ravings about the
mysteries of Mithras and the eternal cult of Isis, which the old man
had mixed up in a strange medley of occult superstitions.  With her
keen intellect and her aspiring temper, Anastasia had been nurtured
by her father from childhood in proud disdain of the mongrel races of
the capital which had now become a veritable _colluvies gentium_, as,
indeed, from that day to this it has remained.  From infancy she had
been taught to look coldly on the endless ceremonies and miraculous
paraphernalia of the Byzantine Church, though her practical mind had
inclined her to but little interest in the esoteric mysteries of
Mithraism in which Craterus would dream away whole days.  She
regarded these dreams as the unhallowed maunderings of a morbid mind.
And while she outwardly conformed to the ceremonial cult of the
Christians around her, her maiden day-dreams would ever turn back to
the immortal creations of Hellenic poetry and myth.  She would
conjure up to herself visions of a Helen of Troy, a Clytemnestra, a
Medea, even an Aspasia, and a Thais; she knew the thrilling story of
Byzantine palace history; how Athenais, the daughter of a philosopher
of Athens, had blossomed out into Eudocia, the Empress; how Theodora
had stepped from the dancing-stage to the throne of the world; how
Irene had divided the Roman realm even with the mighty Charles
himself.

Long after she had quitted her father, Anastasia sat musing in her
own chamber, from time to time scrutinizing the ring which the
wounded youth had given her, and which she had hastily concealed in
her bosom.  Again and again she turned the jewel to the light, and
examined it on every side.  Could it be, indeed, an emerald--a real
emerald--of such a size and such lustre?  If it were, indeed, a
veritable stone, it was worth a king's ransom.  Could the stranger
lad have so magnificent a ring in his possession, and would he
lightly hand it to an unknown girl?  And yet--could a youth,
evidently so noble, so wealthy, bear about on his finger a thing of
paste?  Anastasia knew something of jewels, antique enamels, and
sardonyx cameos, as of reliquaries, crosses, and miraculous ikons,
for her father was supposed to procure such things from time to time
from correspondents he had in Asia Minor and to dispose of them
successfully to the travellers who would come to his place on their
way to the capital from the East.  And Anastasia had half suspected
that the old Corinthian attendant who had charge of her father's
curios had done something more than always repair or reset the pieces
on which she saw him secretly engaged.

And while she turned the jewel round and round, she fancied she could
read some letters engraved, but her untrained eye, for all her
curiosity, was not able to put the words together.  She called her
nurse, the aged woman who had been about her since her mother's
death, and in whose fidelity she was sure she could confide.
"Charmion," she said, "dear old girl, here is an adventure.  As I was
turning over the old jewel-case of my sainted mother in heaven I
found this ring which had been strangely overlooked by my father for
years.  Take it to Leontius in his workshop, and ask him to tell us
what it is, and if he can read these words that are engraved around
the setting.  But be sure you charge him, as he values my favor, to
breathe not a word of it to man or woman--least of all my father.  It
would break his heart to think that he had neglected so dear a relic
of my mother--and thou knowest that all she had of jewels are mine."

The crone eyed the ring with keenness, and her eyes then fell on her
lovely mistress, who bore her scrutiny with a tranquil smile.  She
hurried off to Leontius, who was preparing to "reset" an _encolpion_
that was destined for a great ecclesiastic.  The old engraver took
the ring and examined it with attention and no small wonder.  Then he
scrutinized it through a crystal lens, and tried it against some
pieces that he had in a case by his side.  He looked hard at the
nurse, and she looked at him.  Neither spoke.  "Nurse," he said, at
last, "the ring is one of the finest and largest emeralds I ever
beheld, and it is set in a rare enamel of exquisite work.  Yes, words
have been engraved within the margin, and I will write them on this
slip of parchment."  He took his style, and, peering closely with his
crystal lens to the minute letters in the ring, he wrote, 
Κυρει Βοηθει Ρωμανω.  "No!" said he, "the last letters must be
somewhat defaced.  It must be Ρωμαιοις--Lord!  Help the
Romans!  It could hardly be Roman!  Could it be?" said the old artist
in cameos, talking to himself.

Old Charmion hurried back to Anastasia, too eager that she might
report her news and ply her young mistress with questions to notice
the intense agitation of mind that Anastasia concealed under her
outward ease.  "How came she to find it?" asked the crone again and
again.  "How was it overlooked?  How had her mother obtained it?
What would she do with it?" and a thousand similar questions, which
Anastasia put off with affected indifference and studious silence.
Nor could the girl rid herself of the nurse's importunate curiosity
until she had peremptorily insisted on the attendant leaving her
alone in order to prepare her bath in another chamber.

Left alone, Anastasia sprang up in a whirlwind of emotion, pacing the
room, and flinging up aloft her shapely arms in the attitude of a
priestess at the shrine of the Delphic Apollo.  "Mother of God!
Daughter of Zeus!  Queen of Love!  Where am I?  What is this?  What
will come of it?  An emerald of priceless worth!  Why, who could wear
such a thing but one from the Palace of Cæsar--wear it--nay, wear it
in a forest chase, in a wild night on the mountain?  'Lord!  Help the
Romans!'--who could bear about such a meaningless prayer?  'Help the
Romans!'  Yes, the priests and monks whine out these litanies in
their daily canticles.  But does a youth who looks like a young
prince engrave on his seal so stupid a motto?  Prince! ah, what am I
saying?  Why, what other prince is there but Romanus, son of our
purple-born Constantine, Basileus of the Romans?  Queen of Paphos,
and of the world!  He _was_ Romanus--the young Basileus
himself--lovely as Adonis--and he loves me--he shall love me.
Augustus that is to be--and why should not I, too, be Augusta, by
divine right--of beauty?"  And the girl flung herself down on a couch
and buried her face in her hands, as if she needed to shut out from
her eyes the excess of light which beamed down on her, even as Zeus
descended upon Semele in a shower of burning gold.




II

The Warden of the Eastern March

While this was passing, the party which was bearing the wounded young
Basileus moved on with haste and care to the shore of the Bosphorus,
where the barge was moored.  The two leading horsemen pressed on a
little in advance to secure the embarkation with speed.  The foremost
was a man not yet of middle life, the very model of chivalrous
strength, audacity, and animation.  He was dark of hue, even for an
Eastern Roman, with fiery black eyes, and raven hair, chiselled
features, and an aquiline nose, and a complexion of clear and
delicate olive, just tinted with color.  He wore a hunting-suit, and
bore a short weapon of exquisite form and mounting chased in gold, of
Persian design.  His whole bearing was that of a leader of men, the
ideal of a cavalry commander, or of some knight-errant bent on
romantic adventures, such as those heroes we now read of in the
_Arabian Nights_.  His companion, an older and graver man, who
treated him as of higher rank than himself, now rode up to the
leader, and in low tones seemed pressing on him some urgent counsels.
"My Lord Basil Digenes, the accident of to-day may be of deep moment
to the whole Roman Empire.  If the bandages of the old Greek and his
daughter should fail to hold, our young charge may yet slip through
our fingers before we can reach the palace.  What would be our fate
if we brought home to our king of kings his only son a corpse?"

"Nay, Theodore, my good man, we shall save the boy; the Augustus
himself is too just and reasonable a king to suppose that you and I
would neglect his heir.  He knows that we would risk our lives rather
than a hair of his head should be harmed."

"His Majesty Born-in-the-Purple is, indeed, a most upright judge, and
as kind a master as Rome ever saw.  But are you sure that the feeble
empress might not be worked on by women and eunuchs, and our rivals
seek to strike us down in a palace plot?"

"What care I for rivals!" cried Basil, with a smile of triumph.  "I
fear no man, and no man of all Rome fears me.  From Cæsar to
handmaiden they love me and know me to be their friend and protector."

"True, indeed! most noble akritas, and therein lies a matter that is
worth thy thought.  Hast thou not noticed how our most illustrious
sovereign lord, after forty-four years of the burden of state, has
begun to weary on his throne?  He may--well!--he may abdicate," he
whispered in the ear of Basil, "in favor of his heir.  Our young
Basileus has entered on his eighteenth year, but he may not survive
his father.  My Lord Basil, you know his way of life as well as I do.
He will never live to see his father's years.  He may die of this
very wound--may the saints save him, and us, too!--he may die this
very day--he may meet such another chance ere the year is out.  What
then?  Where will the throne of Rome be then, most illustrious
commander and victorious warden of the marches?  What will happen
then?"

"Most sapient chamberlain," said Basil, "his Sacred Majesty will name
a worthy successor, and honor him with the hand of one of the five
princesses, his daughters.  And if the Basileus were to die without
such nomination, the Senate and army chiefs would find such an
emperor themselves as they have so often done of old."

"And where would they find such a chief?" murmured the chamberlain,
in the insinuating voice of the courtier; "where but in the person of
the most valiant hero, lord warden of the eastern frontier,
victorious in a hundred fights, the Achilles of our warlike
odes--Basil, of royal name and royal race, offspring of a Roman
princess and a Syrian emir, who had come to Christ.  Basil Digenes, I
tell thee, potent akritas and chief, should the throne of Rome become
vacant we should all look to thee to mount and hold it!"

"Retro!  Satanas!" cried out the akritas (_i.e._, the warden of the
marches), with a gay gesture of scorn; "tempt not the most loyal
servant of our most High Sovereign Lord!  If his son were not to
reign, I tell thee again, it would have to be some ennobled husband
of one of his Majesty's daughters."

"And who would that be," said the wily chamberlain, "save that chief
on whom the loveliest of them all, the gentle Agatha, her father's
favorite, casts such looks of tenderness?  Why, the Sacred Palace
rings with gossip of her sighs and blushes when the harpers sing the
deeds of 'The Flower of Our Roman Chivalry,' as the poets name the
warden of the eastern march!"

"A truce to thy jests, my lord of the chamber, and profane not with
thy court scandal the name of the sweetest, purest, most modest
virgin in your city of sin and folly.  Things are too serious for
idle jesting, and the fate of Rome and our Holy Church is even now
hanging in the scales of the angel of judgment.  A man who has lived
as I have since boyhood, in the saddle and on the borders, knows what
are the perils and the trials which are gathering round the empire
from the east and from the north."

"Oh, forbear such ominous words, most noble lord warden!" cried the
chamberlain, crossing himself more from habit than from superstition;
"was Rome ever so great and glorious as she is to-day?  Behold in the
morning light the splendor of our Eternal City--we can see afar
across the straits the gilded dome of the Holy Wisdom and of a
hundred fanes.  Was any autocrator more truly worshipped and more
worthy of our worship than our Most Majestic Sovereign
Born-in-the-Purple?  What invincible armies does he send forth?  What
fleets and merchandise crowd the Golden Horn?  What multitudes from
all parts of this earth swarm in the streets of our matchless
capital?  What a galaxy of treasure, pomp, and beauty amazes all who
are admitted to the Sacred Palace of our king?"

"Vanity of vanities!" groaned the great soldier, more to himself than
to the chamberlain; "it is thus that courtiers beguile our Sacred
Majesty by idle vaunts.  We who in the distant marches have to bear
the brunt of the enemy, who have to rule those provinces which he
drains to the bone by his ravages--we know all the peril that
encompasses our empire and threatens its ruin.  Egypt, Syria, Sicily
have been torn from it by victorious Saracens and worshippers of the
Prophet.  Antioch, Jerusalem, Alexandria have forsworn Christ and
Rome, and for centuries have submitted to Allah and the Caliph.  On
the Cilician frontier we hold the passes by daily combats, wherein
to-day we find our match--it may be to-morrow our masters.  The
savage corsairs, who have seized Crete and Cyprus, tear to pieces the
seaboard of Asia and of Greece at their own sweet will.  Italy is
lost to the empire forever, and these Teutons and Latins are boasting
already that the empire of Rome is one, and is theirs, not ours.
Within a few days' march of Constantinople itself there is a
Bulgarian kingdom which may pour on us again in an avalanche at any
hour.  And beyond them are Slavs, Russ, Petzinacs, Chazars, and
Turks, and many a barbarous horde beyond.  I tell thee, chamberlain,
as I have come hither to tell our sovereign Augustus and his council,
that the empire can be saved no longer but by great and thoroughly
equipped armies of stalwart Romans, not of hired barbarians--but
above all can be saved only by a mighty soldier, by a great general,
by a hero whom his men will follow to the death."

"And where shall his Majesty and his valiant soldiers find such a man
but in the victor of a hundred fights, the hero of a thousand
war-songs, the glorious lord warden of the eastern marches--our
commander-in-chief that must be--our sovereign Augustus that might
be--if God in His inscrutable purposes took to Himself our Sublime
Majesty and his adorable son and heir"--fawned the chamberlain as he
stole nearer to the ear of the akritas, and crossed himself again and
again in contemplation of the twofold imperial obsequies.

"That can never be," replied Basil Digenes, with an air of deep
conviction and thought; "my birth has made it impossible,
inconceivable, almost a sacrilege to contemplate.  My very name
reminds the Romans that I am but half a Roman, and bear in my blood
and skin the color of the Prophet.  My noble father, Mousur, emir of
Edessa as he was, born a Syed of the sacred stock of Islam, and from
early youth a hostage at the court of the governor of Cappadocia, the
illustrious Ducas, forsook his people and his faith for the love of
my mother.  Yes, Eudocia Ducas was as noble as he, fair and good
enough to make a saint forswear heaven to win her.  My father made me
a soldier of Christ and of Rome, and such I will live and die.  But
the blood of the emirs of Edessa stirs in my veins to-day, even when
I am leading the charge upon their ranks.  And I have seen in the
armies of the Prophet courage as high and hearts as pure as any who
worship the cross.  Never will I stoop to join in the insults that
your craven mobs in the city delight to cast at the children of
Hagar.  I trust in Christ, but I will not revile the Prophet or his
servants.  And now tell me, most illustrious and most politic lord of
the purple chamber, do you think the patriarch and his priests and
acolytes will ever consecrate under the dome of the Holy Wisdom me,
Digenes--'the half-breed,' the son of the Saracen, with the blood of
the Prophet of Mecca darkening my very cheek?"--he ground out these
words between his teeth--and then he added with the ringing voice
that was natural to him: "No! my Lord Theodore, tempt me not with
these palace intrigues.  I am proud to serve our Basileus as the
warden of the marches.  I will fight--I will sweat and die for Rome
and for Christ.  But I am not of the mould in which your cubicular
conspirators are cast."

"Oh, dream not that I am capable of hinting at such treason, my Lord
Basil!  I sought counsel only in the lamentable yet conceivable
chance that might befall this empire and our sacred and imperial
stock.  On whom, then, would your Eminence propose that we should
turn our hopes, if God in heaven were indeed to afflict us so sorely?"

"How can you ask?" shouted the lord warden, almost bounding from his
saddle; "there is but one, and he fills every mouth with his glory.
There is but one man who can save Rome, but one man whom every Roman
warrior will follow, as if he were St. Michael, with the sword of
heaven in his hand.  Whom could I mean but Nicephorus, the
commander-in-chief of the forces of Asia, the greatest hero of the
heroic race of Phocas, son, grandson, brother, and kinsman of the
most valiant commanders whom Rome has ever known.  Ah! had you ever
seen our glorious Nicephorus at the head of his army; had you ever
heard the roar of his men as his eagle eye swept along their ranks;
had you ever watched him as I have, chamberlain, in the storm of a
bloody fight, firm as a rock, alert as a young lion, keen as a hawk,
and sublime master of the whole battle array--had you ever seen him
in the hour of victory, directing all men to his will, like Homer's
Zeus presiding over the shock of earthly men below--you would not
ask, most eminent lord of the sacred chamber, who was the destined
savior of Rome--under God and His mother, be it said--who is our born
chief!  Why, man alive--Nicephorus Phocas--whom to follow is to be
blessed--whom to know is to honor and to serve."

The supple chamberlain was well aware of the enthusiasm for the
Armenian chief, in which all the fighting men of the empire were
agreed; and he knew how deeply the autocrator himself valued--if he
also feared--the genius of his great captain.  But he also knew how
sorely the palace held Nicephorus in dread.  They knew him to be
stern, just, of unimpeachable honor, of almost fanatical piety, and
of a loyalty that neither flattery nor prize could seduce.  This
terrible soldier, with his inexorable justice and his inevitable
insight, would be a grievous burden to the palace, and to the silken
minions who thronged its halls.  The ingenious Theodore accordingly
made haste to drop the subject and efface from the mind of the
gallant warden the impression he had sought to instil into it.  And
as they had now reached the shore, the whole attention of the party
was occupied in placing the young Cæsar in safety and in comfort on
his luxurious barge.

The task was rapidly and skilfully accomplished under the masterly
care of the lord warden, and soon the imperial barge was being
swiftly oared across the two or three miles of sea which divided the
palace from the Asian shore.  The young Basileus lay peacefully on
purple cushions beneath a rich awning of silk, tended by his
body-servant, who from time to time moistened his lips with sorbets
and cordials, while the keen glances of Basil watched over his charge
as he directed the course of the boat.  Both he and the chamberlain
seemed lost in thought, though the nature of their meditations was
somewhat unlike.

The sun had now risen in a dazzling May morning, and was bathing in
its light that most glorious of all earth's landscapes.  As they
rounded the headland of Keras, that we now call Seraglio Point, the
barge was in the centre of that scene which the ancient and the
modern world has agreed to be the most imposing and most beautiful
that Europe and Asia can show.  The profusion of form and color is,
indeed, quite dazzling to those to whom it is unfamiliar.  Bays,
gulfs, creeks, and seas were stretched in endless vistas On every
side, the gentle rippling of those azure waters glancing with joy in
the morning sun.  Out of the waters, from point to point there rose
terraces, gardens, towers, palaces, and churches, radiant in marble
and gold, thickly strewn with groves of beech, acacia, arbutus, and
cypress, dotted about with fruit trees, now in their snowy blossom.
Northward the grand "river" of the Bosphorus swept slowly down in the
majestic tide of its blue stream, stately cliffs and wooded crags
rising on either side of the strait, and these were clothed with
countless towers, villas, monasteries, and temples.

On their right the Golden Horn ran up far into the land.  This branch
of the sea was crowded with every kind of floating ship--dromons, or
warships of the state, with their brazen beaks, banks of long oars,
and high masts fitted to hurl the shells of Greek fire--the
bright-sailed merchant vessels from west and east: from Amalphi,
Venice, Durrachium, Bari, Naupactus, Cherson, the Ægean, the
Propontis, Smyrna, and Rhodes.  Thousands of busy craft were moored
in the great harbor, while light caiques and skiffs scudded across
the narrow seas.  In front of the returning barge rose the tremendous
ramparts, towers, and gates of new Rome, encircling the vast city
with that massive range of fortifications which for eight centuries
flung back the most valiant assailants, whether from the north or
from the east--those fortifications of which the pathetic ruins and
remnants to-day are the most majestic memorial of its forces which
the ancient world has left to us.

And behind those miles and miles of wall, battlement, tower, and gate
the Seven Hills of New Rome rose into the morning sky, one after the
other, in picturesque confusion of terrace, dome, tower, cloister,
and palace, all bowered in groves of flowering shrubs and avenues of
acacia and tall, dark cypress.  And all around this vast and
variegated pile--this, the central city of the world, as all who saw
it felt it to be, whether they were Latin or Greek, Russ or African,
Christian or Moslem, philosopher or barbarian--there mounted up into
the blue welkin countless ranges of wooded hills, crags, headlands,
and far-off mountain outlines, softly folded in pencilled lines and
mists of white haze.  Southward the eye ranged across the Propontis,
that immense inland lake girt with smiling bays, inlets, and cliffs,
with the nine islands we now call the "Princes' Isles," each clothed
with villas, convents, gardens, and forests.  And far beyond, across
the sea and hill, rose dazzling white in the morning sun, in long,
broken ranges of snow, that glorious Bithynian Olympus which ever
looks down over the imperial city like the heavenly throne of its
guardian God.




III

The Betrothal

In the wooded slopes on the Asian side of the Bosphorus it was a
sultry evening of midsummer.  The sun had already descended behind
the mountains of Thrace, in a deep glow which was reflected in the
glassy sea.  A single worshipper was prostrated before the chief ikon
in the tiny shrine of St. Demetrius that stood in the forest not far
from the house of Craterus the Laconian.  The humble dome, lit only
by one struggling lamp beneath the image, was dark and silent.  The
eye that had become accustomed to the gloom could have perceived at
last the figure of a girl at her devotions, completely enveloped in a
long, dark cloak.  "Mother of God, be of help to Anastasia," she
murmured again and again; then she listened, now she waited in
silence, and at last she drew furtively from her bosom a slip of
writing that had been flung at sunset into the open casement of her
chamber--"Be to-night at the shrine of Demetrius."

Yes, at last a light step was heard; and though she forbore to raise
her eyes from the altar and remained in prostration before it, the
worshipper's eager ear perceived the alert pace of a man who swiftly
came up beside her.  It was the tall and graceful youth whose wound
she had tended, now restored to health, in all the glow of his young
beauty and the graceful assurance of his high estate.  He was again
in hunting garb, but round his neck and on his fingers glittered
jewels which even to the rustic eye of Anastasia seemed worthy of a
king's son; and his dagger was of the most exquisite Damascene work
mounted with precious stones and enamel.  He raised her from the
ground with smiles of mingled triumph and admiration, as if he were a
young god who had descended to toy with an earthly lover.  "I told
you, my nymph of the woodman's hermitage, that we should meet again.
And now that they have put back into my veins all the blood that I
lost that night, I come to present my thanks to the beautiful nurse
to whom I owe my life.  Tell me, my lovely wood-nymph, what gift
would please thee most."  And, without waiting for an answer, he
threw his powerful arm round the girl and pressed on her lips a
passionate kiss.

Anastasia flung herself out of his arms and started back, the long,
dark cloak falling from her shoulders to the ground.  She stood there
in flowing robes of pure-white gauze that clung to her rounded form
and made her look like the Virgin as she stood abashed and listened
to the angel at the Annunciation.  Her bosom heaved with emotion and
indignation; her cheek was pale but lovely in its pallor, her eyes
glowed with fire, and her open lips seemed to tremble with unspoken
words.  At last she found voice to speak: "Forbear, rude man, to
insult a maiden whom our Lady of Mount Damatrys has taken under her
holy keeping."  The gay youth laughed aloud.  "Why, my forest beauty,
I thought you knew me!  I am Romanus, son of the Basileus, at your
service, to give you whatever you please to ask--be it jewels, robes,
or charms, but in any case the love of a king's son," he murmured,
seizing her again, and with a look of genuine rapture.

"This to me, thy consecrated maiden, O Holy Theotokos!" shrieked
Anastasia, with an air of frantic disdain, as she sank to the
pavement and flung herself down sobbing before the image of the
saint.  Her agony and outraged modesty quite touched the young Cæsar,
who, profligate as he had already become, was still very young and
had gentle feelings by nature.  In all his experience of the houris
of the palace and the city, he had met nothing like this before, and
the sight of such wonderful beauty, united to such miraculous
modesty, filled him with a new love, such as he had never dreamed of
in all the adventures of his gay young life.  "Nay," he said, at
last, after trying in vain to alleviate her sobs, "I mean not to
offer you any offence, nor am I such a brute as could give a moment's
pain to the loveliest woman in my father's empire--to her who has
saved my life.  Anastasia, I have loved you since that hour when you
seemed to have come down like the angel who comforts a dying man.  I
love you now; I love you to distraction.  I would fling away empire
itself if I might keep you.  I swear by our own St. Stephen of the
Daphne that I will give thee a palace near the Augusteum, and thou
shalt have the establishment of a princess.  I will have thee
acknowledged by the palace as the chosen love of Cæsar; and when I am
autocrator myself thou shalt ask of me what thou wilt, O thou most
lovely and dearest of women!  I will--"

"Ah, saints in heaven, and thou, Holy Mother of God!" shrieked
Anastasia again, with a fresh outburst of convulsive sobs, "must I
listen to such insults?  If thou art, indeed, Romanus, son of
Constantine Born-in-the-Purple, thou knowest not to whom thou darest
to offer thy dishonorable love.  No breath of scandal has ever
tainted me or mine.  My birth is, indeed, far above thine, proud as
thou boastest thine.  My ancestors were kings in Greece when all in
this land were barbarians.  My blood for a thousand years has run in
royal houses--fallen, despoiled, forgotten, but pure as the snow on
Mount Olympus.  Who was thy great-grandfather's sire, O Romanus of
the race of Basil the Macedonian?  Did he know himself--did any man
know--or his own mother?  And thou, his direct descendant, offerest
outrages to me, the daughter of a hundred kings, the chosen maiden of
Our Lady here!"--and she sank back exhausted with her passion,
sobbing aloud--"because I am lonely, poor, an orphan, and unprotected
by man, though watched over by the Queen of Heaven above."

And here she broke away with a faint scream; and, whirling around her
limbs the flowing draperies of white gauze, like a mænad chased by a
satyr, she rushed across the chapel, and, dashing into a small, dark
oratory at the other side, she seemed to seize the ikon of Our Lady
with her hand as if claiming sanctuary of her patron divinity.

Romanus followed her as soon as his eyes could detect her in her
retreat; and, panting with his effort, he cried: "Anastasia, listen
to me again, and forgive my words of mad love!  I swear by the saints
above that I will make you my wife, so soon as I am seated on the
golden throne," gasped Romanus, now wild with love, passion, and
excitement.

"Swear that we are betrothed this moment in the sight of God and His
saints.  Swear it with thy hand placed on the ikon of Our Lady here,
as God shall save thy soul in the last judgment.  Swear thus--'I,
Romanus, take thee, Anastasia, for my wedded wife, till death do us
part.'  Swear it with thy hand on this ikon, made, as thou knowest,
by no earthly hand.  Swear as I tell thee, or never see me again!"

Mad with love and half intoxicated with adventure as he was, Romanus
uttered the sacramental words half in jest and half in earnest; he
hardly knew what he was doing.  And as he spoke, the venerable hermit
whose cell adjoined the chapel, a priest who had long forsaken the
world, stepped forth in his ceremonial robes from the dark corner in
which he had been on his face at his devotions quite concealed from
view.  "Amen, amen," the venerable man of God said, with profound
solemnity in the ritual chant.  "Those whom God hath joined together
let no man put asunder.  My son and my daughter, go your ways in
peace.  Ye are betrothed husband and spouse.  May Mary the Divine
Mother and St. Demetrius guide ye both in blessed wedlock."

And as he spoke Anastasia slipped back into the arms of her old
nurse, Charmion, who was holding her cloak hard by in another dark
corner of the chapel.  The hermit and the two women passed
noiselessly out into the night; and the young Romanus stood alone in
the dark chapel, revolving in his mind what it meant and what was to
be the end of this amour.  He had caught sight of the girl already
once or twice in the three months that had passed during his
convalescence, but always in presence of her nurse or father, and he
felt himself to have sunk madly in love with her marvellous beauty
and queenly air.  Of a truth, she could be no burgher's daughter: he
had already heard vague rumors about Craterus and his royal
ancestors.  And where had he seen that old hermit who had so
mysteriously sprung up out of the dark cell beside the altar of Our
Lady?  He thought he had once before met those foxlike eyes and that
lofty brow.  But the long, white beard and priestly robes?  Priest,
monk, hermit!  Had he sworn wedlock before the priest of the Most
High?  Betrothed!  Married!  Was it a jest or something more?  And
the wild lad laughed, and then he drew a deep sigh, and then again he
laughed, and as he left the sacred spot he swore a deep oath by the
saint to whom he never was forsworn that Anastasia should be his,
come what might.  And as he passed on to his attendants who waited
for him in the copse hard by he determined to call to his counsels
the chamberlain, the Lord Theodore, whose skill in intrigue he knew
to be unrivalled, and of whose fidelity to himself he was entirely
assured.

The lord chamberlain listened carefully to the story of the young
prince's adventure and asked him again and again to repeat exactly
what had passed.  But the youth was in a state of transport and
excitement so wild that the true facts were only drawn out of his
memory by degrees.  "It would be too great a risk," said the courtier
at last, "to stir up a scandal in connection with the shrine of St.
Demetrius so near to the city which holds this particular ikon in
such awe.  And if the girl still resists all promises and gifts, your
Imperial Highness would be wise to think of her no more."

"Never! never!" shouted the prince, in a passion; "I will give up the
throne itself, my life, my chance of heaven, but not this girl, whom
I have sworn by St. Stephen of the Daphne to make my wife."

"Surely not!" said Lord Theodore, now in genuine alarm.  "How often
has the patriarch, in confession, warned your Highness against being
forsworn by that saint of all others!  But tell me precisely the
words that passed.  You never have vowed marriage in presence of a
witness?"

And now the youth, sobered by the evident anxiety of the wily
courtier, rehearsed all the circumstances and the words spoken in
presence of the hermit who had pronounced at the altar the fatal
words of the betrothal, as the old nurse would witness.

"And the old hermit betrothed you two, if he did not actually marry
you to the woman?" stammered out the chamberlain; and he struck his
forehead in dismay as he muttered, "God in heaven help us!"  For he
well knew the close confidence that existed between the hermit of St.
Demetrius and the venerable patriarch of Constantinople.  He well
knew also how deeply the patriarch abhorred the character and
parasites of the young prince, and how gladly the bold and sincere
high-priest of Hagia Sophia would see the succession of Romanus fail
or be set aside.  Even the experienced craft of Theodore did not
suspect the identity of the hermit, and he never doubted for an
instant that the old priest of St. Demetrius thoroughly understood
and would use all the power over the court which the incident had
given him.

"If, indeed, the sacramental words of marriage, or even of betrothal,
have been pronounced before and by such a holy man as the hermit, and
one so deeply reverenced in the city, the case is assuredly fit for
all our care and thought," at last murmured the chamberlain.  Should
he not himself promote this intrigue?  He reflected.  He had heard
much already of the surpassing beauty of Anastasia, of her consummate
grace and adroitness, and of all her pretension to royal birth in
Greece.  He began to run over in his mind the marvellous history of
humble beauties who had mounted the throne of the Sacred Palace.  He
saw, as in a vision, how he, Theodore, might rule supreme in a new
reign if he could bind to himself the infatuated prince and this
lovely but utterly untutored girl as his wife.  And he well knew that
the title and the reign of Constantine Born-in-the-Purple were
running down fast into their final sands.

And so the lord chamberlain escorted homeward his young lord and his
apt pupil, himself deeply meditating on the future and its vast
possibilities, while the love-sick prince lay silent in his barge on
the moonlit water, wrapt in delicious reveries as he recalled every
word and look of his betrothed and pressed to his lips the kerchief
that he had snatched from her bosom when he held her in his arms.




IV

The Young Augusta

The lord chamberlain was not the man to disappoint the young prince,
his future master; and for some months he had carried on a most
elaborate series of schemes and intrigues.  He plunged into these all
the more that he perceived how rapidly the health of the emperor was
sinking day by day.  Constantine Porphyrogennetus was himself aware
of his decline.  One night he had received a solemn embassy from
Olga, the czarina of the Russ, with more than usual ceremonial.  A
great feast had been celebrated in the golden banqueting hall, or
chrysotriklinos.  This gorgeous chamber was roofed by a spacious dome
of rich mosaic designs and lighted by sixteen windows ranged around
the base of the dome.  In the centre hung a vast chandelier of
silver, while the walls were decorated with figures of saints on a
background of golden mosaic.  The floor was paved with precious
marbles, now covered with rare carpets and rugs, and the emperor,
with the patriarch and three other great officers, had dined at the
golden table of high state.

The feeble emperor, who had struggled to go through all the appointed
offices of a ceremonial banquet, had been borne by his cubiculars of
the chamber through the great silver gates that led into the Long
Saloon; and, while dessert and condiments were served to his guests
in the Aristaion, he was carried into the imperial bedchamber and
laid upon a couch.

There the most majestic autocrator sank down with so much exhaustion
that the Augusta and her son, Romanus, were summoned to his side.

It was a scene that night in the innermost privy chambers of the
sovereign to point an epigrammatic essay on vanity or a pathetic
sermon upon death.  While the rude envoys from the Russian capital in
Kiev were conducted, open-eyed and stolid as they were, from one
gorgeous hall to another, and were plied with every sight that could
fill them with awe of the autocrator of the Romans; while the marble
corridors, anterooms, and portals that surrounded the Golden
Banqueting Hall were crowded with senators, cubiculars,
proto-spathaires, acolytes, and patricians, all in state robes, with
chains and badges of office, and with them in picturesque confusion
were mixed the guard of honor and the quaint uniforms of the
Varangian battle-axemen, the Mighty Lord of the World and King of
Kings lay faintly reclining on a couch.  His head was supported by
his youngest daughter, Agatha, who hung over her father with loving
care.  Beside him, on a low stool, sat the aged Empress Helena,
herself not much stronger than her husband, and by her side the tall,
handsome figure of the young Basileus, in all the glow of his
youthful grace and the jewelled robes of state in which he now was
arrayed.

"Our son has come, my lord and august spouse," the Augusta began, in
winning tones, "to ask a blessing of his imperial father, and to pray
for his sanction to the marriage as to which our Romanus has already
spoken to us both.  The noble lady Euphemia, the wife of our lord
chamberlain, is the kinswoman of the beautiful Theophano, and has
duly presented her at my court.  The Lord Theodore himself has made
ample inquiries, and finds that this lady is of royal descent from
the ancient kings of Sparta, and is herself as acccomplished and
discreet as she certainly is surpassingly beautiful.  If it be the
will of my lord the sovereign, the Lady Euphemia, who is now, with
her fascinating kinswoman, in my private apartments, will introduce
her to your Sacred Majesty, and she will ask a blessing on her
betrothal to our son."

"We have long desired to see our son well wedded before we are called
to Christ ourselves," the gentle emperor began, "and have long felt
grieved that he could never decide on his choice.  But so
all-important is the conduct of the future Basilissa that perhaps he
did well to wait.  If this lady be of royal birth, and if our trusty
Theodore and his virtuous lady are fully assured of her discretion,
deportment, and breeding, our son shall have his way and his father's
blessing.  How is she named, my son, and since when and from whence
has she come to our court?"

"She is called Theophano, my royal father, a name we all love and
honor as that of my darling sister.  And this wonder of the world is
but recently arrived at the palace of her kinswoman, the Lady
Euphemia, from the banks of the Eurotas, in the Peloponnesus, where
her father once held a now decayed principality.  Let me bring her to
the presence of your Majesty; and your profound understanding of
ceremonial deportment will perceive how truly this royal lady was
designed by Heaven itself to be a Basilissa."

With the emperor's consent, the chamberlains and ladies of the court
at once summoned the Lady Euphemia, accompanied by her kinswoman
Theophano.  The young Basileus himself stepped forward as the lord
cubicular-in-waiting announced the noble ladies in due form, and led
his Theophano to the couch of his father, himself beaming on her with
admiration and love.  As she slowly advanced, with the three
appropriate reverences in use, the serene composure of her
countenance just mantling over with subdued blushes, all eyes in the
chamber were bent on her, and every soul felt a thrill of wonder and
admiration.  Theophano was now arrayed in silk-embroidered robes, the
most sumptuous which the art of Constantinople could provide, and
adorned with priceless jewels which Romanus and Theodore had managed
to procure from the recesses of the sacred treasure-cell in the
chapel of St. Theodore behind the Chrysotriklinos.

In casting off the virginal simplicity of Anastasia, the aspirant
Theophano had taken on a new bearing along with the change of name.
Her manner was that of a queen, and of a queen who was wont to bend
all men to her slightest caprice.  She took her place in the imperial
circle as if she herself had been born in the purple chamber.  And
even the lovely Agatha, the princess by her side, seemed more fit to
be her lady-in-waiting than her sister-in-law.  Never had the
imperial palace been graced by such dazzling beauty and such royal
grace.  And even the autocrator himself, oracle of dignity and
behavior as he was, was bewitched into the pleasant belief that at
last his truant son had, indeed, found a royal lady worthy to
continue the race of the Constantines Born-in-the Purple.

"Approach, royal maiden of the Spartan line," said the easy and
affectionate Augustus, enchanted with the beauty and dignity of the
girl; "come and kiss thy father that adopts thee, and perform the
ceremonial obeisance in use to our queen, the Augusta, whose daughter
thou art to be."

Theophano moved forward gently, with every eye on her steps, radiant
and majestic as if Here were entering the expectant circle of
Olympus.  During the three months that she had passed in the palace
of the lord chamberlain, where she had been under the protection of
the Lady Euphemia and had accepted nothing but the ceremonial
courtship of the infatuated prince, Theophano had been carefully
trained in all the minutiæ of the etiquette of that most ceremonious
of all imperial courts.  Her genius for seduction had made her a
consummate mistress of all the graces of a court.  And born actress
as she was, she went through the ordeal of these formal obeisances
with such perfect dignity and charm that, while the whole company
were delighted with her bearing, the emperor himself was in
uncontrollable raptures which his own fine manners could hardly
conceal.

To the morbid imagination of the now enfeebled emperor, whose
innermost religion had long been the maintenance not so much of the
empire itself as of the traditions of the imperial ceremonial, the
prospect of a marriage of the youthful Basileus to a magnificent
woman, worthy indeed of the golden throne, was an event of the first
magnitude and of almost divine dispensation.  "And thinkest thou, my
sweet Basilissa-elect, that thou wilt have strength to comport
thyself exactly in all the appointed usages of an imperial marriage?"
said the doting Constantine Born-in-the-Purple, "for it needs the
memory of a proto-cubicular to go through the ceremonials without a
slip, and the majesty of St. Helena herself, our imperial ancestress,
to bear thyself fitly in that day of days."

"Most august sovereign lord and father," softly murmured Theophano,
in an attitude of profound reverence, "I have been permitted by her
Sacred Majesty's favor to offer up my prayers for help to our most
Holy Lady in the Daphne here, and a special assurance has been
vouchsafed to me that by her aid I shall be equal to the duties that
will devolve on me on that auspicious day."

"Thou shalt hear in the authentic words of the autocrator himself how
the marriage ceremonial of a Basileus is performed," said
Constantine, quite roused to infatuation at the prospect of seeing
his own court ritual enacted in his presence.  "Send for the
reader-in-waiting, and let them bring in the roll of my book on the
_Ceremonies in Use at Court_.  I will have the chapter of 'Royal
Marriage' rehearsed this very night in presence of the royal
bridegroom and bride that are to be."

The parchment roll, the scribe, and the reader (never far from the
side of the imperial pedant) were at once in attendance.

"Here, here is the passage," cried the feeble despot, foolishly
fumbling the rolls in his eagerness to turn to his own much-treasured
revelations of deportment.  "Give me the first book of our _Basileia
Taxis_--turn to Chapter XXXIX.--on the 'Ritual for an Imperial
Marriage.'  Now read--where we say how the divine service is held in
the shrine of St. Stephen the Proto-martyr in our Daphne, and so on."

The reader approached, and amid profound silence read as follows, the
imperial dotard nodding and smiling feebly to his family as each
passage gave him new delight:


"When the imperial pair have been duly diademed in the Sacred Office,
they pass though the Octagon and the Augusteum and by the Golden
Hand, and they are received by the magistroi and patricians in the
Œnopodium, and the ceremonial procession is formed.  The Factions
are arranged in the Triclinium on both sides near the stairs of the
Magnaura.  Then the choirs of the two Factions chant, 'Long, long,
long,' and all respond, 'Long, long life: long and for evermore!'
Then the solos take it up--'Our Saviour, preserve our Lords: Holy
Ghost, protect our Augustus!  Sovereign Bridegroom, may God have thee
in His holy keeping!  May God in heaven give thee grace abounding in
thy wedlock!  May He who of old time blessed the marriage in Cana
bless thy marriage also, and may He visit thy spouse, so that
offspring may be born of thee in the Purple Chamber.  This day is a
festival of joy to the Roman people, wherein our Lord (Romanus) is
espoused to our Lady (Theophano), our most blessed Augusta.'  Then
the wedded pair pass on to the hall where the Factions are feasted,
and again the two choirs renew their chants, singing 'Hail!  All
hail!  Sovereign of the Romans, blessed be thy coming and that of thy
consort!'  And the people shout, 'Blessings on thee, joy of the
Romans, glory of the Purple.  Blessings on thee, lady, whom all
desire to behold!  May God hear the prayers of thy people!'  And
thence the wedded pair proceed to the nuptial alcove, where they lay
down their diadems on the bridal bed of state; and hence they pass
through the portico to the Hall of the Nineteen Couches, where the
feast is spread."


The younger members of the family now began to show visible signs of
fatigue as the reader poured out the interminable catalogue of
salaams, processions, chants, and antiphones prescribed in the
imperial _Manual of Etiquette_.  And the exhaustion of the invalid
emperor was so obvious, in spite of his enthusiasm and elation, that
the Augusta induced her lord to command the close of the reading and
to retire to rest in the Sacred Chamber.

The marriage of the young Basileus Romanus with the illustrious
Princess Theophano of Lacedæmon was celebrated with all the splendor
of that age of pomp and all the elaborate ceremonial ordained by that
most rigid of all imperial purists.  Constantine Porphyrogennetus,
who was now become little more than the grand master of the
ceremonies in his own palace, the veritable "Grand Monarque" and "Roi
Soleil" of the tenth century, seemed to have recovered something of
his strength from the supreme satisfaction of seeing one of his own
highest functions carried out to perfection in every detail, and by
the prospect of an assured succession to the Basilian dynasty in the
fruitful marriage of his only son.  The birth of another Basil,
hereafter to be known as the mighty warrior, "The Slayer of the
Bulgarians," was soon followed by that of another Constantine,
destined to be eighth emperor of that glorious name.  The Basilian
dynasty seemed saved; and the Sacred Palace was the scene of an
endless round of magnificent ceremonies, fantastic amusements,
incessant scandals, and sinister intrigues.

Marriage, alas! seemed only to have given the young Basileus
increased zest for wild sports and scandalous adventures, which were
rapidly destroying his health and sapping what was left in him of
moral fibre.  Now he plunged into the forests of Thrace, now into
those of Bithynia, to hunt the boar or the bear, exhausting himself
in midnight fatigues and exposure to all weathers and seasons.  From
time to time he was seen in the Tzykanisterion, or polo-ground, in
the east side of the palace between the pharos and the sea-wall.
Here the young nobles, having the _entrée_, were wont to engage in
polo and other exercises on horseback.  This spacious
practising-ground had been extended and levelled by the Emperor
Basil.  And here his royal descendant loved to exhibit his prowess as
a player in that manly game of polo which the Byzantines had adopted
from the Persians.  The young prince had been trained from boyhood in
the game by the noble Basil Digenes, who had an hereditary gift for
this sport, and who alone was regarded as the match of Romanus.  It
was no flattery when the best players in the kingdom yielded the
victory to the splendid horsemanship and keen eye of the imperial
athlete, while the courtiers and ladies of the royal households
surveyed the games from arcades of the terrace above.  First one and
then another of the beauties who thronged those gay companies would
be chosen by the gallant prince to receive the crown or garland which
was the winner's prize; and the vagrant amours of his insatiable
fancy gave as much ceaseless gossip to the witty and frivolous court
as ever did a Louis at Versailles or a Charles at Whitehall.  Not
that the adventures of Romanus were confined in any sense to the
Sacred Palace, nor his love-making to maids of honor or high-born
dames.  Frolics, sports, orgies, carouses of all kinds--wine, women,
mummers, acrobats--all came alike to Romanus with his thirst for
excitement and pleasure.  Old soldiers and the wary administrators of
the government looked sad and doubtful.  But Theophano herself, whose
discreetness and virtue had been so fully approved and certified by
the Augusta and by the Lady Euphemia, was not seen to complain of or
even to perceive the excesses of her boy lord.  Indeed, some
scandalous old dames who attended on the aged Empress Helena had been
heard to insinuate (with much shaking of heads and many a "My dear,
if I only could speak") that Theophano had more than once flung into
the arms of her lawful mate a pretty young thing about her own
person, who in no way thereby seemed to forfeit her mistress's favor.




V

The Dying Emperor

Constantine Born-in-the-Purple, who, if he had degenerated into a
ceremonial martinet, was neither depraved nor idiotic, watched with
sorrow and shame the excesses of his only son, though his easy
indulgence and his enfeebled will prevented him from interfering to
check them.  And, steeped as he was in the narcotic poison of a crowd
of parasites and sycophants, he had yet too much experience of empire
and of the enormous burdens of its ruler not to turn with a heavy
heart to the ominous storm-clouds around his throne.  He felt himself
dying by inches; and, in spite of the extravagant adulation that
formed his daily existence, he had too much sense not to be aware
that he was leaving his empire to a broken and reckless debauchee,
his wife and daughters to an ambitious and unscrupulous rival, and
the frontiers of his vast dominions a prey to powerful enemies--to
the advancing tide of the Prophet, to the savage corsairs who swept
the Ægean Sea and the coasts of Asia, and to the barbarous hordes on
the Ister and the Danapris, who hung like avalanches from the
northern steppes ready to burst on the plains below.  Long and weary
were the secret councils which the broken Augustus would hold with
minister or general, high-priest, philosopher, or monk, whom from
time to time he would call to offer him advice.

The emperor of the Romans at Constantinople, feeble and pedantic as
was Constantine himself, was still surrounded by statesmen of great
experience and sagacity, who were served by an immense army of
trained officials and zealous administrators.  This secular
organization kept in life and activity the vast fabric of civilized
government which had been built up by a long succession of
Constantines, Basils, and Leos, and which was carried back by
tradition to the ages of Justinian and Theodosius, even to those of
the Antonines and Trajan.  It was far in advance of any engine of
government then existing on earth, unless it were for the moment in
Andalusia; and it maintained the framework of civilization and of
imperial administration at an age when both the Asiatic and the
Teutonic polities were in a state of flux and rudiment.  The
sovereign lord of Constantinople still held in subjection the
manifold races of his heterogeneous dominion by means partly of the
overwhelming tradition of Roman rule, partly by the mysterious
consecration he received from the Orthodox Church, but practically by
the instrument of a trained and organized service, both civil and
military, much as the czar of Russia and the padishah of Roum have
held their kingdoms together in spite of corruption, folly, and
intrigue in the court, and at times gross incompetence on the throne
itself.

On one day, at the close of Constantine's life and reign--he was now
in his fifty-fifth year--nearly all of which time he had been
nominally Basileus, the emperor held long and anxious privy council
with several of his great officers of state.  The conclave had been
almost forced upon him by the vehement expostulations of the
patriarch, the venerable Polyeuctus.  This famous prelate had been
brought from his monastery, where his austere piety and zealous
spirit had covered him with a halo of sanctity, in order to purge the
Holy See of St. Sophia from the scandalous extravagances of
Theophylact, when that horse-racing patriarch had been killed by a
vicious stallion he had bred.  Polyeuctus did not hesitate to rebuke
even the sacred person of Augustus himself before his whole
congregation.  And, much as Constantine resented and feared the
warnings of the ardent patriarch, he silently admitted the justice
and honesty of the stern monk and fully understood the secret of his
unbounded influence.  On this occasion the patriarch was supported by
the patrician, Joseph Bringas, lord high admiral and lord commander
of the eunuchs, who, eunuch as he was himself, was a man of great
intellect and power, and practically the chief authority within the
Sacred Palace.  He had brought with him to the imperial cabinet
Sisinnios, one of the proto-spathaires and prefect of the city; the
proto-secretis, or chief secretary, Theophylact Matzitzikos; and his
Honor Judge Joseph, one of the spatharo candidates, president of the
High Court of Justice.  These five councillors were all men capable
of governing an empire and fully aware of the perils around it.

The patriarch began, as was natural from his exalted office and the
fiery nature of the man: "Most august sovereign, the critical
condition of thy kingdom and the manifest disorder of thine own
household require thy most serious concern; and we, thy servants, and
servants by thy favor, be it said, of the Most High God and of His
precious realm, have come to warn thee, O King, even as the prophet
Samuel gave warning to Saul and the blessed St. Paul to Festus.  Thy
only son and our future Basileus is filling this city and thy Sacred
Palace with his fooleries, his stage-players, his orgies, and his
wantoning.  The woman whom thou gavest him to wife does nothing to
restrain his vices.  Would that we could see in her any virtues of
her own.  She wastes the treasures of thy kingdom on effeminate
displays and unworthy favorites.  She is forming in thy palace a
party who are alien to thee and to thine; she is seeking to attach to
herself the most unscrupulous adventurers she can find, and is
manifestly grasping for herself the power of the state.  She openly
flouts her Sacred Majesty the Empress, and permits her minions to
speak evil of the princesses, thy honored daughters.  In private she
mocks at the sacred offices of the Church, and has suffered them to
profane the very altar in her private chapel of St. Theodore.
Chastise her offences, O king, and banish her to a convent in some
distant island, or thy son, thy wife, and thy daughters will be made
the victims of her jealousy, and thy golden throne may be occupied
one day by some paramour of her own whom she has chosen to place in
power by her side."

"Forbear, forbear from such awful words," groaned the miserable
emperor, who sat propped up on his cushions and cowering at each blow
of the monk's words as if he were struck with a scourge.  "Forbear,
most venerable patriarch, in the name of Christ, Our Lord, and the
Holy Mother who bore Him.  For mercy's sake cease thy maledictions,
and tell me how can I, the loving but the dying father of my
headstrong son, venture to chastise him as a boy, and how can I part
him from the wife he has chosen to wed, and how tear her down from
the high place of state which I have given her myself.  Alas! alas!"
cried the broken old father, wringing his thin hands as hot tears
poured down his emaciated cheeks, "have I not striven to train up my
son in every virtue and in princely deportment to make him worthy of
the royal part he was to bear; and this, this is the end of all my
pains and my teaching, of the many tutors and my own writings.  And
she whom I gave him to wife seemed so able to bear all the duties of
Basilissa and to understand the great part she had assumed.  And this
is the end of our love and our forethought."  And the poor old man
wept bitter tears.

"It is not for me, most august sovereign," replied the zealous
prelate, "it is not for us, the servants of the Most High God,
absorbed as we are in sacred things, to offer thee counsel in things
of the world; nor am I skilled in devising machinations of policy to
deal with sublunary intrigues.  This most sagacious counsellor here,
the Lord Bringas, or the illustrious patrician Sisinnios, can advise
thee in such things which belong to their province.  'Tis mine, O
King, only by fastings, watchings, and adoration at the altar of God,
to receive such warnings as His mercy vouchsafes to convey to men by
the unworthy channel of His anointed priests.  And as one of the
humblest of these servants of the Most High, I tell thee, Lord
Sovereign Augustus, to thy face, thou art harboring in thy palace a
woman such as thy imperial ancestors have harbored of old--an Irenei
a Eudocia, a Theodora--ay, even such a one as Ahab, King of Israel,
once harbored to the ruin of his kingdom and his house."  Constantine
quivered and sobbed in silence.  And the patriarch solemnly folded
around him his robe of office and slowly left the imperial presence
with no visible sign of obeisance, adding only: "I go hence to my
place in the Holy Wisdom, to partake of the body and blood of Him in
whose sight the kings of the earth are worms and dust.  I go to pray
for thee and for this realm and people of Christ."

The patriarch, whose supreme office and reputation for sanctity
placed him for the time on more than an equality with the weak and
yet conscientious emperor, quitted the council, leaving Constantine
overwhelmed with his emotions and the other officials somewhat
alarmed at such an outburst.  At last Joseph Bringas, a real
statesman and a man of energy and prudence, ventured to say: "Most
august sovereign, it is not for thy lay servants to answer the
accusations which his Holiness the Patriarch holds it his duty to
deliver to his sovereign.  If the words he has presumed to speak have
been put into his heart by God Himself, thy royal wisdom will not
fail to judge.  For us, mere lay ministers and thy counsellors in
earthly policy, it is enough to consider what is politic,
practicable, and prudent to be done, for the sake of thy sacred
person, thy family, and thy throne.  It is not for us to judge thy
royal son, his Highness the Basileus, but I venture to appeal to his
father's heart if his errors are more than the failings of such
extreme youth.  His natural disposition is excellent and his goodness
of heart makes him indulgent to those about him.  To put him under
restraint would be to light up a civil war; to assail the royal lady,
his lawful spouse, would involve a revolution in the palace which
would soon spread to the city.  A strong hand to guide his youth and
to check the disorders of thy household is all that is needed.  The
favor of your Majesty has given me authority in the past.  Extend and
continue thy royal favor to thy devoted servant, and with the aid of
these councillors here, we will answer for peace and order at home."

"Intrust me with ample authority to arrest and deport any favorite of
his Highness who may be organizing sedition in the city, and I will
answer for the conduct of the Factions at all times," said Sisinnios
the prefect.

"And the logothete, your Majesty's treasurer," said the chief
secretary, "must be authorized to refuse those incessant advances
which he is called upon to honor, ostensibly for the ornaments and
household of her Royal Highness, but which we have reason to know are
being accumulated for a very different object."

"The existence of your Majesty's empire depends on a rigid
administration of the imperial finances," broke in the patrician
Bringas.  "The payment of tribute has been seriously reduced for
years past by the ravages of the Moslem invaders on the East, and
especially by the corsairs of Crete.  But the whole of our seaboard
and Asian frontier will be drained of its resources unless we can
restore the supremacy of Roman arms, so much shaken by these infidel
hordes.  Your Majesty has one great soldier in your armies.  To him
no triumphs are too great to be achieved--a soldier of courage and
genius, that may vie with Heraclius, or Narses, or Belisarius
himself.  Need I say that I mean Nicephorus, the Armenian of the
warlike race of Phocas?  Place him, O king, at the head of a powerful
army and a fleet of equal strength, give him thy imperial command to
restore the supremacy of the Cross, and the Roman name shall be again
as great in the two continents as was ever that of Justinian or
Theodosius; and Christendom will be rid forever of the accursed brood
of Hagar."

"Well, but this is just what the Lord Akritas of the Eastern Marches
told us," interrupted the distracted Basileus, "when I summoned him
to advise us on our policy in the East."

"Most mighty sovereign, it is what every real soldier has said for a
generation, and what every wise man at home knows to be the truth."

"Have we not made this favorite hero of our armies a grand marshal of
the empire, commander-in-chief of the forces of the East?  Have we
not loaded him with honors, appanages, and favors from our throne?"

"And he has won each honor that your Majesty has been pleased to
vouchsafe to him, by saving a province or by increasing the empire,"
said the chief eunuch.

"Nay, but if we place in the hands of this adored general a power so
vast, will not ambition prompt him to turn his arms against our
dynasty in the person of our too careless son?" asked the ever-timid
and suspicious sovereign.

"Nicephorus Phocas," said the chief eunuch, "is the soul of loyalty
and the mirror of honor.  He is as utterly incapable of treason,
rebellion, or even disobedience as the archangel Michael beside the
throne of God.  Few, indeed, are the trusted officers of your
Majesty's armies to whom I would counsel you to confide such
paramount authority in arms.  Nor, indeed, for that matter, would I
like to counsel that it be confided to any of your Majesty's servants
at home," said Joseph Bringas, as he looked at his colleagues with a
significant smile.

"I would not advise the bringing home this great soldier from Asia.
But Nicephorus Phocas may be trusted to be true to death while he is
serving his sovereign in arms abroad.  We may trust him even as we
may trust the saints in heaven."

"And do our trusty councillors here present in audience share the
confidence of our most noble lord admiral in the loyalty of the grand
marshal?" asked the Basileus, still hesitating.  "Are ye all sure
that when he possesses the collective forces of our empire, he will
still remain servant of the illustrious dynasty that was founded by
our mighty ancestor Basil, of pious and glorious memory?"

"If his power be limited to the armies, and he be occupied in Asia,
we are all as sure of it as the Lord Bringas himself," replied the
three officials appealed to.

"We will ponder and reflect on your advice," murmured the feeble
sovereign, now thoroughly exhausted both in body and in mind.  "We
thank you, noble and trusty councillors, for your attendance upon us
and your sage counsels.  In the mean time, let the grand marshal of
our Eastern armies be summoned to the Sacred Palace that we may
confer with so illustrious a chief."

Nicephorus Phocas was duly summoned by imperial messenger, with the
official despatch sealed with the vermilion cipher; but he never saw
his punctilious and procrastinating master.

Constantine Porphyrogennetus was now dying.  Enfeebled by internal
disease, he was exhausted by chronic fevers, for which his physicians
prescribed the baths of Prusa, in Bithynia.  The medicinal waters
rather aggravated his malady, and he turned from earthly to spiritual
resources, visiting the monasteries around Mount Olympus, carried in
his golden litter from cell to cell while he shared the watches, the
services, the pallet of the most famous anchorites, joining in their
prayers, hymns, and prostrations.  All was in vain.  He was borne
down to the shore of the Marmora, whence the royal dromon, or galley,
conveyed him by an easy transport to the Sacred Palace.

It was a cold and dreary November when the mighty Augustus was for
the last time carried back to the hieros koiton, or imperial
bedchamber, the magnificence of which seemed to mock the helplessness
of the sinking potentate.  The patriarch was summoned with his
acolytes to administer the last offices of religion according to the
rites of the Orthodox Church.  The venerable Augusta sank down
exhausted with grief and anxiety.  The princesses were gathered round
their father's couch, and Agatha, the youngest, was bending over him
with incessant care to smooth his pillow and moisten his lips.  The
monarch in his expiring moments asked for his son.  But no son was
there.  The reckless Romanus had gone off with a gay retinue of
courtiers to hunt in the forests on the Asian side of the Bosphorus,
and all the messengers had failed to meet him.  The eunuchs of the
royal chamber, the chief physician, and his Holiness the Patriarch,
watched the last agony of the sovereign.  At a sign from the
physician who held the pulse of the dying man, the chief eunuch of
the chamber closed the eyes and covered the face of the dead.

Then, with a loud voice which rang through the awe-struck and silent
chamber, the Patriarch Polyeuctus sprang from his knees, and, raising
aloft the crucifix, he cried: "Go forth hence, O king.  The King of
Kings, the Lord of Lords, has called thee to Himself."

At these thrilling words the Princess Agatha shrieked aloud and the
venerable Augusta fainted.  The other princesses flew to aid their
mother: Zoe, the eldest, cried aloud for the ladies-in-waiting to
carry the Augusta to her own bedchamber, the sacred apartment of the
empress regnant.

But here the door of that chamber was flung open, and Theophano stood
in the entrance like some fierce and majestic fury presiding over a
scene of carnage.  She was surrounded by her own chamberlains,
eunuchs, and ladies of honor.  "Bear not the widow hither, I command
ye.  There is no Augusta here but one--and I am your Basilissa
to-day.  The chamber of the empress is for me, and I share it with no
relict of the dead.  Here, carry off your late king to prepare him
for the tomb.  This sacred koiton is for my lord Romanus, second of
that auspicious name, most mighty and illustrious Baselius of the
Romans.  In his name I charge ye, get ye all hence."

Appalled by this sudden apparition, as if it had been some evil
spirit issuing from the depths of hell, and yet well aware of all
that might be brought about by the waywardness of Romanus and the
malice of Theophano, the family and retinue of the dead sovereign
shrank away in tears and groans beneath the triumphant smiles of the
new Augusta and the mocking menaces of the attendants she had brought.




VI

The Coronation

It was just daybreak on a bright morning of the year 960 A.D., near
the Hebdomon barracks, outside the walls of Constantinople; and a
general movement towards the city could be seen on the shores of the
Propontis.  The sun was nearly risen over the eastern hills and was
reflected in the smooth water of that inland sea.  The harbor and
shore were covered with gay sailing vessels and boats hurrying
towards the city, of which the walls and towers were some three miles
distant.  From the circular castle of Cyclobion, half a mile nearer
the city, were pouring forth masses of troops, both horse and foot,
which were being marshalled in the broad exercising-ground that lay
between Hebdomon and the city walls.  At this moment two officers in
resplendent array, mounted on light Arab chargers and followed by
orderlies and grooms, issued from the huge gateway of the fortress
and crossed the drawbridge into the road that led to the Golden Gate.

Both warriors wore the gilded cuirasses, greaves, and armlets of the
imperial guard; their long lances and embossed shields were borne by
their attendants.  The elder, a dark and bronzed Armenian of mature
age, was leading the way and explaining the concourse to his
companion, an athletic, fair-haired youth from Norway.  In truth, the
young and noble Eric had been driven from his home by the conquering
Dane, and had just found his way to friends among the Varangian guard
to take service with the Byzantine Cæsar.  His birth, reputation, and
skill in arms had gained him a warm welcome, and Bardas Skleros, who
was one of the veteran generals of the Eastern army, had taken him
into favor and made him his aide-de-camp.  To-day, the
long-anticipated date fixed for the consecration of the new Basileus,
Bardas had promised the Norwegian tyro to show him the capital and
the army which he had just joined and to introduce him at court in
person.  The young hero, to whom all this splendor, pomp, and array
were a dazzling novelty, strove hard not to betray by a look his
wonder and admiration; while the politic chief sought in every way to
arouse his curiosity and to fill his rude mind with a fitting awe.

As they rode past the long ranks of troops waiting their orders to
join in the procession, each company and squadron in various
equipments and from different nations, Bardas was received with
salutes and cheers from the men whom he had often led to battle.

"These are our Dyrrhachian Highlanders," said the general, as they
passed the huge mountaineers from the Dalmatian coast in their rough
capotes and short claymores; "and next to them are companies from the
Peloponnesian Islands.  Next come the Patzinak foreigners, who have
volunteered for service under our standard.  See those giants there:
they are Russ, who, dissatisfied with their own czar, have taken the
oath to our lord."

"Are they all of different race, costume, weapon," said the puzzled
lad, "for they seem to speak different tongues--not one of which can
I understand or name?"

"Yes," said the Bardas, "for the ceremony of to-day they are
purposely chosen from the various nations which fill our armies.  All
are Romans, all are sworn to die for our sovereign and august
Basileus.  But he never asks them to forsake their own tongue, nor
their own accoutrements and arms, nor any of the habits to which they
have been bred.  Each company has its own chief and interpreter, and
the word of command is given in the speech they love."

"Are they not all even worshippers of the Cross?" said the pious
Eric, as he devoutly crossed himself.  "Are they not so much as
baptized?"

"Cæsar," said the general, with a dry smile, "is proud to know that
they serve him with loyal faith to the last breath of their life.  He
knows that their souls are safe if they die in his service, for his
service is the defence of the Church and the Cross.  They have had
their baptism of blood, and in good time they will have their baptism
of water.  Besides," he muttered between his teeth, "since these
gallant fellows never converse with other regiments, they have no
temptation to mutiny or intrigue.  And since many of them have no
occasion to call in a priest, they are never disturbed in mind by
anything that happens in Church or State."

"The soldier of Rome," said Bardas, with a keen look into the eyes of
his young friend, "has nothing to do with politicians or with monks.
Discipline, obedience, fidelity make up his whole duty to God and
man.  His religion is to serve Rome and its divine autocrator!"  Here
a shout of welcome and a crashing salute of more than ordinary vigor
surprised the young Norwegian, who noticed the gleam of pride that
lighted up the general's face.  "Ay," said Bardas, "these are my own
Armenians, the brigade I raised in my native mountains.  Did you ever
see more likely-looking men-at-arms?"

And now, as they drew up near the walls, they saw the splendid array
of the Varangian host, into which Eric had just been admitted, with
their scale coats of mail and their terrific battle-axes, drawn up in
line around the Golden Gate of triumph.

At last the young Scandinavian beheld that mighty range of
fortifications stretching for some three miles from the Propontis to
the Golden Horn--those historic walls of Constantinople which for a
thousand years defied the onslaught of a series of invaders.  The
land walls of the city are still, even in their abandonment and ruin,
the most impressive monument of its military skill that the ancient
world has left us.  In the tenth century they rose in three distinct
lines of circumvallation, with broad causeways between each line and
in front an immense moat more than sixty feet broad and some twenty
feet deep.  Each of the three lines of ramparts, which rose in
increasing height, one behind the other, was surmounted by
battlements, the two inner lines being strengthened by towers, also
crowned with battlements and pierced with narrow embrasures.  The
towers of the wall rose to a height of fifty feet above the outer
peribolos, or terrace, which separated the second from the outer
wall.  The last defence, the huge inmost wall, rose to a height of
forty feet from the broad terrace which separated it from the middle
wall.  It had ninety-six tremendous towers at distances of one
hundred and eighty feet apart, which rose to a height of sixty feet
above the terrace, and thus were about one hundred feet above the
level of the moat.  The great inner wall was fifteen feet thick,
faced with blocks of limestone on its outer and inner face.  The
entire transverse width of this complicated fortification, not
counting the moat, from the outer wall to the inside of the inmost
line, measured about one hundred and fifty feet.  In height the
serried line of towers rose to ninety feet above the surrounding
country and also above the level of the city within.

The young barbarian could no longer restrain his emotions of wonder
and enthusiasm.  He reined in his charger and stood awe-struck at the
sight of such a fortress; and, falling back to his native tongue,
muttered some broken exclamations in a mixture of creeds about Odin,
Asgard, Valhalla, and the Mother of God.  The wily chief eyed his
young charge with inward satisfaction.

"We shall have ample time to study the fortifications on some other
day; and you shall soon be instructed in all the means of defence
they possess.  Some day you shall attend the rampart drill, and see
how the troops are trained to rush along the level terrace from tower
to tower; how the successive lines of defence are manned; how, from
the battlements above, the engines of war are arrayed which pour
bolts, stones, molten lead, and our Greek fire on any invader who
might be rash enough to come within their range."

Eric mused in silence.  He had seen the log stockades of his native
land, and had known them drenched in blood and crackling with fire as
they fell before a fierce attack.  He had borne arms within the
circular palisades on the Vistula and the Danube, which the Slavs and
the Bulgarians styled their capitals and royal cities.  He had even
been a prisoner in Kiev, the renowned city of the Russ, of which the
fame had spread up the Baltic and through the whole Scandinavian
peninsula.  But these were but the fastnesses of savages compared
with the vast and scientific circumvallations which protected the
capital and palace of the Cæsars.

"The rebel angels might as well hope to scale the heaven and throne
of the Almighty," said the chief; "but let us hasten on to the court
and the Sacred Palace, for you may expect to see greater wonders
to-day."

The horsemen rode on amid the tramp of various troops advancing to
take up their positions in the city and crowds of country people from
the neighboring villages who were hurrying to see the show.  And now
the chief pointed out to his companion the beautiful Golden Gate,
outside of which was posted a company of Varangians.  This noble
monument, of which we see the ruin built up into the Turkish fort of
the Seven Towers, was a triumphal arch of the great Theodosius, but
now incorporated in the mighty circumvallations constructed by his
grandson.  It was wholly of marble, upheld by lofty classical
columns, and at this date was still in perfect preservation.  The
royal gate was reserved for the emperor and his special guests, and,
of course, was now closed and guarded.  Our horsemen passed into the
city through the public gate that adjoined, along with the troops and
the crowd.

Once within the city, they pressed on along the Via Triumphalis, that
ran parallel to the sea, a course of some four miles to the Golden
Palace and the Augusteum.  The great street was lined with palaces,
churches, colonnades, and public buildings, the windows and balconies
being festooned with draperies and colored curtains, and the roadway
strewn with bright sand and enlivened with flowers and wreaths of
myrtle, rosemary, and laurel.  They hastened past the Forum of
Arcadius, with its column, one hundred and fifty-eight feet high,
surrounded by bas-reliefs of battle scenes in imitation of the Column
of Trajan at Rome.  Thence they passed to the Forum of Theodosius,
and so on through ever-increasing crowds to the Middle Street (Mesé)
and the Forum of Constantine.  This splendid area, in shape an
ellipse, surrounded by two tiers of porticos, with a marble arch at
either end, was adorned with public buildings, monuments, statues,
and crosses; in its centre the Porphyry Column, which still remains
in its ruined state in the heart of the city.  In the tenth century
it was still uninjured and surmounted with the statue of the
venerable founder of New Rome.  The chief explained to the awe-struck
viking the story of this sacred symbol; and the simple youth remained
dumb with astonishment before such signs of magnificence and power.
As he passed countless palaces, porticos, churches, statues, and
memorials he was made dizzy with the infinite multitudes in the
crowd; and his martial ardor was roused by the sight of the various
troops of horse and foot which occupied the entire line and
restrained the eagerness of the mob.

At the Forum of Constantine the two horsemen alighted, gave their
chargers to the attendants, and proceeded on foot to the Augusteum.
Here the crowds were more dense, the adornments of the streets more
brilliant, and the array of troopers more solid.  At sight of the
chief and his companion, all barriers were removed and the military
lines were opened; and with throngs of officials, priests, and nobles
in gala attire, the general and his aide strode on till they reached
the great open space south of the vast church and fronting the bronze
gateway of the Sacred Palace.

"This mighty fane before us," said Bardas to his friend, "is the
Metropolitan Church of the Divine Wisdom, built by Justinian the
Great more than four hundred years ago.  It outshines all temples of
God in the world both in size and beauty, as the Roman Empire
outshines all other states.  These statues and monuments in the forum
around are the precious gifts of a line of beneficent princes.  That
glorious equestrian statue in the centre of the square is our
ever-to-be-venerated emperor Justinian of immortal memory.  And
opposite is the bronze gateway that leads into the corridors of the
Sacred Palace.  Follow me, my son, and try to wear a look of less
amazement and confusion at what you see.  I have obtained permission
from the parakeimomenos himself that you shall be in attendance on me
to-day in the palace and the procession that will shortly be formed."

They passed in at the gorgeous gates of gilt bronze amid salutes by
the imperial guard and reverences by the ushers addressed to the
general, and wandered at leisure from court to court, along the
corridors and porticos filled with marble and bronze statues, adorned
with mosaic pictures, and now hung with tapestries and Eastern
embroideries.  The vast halls and cloisters were crowded with nobles
and officials in robes of state and the higher chiefs of the army in
their most splendid uniforms and jewelled arms.  Gradually they
joined the gay crowd, as it gathered up to form the procession from
the sacred apartments within.  At last, three ringing blasts from the
silver trumpets summoned the ranks to close, and the formal
ceremonial of the day began.

First came a company of Varangians--stately warriors from the
North--Scandinavians, Russians, Saxons, with long limbs and flaxen or
red hair--the imperial body-guard, in gilt mail tunics, armlets, and
greaves, carrying the peculiar weapon of their country, the huge
battle-axe surmounted by a sickle-shaped halberd.  Then came a group
of ushers and palace officials in splendid civil garb.  Next followed
the court officials in their due order of precedence--silentiaries,
chamberlains, masters of the robes and masters of the horse, high
stewards, court eunuchs, and privy-councillors, grooms of the
chamber, and dispensers of the royal largesses, the chancellor, and
the logothete, or minister of finance.

A fresh company of guards--these from the Eastern cavalry--separated
this part of the procession from the rest.  Then came an almost
interminable procession of priests, each bearing huge wax tapers,
choristers, acolytes, and incense-bearers, with a long array of
crosses, ikons, and holy emblems.  The priests were in their bright
robes of high ceremony, embroidered copes charged with long palls
bearing the Greek cross on each fold.  The choristers chanted a psalm
as they passed on, and the incense-bearers swung their silver
censers; and as the miraculous ikons passed the privileged
spectators, by whom the courts were lined, bowed to the earth in
reverence of each holy emblem.  At last, a fresh group of priests
bore along the true cross of St. Helena, or rather the portion of it
enclosed in an enamelled and jewelled cross of solid silver, and the
miracle-working rod of Moses, the girdle and veil of the Mother of
God, and the portrait of Christ, "not made by human hands," which had
been vouchsafed to men on earth.  All these were received with
profound reverences from the spectators in their stations as they
were borne along amid the glitter of the tapers and the perfume of
incense.

And now came a third group, headed by grooms of the chamber,
lords-in-waiting, and masters of the household, all in flowing robes
of embroidered silk of various color and pattern.  At last stalked
by, the observed of all beholders, who cringed and cowered before
him, the parakeimomenos himself, the eunuch Joseph, the lord high
chamberlain and president of the imperial privy council, who was
practically the real ruler of the empire.  Then came a pause and a
hush of expectation.  And lastly there advanced, headed by a further
company of guards--tawny mountaineers from the Anatolian Theme--and
by a band of musicians with trumpets, cymbals, drums, and fifes, the
new Basileus and Basilissa themselves.

Romanus II. was arrayed in a corselet and armlets of gold over his
purple tunic, which shone with jewels and pearls; and from his
shoulders hung the long folds of the imperial scaramangion.  His legs
had already been fitted with the quaint scarlet boots, or leggings,
which were the ensign of an emperor.  His scabbard was scarlet,
enamelled and jewelled.  He wore on his brow a fillet with precious
amulets, but as yet no crown; for the crown was borne along beside
him by Polyeuctus, the venerable patriarch, supported and assisted by
the prelates of his cathedral in their most gorgeous robes of office.
Behind the Basileus, in a dazzling group of court beauties,
ladies-in-waiting, of mistresses and ladies of the robes, came the
new Basilissa herself, in a tunic of silk gauze of the hues of the
rainbow, covered with full robes of massive embroideries and blazing
with precious stones, pearls, and pendants.  Pride, joy, hope beamed
from the lovely countenance of the empress, and was reflected as it
were in that of the emperor.  As they passed slowly along the
corridors, courts, and colonnades, the privileged spectators, who
lined them, broke forth at the bidding of the silentiary, or usher,
with fervid cries of, "Many, many happy years!" "Holy!  Holy!  Holy!
Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth!  To our great
Basileus and Autocrator Romanus, many years of life!"  And as the
empress passed, again they chanted, thrice, "Long life to our blessed
Augusta.  Welcome, Theophano.  May God keep thee, most pious lady of
our sovereign lord!"  It may be doubted if Romanus II. were the most
glorious emperor of his mighty line, and yet more if Theophano were
the most pious of royal princesses; but this is certain, that in all
that concourse of brilliant men and lovely women in the wonderful
panorama of that crowded day, in all that empire which stretched from
far Calabria to the Chersonesus, from the Adriatic to the Caucasus
and the Euphrates, there could be found no more brilliant figure than
that of the young Romanus, and no such dazzling beauty as that of the
Greek Theophano herself.

A space separated the imperial group from the rest of the cortège.
Then, in gorgeous robes of samite embroidered in gold thread,
advanced alone the huge form of Basil the eunuch, the royal bastard,
now grand master of the ceremonies.  He was followed by a group of
general officers in their most splendid uniform of parade.  All eyes
were now turned upon the illustrious chief, who stalked on in front
of the line--the generalissimo of the Oriental armies--the first
soldier of the empire.

"See, the hero comes," said Bardas Skleros, in a whisper, to Eric, as
the adored chief turned a friendly glance on his trusty comrade and a
piercing look on his athletic attendant, who now took their places in
the brilliant group of officers of the staff.  Nicephorus Phocas, the
most eminent chief of a long line of Armenian nobles, the most heroic
warrior of a family of famous men of war, was now in the flower of
his strength, at forty-six years of age.  His natural olive
complexion had been tanned and burned almost to a dark hue in the
incessant campaigns he had fought since his boyhood amid the suns of
Mesopotamia and the snowy passes of Cilicia.  He wore his hair long
and flowing, with a crisp beard just beginning to be tinged with
gray.  His nose was long and aquiline, his eyes were dark, of an
intense fire under a penthouse of thick, black eyebrows.  Of middle
height, he had the trunk and shoulders of a giant, with abnormal
depth of chest, and the long, muscular arms with which he had more
than once in battle cleft a mailed enemy to the chine.  His look was
stern and pensive, lighted up at moments, as it were, with a sombre
fire within.  He was taciturn and immovable by habit, so that hardly
a gesture or a look ever betrayed his purpose or his thought.  To-day
he stalked on alone, his mind far away from the Sacred Palace, with
neither comrade nor lieutenant by his side; and he just acknowledged
with his hand the cheers and obeisances with which he was received.
It was noticed that he alone of all that brilliant throng had chosen
to attend the procession in his well-worn tunic and his close helm
and corselet of action, in the same accoutrements and arms in which
he was wont to appear on many a bloody field.  And as his scrutiny
fell on the warlike figure of Eric, the young Scandinavian felt a
thrill to the marrow of his bones; and to his fantastic Northern
imagination it seemed to him that Odin himself was searching him with
a look to judge if the lad were yet worthy to enter into the Valhalla
of heroes.  Slowly the immense procession passed on to the royal
gate, where the emperor mounted his cream-colored charger of the
purest stock of Arabia, richly caparisoned with jewelled and golden
ornaments.  When the Augusteum was reached--the forum in front of the
palace bounded by St. Sophia and the Hippodrome--the Basileus was
received by an immense crowd of privileged and official spectators,
who again raised the chant of "Long, long life and happy years to our
Augustus and autocrator!"  Here was renewed the ancient ceremony of
ages, dating from the time when Cæsar was the true
commander-in-chief.  Romanus dismounted and was raised on an immense
shield, upborne by general officers, the heads of the senate and the
palace, and even nominally by the patriarch himself; and, amid
volleys of cheers--"Long life and happy years!"--from the vast throng
in the porticos and terraces around, he was saluted as Cæsar, even as
Trajan, Constantine, and Theodosius had been hailed by the army as
successors of Julius and Augustus.

This secular ceremony accomplished, the Basileus and Basilissa, with
their trains, ascended the staircase which led to their place in the
Hippodrome.  In due order they appeared in the cathisma, or raised
balcony, at the northern or straight end of the vast circus, which
for hours had been filled by an immense concourse of citizens.  As
the imperial pair, in their gorgeous array, appeared at the rail in
front of their lofty balcony, the sight was one that struck dumb the
raw Norwegian halberdier, and would profoundly impress even the most
experienced sight-seer of modern times.  On each side of the long
Hippodrome there rose, tier after tier on the marble steps crowned
with open colonnades, a gathering of at least three hundred thousand
spectators.  In their proper places were seated the Factions, now
organized and recognized political clubs.  On the city side were
seated in proper uniform the Green Faction, on the sea side were the
Blues, and from ten thousand trained voices, at the baton of their
leaders and at the word of "Salute!" there broke forth, time after
time, and in answering strophe and antistrophe, the ordained chant,
"Long life and happy years to our Augustus and autocrator,
Romanus"--"Holy!  Holy!  Holy! to God in the highest, and peace on
earth!"  The Cæsar descended; and, on this occasion, by special
favor, as he was proud of his beauty and his consummate horsemanship,
Romanus rode in state on his cream charger round the entire arena.
As he passed each block of the enormous throng he was received with
deafening cheers and the eternal chant of "Long life and happy
years!"  He was now disrobed from the stately diabetesion and
scaramangion, and had chosen to exhibit his exquisite limbs in the
uniform of a cataphractic trooper in full campaigning equipment.  And
as he careered round the long Hippodrome, curveting on his fiery
Arab, the superstitious Byzantine burghers imagined that they saw the
blessed St. George himself.

When he was returned to the cathisma aloft and had taken his seat on
the throne which stood high above the gates whence the chariots
started, the Basileus signed to the parakeimomenos that it was his
wish for the games to begin.  The marshals and heralds now cleared
the race-course, and four chariots of four horses each were shot
forth from the carceres.  The race was followed with shouts, yells,
and screams of excitement by the vast host in the circus.  More races
ensued, and displays of various strange beasts from Asia and from
Africa: camels, elephants, giraffes, ostriches, and lions were
paraded round the ring; and deputations from wild frontier tribes, in
strange, outlandish costumes, advanced to pay reverence and offer
gifts to the Cæsar--naked Nubians, seamen from the Ægean Islands,
vikings from the Baltic, Russ exiles and outlaws, and hillmen from
the Caucasus in huge sheepskins and with bows and arrows.

The shows in the Hippodrome were continued long after the Basileus
and Basilissa had left their thrones in the cathisma.  This day of
most exhausting ceremonies had yet to receive its final and most
important function, in the solemn consecration of the imperial pair
in the cathedral church by the patriarch.  The emperor again crossed
the Augusteum to the portal of the great church.  He had now been
relieved of his military array, and had been formally clothed in the
gorgeous robes of imperial state, brocaded with gold, gems, and
quaint devices.  At the entrance to St. Sophia the Basileus was
received by the patriarch and all his clergy; and while his steward
of the largess presented gifts to the holy places, the emperor, the
empress, and all their principal attendants were supplied with
lighted tapers, with which they entered the narthex.  They were
conducted into the vestry, where fresh robings took place, and even
some refreshments were offered to the exhausted princes.  After a
short rest the sacred ordinances of the ceremony began.  Emperor and
empress, in turn, duly prostrated themselves before the holy images,
crosses, and emblems, and devoutly kissed the miraculous ikon.  The
procession advanced to the centre of the mighty dome, the choir
chanting hymns and repeating, "Holy!  Holy!  Holy!  Glory to God in
the highest and peace on earth!" and the ushers and prelates placed
the royal personages on the thrones prepared for them.  The patriarch
himself, in the bema, or chancel, within the semicircular apse,
opened the stated prayers, and the coronation liturgy was chanted,
the close of each invocation being marked by the chant of the
choristers.  Advancing from the chancel to the ambon, the patriarch
caused the gospel of the day to be read out, and again he uttered the
prayers of the rubric.  This ambon was a raised platform of colored
marble, surmounted by short columns supporting a canopy of alabaster
and mosaic.  It was reached by a flight of marble steps, both on the
eastern and the western sides, and formed a kind of stage between the
chancel, or apse, and the centre of the great dome; and it served at
once as reading station and stand for important ceremonies.  Hither
the Basileus was led by one range of stairs, the patriarch standing
at the opposite end and the crown being held beside him.  The crown
itself was perfumed with incense and blessed by the patriarch by
placing his hands on it.  Then, summoning the emperor to his side,
the patriarch raised the crown aloft and solemnly placed it on the
head of the Basileus, crying, "Holy!  God in Three! bless our august
autocrator and Basileus!"  Then the Basilissa was led forth by her
attendant eunuchs and borne up into the ambon, where the emperor
himself placed her crown on his consort's head.  They both then were
attended to their thrones in front of the chancel, and the rest of
the ceremony was concluded, the patriarch having now returned from
the ambon to the bema.

There he celebrated mass himself and partook of the elements in
solemn form.  Thereupon the Basileus was led into the bema and stood
beside the silver altar.  His crown is taken from his head and held
by the chief deacon, while the Basileus on his knees partakes of the
body and blood of Christ.  The patriarch again blesses him and
anoints him with holy oil, and cries over his bowed head: "May the
Lord be mindful of the power of thy kingdom in His universal kingdom,
now and always, for ever and ever.  Amen."  Thereupon the emperor
stooped low and thrice kissed the hand of the patriarch, and remained
in silent prayer amid a breathless pause.  At last the autocrator
rose and was led to his throne beside the empress.  And at once the
choir burst forth with the peals of the organ and the blare of silver
trumpets, and the chants of the choir in the galleries were renewed.
The imperial procession was reformed.  Hundreds of pendent
chandeliers held lighted candles and glass lamps.  The incense poured
upward in wreaths to the saints, archangels, and cherubim in the
mosaics of the domes, and amid a blaze of color and the rustlings of
a thousand robes of silk and brocade the imperial cortège passed into
the open square.  As they issued from the portal, a roar of voices
ascended from the crowd without, with renewed shouts of "Long life
and happy years to Romanus and Theophano!  Augustus ever victorious
and Augusta beloved of the Mother of God!"

The imperial procession, with its multitude of officials, soldiers,
eunuchs, and priests, passed into the bronze gates of the palace amid
infinite acclamations, the murmur of a vast mass of excited human
beings, and the incessant strains of martial music.  They proceeded
to the hall of the excubitors, or body-guard, where a banquet of
three hundred guests was held.  The Basileus and Basilissa themselves
were conducted, with a series of obeisances and forms, to the privy
chambers of the Sacred Palace, where, after a fitting rest, they
supped in the Hall of the Nineteen Couches with the patriarch and a
few of the highest officials of the empire.




VII

The Confession

The young viking had been dismissed from his attendance on General
Bardas; and, stunned as he had been by the noise and marvellous
sights of the day, his senses reeling from the fumes of the incense
and his eyes aching from the incessant panorama he had witnessed, he
ventured to enter the great temple alone that he might recall his
thoughts from the whirl in which they swam.  The crowd had left the
building; a few sacristans here and there were extinguishing the last
lights; the air within was heavy with the scent of flowers and
incense.  The young soldier raised his eyes from the checkered floor
to the walls resplendent with the most magnificent marbles cut from
the Eastern and African quarries, and thence to the enormous
monoliths crowned with capitals of intricate work of acanthus and
vine leaves.  He little understood the nature of the mighty dome
under which he stood; still less, how the marvellous pictures in gold
and colored glass which filled the vaults had been made.  To his
untutored eye, the figures of the archangel Michael, of the Mother of
God, and of the Saviour of Mankind seemed to him miraculous
appearances of these sacred and divine beings in their proper
persons.  Fainting under the sense of superstitious terror, exhausted
in body and mind by all the excitements of the day, the young
Norwegian, whom neither man nor brute had ever dismayed for an
instant, sank down beneath an ikon in a dark corner of the aisle,
and, striving in vain to utter a few coherent prayers, he bowed
himself to earth, muttering, "God, be merciful to one of the least of
Thy servants!"

How long he remained in this posture he never knew; but when coherent
thought returned to him again he saw by a dim lamp two men in a
distant corner of the aisle: one a priest in his seat of confession,
the other a bronzed veteran, wrapped in a long military cloak, on his
knees before the man of God.  The priest was a young monk whose
emaciated face bore witness to a life of austere sacrifice.  The
warrior bore the look of the illustrious stratelatos--Nicephorus
Phocas--a look which no man who had ever seen it could forget.

The young soldier was thunderstruck to see at such a moment, in such
a place and with such a look, the chief whom he believed to be within
the Sacred Palace in the place of honor at the coronation feast.  The
mighty general was on his knees before the monk; his proud
countenance was now wrung with remorse and some dark purpose within
his mind.  To Eric's heated imagination it seemed as if he had
intruded on some hallowed scene, as if he were watching his Saviour
in the Garden of Gethsemane awaiting his hour of passion.  The
guardsman stole away in the gloom of the side aisles, muttering
prayers to all the saints whose names and offices he knew or could
remember.

A severe struggle was, indeed, passing between the anchorite and the
general--a critical moment in the life of the mighty commander of the
Eastern armies.  The monk, Abraham, had been made known to Nicephorus
by his venerated uncle, Maleinos.  The monk was now known as
Athanasius.  His eloquence, zeal, and saintly character had deeply
impressed Nicephorus, who held him in profound veneration.  This monk
was the sole confessor of the general.

"Holy father," he was saying, in a hoarse whisper, "I have lived from
youth upward as a man of war, to which I was bred by my father and my
grandfather of noble memory; and, if I have done deeds of blood, it
was in obedience to the orders of my commanders and of our lord the
Basileus.  But Christ has said that they who take up the sword shall
perish by the sword.  I have always hoped to die in some glorious
field, my sword red with the blood of followers of the False Prophet.
But now I, who never feared mortal men, tremble to think of myself as
standing at the judgment-seat of a God of love and mercy.  I feel at
last--too late, alas!--how a life such as mine has dishonored the
gospel of Christ.  And if He spare me a few years longer, they will
be too short to wipe out my sins by penance and groans and the
solitary life of a hermit.  Father, I have come to ask from thee a
blessing, and thy good word to the monks of St. Demetrius on Olympus,
whither I am about to withdraw forever to a cell."

"My son," replied the monk, "if God has given thee success as a
soldier, it was to serve some wise purpose of His own.  Thou hast
neither that humility nor that patience which it becomes an eremite
to possess, and without which all penances and prayers are in vain.
Thou art too old to learn our hard and cheerless way of life.  Thou
hast no experience of the raptures of the soul when it communes with
the beings above in glory.  Thou art not the stuff of which saints
are made or with which the saints can hold converse."

"Ask my troopers," said the hero, proudly, "if I have not lived a
life as hard as any hermit of Mount Athos!"

"And of humility and peace and meditation such as theirs?" said the
monk, with a gentle sadness that entirely covered the sarcasm of his
question.

"Show me how I can humble myself more than I do at this hour, at the
feet of thee and of Christ.  It is peace that I ask.  And as to
meditation--how often in the watches of the night, in the tented
field, have I lain awake seeking the Lord and His blessed saints,
till I had a vision of the Babe smiling in His mother's arms, and I
knew by that sign that in the morning I should win a new fight for
the Cross."

"Ay, Christ means thee to win yet other fights in His name, for the
peril of the Cross was never greater than it is now.  But how comest
thou to be here at this hour?  Will not the Basileus and his
courtiers mark thy absence from the feast and accuse thee of treason
against the throne?"

"Does Nicephorus Phocas care for the yelping of these parasites and
eunuchs?  Is he anything to-day to the Basileus himself or to the
crowds in the Golden Palace?  Can you think that the Basileus is
troubled at his absence--ay--or the--the--the he-women or the she-men
who prowl about the imperial koiton?" he added at last, after a
broken sentence wherein he seemed to choke down some words that rose
to his lips.

"I know of many she-men in that court, but of only one he-woman,"
said the subtle priest, suddenly catching at a new thought and
casting on the soldier a piercing glance.  "What!  Has the proud
Basilissa dared to affront the first soldier of the empire and
maddened him to forswear the service of his Majesty in his wrath?  I
thought a Phocas was of too stern a mould to be goaded or turned from
his duty by the insolence of a spoiled beauty!"

"Father, it is done.  And neither man nor woman in the court will
miss Nicephorus or wonder at his absence.  I have sent a trusted
messenger to the lord high chamberlain to beg from his Sacred Majesty
permission to retire from all my offices and leave to enter a
hermitage.  And his lord high eunuchship will take good care that his
Majesty grants my prayer.  That is how I come to be here.  My
sovereign lord Romanus will be glad to be rid of his gloomy
commander-in-chief, and our sovereign lady Theophano will jest about
the surly monster in the blood-stained tunic as she is unrobing with
her maids of honor; and she will finish the epigram she was beginning
to-day."

"What!  Did she address thee in public?"

"She beckoned me towards her side as the procession was forming, and
called out, so loud that the wife of Lord Demetrius and others could
hear, 'Wear not so gloomy a countenance, for my sake, lord commander
of the eastern themes, or our loyal Byzantines will fly from the
sight of thee, as they say the Hagarenes so often fly when thy plume
is to the front!'  These were her very words--I hear them ringing in
my ears; and then she smiled on me the smile that no man forgets."

"And is it possible that the 'Terror of the Hagarene,' as they truly
name thee, will suffer the idle word of a woman to turn his life, to
break the keenest sword in Christendom, if not to put in peril this
empire of Rome and of Christ?"

"Father, I tell thee it is done.  My life as a layman is ended.  My
surrender of office is already in the hands of our autocrator.  I am
no longer a soldier.  I am a postulant for the holy life--in what
remains to me on this earth," he muttered, with a deep sigh.

"Nicephorus, my son in God," said the monk, with solemnity that was
almost stern, "thou art hiding the truth from thy father-confessor.
To mislead the priest in confession is to seek to mislead God
Himself.  And He who reads all thoughts and sees to the heart of man
will surely avenge the insult to His servant who is betrayed in his
holy office.  Nicephorus, I charge thee, in the name of the Mother of
God, hide not the truth from me as thou canst not hide it from God!
Thou art bewitched by a woman!  Who has seduced thee to sin?"

"Father, as I live by bread, I have never sinned with woman, nor has
woman ever sinned with me!  My sins, as God knoweth, are sins of
violence and wrath and blood and pride; but of love never, of lust of
the flesh nothing, ay, of self-indulgence, I may say without a boast,
not an hour since I first grew a beard.  Monk, I tell thee that of
woman I am as pure as thou--ay," he added, with a bitter word, "much
more worthy of the crown of virginity than are many monks of East and
of West."

"Nicephorus Phocas, palter not with words in this sacred office,"
rejoined the monk, now rising to stern authority in exercise of his
divine mandate, and addressing the great soldier with such power as
he himself was wont to use in giving his orders on the field.  "I
said thou art bewitched by a woman.  Again I ask thee in confession,
what woman has bewitched thee so to change thy life?"

The chief answered not a word; but he sank down flat on the marble
pavement, and lay prostrate, writhing in agony and shame and despair,
his huge limbs convulsed and his powerful hands clinched in his
passion.  A long silence ensued, hardly broken by the sobs and groans
of the chief, as his frame was shaken with a tumult of emotions.

"God gives me no right to grant His absolution till the truth is
confessed and penance is prescribed," said the monk at last, in
measured and solemn tones, and he waited till the storm of feeling
had grown calm.

"Holy father," said the chief at last, rising from the pavement but
still on his knees, his head bowed down and his hands clasped under
him, speaking in a low and broken voice, "my sin is in thought, as
yet known only to God and to my heart.  I have done no act of wrong.
I will do no act of wrong.  But I am consumed with a fire within me,
and I must be far away from this city of sin--this palace of folly
and lust and vanity--this pandemonium of eunuchs, pimps, and panders.
I must flee from this woman--this new Theodora--this second Irene.
The thought of her haunts me day and night.  When she first began to
mock the battered warrior, whose grisly boar's head, she said, might
well be used to frighten the Hagarene babies when they whined, a
thrill went through me--no! not of pain or anger--no! not of
shame--no! rather of pleasure.  I found myself waiting in the portico
where she would take the air with her girls and creatures, and she
would pinch my rough cheek and call me Vulcan, looking herself,
indeed, the Goddess of Beauty, as fabled by those pagan poets that
the courtiers still love to recite."

"Well, why this to me?" broke in the monk, in manifest disgust.
"What matters all this to thee or to me?  Quit this city of folly and
sin, and be off hence to thy command in the marches of Taurus, to
stop the ravages of the Hagarenes who threaten the people of Christ."

"Thou hast not heard all, holy father, or I should not now be here
and on my knees.  I tell thee the woman has seen her power.  These
subtle daughters of Eve know by instinct when the sons of Adam begin
to feel weak.  The flashing rays from those eyes burn me.  They
pierce my eyes with fiery points, as it were when some royal traitor
is blinded by red-hot needles.  She smiles triumphant when she sees
me quiver, and, woman-like, she loves to see me quiver again before
her."

"Leave her, and begone to the East," broke in the priest, with no
little impatience and contempt in his voice.

"That I cannot do while I remain an imperial officer of state.  She
has her purposes: she means to make me her creature, her tool, her
lover--her--I know not how--I know not what is in her thought.  She
despises her own lord; she tempts him to wallow further in the mire
of his harlots, eunuchs, and catamites.  She has great designs and
aspiring thoughts.  She needs a commander who has the trust of our
troops.  Father, I tell thee, she has need of me; and I burn for her.
She knows her power and my shame."

A long pause followed, and neither spoke.  The monk meditated in
silence.  At last he spoke.

"Nicephorus Phocas, it cuts me to the heart to hear a warrior of high
renown confess to being tempted into the toils of a woman such as
this.  I judge it to be a passing madness, which distance and thy own
great duties and labors alone can cure.  The monks of St. Demetrius
shall not be poisoned by the presence among them of thy fevered soul.
Thou art not fit in the sight of God and His Mother for the spiritual
life; thou art sorely needed by God and His Son for the martial life.
Rome and Christ can be saved from Mohammed only by thee.  Thou hast
sinned against Christ and His Virgin Mother by idly toying with the
imperial temptress.  See her no more, but hasten to thy post in the
Anatolian Mountains.  There, in thy lonely tent, pray nightly to the
immaculate one for her blessing and pass the day in the saddle among
the scattered outposts of thy menaced command.  On this condition
alone can I give thee absolution for thy sin--sin as black in the
sight of Christ and His Mother as if thou hadst been taken in open
adultery and dragged to execution as a traitor.  Accept this penance,
or remain unanealed in thy sin and thy shame!"

The silence lasted for a space, till it grew acutely painful to both.
With groans and tears and writhings, the chief at last uttered the
fatal words, "I obey the Holy Mother Church!"

Then the monk rose to his full height; and, with a look of triumphant
authority and a voice of thrilling power, as he placed his long,
thin, emaciated hands on the bare head of the chief, he said: "Christ
absolves thee from thy sin, and accepts thy obedience and service.
Pass to thy appointed command, and do thy duty as a soldier of Rome
and of Christ.  I purge thee of thy sins in the name of the Trinity
and of the Mother of God, into whose holy keeping I now commit thee!
Nicephorus Phocas, go in peace, and may God be with thee!"

"I go," murmured the chief, exhausted by his long agony and strife;
"I go to my ruin--to my shame--to my death."




VIII

The Sacred Palace

The gay and luxurious young Basileus was no sooner installed on his
father's throne than he redoubled the riot and debauchery that had
been kept in restraint--or, at least, in concealment--by Constantine
Born-in-the-Purple.  Romanus, who had been born in the purple
himself, whose legitimacy as Augustus could not be disputed, while
his personal popularity as a gallant and gracious prince was renowned
far and wide, saw not the slightest reason to curb or to restrain his
excesses.  He replaced most of the aged and trusty counsellors of his
father with parasites and favorites of his own; and the revels and
buffooneries to which he gave himself reminded the serious of the
orgies of Elagabalus or Michael the Drunkard.  Wrestlers from
Cappadocia, singers and lutists from the Lesbian theatres, boys who
might have stood as models for the Apollino of the Vatican or the
Hermaphrodite of the Louvre, lounged about the koiton of the Basileus
of New Rome.  The Basilissa was not much seen in those sacred
precincts; for she troubled herself as little about the Basileus and
his amusements as he did about her and hers.  Indeed, women were no
longer welcomed in the harem of the voluptuous Romanus.  Theophano
had her own court, her privy purse, her favorites, her eunuchs, her
guards--and her own schemes.

A week hardly passed since the coronation ceremonies when Romanus,
who had prolonged his feast late into the waning day, was surrounded
by his creatures and his scandalous favorites, led on by Chærina, a
disfrocked prelate, and now his coryphæus of the hermaphrodites.  He
had just listened to a fescennine song by his favorite buffoon, at
which the parasites sought to surpass the applause of the Cæsar,
when, in the midst of a posture-dance by one of his young athletes,
the parakeimomenos sent his secretary to beg for an audience with the
Basileus.

"Bring him in!" cried Romanus, jovially; "if his Eminence will
promise not to scold.  I am never too busy to see my invaluable
Nestor and fidus Achates.  And so begone, all of ye! satyrs, fauns,
and young devils who would make a sinner of St. Peter himself."

Romanus, debauched as he was, was neither a fool nor an utter
fribble; and he thoroughly understood that if he was to enjoy his
pleasures and his popularity, he must place the government of the
empire in able hands.  Accordingly, he had given his confidence to
the lord high chamberlain, the eunuch Joseph Bringas, whom he created
anew the president of the privy council and of the senate.  Joseph,
indeed, was a statesman of consummate ability and vast experience.
Eunuch as he was, he had courage, energy, caution, and profound
knowledge of men and of things.  It had long been the tradition of
the empire to intrust the ultimate seals of office and the most
important arcana of state to men who, either by their sacerdotal rank
or the cruel ambition of their parents and sovereigns, were incapable
of succeeding to the purple themselves.  Men so prepared from infancy
for confidential employment about the cabinet and bed-chambers of
Basileus and Basilissa were in no way disparaged thereby, but held an
honorable rank almost analogous to that of dukes in modern times.
Joseph was as well qualified to direct the fortunes of the empire as
any one of the many millions within it; and Romanus well knew his
value--how much his own peace, good name, perhaps his throne and his
life, depended on the brain and will of such a statesman.

After the ceremonious reverences by the parakeimomenos on entering
the august presence--reverences which the good-natured Basileus cut
short with a pleasant welcome, "What brings ye here, my lord, with so
gloomy a look--at so unreasonable a season--to disturb our peace?"

"I have grave news from Miletus, most august sovereign, which I
cannot keep from your royal wisdom for an hour.  An infidel fleet has
eluded our guardships off Cnidus and Naxos, has swept up the Ægean,
and has stormed and sacked the city of Miletus with horrible outrages
of blood and lust.  They have carried away ten thousand girls and
youths into captivity, after massacring their parents."

"From whence do they come, these children of wrath; and how are we to
find them if they have made good their escape?"

"They come from the island of Crete, which they first overran in the
disturbed time of your royal predecessor, Michael the Stammerer, long
before the august dynasty of Basil had mounted the throne.  There,
generation after generation, they have established their power,
harassing the Christian people and forming almost impregnable
fortresses and arsenals.  They issue thence from its hundred ports,
as you must remember, time after time, sweeping the Ægean Sea up to
the very gates of the Hellespont.  You have heard of the terrible
sack of Thessalonica in the age of your royal grandfather, Leo the
Learned.  And you must remember the incessant efforts in the late
reign, and finally the disastrous expedition of Gongyles which cut
your father's royal heart to its core, and doubtless shortened his
life.  The very existence of this haunt of infidels and pirates is a
menace to the empire, and drains its life-blood, its children, and
its wealth.  Our harried people, plundered and decimated, cannot pay
the taxes due from them, and the finances of your Majesty are
distressed.  There is just arrived at the capital a young son of the
late governor of the Samian Theme, who has escaped from captivity,
when the flourishing town of Miletus was stormed and laid in ruins.
He saw his gallant father murdered and tortured, his mother defiled
and murdered by these Hagarene demons, and his sisters carried off
with himself to their harems in Candax, their stronghold in the
island.  The lad was preserved by his rare beauty for these monsters;
and I crave your Majesty's grace to admit him to your presence, that
you may hear from the lips of an eye-witness the horrors and the
desolation to which the most loyal and industrious of your Majesty's
servants are subject."

"My excellent friend and sweet counsellor, could not this affair of
state be submitted to the wisdom of our privy council to-morrow--or,
indeed, at its next meeting--and perhaps with previous inquiry into
the facts and conditions?  And yet--well! if the lad be noble, and
the Antinous you describe (and, by St. Sebastian, these Paynims have
a pretty taste in boys!), why, I might see him at once--if he be
within our palace and presentable at this hour."

With this consent, the politic minister introduced to the presence of
his sovereign the poor lad, who was encouraged to tell his horrible
story and the sufferings of his family.  He was, indeed, a youth of
rare beauty and winning artlessness of manner.  He still wore the
girl's dress in which he had made his escape from the Saracen harem.
After battling for days in an open boat in which he sailed forth at
night alone, he had been fortunately picked up by a trading-vessel
that brought him into Greek waters.  The slight robe he wore had been
almost torn in rags from his graceful limbs, and sufficed to show
that it was no girl, but a stripling of the finest Ionic type.  The
terrible life that he had passed of late had given him an energy and
seriousness beyond his years.  He spoke with eloquence, fire, and not
a few sobs and tears as he told his awful tale.  The voluptuous
Basileus, whose thirst for adventure equalled his enjoyment of
beauty, fixed his eyes on the lad, graciously encouraged him to
speak, and listened with open ears to the thrilling and piteous tale.

Young Glaucus told how peaceful and happy the town of Miletus seemed
one bright Sunday morning, when the churches were full and the
streets were thronged with gay crowds.  No one was alarmed when a
fleet of dromons was observed in the offing, treacherously hung with
the imperial ensigns.

Suddenly a startling cry ran through the city when it was discovered
that the ships were not from the imperial fleet, but were Saracen
rovers filled with armed pirates.  The boy described the gallant
fight made by his father, who manned the walls with all the available
fighting men--the furious assault by engines and missiles of the
enemy--and their ultimate entrance by an unguarded postern.  Once in
possession of the arsenal, the town was given over to fire and sword.
The youth wept as he told of the horrid fate of his father and his
mother, how all that was valuable and precious was torn out of the
houses, how the streets ran with blood, how churches had been burned,
and thousands of citizens who had fled to them for refuge perished in
the flames.  For three days and nights massacres continued, the booty
was gathered in the holds of the ships, and a city of fifty thousand
inhabitants had been laid desolate.  Ten thousand virgins, young
women, and lads of tender age, among them nuns torn from their sacred
monasteries with the children they had gathered round them, were
collected in the market-place, stripped, inspected, catalogued like
cattle at a fair, and finally put up to public auction and sold to
the highest bidders, a portion both of the fairest virgins and youths
being reserved for the commanders and chiefs.

The Basileus, to whom the more personal and thrilling part of
Glaucus's narrative was as fascinating as a romance, put many
questions to the youth as to all his adventures and experiences, when
the politic minister seized the first opportunity to dismiss the lad
that he might impress the imperial mind with the need of action.

"My sovereign lord," he said, solemnly, "the truth is this--that a
flourishing city, the centre of a most industrious province, is
blotted out from thy royal dominions; its population is destroyed or
dispersed; panic is spread through the islands and seaboard of the
Ægean Sea, and a revenue of fifty thousand pieces of gold is lost to
the imperial treasury.  The capital itself is hardly safe; nor can I
or any servant of thy throne answer for its stability while this
cancer is consuming the vitals of the empire."

"You desire, then, most resourceful of counsellors, to increase the
strength and alertness of our fleet in the southern waters.  Well, be
it so.  Double the fleet at Halicarnassus and Cnidus, station a
second fleet at Cythera, and let both be provided with a new squadron
of cruisers.  Oh, best of all parakeimomenoi, thou shalt have an
order for their cost, though I may not buy myself a new Arabian
charger nor a Lydian singer for the next six months.  My empire shall
come first, my lord high chamberlain, as I am Roman by name and in
soul!"

"We know the glorious spirit that animates the heroic line of Basil,
Leo, and Constantine," broke in the wily eunuch, "but the need of the
hour is far more serious than your Majesty conceives.  The story
brought by this eye-witness of the latest disaster, which has just
been so vividly told to your grace, makes it clear that no vigilance
or force in the fleet can restrain the audacity of these Saracens, so
long as they can issue at will from their arsenals in Crete, and can
in a night's voyage betake themselves to this secure stronghold after
every raid on our coasts.  After Crete is again our own, we shall
restore to Rome all that the Hagarene has wrested from thy royal
ancestors.  Most gracious Lord Basileus, thy throne is in peril while
Crete is in the power of the False Prophet and his unbelieving crews
of pirates.  Crete must be Cæsar's, or Constantinople will not remain
his own forever!"

"Crete, Crete! most inconsistent of lord privy councillors, have you
not told me even to-day that Crete is impregnable to our forces by
land or by sea; and is not that the answer which I and my father
continually have received when we insisted on having it conquered by
our arms?"

"By our forces as now or lately they have been organized, Crete was
and is practically impregnable; nay, it would be madness to attempt
its reconquest by any forces that your Majesty now has on foot.  But
by an adequate force, by an irresistible fleet and an invincible
army, such as the empire can yet equip, Crete can be, shall be,
retaken.  Nothing is impregnable that Rome and Cæsar resolve to
subdue!"

"And thou hast just told me, my lord-of-short-memory, how the boasted
expedition of Gongyles ended in disaster, and how cruelly it wounded
my royal father and his kingdom."

"The expedition sent forth by thy royal father, great as it was, was
not adequate for its tremendous task.  It will be my case to equip a
fleet and an army which will be ample--even for the formidable work
of storming Candax and restoring Crete to the empire of Rome."

"And where shall we find the commander who is to succeed in the task
in which thy illustrious predecessor Gongyles so egregiously failed?"

"It is just in that, my august sovereign lord, in which I plant my
trust.  Rome has still one invincible soldier to whom no mission is
impossible.  The entire equipment, strength, and numbers of the fleet
and the army to be raised must be intrusted to one man, and that man
must have absolute command and undivided authority by sea and on
land, and the right to give orders of every sort, as if he were Cæsar
himself."

"And that man is--?"

"Nicephorus Phocas, O king of kings, the general-in-chief of the
orient themes--he who never yet failed his sovereign lord."

"Ho! ho! ho!  My most incomprehensible of privy councillors," broke
in the Basileus, with a ringing laugh, "what has converted your
sagacity to the fierce Armenian hero?  We thought ye were anything
but friends.  And stanch as I know him to be, and inestimable in the
Anatolian marches, is it not tempting his virtue too much if we give
him our sovereign authority without a limit, and place him in
effective command of the whole resources of our state--and that
within a day's sail of our Byzantine capital?  No, my lord
parakeimomenos, never will I put temptation such as this in the way
of any man, were he the archangel Michael with his sword drawn!  I
have said it.  Send your Belisarius off to the Saracen frontier--and
place a good month's march between him and us."

"The reconquest of Crete, my august lord and king, will take
Nicephorus far enough away, and will occupy him long enough; and,
indeed, may expose him to death and disaster, even more than the
Saracen frontier.  Nicephorus Phocas we all know to be the one great
officer of the empire who is incapable of treason as he is of fear.
And has not the infallible eye of my lord Basileus perceived that the
temptations of Nicephorus Phocas lie not in the power he commands nor
in the themes he controls, but rather they are within the Sacred
Palace itself, and in the light that shines upon him there?" added
the eunuch, in his most subtle and insinuating tone.

"Ah!" cried Romanus, quickly, as a frown crossed the joyous and
beautiful face of the young Cæsar, "thou counsellest me to find
employment for this Hercules of mine lest he prove himself
troublesome at home in sheer wantonness of heart and lack of heroic
occupation.  My lord high chamberlain, we understand you at last--we
thank you and commend your frankness.  Would that your colleagues of
our council were equally vigilant and outspoken.  My lord, we will
hear more of this.  Come to-morrow with the rest of our privy
council.  This matter is critical and urgent."  The Basileus spoke
with a seriousness and a dignity which he had not shown in the long
interview, and as became an emperor of Rome.

Romanus now dismissed his prime-minister with real expressions of
confidence, and relieved him of much of the ceremonial obeisances
which the wily "bed-fellow" of his sovereign was too prudent to omit.
And the Basileus was already considering what new dissipation would
best distract his mind from the cares of empire, and from the lurking
suspicion which the ambiguous words of the great eunuch had planted
for the first time in the careless heart of the prince.  But at this
moment the peace of the imperial privacy was disturbed by a fresh
intrusion of a very different kind.  Vehement expostulations, mixed
with the sobs and cries of women, were heard at the door of the
chamber.  The noises and confusion increased until at last the guards
and ushers of the royal presence found themselves unable to resist
the pressure of women, who, with shrieks of grief and indignation,
forced their way through the amazed and abashed group of attendants.
They were the royal princesses, own sisters of Romanus himself,
beloved and honored daughters of Constantine Born-in-the-Purple, and,
like their father and their brother, equally porphyrogennetoi, with
all the divinity that did then hedge such royal birth and origin.
Zoe, the eldest of five, and next to her Theodora, each breaking from
the feeble and half-hearted restraint ostensibly offered them by the
confidential eunuch-in-waiting, were the first to burst upon the
privacy of their brother.

They were women of beauty, refinement, and high culture.
Constantine, who was a loving and indulgent father, had been only too
willing to keep his girls around him in the palace, and fell into the
advice of his politic counsellors to delay their marriage, lest a
husband, who would be a son-in-law of the emperor, might endanger or
disturb the succession of his own son.  The Basileus, absorbed in art
and literature as he was, took care to provide the princesses with
all the learning and accomplishments of the age, while he surrounded
them with every luxury and delight which the most beautiful and most
luxurious palace in the world could offer.  Young, gay, and
cultivated, they had never till this day known an hour's anxiety nor
a pang more serious than the loss of a pet bird or a hitch in their
own most decorous and virginal flirtations.

"Sovereign lord, brother, Romanus," shrieked Zoe, as she flung
herself down with her sister at the feet of the uneasy Basileus,
"these barbarous wretches pretend that they have your sign-manual to
an order to expel us from the palace--us, your own sisters, daughters
of your father, who is hardly cold in his tomb--have orders to seize
and force us off this very day!"  And here she burst into such an
agony of sobs that her voice became inarticulate, her fine
countenance was convulsed with passion and terror, and her imperial
robes and ornaments were disordered by the prolonged struggle she had
made to reach the throne of Cæsar.  "They say, too, now," she
screamed out in her despair, "that your order is to have us all
imprisoned in a convent, buried out of sight of the world, robed like
nuns in brown serge, without hair or ornament--nay, this lying priest
dares to say that we are all to take the veil forever."

"They must have forged this pretended order!  Our brother is not so
cruel!" shrieked Theodora, beside her sister, like her convulsed in
tears and writhing on the marble pavement.  "Romanus, can you bear to
see us suffer--we who have played together from childhood--we who
have never had an angry word in our lives--we who have so often saved
you from our father's anger?  Say that you are not such a monster as
to condemn your father's children to a living death!"  And here both
sisters sank down with sobs, and strove on their knees to reach the
feet of their brother and take his hand.  "Brother, brother, speak!"
they both shrieked.  But the eunuchs held them back from the hem of
Cæsar's robe, while Romanus stammered out: "No! no!  We cannot settle
such a matter here, and in such a way.  Back to your woman's
chambers, my children, and calm yourselves.  This is a matter of
state, for the council to deal with."

His hesitating words only roused fresh storms of wailing from the
women, for now the three other sisters, Theophano, Anna, and Agatha,
managed to force their way into the room, from the corridor where
they had heard what already had passed.  They, too, flung themselves
down in a group round the perplexed Basileus, who seemed torn by his
two spirits within--unscrupulous selfishness and easy good-nature.
The scene became one of wild confusion.  The five princesses, calling
on their brother by every word of pity that could touch his heart,
and mingled with screams of indignation at the dreadful fate to which
he was condemning them; the chamberlains, eunuchs, cubiculars,
striving aimlessly to shield their sovereign from the storm, and yet
hesitating to offer indignity to the royal ladies, to whom till
yesterday they had been the humblest of courtiers; the sovereign lord
of the world, torn in half by natural feelings and selfish purpose,
made a tableau that could only be reproduced by the stage.  The
tumult and excitement had now roused the Sacred Palace.  The great
chamberlain, Joseph Bringas, returned again to assist his sovereign
by his counsels, and with him one or two of the great officers of
state, who had been summoned to the coronation ceremonies.  The
illustrious John Tzimisces, the right arm of Nicephorus Phocas and
the second soldier of the empire, was seen in the throng behind
Theodora, to whose hand he was known to aspire; and there, too, was
the young hero, Basil Digenes, at sight of whom (the courtiers would
whisper) Agatha had been seen to blush.  Romanus himself could no
longer restrain his tears.  "All this must be considered, my sweet
girls," he said, as he raised the tender Agatha from the ground and
kissed her on her pale cheek.  A thrill passed round the court, and
the women felt they were saved.

But at this moment a new group broke into the assemblage.  A tall,
gaunt, and terrible-looking monk, escorted by his acolytes, bearing
an enamelled crucifix, with an ikon embossed with gems, stalked
haughtily up to the very throne, and, planting the holy emblem before
him with his right hand, he cried aloud, in a stern voice, to the
vacillating Basileus, "Sovereign Lord, Augustus, autocrator over men
on earth, thou wilt not forget that thou art the servant of the King
of Kings, who is above, whose minister and interpreter we churchmen
are.  Thy royal decree, bearing the vermilion signet, and duly
enrolled in thy chancery, has lawfully devoted to Christ and to the
Mother of God these illustrious virgins of thy father's house, in
order that they may pass into the more Sacred Palace of our Blessed
Lady, wherein they will live with the angels and not with men.  They
are already children of Our Lady, and are devoted eternally to the
blessed life of virginity.  The office which thy wisdom and piety has
committed to my charge by thy imperial decree--to have them arrayed
in the garb of Holy Church and consecrated to the holy life--this is
a formal ceremony which their own ignorance and needless alarm has
interrupted.  But in the records of heaven, as the archangel above
has graven it in the mystic book of life, their bodies, like their
souls, are already consecrated to Christ.  To tear from Him His
chosen bride would be sacrilege and outrage on His holy name.  My
Lord Basileus, I claim these royal virgins to present them to my
Saviour and to my Church."

All shrank back aghast at the words of the monk.  It was John, the
superior of the venerated convent of Stoudion, a fanatic of iron
type, whose austerities and inflexibility had won him a wide
ascendency in the city, where his influence was only second to that
of the patriarch himself.  The weak and perplexed Basileus was
plunged again in bewilderment.  He had begun to feel the cruelty of
his own edict; but he well knew the dangerous power that the monk of
Stoudion possessed and the relentless nature of the man in the cause
of Holy Church and the virgin life.  And now a fresh apparition
struck terror and compunction into the heart of the Basileus.  The
groups parted as there advanced amid solemn silence the stately
figure of the Basilissa-Dowager, Helena, daughter of the late Emperor
Romanus Lecapenus, widow of the late Emperor Constantine.  She was
robed in deep mourning, and her eyes alone betrayed the excitement
and agonies she had endured.  She stood before her son, with her
daughters around her, looking like a Niobe or a Hecuba who sought to
avert the stroke of fate from her offspring.

"I stand here, my son, whom death has just made my sovereign, to
learn if it can be truth that thou hast dared to consign the mother
that bore thee to a convent.  Am I also, who have queened it in this
Sacred Palace for a whole generation, to be torn from my children and
my home, from life and air, and thrust into the desolation of a
nunnery?  Romanus, if thou art bent on being a new Nero, a second
Orestes, stab me in this womb which bore thee, as I stand here; and
may God and the Mother of God witness between thee and me!"

"Mother, I cannot bear it--I will not--I meant it not.  These priests
have beguiled me.  They have bereft me of reason," gasped Romanus, in
an agony of tears and sobs, and he strove to fold his mother in his
arms.

"It was no priest that beguiled thee, Romanus, my beloved child.  It
was no priest, and no minister of state.  It was the sorceress, the
demon, the base-born creature from the tavern, who was the death of
thy father and has been a curse to thyself!"

These words were still ringing round the dome of the imperial chamber
when Theophano glided in at the head of a splendid array of
cubiculars, eunuchs, guards, and pages, in all the glamour of her
imperial vestures and her divine beauty, with a smile of triumph on
her lips and the glance as of an angry Juno in her eyes.

"My King, my lord, my hero," burst forth the Empress, as she flung
her siren's arms about the neck of her husband and fascinated him
with the basilisk fire of her eyes, "I am come to save thee and keep
thee true to thyself.  Can the mighty autocrator of Rome be twisted
and turned from his purpose by the cries of girls and the scoldings
of a crone?  Wilt thou suffer the majesty of thy own imperial purple
to be besmirched by the ribaldry which passes among slaves in the
street?  In flinging their nicknames at thy wife they are committing
treason against thy sacred person.  Who is the daughter of Lecapenus
to bandy insults at me, the daughter of a hundred kings of Sparta
down from Leonidas of Thermopylæ.  Does the widow know who was her
own grandfather, for Lecapenus, the foundling, himself never boasted
of a sire?  And cannot she remember the day when his sons, her own
brothers, had their father, the mock emperor of a day, seized in his
bed and flung into a monastery in an island?  There, in like manner,
it is time that she should go, this Hecuba, the widow-scold, and her
shrieking girls.  It is the rule of this empire to keep no secret
traitors near the throne, be they men or women--and especially
women," she added, with a cruel sneer, "for they tempt men to be
traitors and become their dupes and their tools.  The Sacred Palace
has no room for widows--no, nor for virgins!  Their place is in the
House of God, where they live with the angels, and are no longer the
snare of men.  My sovereign lord, submit to Holy Church, for whom the
father here present speaks; be guided by thy privy council, whose
voice the lord chamberlain has brought thee to-day!"

The wretched lad cowered under this torrent of reproaches and
commands.  In breathless silence he turned his eyes from the monk to
the chamberlain, and thence he fixed them on the ground in sore
perplexity and utter bewilderment.  Stifled sobs alone broke the
agonizing silence.

"Romanus, my husband, my lover!" hissed the Basilissa at last, as she
forced him to look into her eyes, and he felt the perfume of her
breath steal into the marrow of his bones--"Romanus, my lord, I say,
choose between me and them!  Dost thou choose them and to see me no
more?  For I swear to thee by the Mother of God in the Daphne, that
unless the widow and her girls do retire to the convent they are
decreed to inhabit, I take the veil myself and forswear thee and thy
palace forever!"

This threat, supported by so sacramental an oath that no man had ever
known to be broken, shook the young Cæsar from head to foot.  He
folded his wife in his arms, and she sank on his bosom in a
well-acted scene of rapturous affection.  At the sight of this final
decision the princesses shrieked aloud.  Their mother flung herself
forward and sought to snatch the robe of her son, but was checked by
the crucifix which the monk struck fiercely down between them.  The
lord high chamberlain gave the signal, and uttered one sharp word to
the royal guard and accubitors.  The eunuchs sprang forward and
seized the princesses, who screamed and struggled in their unholy
grasp.  The ladies of their retinue joined in the _mêlée_ and sought
to tear their beloved mistresses from their jailers' hands.  A wild
hubbub broke forth.  "Save us!" "Spare us!" "Cruel brother!" "Wicked
woman!" "Ungodly priest!" were the broken phrases heard above the
shrieks of the women.  After an unseemly struggle, such as ill became
a palace and was cruel indignity to royal ladies, they were dragged
through the corridors and hurried in litters to the convents which
yawned to receive them.

The Emperor, torn to pieces and almost fainting under the storm of
his emotions, flung himself down on a couch, buried his face in his
embroidered robe, and wept the most bitter tears he had known since
childhood.

Theophano turned from him with a look of scorn and pity.  "The
granddaughter of the Scythian barber," said she, in the ear of her
principal eunuch, "will not again fling names at the descendant of
Spartan kings!"




IX

The Muster of the Crusade

A glorious July morning in the year of Our Lord, 960, was irradiating
the shores of the Propontis and the porticos and domes of Byzantium,
and already the city and palace of the Cæsars were crowded with
brilliant throngs and gala trappings of expectant triumph.  All the
terraces which commanded a view of the sea were full of eager
sight-seers.  The walls that girdled the city on the sea-side were
covered with dense groups; and the sea itself, from the Golden Horn
to the Princes' Islands, was alive with thousands of vessels of every
description as far as the eye could reach.  The mighty expedition to
recover Crete from the infidel was at last about to sail.

In the Sacred Palace itself a throng of courtiers and high officials
were gathered in the Tzikanisterion, or polo-ground, and in the
gardens, porticos, and arcades that adjoined it, waiting for their
Majesties and the great ministers of state, who were to watch the
fleet at its departure and wish godspeed to its illustrious
commander.  In the corridors and cloisters of the palace all was
animation and a hubbub of greetings, inquiries, and ardent
anticipations.  A group of gentlemen of the wardrobe, grooms of the
chamber, and a silentiary, were discussing the exact constitution of
the vast expedition.  Nicetas, the Paphlagonian, a _vestiarius_, or
gentleman of the wardrobe, was loudly exclaiming that so powerful an
armament had never left the Golden Horn since the age of the great
Heraclius.

"It is so many generations since that occurred," rejoined Dionysius,
attached to the cubicular service, "that we cannot make any
comparisons; and no one is bound to take literally all the fulsome
eulogies we read in the Heracliads of George of Pisidia, I suppose."

Here they were joined by Theodosius the deacon, who already was
preparing materials for his own iambics on "The Conquest of Crete."
"Let us remember," said he, "the well-omened words of George, when he
addressed his king:

  "'Return triumphant with thy sable greaves
  Dyed crimson in the blood of heathen foes."


"If thou canst compose such a poem as that of George, most reverend
deacon, thou wilt, indeed, be famous," said Dionysius; "but is it not
a somewhat doubtful compliment to insinuate that Nicephorus when he
returns in triumph is to be installed in the vermilion buskins?"

"A truce to unseemly gibes on such an auspicious day," said the
poetic deacon.  "I have been collecting in my note-book the exact
figures which show the strength of the fleet and army, and from a
friend of mine, who is employed as scribe on the general staff, I
have obtained a copy of the official return prepared for the privy
council."

"Well! let us hear as much of it as is lawful to be divulged to mere
civilians as we are," said the other speakers, with one voice.

"Know, then," said the deacon, with importance, "that the entire
armament, both on sea and on land, has been organized and equipped by
the ever-victorious Nicephorus Phocas, commander-in-chief, whom God
and His Mother preserve."

"And have the ministers of state, and above all the most noble lord
of the bedchamber, had no hand in the work?  We know that they have
been toiling night and day for six months," said Stephanos, the
silentiary, who was a creature of the eunuch Joseph.

"Certainly," rejoined the deacon, anxious to retrieve his slip of
speech, "the great minister of our imperial master has brought to
bear on the task the whole of his unequalled energy and experience.
And he has toiled to satisfy the demands and plans of the commander.
Nicephorus designed the whole array, which the parakeimomenos carried
into execution.  As both soldier and statesman recognized that the
future of Rome hangs on the issue of this critical war, they have
worked together as one brain--the general bringing to bear his
consummate mastery of tactics, the minister exerting his wonderful
control over all the resources of the empire."

"And Rome has at last risen to the occasion," said Dionysius; "it was
time that she did!"

"Everything has been ordered in the manner prescribed by our late
blessed Lord Constantine Born-in-the-Purple, whom the saints are now
conducting to paradise, as he has set forth in the first book of his
_Memoirs and Regulations_.  But in many arms, and especially in
cavalry, the strength has been much increased by the foresight of
Nicephorus.  The first brigade is formed of Thracians and Macedonians
from the mountains of Rhodope and Hæmus.  Then are enrolled picked
troops from the eastern themes, Cappadocians, Lycaonians, Anatolians,
Isaurians, Mardaites, Opsicians, and Galatians--those tall, fierce
descendants of the northern invaders of old.  Of course, Nicephorus
has selected, for the centre and bulk of his army, his own Armenian
regiments, whom he has so often led to victory.  But Bringas himself
has insisted on adding a division of Russ, those Scandinavian
mercenary giants who are willing to serve under our eagle.  And there
are no less than twenty-five squadrons of the wild horsemen from the
northern frontier, beyond the Ister and the Euxine, who call
themselves Hungarians, Patzinaks, and Khazars, and I know not what
outlandish names they bear--names uncouth enough to fit into iambic
verse!" said the poet, with a sigh.

"Unspeakable barbarians and unbaptized heathen is what I call them,"
said Dionysius.

"They fight for the Cross stoutly enough, and they follow the general
to the death," said the deacon; "they are undoubtedly the finest
light horsemen that God ever made.  The Hagarenes of the desert, for
all their pure-bred steeds, are no match for these hairy barbarians
of the steppes."

"And what may the total of the forces amount to?" asked Dionysius,
eagerly.

"The roll that I have seen copied from the lists signed by General
Nicephorus himself, and countersigned by Lord Bringas, brings up the
total of all arms, of all nations and tongues, to fifty-seven
thousand eight hundred and ninety.  Each nation fights with its own
arms, costume, and officers, interpreters to each company conveying
in their barbarous jargons the Greek word of command."

"No such army ever left the Golden Horn!" they all cried at once.
"May Mary Hodogetria bring them home in triumph!"

Here a movement in the gay throng led the speakers to pass into the
lovely garden adjoining the polo-ground, the arcades around which
were crowded with ladies of the court.  The parterres and terraces,
as they rose one above another, were bowers of roses, myrtles, vines,
oleanders, and carnations, and the air was heavy with the perfume of
their blossom.  A group of fair women, in their brightest robes of
silk gauze and lace, saluted the poet and his friends, as they joined
them in the open terrace hung with awnings of Oriental tapestry.

"Tell us poor, ignorant women, O most reverend deacon," said the
beautiful Theodora, the young wife of a new lord-in-waiting, "what
are the names and uses of all these myriads of ships that we see at
anchor in the bay; and explain to us all the mysteries of the
marvellous instruments with which they are filled."

The poet was only too ready to dilate on his favorite theme, and to
display his official information.

"Gracious Lady Theodora, and sweet ladies," he said, "I am delighted
to do your bidding.  The entire fleet consists of vessels, large and
small, no less than three hundred and sixty in number, but, of
course, most of these are transports, cutters, and smaller boats.
The great ships of war that they call dromons are one hundred and
twenty-three in number, each carrying from two hundred and fifty to
three hundred men, about one-quarter of whom are from the regular
army.  The cruisers of the Pamphylian build carry one hundred and
thirty to one hundred and fifty men.  Of these swift ships there are
ninety-five.  The ships of war, with double or single banks of
oarsmen, thus number two hundred and eighteen, and carry altogether
forty-nine thousand two hundred and fifty men, about half of whom are
oarsmen and seamen from the Peloponnesus and the Ægean Islands, and
from the Asian coasts."

"And what do you call this great ship moored close against the harbor
of Boucoleon near us?" asked Theodora--"the one with three banks of
oars, I mean."

"That is the commander's own flag-ship--_The Archangel Michael_--one
of the largest dromons or war-ships that we have.  It is waiting now
to receive him on board."

"And what is the great turret in the middle of her?" asked the fair
girl.

"That is the war-tower to which the fighting men ascend in
action--the _xylocastron_--from the bulwarks of which they pour down
missiles, stones, and molten lead."

"And the smaller turret in front, with the brazen throat like the
dragon which St. George slew with his spear?" she asked again.

"Oh, that is the barbette, from which our siphons shoot forth the
Greek fire that is the terror of our foes.  Each dromon carries three
of these guns, which spout forth streams of this liquid and
unquenchable fire through the brazen throat of the dragon at the
prow.  Beside which, the ships carry grenades, or pots of this
combustible liquid, arranged in rows round the bulwarks.  You can see
them hung like oil-jars round the bulwarks of the _St. Michael_.
This is our secret; and our Greek fire makes our ships invincible at
close quarters."

"And for what are all these clumsy-looking merchant and traffic
vessels which seem to be swarming on the sea?"

"These are the great transports, filled with the men, horses,
artillery, and stores.  They number one hundred and forty-two.  They
carry an average of fifty men each, and number in all seven thousand
one hundred, thus making a grand total of fifty-seven thousand eight
hundred and ninety.  Everything has been carefully thought out by the
general and the council.  I can even show you the figures," said the
deacon, in his ardor drawing forth his tablets, wherein he had copied
down the main items of the equipment.  "Yes, here are the lists.
Every war-ship carries aboard her some seventy men-at-arms.  In her
storage are seventy coats of mail, eighty helmets, twenty-four light
corselets, one hundred swords, eighty lances, seventy shields, twenty
halberts, one hundred javelins, and one hundred bolts, with twenty
cross-bows, and fifty bows with double strings each; ten thousand
arrows, two hundred darts, ten thousand caltrops or prongs, fifty
surcoats, fifty steel caps, and seventy baking-pans."

"Oh, spare us these catalogues of weapons, good deacon; poor girls as
we are do not so much as know what all these mean!"

"Ah, but I have not nearly done," said Theodosius, "for there are all
the munitions of war--battering-rams, with their iron rams' heads,
and turtle-back shields to protect them from assault; catapults, with
their windlasses, to hurl rocks and bolts at the walls; cranes,
palisades, mallets, barrels, cables, spars, ropes, one hundred axes,
one hundred ship's adzes, three thousand pounds of lead, two hundred
pounds of zinc, two hundred pounds of tin, three thousand pounds of
iron, three thousand nails, one thousand spades, two thousand
buckets; and, for each ship, one hundred and twenty spare oars,
masts, sails, hawsers, and anchors--"

But here the poet was interrupted by shouts of laughter from the
women, who had been deluged with too much of his official catalogues.
"We are not in training for the admiral's cabinet!" cried they.

"And how will you get these uncouth names into the iambics of your
cantos, O friend of the Muses?" asked Nicetas, of the robing-room,
and turned the laugh against the poor deacon.

"Well," said he, "did not Homer fill the second _Iliad_ with his
catalogue of the ships and their captains?  The world shall rehearse
my _Iliad--The Taking of Crete_--a thousand years hence.  Have you
heard my invocation?  Something new and sublime, I can assure you.
Listen to this:

  "Old Rome, our mother, grudge not to thy child
  That New Rome shall an equal glory boast.
  Thy Scipios and thy Cæsars have not yet
  Drained to the dregs the flowing cup of Fame--"


But before the poet could recite any more of his epic, which he
fondly believed would outlive the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_, and
which has certainly fulfilled his boast by surviving a thousand
years, the courtiers thronged to the upper terrace, where the heralds
and ushers announced the approach of their Majesties.  Presently
Romanus appeared, in a magnificent tunic and robe of soft samite,
embroidered and brocaded with a pattern of the Basileus spearing a
lion, and with other quaint devices, and a light diadem that shone
with emeralds and rubies.  He was surrounded by a suite of his
principal officials and not a few of his parasites, among whom the
fair young Glaucus of Miletus had been enrolled, much against his own
desire.  And foremost rose the tall form of the parakeimomenos,
Joseph Bringas, to-day more than ever the real wielder of power.

"The saints above have vouchsafed to us a glorious morning for the
great start, most fortunate of lord chamberlains and most mighty of
eunuchs," said the prince, gayly.  "At whose altar have you besought
such a boon?"

"At the shrine of St. Romanus, my sovereign lord, most fortunate of
kings," said the politic Joseph.  "My task has been but to carry out
the orders of your Majesty, and to satisfy the demands of the soldier
to whom your wisdom has committed the fortune of Rome."

"Let the chief be summoned, then, that we may give him our royal
blessing and speed him on his enterprise, which you men of craft and
forebodings will not suffer me to lead in person."

"Rome and this city, which God guards, would not be safe if Cæsar had
quitted it, sire!  The lord commander-in-chief waits your Majesty's
summons."

The crowds parted and formed in an expectant circle as the form of
Nicephorus was seen advancing to do homage to the Basileus.  Arrayed
in resplendent armor, he looked grave, resolute, and confident as he
rose from the ceremonial obeisances that custom prescribed.

The Basileus received his great vassal with dignity, honor, and
friendliness, and addressed him his vows for his triumph with all the
graciousness that made Romanus popular with his servants and people.

"We envy you the honor of leading so vast a host, which my
taskmasters of the council will not permit me to join, greatly as I
desire to fight by the side of so illustrious a warrior.  Nor need I
tell you, my lord general, that the whole resources of our empire are
committed to your charge, and that Rome has now no other army, and no
second fleet."

"Most gracious sovereign, no man knows so well as Nicephorus himself
how great a trust has been committed to his hands; and no man is more
sensible of the supreme confidence with which his king has honored
his demands for men, arms, ships, and material, nor of the zeal with
which your Majesty's council have supplied him with all that he
required.  We whose lives have been passed on the Asian frontier, in
battling with the ever-increasing hordes of the False Prophet, well
know that Rome or Islam must fall in the end; that this royal city
itself must become one day the chief throne of the infidel, unless we
drive him back into his deserts and his steppes.  For some hundred
and fifty years he has been master of Crete, and has continually
strengthened his power, and defied all our efforts to recover it.
While he holds it, thy empire is being bled to death, O king!  It
must be won back, or Rome is ruined.  We must stake our all on this
venture, and no sacrifice is too great for such an end.  My lord
Basileus, we go forth with the aid of Christ and His Blessed Mother
to save the Cross and His people.  We will win back Crete for the
Cross and for Rome, or I and my men, or such parts of us as the
Hagarene dogs have not devoured, will lie rotting on the soil of that
island.  God be merciful to us miserable sinners, and strengthen the
hands of us weak servants of His holy name!"

But here, as the chief ended his audience with the Basileus and was
passing away with the official reverences in use, he received a
special summons from the empress, who, with her officers and ladies,
was standing apart in a more retired part of the royal portico.
Theophano was radiant in her most lovely smile and in her most airy
draperies of summer.  She was wrapped in diaphanous clouds of silk
gauze, dyed with the hues of the softest sunrise, and all dazzling
with pendent jewels and patins of gold.  She beamed on the hero, as
he advanced to her feet, and overwhelmed him with her praises and
fervent prayers for his return in triumph.  Nicephorus prostrated
himself before her, and seized the hand she permitted him to kiss.
She bent over him till her lips almost touched his head, and she
whispered in his ear, as her perfumed breath filled the soul of the
warrior to intoxication: "Come back to us, thou new Belisarius, in
glory, and thou wilt find in the Sacred Palace a more generous
Theodora.  Forget not that the savior of Rome is ever destined to
become its master!--master of Rome, and master of Rome's mistress."

Stunned by the manner of his reception, with these mysterious words
ringing in his ears, the chief bowed himself from the presence and
nerved his whole nature to the great task he had in hand.  His
officers and staff, after the prescribed ceremonies of presentation
and leave-taking were fulfilled, followed him to the port of
Boucoleon, with its marble quays and staircase, whence the barges in
waiting took them to their ships.  When the commander-in-chief and
his captains were on board and all was ready to weigh anchor, the
Basileus and Basilissa, each surrounded with a brilliant court,
mounted the imperial stand that had been built up at the water's edge
to witness the scene.  It was surely one of the most magnificent that
the eye of man had ever till that day beheld.  Far out to sea, across
that grand bay, now glancing in the morning sun and surrounded with
mountains, headlands, and distant towers and churches, the vast fleet
was spreading its colored sails.  The decks were crowded with
soldiers in various arms and accoutrements; some were the mail-clad
cataphracti, the Varangian guards, with huge axes and gilt corselets,
the Thracians in their stout jerkins of leather and sheepskins, the
Scythians and Russ in bearskin and sables, the Isaurian mountaineers
in white capotes.  The masts of the war-ships were topped with
emblems and banners of fantastic design, and their gilt and bronze
prows represented the gaping jaws of beasts of prey.  The shouts of
the captains standing on high in their turrets, re-echoed by the
boatswains below, as the anchors and hawsers were swung in to the
monotonous songs of the seamen, resounded across the waters.  And now
the rowers settled down in their benches and the huge sweeps slowly
began to plunge through the foaming waves in response to the rhythmic
beat of their leaders.  At the appointed moment the Basileus himself
gave the sign to the patriarch, who was stationed in a commanding
spot, surrounded by his prelates, clergy, deacons, choir, and
acolytes, who carried aloft the most venerated ikons, pictures, and
crucifixes that the sacred edifices could yield.

A profound hush then fell on the vast throng, and the rowers held up
their vessels on their oars, as one by one the captains ceased to
shout and commanded a solemn silence for prayer.  Then was heard far
across the waters the shrill voice of the aged Polyeuctus, blessing
the fleet and invoking the Divine aid, and ending with the "Holy!
Holy!  Holy!  Triune God and Blessed Mother of God, preserve in Thy
holy keeping this army and this fleet which goes forth to save Thy
people from the apostate children of Ismael!"  Then the choir took up
the words, and thrice repeated the invocation of the patriarch.  This
was followed by a hymn, wherein the immense body of monks, churchmen,
and catechumens joined, so that the volume of voices rang out across
the sea to the shores on the other side of the strait.  And as the
last notes of the choir died away, a roar of cheers broke forth in
endless bursts of farewell and godspeed from the hundreds of
thousands who lined the walls and terraces and who had been gathered
to see the great departure--from the point where the light-house
stands on the Golden Horn at the eastern corner of the city, round to
the shore of Hebdomon on the western plain beyond the walls.  As each
battle-ship and transport passed within hearing of the mighty roar of
voices, the crews and troops on board returned the shout, and the
trumpets and cymbals, drums and fifes, rang out their martial notes
with a crashing sound.  They were followed for some short distance by
crowds of light-sailing craft and gayly trimmed caiques, which
carried out to the fleet the holiday sight-seers from the city.  And
so, with wild hopes, resounding cheers, and solemn anthems of prayer
and blessing, the great crusade of the tenth century sailed forth to
do battle with the Saracen.

All through the day the vast fleet of war-ships and lighter vessels
kept on their southwesterly course in the bright sunshine, with a
gentle breeze that blew down the straits from the Euxine Sea, and
till late in the evening eager crowds from the city remained watching
the sight on the walls and on the open terraces above.  As the last
battle-ship disappeared in the offing they gathered in the fora and
porticos discussing the event, while the churches, shrines, and
wayside oratories were filled with worshippers in supplication and
silent prayer.  All through that eventful day, and far into the
night, the priests and monks throughout the city kept pouring forth
their endless chants and monotonous invocations to all the saints and
divinities in turn, amid ten thousand Trisagions and Kyries, clouds
of incense and procession of ikons.

But all this time of national exultation and hope, gloom and despair
hung heavily in the massive convents wherever women who had been
forced to take the veil as nuns lived out their dreary lives "with
the angels," as the euphemism in use would put it.  And in none was
there a deeper despair than in the Myrelaeon convent, where the
princesses Anna and Agatha were immured.  After the terrible scene
with their brother, as told in the last chapter, the queen-mother and
her five daughters had been dragged forth by the eunuchs and
cubiculars of the Sacred Palace and carried off to the convent of
Canicleion (or the Rubric).  It had once been the palace of the
magnificent Theoctistus, the finance minister, who held the vermilion
seals and had been murdered under Michael the Drunkard, when the
Basileus had converted his victim's splendid abode into a monastery.
Once within its fatal portals, the royal ladies were at the mercy of
the inexorable John, the abbot of the Stoudion, who had torn them
from the weakness of Romanus.  In spite of their protests, their
shrieks of rage, and on the part of the younger women their
convulsive struggles, the monk had their long hair cut short, their
royal vesture taken off; and while three sturdy sisters held them by
main force, they were dressed in the coarse brown serge robes of the
order of St. Basil.  They were literally dragged to the altar and the
mockery of the consecration service was gone through, the fanatic
John troubling himself little that the vows of the order were not
distinctly uttered by any of them, and were not uttered at all, even
as a pretence, by the two youngest princesses, who obstinately
refused to give any consent to the act of their immolation as brides
of Christ.

It was soon found that the queen-mother was so cruelly affected in
mind and in body by all that she had suffered that her very life and
reason were despaired of, and Romanus was easily induced by her
entreaties to suffer her to return to a secluded wing of the palace,
where she remained in strict retirement and a hopeless invalid for
the few months that she had still to breathe.  Nor did Theophano
herself offer any opposition to this, when she found the queen-mother
so utterly fallen from power and so feeble in body and mind.

The five princesses in the Canicleion nunnery were enabled to meet
and take counsel together, and by their prestige as sisters of the
reigning emperor, their rank as undoubted porphyrogennetoi, and their
own ability and force of character, they soon recovered much of their
influence.  It became known to the confidantes of the empress that
they were conspiring to recover their liberty and rank, that in spite
of all the exhortations and orders of the abbot, who insisted on
confessing them himself, they still retained in private their lay
dresses and habits, and obstinately declined to observe the fastings
and austere rules of the order to which they were supposed to be
vowed.  Secret friends and partisans of influence obtained the ear of
the politic Joseph, who thought it high time to have some
counterpoise to the ambition of the empress; and at length, by his
secret connivance, the good-natured Romanus was willing to mitigate
his cruel decree, and a tacit compromise was effected.  The
princesses were allowed to inhabit royal palaces and to receive the
appanages and privileges of their rank, upon their formal consent to
accept their consecration to the virgin life of professed nuns.  The
three elder princesses outwardly conformed to this arrangement.  They
were installed in the palace of Antiochus, near the Hippodrome and
the great church of St. Sophia, living like the noble and royal
canonesses of western Europe, but, except in the matter of betrothal
and marriage, not otherwise deprived of their imperial honors.  And
ultimately, as we know, the Princess Theodora became herself empress,
as wife of John Tzimisces.

The two younger princesses stoutly refused the compromise, and would
not accept the obligation of nunship; and Agatha, her father's
favorite and the most thoughtful of the whole family, insisted on
treating the ceremony of her consecration as a blasphemous mockery.
She persuaded her sister Anna to join her in the refusal.  Both of
them were therefore removed to a still more secluded nunnery, that of
Myrelaeon, a palace formerly built by their mother's father,
Lecapenus, when regent.  It stood on the upper reaches of the Golden
Horn, at the water-side, not far from the walls beyond Blachernæ.  In
that which once was the guard-room of old, a chamber which hung over
the sea and was far removed from the sights and gayeties of the city,
the Princess Agatha was immured as a prisoner of state, but even
there she was able to have occasional intercourse with her sister
Anna, and also with her aunt, the ex-Empress Augusta Sophia, widow of
Christopher, eldest son of Romanus Lecapenus.  She also, at the fall
of that family from the purple, had been consigned to the life of a
strict nun in the same convent of Myrelaeon.  It was, in truth, a
kind of suttee of Byzantine manners that the widow or discarded wife
of a fallen prince or noble should be consigned to a nunnery in some
secluded monastery near the capital.  The fall of the House of
Lecapenus had been so complete, and the good-will of the Empress
Helena towards her unfortunate sister-in-law was so effective, that
the ex-Empress Augusta Sophia was still able, through the old
adherents of her family, to obtain very considerable authority,
always short of her own delivery from the convent, which at her age
she no longer sought.

This night she was exerting all her powers of persuasion to induce
the sisters Anna and Agatha to accept the conditions of comparative
restoration to lay life to which the three elder princesses had
already consented.  She pressed them to remember the youth, generous
nature, and unquestioned autocracy of their brother, the emperor, the
hope of gradual improvement in their terms, and the danger of further
incensing so terrible a woman as the empress.

"Twenty years have passed," said the aged ex-empress, "since I, too,
was thrust from the Sacred Palace, where I once was honored as the
wife of a Cæsar.  I have grown accustomed to my quiet lot in my old
age, and I would not now exchange these sombre robes for those of an
Augusta, even if I could.  I, too, once had a proud spirit, but it is
broken and dead as I am to the world.  My sweet child, you will never
be able to endure the trial.  Yield to your brother, who with all his
faults has a heart to be touched, and you may yet find a happy life,
and, who knows, perhaps an illustrious marriage, worthy of your birth
in the purple and your royal race."

The clear-sighted Agatha might feel the worldly wisdom of her aunt's
advice, which had already brought the gentle Anna to the melting
mood, but the last words of the ex-Empress Augusta Sophia, about her
birth and royal race, touched a secret chord in the heart of the girl
who had so often quivered when she heard it said that few were fit to
mate with princesses of the House of Basil.

She flushed, and with a look of resolution and fire that would become
a virgin martyr, she replied: "Never will I dishonor myself and
forswear the teaching that my mother gave me, by consenting to treat
as a consecration to Christ the outrage inflicted on me when the monk
and his nuns forced on me the mockery of this garb.  I have poured
out my soul in prayer to my Saviour and to His Blessed Mother in
heaven.  They have heard my cries and my sorrows, and a spirit within
me has revealed it to my heart, that the good Lord Himself does not
vouchsafe to accept the forced sacrifice of his devoted handmaiden.
No, my dear aunt, they may imprison me, they may torture me, they may
kill me, but they shall never force me to profess myself by a lie the
bride of Christ!"  This conversation was now interrupted by the
entrance of one of the sisters of the nunnery who had been assigned
as attendants of the princess.  She came, she said, with a peremptory
message from the Abbot John himself, who required the immediate
presence of the nun, Sister Euphemia, the name given to Agatha "in
religion," in the confessional of the chapel.  This unexpected
summons the princess was inclined to defy, but her aunt warned her of
the danger of flagrant disobedience to the all-powerful prelate, and
the attendant sister whispered in her ear that a great surprise and
unexpected deliverance might yet be in store for her.  The princess
accordingly submitted to the command, and was conducted through the
corridors to the darkened chapel of the convent, where she took her
place on her knees in the accustomed place of confession.  The
prelate was already seated in his recess, and as usual had chosen to
cover his whole person in his monastic garb, and to conceal his face
in his cowl.

"My daughter," he began, in a voice purposely simulated and subdued
to a whisper, "I have called thee to confession to learn if thou art
still resolved to resist the superior of thy order, and to defy the
mandates of Mother Church in repudiating thy consecration to Christ
as His bride."

"Father, I tell thee plainly, for I will treat thee with more
frankness and with more courtesy than thou hast treated me--I am no
bride of Christ.  No threat and no cruelty shall ever force me to
utter or to act a falsehood, which I hold to be a profanation of His
holy name.  I am no bride in heaven--no, nor shall I ever be a bride
on earth," she uttered, with a deep sigh that she could not restrain,
and abruptly ended her half-spoken sentence.

"My daughter, hast thou indeed registered a vow to lead a solitary
life, and never to listen to the love of any man?" said the monk,
with a new eagerness in his voice, that seemed to tremble at his own
words.

"No man has ever sought my love, I tell thee," she said haughtily to
such a question, "nor will I, even in confession, bring my lips to
utter what Agatha might answer if he did.  If she ever had such
dreams, they are vanished in the black night that has fallen upon my
miserable life.  But what means, my father abbot, this sudden summons
to me this night, and what are my maiden dreams or vows to thee or to
thine?  Why am I here?  What is it that thou askest of me?"

"Royal lady," said the monk, now dropping his voice to an impassioned
whisper, "thy maiden dreams are all in all to one who loves thee
better than his own soul, and who is at this moment risking life,
torture, and mutilation, in the effort to protect and save thee.
Nay, do not start or flee, noblest, purest, bravest of women!  Steel
thy nerves to be still, and listen to our schemes to rescue thee from
this dungeon of the priests.  Nay, by the Mother of God! do not move
or cry out, for three sisters of the convent wait within sight of us,
and only one of them is in our plot.  Remain as thou art, and listen
to one who, on the field of battle, on the stormy seas, on the
solitary mountains of his home, has learned to pray to thy image
along with that of the blessed Agatha, whose name thou bearest, as
the true saint of his faith and his hope.  Listen to him now, for he
has come through fire and water to save thee!"

At the first words of this most startling address the maiden had
detected the manly tones of the young hero of her day-dreams, and
wild hopes and exultation thrilled through her veins as she steeled
herself to retain her attitude of a penitent, and to hear out the
mysterious story of the confessor.

"See who it is that has dared to seek thee thus," said he, as he
threw back the cowl and showed her the gallant features of Basil
Digenes, the Romanized son of the emir of Edessa.

"By the aid of the venerable princess, thy aunt and fellow-prisoner,
I have matured a plan of escape for thee.  Three of the sisters of
this convent are our confederates in the scheme, and by their help I
have succeeded to-night in assuming the part of thy tyrant, the
abbot.  My own lady-sister, Theodosia, as thou knowest, the wife of
the patrician, George Comnenus, is now in her summer palace on the
island of Proconnesus, where she will receive and conceal thee until
the heart of Romanus is softened, for the family of the Comneni is
too powerful to be defied.  To-night, at midnight, I will be waiting
beneath thy chamber window with two of thy ladies who served thee in
the palace, and a stout crew of boatmen.  The three sisters of this
convent who are entirely devoted to our service will supply thee with
fitting lay dress, and also with a rope-ladder to descend from the
window on to the waters below, where the boat shall be ready to
convey thee to my sister.  Thou hast heart for such an enterprise,
true daughter of the lion race of Basil, I know full well, if thou
canst trust the honor of the son of the Saracen," said the enamored
young hero of the marches, who, even in his stormy life of adventure,
had never embarked upon a more chivalrous escapade.  He gazed on the
maiden with a deep and rapturous appeal in his countenance.

Agatha paused and communed with herself.  Then without a word she
took the hand of the pretended confessor, and gently pressed it with
her own.

"And can Agatha learn to love him whom she has already learned to
trust?" said her ardent lover, as he kissed her hand again and again.

"It will be time to speak to her of love," she said, softly, "when
Agatha has put off the garb of Euphemia the nun.  But that I will do
this very night, with the help of Our Lady in heaven above.  Into her
holy keeping I commit my body and my soul!"




X

The Conquest of Crete

The scene now shifts to that magnificent island of southern Greece,
whence in prehistoric ages so many germs of ancient civilization had
been carried to the main-land.  The northern headlands and bays of
Crete were still wrapped in dim twilight, while a glorious sun of
July had tinted the topmost crags of Mount Ida, and its beams
gradually swept downward on to the lower ranges, upland pasturages,
woodlands, and teeming meadows of that beautiful island.  From point
to point, as the day rose, the eye caught sight of bands of swarthy
Africans, for the most part in white tunics, armed with spear and
sword, while mailed emirs in turbans and snowy burnoose hurriedly
passed from post to post across the glens.  Light-clad messengers on
quick Arab barbs dashed across the open spaces or scrambled up the
rocky path to some castle on its pinnacle of stone.  Far as the eye
could reach the whole coast seemed alive with excitement and moving
hosts.

From the bay that faces the petty islet then called Dia, a small band
of Arab spearmen were hurriedly dragging three bound prisoners to an
eminence which commanded a range of view both east and west.  There
was displayed on a lofty lance-head the streaming standard of the
chief emir, around whom were grouped camels and barbs with
embroidered housings, mailed warriors, and ebon footmen from the
Soudan.  When the party had dragged their captives to the commander,
by a gesture he ordered them to be brought to his presence, and
called for an interpreter to put his question in the Greek tongue.
The Emir Abd-el-Aziz, the governor of Crete, looked what he was, one
of the heroes of Islam in the long death-grapple which for seven
centuries and a half the Crescent maintained against the Cross of
Rome.  He well knew the vital importance of defending the island
which his creed had held for one hundred and thirty years.  All his
demands for help from the Asian side had been paralyzed by the
internal confusions of the caliphate of the East.  The urgent embassy
he had despatched to the great Abd-er-Rahman, the caliph of Spain,
had not yet returned.  Left with his single island force to meet the
mighty host and navy of Rome, he strained every nerve to resist the
Christians to the death.

"Who are these men, and where were they taken?" he asked the leader
of the band who had brought them--the captain, in fact, of one of the
corsairs which had scoured the Ægean Sea with such success.

"Last night," said the seamen, "as we were watching the advance of
the misbelievers, we sighted three of his despatch-boats on the
lookout for a good landing.  We cut off one of them, and after a
stout fight dragged the survivors ashore, Allah be praised!"

"What have you learned of the enemy's strength?" said the emir.

"We have sighted three squadrons, each of which is believed to
contain more than one hundred sail.  And they are within a few hours
of the coast."

"Require the prisoners to report the strength of the enemy and the
place where they seek to land.  If they speak, they shall be free to
serve the one God and His Prophet.  If they refuse, send for the
provost marshal and his men."

The alternative was duly interpreted to the wretched captives,
bleeding with their wounds and panting from the haste with which they
had been dragged.  A smile of defiance was their only answer.  The
two foremost prisoners were seamen from Chios; the third was no
soldier, but a landsman from Thessalonica, pressed into the service
of the oars.

One of the emir's staff now stepped forward and took charge of the
question.  "One!" he shouted; and as the prisoner neither spoke nor
moved, the provost marshal's men slashed off his ears and his nose.
Not a groan escaped the prisoner.

"Two!" he shouted, and within two minutes more the wretch was flung
on the ground and his eyes were gouged out in sight of his shuddering
comrades.

Silence ensued, broken only by the moans of the sufferer with his
muttered prayer to the Mother of God and the stifled groans of the
two who were awaiting the same fate.

"Three!" and all around held their breath to listen; but no sound
passed the Chian's lips, and he bit his lips to choke his moan.  A
deathly pause followed.  "Christ receive me," muttered the man.
Then, with a sign from the captain, a scimitar crashed through the
victim's neck, and his mutilated head rolled to the feet of his
companions in agony.

The sickening scene was repeated with the second Chian, who suffered
and died with the same stoical silence.

But as his head rolled towards the Thessalonian prisoner and covered
him with blood, the courage of the third man gave way, and with a
shriek he offered to disclose all he knew.

A long and close examination, carried on with no small persuasion
from the instruments of torture and mutilation so liberally displayed
by the provost marshal and his men, at length wrung from the prisoner
a full and fairly accurate description of the forces led by
Nicephorus, and also of the place and time in which they might be
expected to disembark.

The emir now called a council of war, and, giving his lieutenants his
final orders, sent mounted men in every direction to marshal his host
for the coming struggle.  The bay, with its sandy beach on which the
prisoners had been brought ashore, seemed the spot where the
Christian host would attempt to land.  And Abd-el-Aziz with
promptitude and skill arranged his forces in a circle round the
amphitheatre which commanded the bay.  He had hardly finished his
dispositions when the great fleet was descried in the offing, as in
three separate squadrons it bore down to concentrate in the bay.
Shouts of triumph, war-songs from a thousand throats, chants to
Allah, and the name of his Prophet mingled with the sound of horses
and camels and the orders and incitements of the emirs in command.

Slowly and in uniform mass the Roman fleet moved on, till it filled
the entire bay, and came so near the shore that the voices of the
captains could be heard on land.  The huge chelandion, The Archangel
Michael, the flag-ship of the commander, was in the centre, and from
it there was now sent forth a powerful barge propelled by twenty-four
oarsmen, on which stood Nicephorus in person to direct the entire
movement.  For a space, both mighty hosts waited in silence, watching
for the first opportunity to strike.  Then Nicephorus, bareheaded and
unarmed--for he had laid aside his helmet, corselet, greaves, and his
spear and sword--stood up at the prow of his barge, and, raising his
hands aloft, and gazing upward to heaven, offered in the sight of
Christian and infidel his solemn dedication of his force to Christ.

"Almighty Creator of this Thy universe, behold the army of Thy people
at the frontier of Thy enemies.  Look down on them.  Thou who canst
destroy with a breath the thousand towers of the ungodly, strengthen
the hearts of Thy chosen soldiers.  Root out from them any craven
fear.  Bring to shame the promises of the false prophets who set
themselves against Thee.  Show forth this day who is the true Peter
and who is the author of false lies.  Make manifest, O Lord, who it
is that is the camel-driver, who is the profligate, who is the
contriver of all craft and abomination!"

Such was the prayer reported in the iambics of Theodosius the deacon,
who was present in the expedition as chaplain on the high admiral's
flag-ship, and was full of thoughts to adorn the immortal _Iliad_ he
designed on "_The Capture of Crete_" in five cantos, which have come
down to us after a thousand years.  And in the same veracious poem we
learn that the ever-victorious commander of the crusade then caused
himself to be fully armed.  He put on his golden corselet and plumed
helmet, and, equipped with his buckler and mighty spear, he bade the
oarsmen row his barge along the line of battle-ships, while he thus
addressed his men in that voice of thunder which they knew and loved:

"Soldiers, captains, my friends, my children, fellow-servants of the
Most High, ye who are the sinews of Rome and liegemen of our
sovereign lord the king, look at this fair shore and island, with its
rich and fragrant pastures, valleys, hills, and bright towns.  Once
all these were part and parcel of our Rome, our fatherland--once they
were in the realm of our king.  Once, I say, in years gone by, till
sloth and vice betrayed them to the enemy, drove out our people and
gave them to the infidel.  Charge these barbarians, then, with a
stout heart.  Take their cities with your swords.  Take their women,
take their children, and their children's children.  Ye have nothing
to fear from their puny darts.  Ye need not be amazed if they do draw
your blood.  Wash out your sins with the red blood of the
misbelievers--these blaspheming savages.  They who fall will be
honored by our lord and master, who will amply provide for their
women and children.  This is my last word, men.  Hold your shields
firm and close.  Clinch your spears well in front.  Show yourselves
true sons of Rome.  Let not that great name be put to shame by you!"

While the chief had been speaking, the Saracen battalions had rapidly
drawn down to the shore, and were now arrayed in long, dense lines
round the bay, both horse and foot, prepared to contest the landing;
but their javelins were not powerful enough to reach the ships.

"Bowmen, advance!" now roared the admiral, and a hundred captains
re-echoed the order along the line.  Instantly a swarm of barges
advanced with long sweeps to the beach, each holding fifty bowmen
from the Thracian and Dyrrachian highlands, armed with the most
effective weapons of that age.  These poured upon the Saracens' lines
a rain of arrows and bolts so dense and deadly that it completely
broke the ranks of the defenders.  They fell back sullenly from bank
to bank, leaving the shore strewn with dead and wounded men, horses,
camels, and mules.

The gallant emir now reformed his broken forces on a higher range of
hills, just out of bow-shot from the ships.  Then they beheld the
advance of the main Christian host.  The ships were driven straight
on to the sandy shore, and from them descended masses of heavy-armed
foot-soldiers, with round bucklers, long spears, and massive
battle-axes.  Forming up in close phalanx, these Macedonian guards,
in hauberk and round helmets, fixed shield to shield like an iron
wall, and advanced in dense array to the charge.  They were led on
the right wing by the Russians and Norsemen of the imperial guard,
whose huge stature, fair, long hair, and gleaming halberds formed a
strange contrast to the lighter arms of the swarthy and wiry children
of the desert.

On came the Roman phalanx without a pause, for the slighter javelins
and missiles of the Saracen could make but small impression on the
closely locked wall of the Varangian shields.  In the midst of each
battalion was seen a bishop with his canons in stole, alb, and
chasuble, bearing aloft a crucifix of gold, ornamented with jewels
and enamel, and a fragment of the true Cross.  They broke forth into
a hymn to the Mother of God, whom they invoked to lead them on to
victory.  And in the hymn the mailed infantry of Rome joined; and
from ten thousand throats broke forth the prayer to Christ to aid His
soldiers against the miscreant railers of His holy name.  So they
marched steadily on to the foot of the hills, whereon the Hagarenes
were massed.  Then at the sound of "Charge!" with fierce yells and
shouts of "Rome!" "Christ!" and "Mary!" they rushed up the heights,
the warlike and poetic deacon tells us, "like mountain-lions," in his
enthusiasm as he watched them from his barge.

The lighter army of the emir could not stand the shock of this
tremendous phalanx, so far heavier in men, arms, and numbers, and
with all their courage and skill they wavered and fell back.  Then a
sight, strange, indeed, to these children of the desert, struck
wonder and dismay into their ranks.  It was a new device to which
Nicephorus and his engineers had given all their thoughts.  The bulky
transports of shallow draft, on which the cavalry had been stowed,
were driven ashore till they grounded on the sand.  Their bulwarks
opened, and from them were lowered by cranes broad and stout bridges,
which had been slung to the masts, so as to form a gangway from the
deck to the beach.  Thence poured out dense squadrons of cavalry
fully equipped with lance and mail.  They scoured the plain from end
to end as they slew the broken fugitives and the helpless wounded.
Foremost among these terrible horsemen were the cataphracti or
cuirassiers, mostly Sarmatians or Anatolians, from the Asian steppes,
clad in close-fitting coats and greaves of mail from head to foot,
and using alternately the bow, the sword, the light lance, and a
small, round shield.  These nimble and expert troopers cut up the
broken ranks of the Saracens, trampled down all who had turned to
fly, and left no living thing on the field where they had passed.

In the midst of the roar of battle the poetic deacon clung to the
commander-in-chief, who, now on his charger, and with his staff,
commanded the cavalry in person.  It was even now his chief care to
prevent his forces, in their heat, from becoming too far scattered
over the broken country.  He knew that with his vast fleet of
transports and barges the sea was a danger greater than the Saracen
army.  This was now effectually repelled and shattered.  The whole
ground they had occupied was strewn with their dead.  Far as the eye
could see, every village was in flames and every post of the enemy
was sacked and levelled.  Galloping to the nearest homestead,
Nicephorus sternly bade his men reform in order to re-embark.  He
ordered them to cease the wanton slaughter of women and children,
whom the Sarmatians and Anatolians were engaged in massacring like
sheep.  With his own hand he cut down a ferocious Cappadocian whom he
saw in the act of hacking to pieces an infant.

At this moment the general was attracted by the shrieks of a woman
who dashed out of one of the houses, the roof of which was already on
fire.  She was closely pursued by a band of wild, irregular horsemen
from the Caucasian border, who, furious and blood-stained, were
following her like hounds after their prey.  Her dress, which had
been that of the Moors, was torn in shreds, and only half concealed
her fair limbs and graceful form.  She rushed screaming to the
presence of the general, whom she addressed in gasps, but in the pure
Greek tongue.  "Save me, keep back these wretches!" she cried.  "I am
a Roman, the daughter of a senator, and a worshipper of Christ and
His Mother."  "Who art thou, my daughter?" said the chief.  "I am
Theodora, the only child of Cedrenus, once governor of Cappadocia.  I
was captured by corsairs while on a voyage across the Ægean Sea to
join my father, dragged to this island, where I have been for two
years the slave of the Emir Nazireddin, whose house these savage men
have sacked and burned."

"Hast thou forsworn Christ and His Holy Mother?" asked the chief.

"Never have I done so in thought, word, or deed, most noble lord,
though I have been forced to submit to the indignities and to listen
to the blasphemies of these unbelievers.  My master, who had wives of
his own creed, cared little what were the thoughts of a slave, or
what were her prayers."

"Are there many Roman women, Christians and virtuous, in like case?"

"There are hundreds in every town along the coast, who have been
seized in ships at sea or carried off from the storming of a seaport
in the empire.  This island must now contain at least twenty thousand
Roman women such as I am, forced to wear the garb of Islam and to
serve the followers of the Prophet--all young--for the rest they kill
off at sight as useless encumbrances."

"Go in safety and in honor, my daughter," said Nicephorus, gently,
"these officers of mine shall see to your protection."  His brow
darkened, and he called round him his chief officers and secretaries.
He said:

"See that this orgy be stopped and bring back my army to our ships.
This Christian and innocent girl is the daughter of my friend and
comrade--whose soul may God receive in mercy--and she was like to be
outraged and massacred by my own men under my very eyes.  Our work in
the Lord is not half done until we save and rescue these miserable
daughters of our people and bring them back to our country and to
Christ."

Nicephorus, whose life had been passed in continual battle with the
sons of Hagar, was far from sharing in the wild exultation of his
soldiers; nor did he at all believe that his first victory, however
brilliant, was enough to complete the campaign.  He well knew the
courage, the resolution, the fanaticism of the Saracens of the East,
and especially of the race which had held Crete for nearly a century
and a half against all the power of Rome.  He took up fortified
positions on the northern coast, supported by his fleet, which
blockaded every port.  He sent forth strong detachments to secure the
principal centres.  And he despatched a powerful force of cavalry and
mounted infantry under Pastilas, a general of valor and experience,
into the heart of the island, with strict orders to keep constant
watch both day and night against surprises, and to practise the
utmost caution against the wiles of the treacherous foe.

A terrible blow justified his warning.  For days Pastilas had been
sending despatches to report that his squadrons had swept everything
before them and had seized immense booty--horses, camels, cattle,
provisions, and valuables without limit--and were concentrating in
the great central plain, whence they would dominate the whole island.

Nicephorus sat late one night in his tent pondering his plans with a
map and studying reports of his scouts, when his officers gave notice
of a mounted messenger advancing at a gallop.  In a moment the
horseman, bedraggled, torn, and bleeding as he was, flung himself
from his foaming and exhausted mount, and threw himself down before
the chief.

"A great disaster, my lord general, an ambush, a rout of our force,
of which I am one of the few survivors.  Our commander and all his
officers slain.  Everything and every man the prey of the Hagarenes.
They drew our whole force into a trap, as it passed through a wooded
defile, and surrounded us on every side.  Pastilas died fighting like
a lion at bay.  But his entire command is destroyed, save a few
fugitives, of whom I am one."

"And my orders?" said the chief.  "Where were the scouts, the
outposts, the eyes of the general?"

"It is not for me, a plain captain of the Defensors, with the
reserve, stationed far to the rear, whence I could see and learn
little, to pass judgment on my commander.  And I fear me much that no
one of his officers in the main battle survives.  Pastilas had
captured and dispersed scores of the enemy's detachments, had swept
the land without a check, had seized horses, stores, slaves, women,
wine, and gold; and his men could not be held from revelry, riot, and
sloth."

Nicephorus listened in silence, with lips drawn tight, and breathing
hard.  He dismissed the messenger with a gesture, and groaned to
himself.  "Thus was Crete lost to Rome by our ancestors.  Thus will
Rome be lost to Christ, unless His people turn their hearts to
understand the desperate war they have to wage with the False
Prophet.  A brave man was Pastilas, who has served Rome and God right
well until this day.  May he find mercy above!  On earth he will be
remembered as one who brought this cause a second time to the verge
of ruin."

The chief had hardly overestimated the gravity of the situation.  The
Saracen hosts were now all drawn into their vast central citadel of
Chandax, whence they issued in continual sorties and raids both by
day and night.  The tremendous fortress was closely beleaguered, but
the strain of so great a siege wore down the Roman army, decimated by
three successive blows--the overwhelming of Pastilas, with the flower
of the cavalry, next the incessant sorties and ambuscades, and,
lastly, fever, cold, and want of food.  The magnificent host that had
set forth so proudly in midsummer from the Golden Horn had dwindled
to a third in the winter, and the immense stores it carried were
exhausted.  The Saracen stronghold was indeed at its last extremity.
But all through that terrible winter it was hard to say if the
defenders or the besiegers were in the worst plight or were the
nearer to famine and exhaustion.  Easter of 961 A.D. was at hand,
when, at the urgent demand of Nicephorus, a new levy was sent out
with adequate supplies under the command of Basil Digenes, the
Acritas, the chivalrous warden of the marches.  It was, indeed,
sorely needed.

The vast stronghold of the Saracens of Crete looked as proud and as
menacing as ever.  Chandax--so named from the fosse, within which the
first Mussulman conquerors of the island had intrenched themselves
one hundred and thirty years before--rose from a precipitous rock
overhanging the northern coast of the island; and in successive
generations it had been raised to be one of the most powerful
fortresses of the Eastern world.  Its huge walls were defended with a
long chain of lofty towers, from the battlements of which swarthy
bowmen shot down every living thing that approached the circuit,
while the gates and posterns would suddenly pour forth by day or by
night bands of light horse or foot which harassed the camp, burned
the engines, and cut off the pickets.

The Moslem fortress was now closely invested and cut off from all
succor by a range of trenches and earthworks running round it from
sea to sea, and it was attacked night and day by every device known
to the siege-train of the tenth century, an art in which the
Byzantines had preserved and greatly extended the traditions and
machines of old Rome.  All attempts to scale the lofty curtain with
ladders had been beaten off with fearful loss, after desperate
combats at all hours of day or night.  Protected by mantlets, hurdles
wattled with osiers and covered with hides, the besiegers had pushed
on their works close up to the walls, which they now battered with
huge rams and pierced with sharp-headed bores.  The rams were worked
each by some sixty men, who were protected by a pent-house of timber
covered with hides.  The bore had already loosened blocks in the base
of the wall, but the defenders within continually crushed the ram or
bore with massive stones, or seized the head with forked beams, which
caught it in a vise, while the rain of missiles from above, with
boiling pitch and every form of combustible, cut down the assailants
and destroyed their engines.  The losses within the city were equally
severe.  Protected by pent-houses, like the rams and bores, but
farther behind their earthworks, the Romans plied their huge
catapults, which hurled masses of rock and iron into the fortress,
keeping up an incessant bombardment.  They also used the balista, an
immense fixed cross-bow, which shot bolts with extraordinary force
and precision upon the battlements, whereon nothing living could
stand exposed without certain destruction.

From morn till night the commander-in-chief, with his principal
officers, inspected the works, ordered some new device, or searched
for some weak spot in the defence.  It was after a strenuous day in
the seventh month of the siege, as the sun was setting in crimson
glory behind the spurs of Mount Ida, that Nicephorus and his trusted
Digenes Acritas were watching the success of a new engine of assault
that had been prepared with great pains.  It was a tower of three
stages, constructed of massive beams protected by frames and hides
and crowned with a stout roof.  It was now being rolled forward on
broad wheels to afford means of scaling the walls.  The assault at
this moment was a terrific sight.  The catapults and balistas were
pouring out on the ramparts stones, bolts, and bombs filled with the
famous Greek fire.  The earthworks of the besiegers were garnished
with poles, on which stood impaled the ghastly heads of Saracens
slain in the sorties.  From time to time the ferocious ribaldry of
the camp led the brutal soldiery to hurl into the city these grinning
trophies of their slaughter, to appall their living comrades.  The
horrid jest of this day had been to hurl from the largest of the
catapults a living mule, in derision of the famine within the
citadel; and the Roman army roared with delight as the wretched brute
dashed quivering down upon the loftiest tower.

Nicephorus and his staff anxiously watched the slow advance of the
great wooden turret filled with troops ready to swing bridges,
planks, and ladders on to the rampart.  The whizzing of the missiles,
the shouts of the Romans, answered by barbaric yells from the walls,
the roar of the flames as, one after another, the engines of the
defenders or of the assailants caught fire, made a truly infernal
din.  "See! general," called out the warden of the marches, "the
turret is within twenty feet of the wall and on a level with the
rampart--fifteen!--ten feet!  Down with the scaling-bridge!" he
roared.  And crashing went the gangway from the front of the
pent-house.  But as he spoke, the soft earth in the newly filled
fosse whereon the turret stood gave way.  The gangway fell short, the
turret toppled and split.  The besiegers hurled on it bolts, rocks,
boiling pitch, and fire-balls; and presently it collapsed with a
sudden crash, and fell in a heap, mangling and burying the men inside
it and beneath it, and at once it blazed up a huge mass of burning
timber.  "No," said the field-marshal, "as I feared, no turret lofty
enough to overtop these walls can be brought up to work on such a
ground as this.  If rams and turrets fail us, we must fall back or
resort to a mine."

The destruction of the great, movable turret, on the success of which
such hopes and fears had been placed, caused the ranks of assailants
and defenders to pause for a space, while both were watching the
effect of the blazing pile.  A lull ensued in the storm of battle,
which was interrupted by a strange incident such as the superstition
of that age invested with supernatural effect.  On the battlement of
the topmost tower there now appeared the gaunt, dishevelled figure of
the wild woman who had long been known to both armies as the "Witch
of Nejd."  The Saracens devoutly believed, and the Christians with
terror admitted, that by intercourse with the infernal powers, and by
incantations that she inherited from Sabasan and pagan ancestors, she
could work spells on those whom she devoted to her Satanic spirits.
Her long, black hair hung round her loosely, in wild folds.  Her bony
arms held aloft a brazier, into which she dropped aromatic drugs, and
her loose robes floated in the wind as she shrieked out her
maledictions on the Christian soldiers beneath:

"Blaspheming followers of the Nazarene!" she screamed, "see the
foretaste of the blazing ruin that awaits your souls, even as fire is
now consuming your ruined turret.  Each flash from this pan is the
answer of my Lord, the mighty Sheitan of the world below, that ye and
yours--your women, your children, your cattle, and your goods--shall
be utterly consumed.  And you, proud, bloody, lecherous emir of the
Nazarenes, you shall be slaughtered like an ox on your own bed by the
foul woman to whom you have sold yourself.  In the name of the prince
of hell, I devote you all to death on this field, and to burning
torment in the world to come!"

"Shoot down the crazy crone!" cried the Lord Digenes.  "Who need
listen to her raving?  Why do the dogs cower at the screaming of a
mad gypsy?"  But not a man stirred.  The guards, the officers, even
the general himself felt a thrill of awe, which they could neither
explain nor suppress.

Silence ensued, till it was broken by the yells of the maniac, who
had now worked herself up into a delirious spasm, which in that age
passed for the inspiration of one possessed by demons.  Leo the
deacon and Theodosius the deacon devoutly believed in her diabolic
mission.  Both solemnly relate the tale.

Again she screamed aloud: "Accursed are ye, sons of the Crucified
Impostor!  Your bolts cannot harm me, the chosen paramour of Sheitan
himself; nor can your lying priests, nor the wanton, the Mother of
your God, avail to save you.  See me stand bare and unprotected in
the sight of your rotten shafts, bare even as when my lord from hell
visits me! you cannot touch a hair of my head nor the skin of my
body!  Shame, death, torment is your portion here and hereafter!
_Seeph--echeimat--ischarop--rhasan--sennet--midene--chaët--iphesane!_"

With these words, which no man in the Roman host could comprehend,
but which Theodosius solemnly rehearses, words which sounded to them
as the knell of their soul's damnation, the maniac fell into a series
of convulsions; and thrice repeating her "_Seeph-echeimat_," she
leaped on to the upper battlement, and then tore off her garments,
which she flung down in derision into the blazing heap below, and
there stood shrieking, in face of the two armies, covered only with
her long, black tresses.

"Shoot the blaspheming witch!" cried a voice here and there; and many
an archer raised his bow, but with the fear of the powers of darkness
in his heart, drew back without daring to take aim.

"_Seeph--echeimat!_" was yelled out a third time.  And at last an
archer (it is said from the Mongol mercenaries, who held Moslem or
Christian mysteries equally cheap) levelled his weapon steadily at
the witch as she stood with her bare body lighted up by the blazing
pile below.  The shaft pierced her breast, and with a shriek that
rang through the Moslem fortress and the Christian camp, the hag fell
headlong from the tower into the burning mass of the fallen turret,
and was there consumed to ashes--almost before the blood had ceased
to flow from the corpse.




XI

The Storming of Chandax

The strange scene had so deeply stirred the vague awe of the Romans,
and so fully engaged their attention, that in the gloom which
followed the dying down of the great fire they suffered themselves to
be surprised by a sudden sally of the Saracens.  A light band,
stealing out from a concealed postern, dashed upon the advanced works
and nearly captured Nicephorus, with his immediate staff.  Basil
Digenes, who had taken personal command of the ruined turret, was
actually surrounded, and after desperate feats of valor in
hand-to-hand combats, was struck down, wounded, and dragged back a
prisoner into the Moslem fortress.  There he was thrown into a
dungeon in the great tower which served as headquarters of one of the
chief emirs, to wait question by the chief of the staff himself.  He
strove to destroy any vestige of clothing or accoutrement which could
betray his rank or name; for he well knew that if the Moslems
discovered that he was the son of the renegade emir of Edessa, he
would suffer a more horrid death than that which, in any case, was
his almost certain fate.  Through the long hours of darkness he lay
on the stony floor, sore and stiff with his untended wounds, and he
faced the worst with a brave heart, calling upon Mary in heaven, but
thinking of Agatha on earth.

Beneath the narrow grating of the slit in the wall of his cell he
could hear the tramp of guards in the courtyard, and as he had
retained enough of his father's native speech to follow the Arab
tongue, he listened to rude jests about the fate which awaited him
when questioned by the emir, and loud disputes as to whether he was
an ordinary guardsman of the capital or an officer of rank.  "He is
not tall enough to be one of those accursed Russ," said one fellow.
"I saw on his side the baldric of a spathaire, as they call their
emirs," said another.  "I tell you, he had a ruby ring," cried a
third, "but some Syrian thief had stolen it before I seized him,"
said the last.  "We shall know all about it, at any rate, when 'Black
Malek' and his singeing tools have begun to loose his tongue!"  And
the coarse shout with which this sally was received rang harshly in
the young hero's ears.

It was still as dark as pitch when a faint streak of light seemed to
glimmer around the barred door; and the keen ear of the lord warden
detected the slow movement of the bolt, as if it were being
cautiously drawn back.  Was he to be assassinated quietly in his
sleep?  If so, well!  Thanks be for this to the Virgin Mother and the
saints!  He closed his eyes and feigned to sleep, with a muttered
prayer to be received in mercy by Christ in heaven.  Presently he was
aware of two figures stealthily approaching him.  "He sleeps
soundly," said a voice, in whispers.  "Allah be praised!" whispered
another voice, which sounded to the listener strangely like that of a
woman.  "Lift up the lantern, nurse; the wound I saw on him was a
deep gash in the left shoulder, made by a blow which had shorn away
his vest."  By the light of a borne lantern the prisoner could dimly
perceive standing over him the figure of a black Nubian woman, who
had sponge, bandages, and liniment with her, and was stooping down to
dress the wound.  Digenes forced himself to lie still and feign deep
sleep in order to hear more of this unexpected visit.

"Ah!  Is the young Nazarene dead?" came with a sigh from the other
woman, who had stood behind the door but now came forward
sufficiently to let the prisoner perceive a young and beautiful girl,
in the most elegant dress of a Saracen lady of high rank.  "Is he
dead, nurse?" she sighed again.  "Not dead, no, nor like to die, my
sweet mistress, not until his Excellency, your father, gives the
word, as I suppose he will at daybreak."

"Tend him now, at least," said the lady.  And the Nubian, with her
strong arms and practised skill, bathed, soothed, and bandaged the
wound, while the patient still maintained his semblance of slumber,
eager as he was to understand what miracle could have won for him, as
it seemed, the protection of the emir's daughter, who was evidently
now stooping to look at his face in the dim half-light.

"What is it can lead you, my darling lady, to bring help to this
cruel giaour, who is fighting against God and His Prophet--one, too,
whom your own father will assuredly put to a just death when he has
wrung from him all that he knows about the unbelieving host?"

"Hush, nurse, do what I tell you.  I saw our men last night as they
brought in this prisoner from the fight.  Behind our lattice I could
see his look, and was struck with amazement at what I saw.  He is the
very image of my own beloved brother, Hassan, who was taken prisoner
in the great battle round Tarsus and died in the castle of the
Armenian chief who had captured him.  But his last days were made
peaceful by the care of the noble lord, who had blood relationship
with our family.  I have longed to do as much for some captive
giaour--and here is one whom I can save."

"Oh, my dearest foster-child, this is a strange delusion," said the
slave-woman.

"I tell you, nurse, he is the image of my dear dead brother.  It is
marvellous, it is incredible, it is some special will of God.  This
young Christian officer--I am sure he is an officer of high rank--has
the same dark eyes, the delicate features, the olive tint, the raven
hair of my lost brother.  I tell you, nurse, as I saw him dragged
bleeding and haggard beneath my lattice, I thought I was looking on
my brother just before he breathed his last in the house of a kind
Christian chief.  It is not true, nurse, that they are all wicked and
savage.  There are Christian heroes as there are Moslem heroes, and I
am fain to think this noble youth is one of them himself.  In any
case, he shall not die if I can save him for my brother's sake!"

"Thanks, gracious lady, for that word.  We are not all savage, as
your brother found us, and as your heart tells you," murmured the
Akritas, in the sweetest intonation which he could give to such
Arabic speech as he still retained.

The maiden started up and rushed towards the door in her amazement
and confusion, when she heard such words in her own tongue from one
whom but a moment before she believed to be in his last sleep.  "Nay,
fly not, gentle maiden, fear nothing; I am your helpless and grateful
prisoner, but I, too, have known how to soothe the dying hours of an
enemy--a gallant Saracen; and from my own father I have the blood and
the speech of an emir as my inheritance--ay, and, I trust, something
still of the honor of that noble chief in my soul.  Fear me not,
lady, help me to die in peace, even as, in my father's castle, I
eased the dying hours of the young Hassan, the son of my own father's
sister."

"What is this?  Speak! who are you, then, if no giaour, and how come
you to be in arms against our people and our faith?"

"Lady, the Hassan, whose eyes I closed, and whom I buried with the
honors due to a gallant chief, was my own kinsman in blood, for I am
the only child of the emir of Edessa, Mousour, who forsook Islam when
he wedded the daughter of Prince Dukas."

"What!" cried the girl, quite beside herself with wonder and
excitement, "you are then cousin-germain to my own loved brother!
You are the lord who protected him!  This, then, is how it came to
pass that when I saw you I thought that my brother himself had
returned to earth and was before me.  Praise be to Allah, for in
spite of your faith and mine we are of one blood, and your father and
my mother were brother and sister of one house; and Allah in his
mercy has brought us at last together, so that blood of yours shall
not lie at our door after all, if the word of Fatima can suffice to
prevent this crime!"

Crimson with blushes and panting with excitement as the terrible
nature of her promise struck her mind, the Saracen maiden fell on her
knees before the prisoner, and, taking his right hand in hers, she
raised it solemnly to her lips, as she uttered to her God a silent
vow.  Then she gave the hand she still held a gentle but meaning
pressure, and rose up in haste.

"Come, nurse, haste! bring these things away.  There is much to be
done.  Everything has to be arranged within an hour.  Prisoner, who
stood friend to Hassan in prison, remember that Hassan's sister will
be friend to you, or will die in the attempt!"

The fair Fatima in fact persuaded her father that, her Nubian nurse
having been summoned to save the prisoner's life that he might be
questioned, it had been ascertained that he had Saracen blood in his
veins, but had been brought up from youth among the giaours.  If he
were carefully nursed back to life and his wounds dressed he might be
led to return to the faith of his Moslem ancestors, and would then
prove of great service to the defence by what he could reveal.  The
emir, absorbed in the cares of his desperate situation, and having no
reason to suppose that he had in his power a prisoner of importance,
consented to the man remaining in his dungeon, under guard, and
permitted the Nubian nurse to visit him and care for his life, if she
had any means of so doing.

When it was supposed that the prisoner was sufficiently restored to
bear examination, he was carried, chained to two stout guards, into
the audience-chamber of the emir-in-chief, Abd-el-Aziz, whom the
Byzantine historians call the kouropas--a curious corruption of
curopalatas, which itself is a corruption of curator palatii, or lord
high chamberlain.  The kouropas was seated on a curiously carved
throne, in a hall hung with arms, Persian carpets, and embroidery,
and was surrounded by a fierce band of officers and orderlies.  He
had already ordered the execution of some prisoners taken in the late
sortie, and Digenes was about to be dragged into his presence, when
an officer rushed forward to announce that the envoys he had
despatched at the beginning of the siege to the Caliph Abd-er-Rahman
in Cordova were just returning with ambassadors from the great
Ommeyad, the powerful sovereign of the West.  As the city of Chandax
was so closely invested, the Spanish Moors had only with great
difficulty and hair-breadth escapes found their way to the walls; and
at last they had been drawn up to the ramparts in baskets hung out
over the fosse by a crane.  The kouropas ordered them at once to be
admitted with all possible ceremony, and rose to do honor to the
representatives of his powerful fellow-believer, and, as he hoped,
his ally.

After the customary salaams and exchange of compliments, the
ambassadors were seated and opened their business, to which Digenes
listened, as he was thrust aside behind a throng of guards and
officials.  The two envoys of Abd-er-Rahman reported that their lord
and master had despatched them from Andalusia in two of his swiftest
cruisers to ascertain the condition of their brethren in Crete.  They
had been shocked to find to how terrible a strait they were reduced.
The giaour was master of the whole island.  Far and wide the Saracen
cities had been sacked and occupied.  The land had been ravaged, and
the bones and goods of the true believers lay scattered over the
fields.  Chandax itself was closely invested, and was on every side
being bombarded with powerful engines.  They saw with horror and pity
as they passed through the streets crowds of country people who had
taken refuge within its walls, old men, women, and children, in sore
destitution, pinched with cold and hunger and cumbering the
market-place with dead and dying.  And, even while they were trying
to force their way through the giaour lines outside, they had
witnessed a ghastly scene.  A helpless crowd of infirm men, children
reduced to the state of skeletons, and women dragging moaning infants
beside them, were forced out of the city as "useless mouths," driven,
as sheep are hunted by wolves, to the enemies' lines, from which
again they were forced back by the bloody Nazarenes with curses,
blows, and weapons, so that they lay down, gasping, in the trenches
now reeking with rotting bodies of men and beasts.  It was a hideous
sight.  And however anxious was the caliph of the West to succor his
kinsmen and fellow-believers in the Prophet, it seemed hopeless to
enter on so desperate an enterprise in a crisis so appalling.

"Noble envoys of the great caliph in Andalusia," said Abd-el-Aziz,
"we are indeed sore bested, but our case is not yet hopeless.  We are
reduced to a remnant of fighting men, but we are sworn to defend this
city or die; and to keep a remnant alive and fit for arms, we have to
sacrifice those who cannot fight.  They, too, are martyrs to our
faith, and God in His mercy will not suffer them to perish forever.
There is still hope left; for we learned but a few days ago that the
imaum of west Africa has succeeded in landing a large force of
gallant Moors, who even now are advancing with haste and will attack
the unbelievers in the rear."

"If ye can maintain your defence yet two months longer," said the
Spanish envoys, "our master will endeavor to give you succor or offer
you a refuge.  His fleets scour the western sea from the island of
Sicily, but he is not yet prepared to make war on the sovereign of
Roum."

But at this moment a fresh despatch reached the kouropas, to the
effect that by a sudden night march Nicephorus had fallen unawares on
the African army of relief, had surprised them in their tents and
bivouac, and had annihilated the entire command and taken all their
stores, arms, and munitions of war.

A spasm of rage, grief, and disappointment ran through the council
when this news was made known; and the hall was a scene of frenzied
excitement and almost of panic as they saw how the wisdom of the
politic Abd-er-Rahman was justified, how little could be hoped from
the side of the Spanish caliphate.

The kouropas rose with an air of heroic resolution and calmed the
storm.  "Illustrious envoys of the mighty caliph of the West, emirs,
officers, and soldiers of the Prophet--we have sworn to defend this
city of the true believers to the last drop of our blood.  If the
great ones of our faith in Spain, in Asia, or in Africa come not to
our help, we Moslems of Crete will fight the Nazarene while we can
hold our swords.  We will never be slaves to the foul brood that eats
swine, that worships stones and painted boards, that prostrates
itself to a wanton.  Sons of Islam, if we are to die, let us prepare
for the Galilean a bloody victory!"

In the mean time the Roman commander-in-chief, sore grieved at the
loss of his young lieutenant-general, the akritas, and made anxious
by the determined energy of the enemy and his own daily losses, was
indefatigable in his efforts to force the siege to a triumphant end.
He was now pressing on the device of a mine, since he found that his
movable turrets could not overtop the wall, nor his rams or his bores
suffice to shake it.  For a month his engineers had been at work on a
deep mine beneath the curtain that lay between two principal towers,
where at last he had detected a soil soft enough to be pierced by
mining.  The main circuit of the wall rested on impenetrable rock;
but now he had found a bit which, with incessant labor, it was
possible to traverse.  A vast, subterranean chamber was now prepared,
supported only on beams, which, on the appointed day, could be
destroyed by fire.

It was now ready for the great assault; and during the night the
whole Roman forces had been marshalled in their respective posts.
The catapults and balistæ were plied with new vehemence.  The air
rang with missiles of every kind--rocks, bolts, darts, and bombs of
Greek fire.  Nicephorus traversed the ranks, calling on his men to
smite these blaspheming sons of the concubine--these Ishmaelites, who
eat unclean camel's flesh and pollute themselves with a multitude of
women, who revile Christ and His Mother, who murder the innocent, and
practise all the abominations of the great Impostor.  Christ and His
Holy Mother would welcome in Heaven all who fell in this sacred war
against the infidel, and their king in Rome would honor and reward
them on earth.

His engineers now reported to the general that the great mine was
quite ready to be fired when the order should be given.  Thereupon
Nicephorus ordered a solemn service to be performed.  He had caused
an army of artificers to be sent from Constantinople, who had raised
a church in an incredibly short time (Michael of Attala, the
historian, solemnly tells us that it was miraculously built in three
days).  It was placed in the rear of the camp, behind an eminence
which concealed it from the city.  It was a miniature Santa Sophia,
with a spherical dome, marble columns, bronze doors, and mosaic
pictures similar to the old Byzantine churches still standing in
Greece.  It was, of course, dedicated to the Immaculate Virgin, and
it was filled with emblems and figures of the warrior saints, but it
long bore the popular name given to it by the soldiers--the "Church
of the Lord General."  There Nicephorus was wont to worship daily,
but on this eventful day he chose to attend the service with more
than ordinary state.  In his most resplendent uniform, with his gilt
corselet, his plumed helmet, and burnished greaves, he called round
him his principal officers and the entire body of the priests and
chaplains of the army.  From the church he issued forth in a
brilliant procession, both military and sacerdotal.  On his white
charger he rode forth, followed by his staff, and surrounded by
priests, choristers, and acolytes, bearing the golden crucifixes,
incense, miraculous ikons, and the host in chased ciboria of gold and
jewels.  General and priests visited each post and detachment in
turn.  The priests pronounced absolution and gave the holy wafer, and
offered to the fervid kisses of the soldiers on their knees the
relics of martyrs in their encolpia, the jewelled lockets they
carried hung by chains round their necks.

Nicephorus again harangued them, galloping from post to post.  "Their
royal master, Romanus, had offered rewards of valor to all who should
distinguish themselves.  These holy servants of Christ here, with the
bones of martyrs and the body and blood of their Saviour in their
hands, promised the palm of martyrs and the glory of heaven to all
who should fall in the fight.  Smite these black sons of the False
Prophet, these revilers of God's name, these miscreants who commit
their abominations to-day in the holy spot where Mary our mother
first laid on earth the Divine Child, begotten of the Father; nay,
they polluted the hallowed sepulchre wherein the apostles laid their
crucified Lord and Master.  Smite and spare them not, sons of Rome
and followers of Christ, even as the children of Israel smote the
sons of Amalek and the brood of Goliath!  Smite--for God in heaven
with His holy ones this very hour is looking down on each of you from
heaven above!"

And then Nicephorus, carried beyond himself into something like
religious illusion, broke into a rhapsody which raised the enthusiasm
of his men to white heat: "I see," he cried, "the heaven opening
before my eyes.  There sits in glory the Immaculate Mother of God: I
see her smile on you the assurance of her divine protection!"  The
chief dismounted, and taking off his helmet, he prostrated himself
thrice on the bare rock, as if he stood before the altar of God.
Then rising, and raising his hands in an attitude of adoration, he
cried: "See the Blessed Mary of Victory as she beckons us to march
against the infidel!  See Christ, the Son, the Creator of heaven and
earth, raising His holy hands to bless you, and to promise you His
Help.  See! around the Saviour stand there St. Demetrius and St.
George, both in golden cuirass, St. Theodore, and the archangel
Michael with his flaming sword.  Soldiers!  Romans!  Christians! can
ye not see the white wings of the mighty archangel beating the air as
he sweeps on in front of your lines?  Can ye not see the flaming
sword that led the angels on to victory against the rebel crew of
Satan, as it points to you the path to victory and to glory?"

A deep and muffled roar ran along the Roman lines as the general
resumed his helmet and his charger; for in that age of imaginative
excitement and religious passion the troops were as easily brought to
believe they saw in the white clouds, tinted with the morning sun,
the figures of the celestial host, as truly as their commander in his
zealous trance had believed himself to have seen them.  The strain on
the mind of Nicephorus, who alone knew the intense crisis of that
moment, was almost unbearable.  He had just sent the order to spring
the mine by firing the props of timber.  As he rode forward to watch
the issue an appalling crash rent the sky.  The two main towers
heaved, toppled, and fell in masses into the fosse below, dragging
with them nearly the whole of the curtain of wall between them, with
battlements, engines, and defenders in one ghastly heap, and from the
fragments clouds of dust rose up, which covered both the city within
and the attacking forces without.

And now, before they could see each other, swarms of wild Saracens
rushed forth over the debris and from the gates of the city, suddenly
thrown wide open.  Haggard dervishes in white vests flung themselves
madly on the Roman spears.  Arab horsemen, on foaming chargers,
dashed into the advancing columns; turbaned emirs in gleaming coats
of mail frantically cheered on their men to slay the dogs who ate
swine's flesh and reviled the Prophet, promising the gold of the
infidel camp to those who survived and the houris of paradise to
those who fell.  Abd-el-Aziz, the commander-in-chief, passed from one
corner of the field to the other, while the gigantic Emir
Ben-Senoussi, the captor of Digenes and the father of Fatima, charged
full at Nicephorus himself.  The tremendous duel for an instant
arrested the attention of both sides.  Spurring his powerful charger
to his utmost speed, and couching his lance, Ben-Senoussi rode at the
general, who was now equipped in his full panoply.  As the Bedouin
bore down on him, Nicephorus caught the lance dexterously on his
shield, and caused it to swerve aside without piercing the weapon.
Then, as the huge Saracen came abreast of him, the general swung his
mighty falchion straight on to the turban of his adversary, and clove
him in twain down to the chine.

With a roar of joy, and triumphant shouts of "Rome!" "Mother of God!"
"St. George!" "St. Theodore!" the Roman army dashed on, slaying the
dervishes in heaps, and pouring over the fallen wall and through the
breach and the still open gates.  The kouropas had been swept back by
the tide of victors and defeated in the _mêlée_, and still with
heroic determination he directed the combat within the walls.  It had
now become a pitiless struggle from house to house, from one winding
alley to another.  All day long the bloody work raged on.  As each
house was stormed all within it were massacred, and it was then
burned or destroyed.  Neither age nor sex was spared.  Portable
valuables were seized; that which could not be carried was destroyed.
Lust, rapine, slaughter ruled unbridled.  Violation did not save the
women who were victims of the license, nor did innocence and
helplessness avail to save the children of the accursed race.  Hell
was enacted in all its atrocities in the name of Christ and for the
honor of the Immaculate Mother of God.  Here and there was heard the
voice of a priest chanting a hymn from the psalm of David: "Thou
shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces
like a potter's vessel."  "The Lord shall swallow them up in His
wrath, and the fire shall devour them."  "O daughter of Babylon, who
art to be destroyed!" "Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth Thy
little ones against the stones."

Long did the infernal orgy of destruction, rape, torture, and murder
run riot through the length and breadth of the doomed city of the
Saracens.  But in the afternoon, as the sun was setting, the
generalissimo of the Romans succeeded in quelling the outbreak.  He
had been detained on the field in order to protect his own rear,
which was threatened by some roving bands which had made a circuitous
advance on to his camp.  Now he rode into the thick of the street
fight, ordering the promiscuous slaughter and destruction to cease.
He directed tried officers of his own to collect and protect the
booty seized, with orders to execute all soldiers taken in the act of
rape, plunder, or massacre.  Coming suddenly on a soldier in the very
act of mutilating a girl whom he had already raped, the general
ordered a sergeant to arrest him, have him flogged, and his nose cut
off.  As he passed on, his officers reported that the soldier, with a
bag of gold that he had just plundered, had bribed the sergeant to
remit the punishment and let him escape free.  Flagrant
insubordination such as this always roused the passion of Nicephorus.
He instantly ordered the same punishment to be inflicted on the
sergeant which that officer had failed to execute on the original
offender.

As he rode up to the gateway of one of the central habitations, the
general found a group of fierce irregulars from the Euxine steppes
attacking a man who was defending himself with nothing but a light
buckler and a Saracen scimitar.  He stood at bay, with his back to
the wall in a corner of the court-yard, apparently protecting a girl
in Moorish dress, who lay fainting on the ground at his feet.  The
gallant swordsman, who looked more like an Arab than a Roman, was now
bleeding from three wounds, and was nearly overpowered by the wild
fellows who had surrounded them.  "Back, you ruffians!" he shouted in
Greek: "I tell you I am a Roman, and an officer on the staff of your
commander, and have been a prisoner here in the enemies' dungeon!"
But the Tartars, who knew no Greek and judged him by his look and
dress to be a Saracen, redoubled their strokes, and were on the point
of completing their work by slaughtering him and ravishing the girl.

What was the amazement of Nicephorus when, in spite of the blood on
the swordsman's face and his Saracen costume, he recognized his
beloved Digenes Akritas, whom he saved in the last moment, driving
back the Tartars with curses and threats.

"Arrest these miscreants!" he shouted to the provost-marshal, "who
dishonor the victory of Our Lord the King, and shame the favor of Our
Virgin Mistress in heaven.  Take this girl, be she Moslem or
Christian, and treat her in all honor.  My beloved brother-in-arms,
who art risen from the grave, they shall take you to my tent and
attend to your wounds.  I must hasten forward to hold these demons in
hand.  Carry my orders to my captains as peremptory on pain of death
to stay this massacre and prevent further plunder and riot, or Christ
above and His Immaculate Mother will visit us sorely, in that we have
turned the victory they have given us into abominations that the
infidels themselves could not surpass in sin."




XII

Digenes and Fatima: Roman or Saracen

The energy and stern determination of the lord general, whose iron
discipline was feared by the wildest Mongol horsemen in his motley
host, gradually restored order and regular government through the
vast encampment of the victorious Romans.  The immense treasures
which Chandax contained, the plunder of a century and a half of rich
and beautiful cities on the Ægean coast and its islands, were placed
under adequate guards, and were carefully distributed into proper
departments for sale, reward, or display.  A portion was reserved to
adorn the triumph of the general on his return to Constantinople.
Other portions were set apart for the prize of the various
commanders, squadrons, and soldiers who had actually taken part in
the late battles; but far the largest portion was sold by auction at
authorized marts for the benefit of the state, the officers, and the
forces engaged.

The general himself from time to time would ride round the lines of
cantonment to inspect the conduct of his officials and the behavior
of his men, and to satisfy himself that his orders were fulfilled to
the letter.  His staff and orderlies followed him in a brilliant
cavalcade; and by his side was usually to be seen his beloved
Digenes, the warden of the marches, now almost restored from the many
wounds he had received from Saracen and from Roman, but still bearing
a scar across his chiselled cheek, and with his left arm suspended in
a silken scarf.  Nicephorus glowed with pride as he passed from one
orderly camp to another, and noticed how completely the rage of
battle and the hurricane of license had given way to a scene of
peaceful business as regular as could be seen in the bazaars of the
capital itself.  The military police patrolled every corner of the
encampment, and strong bodies of civilian merchants, salesmen,
experts, and traders, such as usually followed a great Roman army,
were busy appraising the booty, or putting it up for sale and
exchange.  The immense stores of coin, nearly all of them golden
bezants from the Roman mints, which had been discovered in the vaults
of the Arab government, were now being registered and placed in safe
keeping for the use of the royal exchequer by skilled fiscal officers
of state.  The gold and silver plate, the jewelled ornaments, and
many of the rarest embroideries, carpets, and tapestries--for the
most part plundered in piratical descents on seaboard cities of the
empire--these were reserved to be borne in procession when the
triumph in the Hippodrome was to be celebrated.  And with these were
set apart for the same show specimens of arms and armor, jewelled
turbans with aigrettes and plumes set on steel helmets, chain
coats-of-mail, fringed pennons, kettle-drums and brass trumpets,
Bedouin chargers of rare beauty, snowy-white, with sweeping tails and
heads as delicate as those of a gazelle.  Camels, and white asses of
rare Arabian breed, and Nubian slaves, gigantic in body and grotesque
in countenance, their ebon limbs circled with massive rings and
loosely clad in white tunics, formed many a fantastic and motley
group.

Abd-el-Aziz, the aged commander, or kouropas, as the Romans called
him, along with his son, the gallant Anemas, were set apart and
placed in tents beside headquarters, under the immediate supervision
of Nicephorus.  They, too, were to be borne in the triumphal
procession and offered to the autocrat to await his good pleasure.
And with the venerable chief and his son were reserved for the same
occasion the most distinguished men and most beautiful youths and
maidens of his family and household, all of whom the general had
strictly ordered were to be treated with the utmost respect and
generosity, and provided with everything proper to their rank.

The ordinary survivors of the Saracen city, and the immense booty of
all kinds, which, in spite of the destruction, the fires, and ruin of
the three days of storm, had been collected by the officers charged
with the duty, were now being sold by auction.  Garments, ornaments,
utensils, fabrics of every kind and of every factory, both of the
East and the West, were strewn about and held up for inspection in
picturesque confusion.  A few of the wealthier officers gathered
round the platforms of the auctioneers to pick up any article which
took their fancy; some of the soldiers here and there thought they
could recognize an ornament plundered from a home they had once
known; but for the most part the buyers were professional traders
who, like vultures after a bloody field, had swooped down on the spot
from far and near: Jews from Syria and Egypt, Armenian brokers from
the Golden Horn, renegade Moslems from Damascus and Acre, exiled
Latins from Amalphi and Palermo, Hellenes from Corinth, Italians from
Venice and Bari, and Slavs from Adrianople and Dyrrachium.

It was not at all a mere auction of stuff, ornaments, and household
goods.  The really useful beasts, whether camels, horses, or asses,
had been already requisitioned for the army by the imperial
officials.  The refuse of the cattle, which was not worth the
transport, was offered to the highest bidder, and now could command
but trifling prices.  But the bulk of the ordinary sales were those
of living prisoners of war.  By the laws of war, as accepted in that
age between Christians and Moslems, the entire population of a city
taken by storm was destined to slavery.  Certainly, slavery had been
the recognized lot of the Christian population that was not put to
death on capture of a city by the Saracens.  An immense proportion of
the males able to bear arms in Chandax had been slaughtered in battle
and in the murderous scenes of the three days' storm.  It was too
true, also, that no small part of the aged and infirm, the children
and infants of both sexes, had shared the same fate.  There still
remained thousands upon thousands of women and girls who were worth
buying, and a certain number of youths who could command a price.
The Arab historians, with exaggeration characteristic of the age,
calmly record that two hundred thousand males were slaughtered, and
as many women and youths sold as slaves.  But it cannot be denied
that, law and religion to the contrary, day by day, and week after
week, the sales of women, girls, and youths were continued, and that
of these all who had beauty, strength, and aptitude of any kind for
work, charm, or art, were eagerly contended for by the professional
merchants in human flesh.

One of the strange incidents of the sales, and the source of constant
disturbance, arose from the claim of many of the prisoners, both
girls and youths, that they were Christians and Romans who had been
abducted in childhood and sold as slaves.  Many of these had, more or
less, lost the use of their Greek tongue, and in dress, manners, and
ideas, were practically naturalized Saracens.  The plea was
continually resisted by the merchants, and was, no doubt, very often
used in fraud; but the vehemence of the protests, and the eagerness
of the captives to prove their Christian faith and their Roman birth,
gave rise to perpetual disputes.  One of them was in full cry as the
general and his staff, with Digenes by his side, rode round the
principal slave mart in the camp.  Seeing the general approach, a
beautiful girl, already set on the stage to be inspected by the
buyers, with loud shrieks invoked the protection of the chief.  She
herself, her younger sister, and a brother, all three included in the
next lots, had been carried off from the island of Melos when it was
raided by a Saracen fleet fourteen years ago, in the reign of
Constantine.  The girl had so far lost her Greek speech that it was
difficult to follow her at all; and her brother and sister had lost
it altogether.  Nicephorus turned to Digenes to question the maiden
in Arabic and to ascertain if she were really of Roman birth and
Christian faith--a task which the lord warden, with his own mixed
blood and training, was peculiarly fitted to fulfil.

"What is your name, my daughter, your home, and your age?" asked the
lord warden, in a tone of paternal encouragement.

"I am Zoe, as my mother called me as a child--but they call me here
Zainab.  I was seven years old, I think, when these cruel men carried
me off in a big ship, but I can remember my home by the sea-coast."

"Was it in the country or in a city, my daughter, that you dwelt?"

"In a city called Melos, that looked out towards the rising sun," she
said.

"And what could you see from your home?"

"Oh, I well remember how we would climb a hill behind our town and
see the sun rise over the pinnacles of many islands that seemed to
cover the sea like stars in the sky at night."

"Was the island flat, or full of hills and rocks?"

"Oh, I remember how we used to climb the rocks where goats fed and
where vines grew, and there was a large fountain of hot water, in
which we used to bathe, and the marble steps in a circle, which they
said the old Greeks built for shows, and caves in the rocks where we
would play at hide-and-seek.  Yes, on clear days in the setting sun
we could see the far-off mountains.  We were a day and a night in
that dreadful ship, lying in the hold without air or water, before
those savage men, who killed father and mother, brought us here."

"Enough!" said the lord warden, and he turned to the general: "This
girl clearly remembers Melos as her home; it is the westernmost of
the Cyclades, whence all these islands can be seen, and the main-land
of Greece in the far west; it has volcanic rocks and hot springs, for
I have touched on the island myself.  No Saracen girl could know all
this.  She and her little sister and brother must be all Christian
captives, for all her Saracen look and speech."

And so, amid the cries of joy of the rescued captives, the grumbling
and disputes of the captors, merchants, and auctioneers, and the
noisy gossip of the curious crowd, the general's cavalcade passed on.
And at every mart similar questions as to living or inert property,
angry altercations between soldiers and civilians, were brought
before the summary tribunal of the staff.

As they rode slowly back from the hubbub of the camp, Nicephorus
called Digenes to his side, out of hearing of his followers.  "I have
now matured the scheme," he said, "on which I intend to despatch you
on a mission, my dear warden, as the man most fit to bring it to
success.  As I told you, his Imperial Majesty has given me full
powers to send an embassy to the caliph of Spain to arrange a modus
vivendi, as our civil lawyers call it, in our respective conquests as
to our prisoners of war.  Saracens have conquered and hold effective
possession of the noble island of Sicily, as we have now conquered
and hold possession of Crete.  In both islands large masses of the
peasants and working-people belong to the race and creed of the
former masters, and in both islands there are tens of thousands of
men and women in slavery who have been struck down from freedom and
comfort by the fortune of war.  The caliph of Cordova also holds tens
of thousands of our brethren.  I have had a scheme prepared by
learned and adroit protocolists from Constantinople to arrange terms
of reciprocal treatment on an equal footing.  And we shall begin by
an exchange of important prisoners.  I have chosen you, my dear
akritas, to head the embassy, for you are not yet strong enough to
undertake any warlike service."

"My honored lord," cried Digenes in surprise, "if I am not fit to
hold a sword, I am the last man in the army to be intrusted with
protocols and imperial rescripts in vermilion text.  Put the charge
on one of the imperial eunuchs from the Purple Chamber."

"My dear warden, I have cared for all that.  The treaty and its
clauses and provisos will be the task of the civilian diplomats who
will be in your train.  Your name, your birth, your knowledge of the
Saracen tongue and manners make you indispensable for this service.
The flower of our Roman chivalry will be persona grata in the
brilliant court of Abd-er-Rahman, the caliph at Cordova, and will
make the task of the diplomats more easy."

"And has the lord general, 'the victorious,' at last begun to see
some good things as possible in the blood of Hagar?" asked Digenes,
with an arch smile.

"I have never denied, my son, the courage or the devotion of the true
children of the False Prophet, even when I saw this courage and
devotion to be inspired by the author of all evil himself.  They and
we must fight it out to the bitter end.  But in this secular warfare
there are truces, settlements, and agreements inevitable and serving
the good purposes of God and the Mother of God, such as help to the
saving of many a soul.  Our royal master himself has sent embassies
and made treaties with the great caliph, and I am obeying his orders
and following his example."

"But what particular part am I to bear in the mission?" said Digenes.

"You are to show these proud emirs of the East that they have nothing
to teach us Romans in all the courtesies of chivalry, or the romance
of knightly life.  And there is another duty for which my courtly son
is specially fitted.  Our mission will include, besides the customary
presents and offerings of horses, jewels, and robes, a select band
from the noblest of the Saracen families, both men and women, who are
to be restored to their Saracen kinsfolk in token of our honor and
good faith.  Who so fit for a charge so delicate as the hero of the
eastern marches?  The chief of these will be Fatima, the orphan
daughter of the giant emir, who fell by my hand in single combat.
She is to return to her people with a sister and a child brother,
with other kinsfolk of her own, and her women attendants and slaves."

"Choose some other as her guardian, my lord general," said Digenes,
rather shortly.

"St. George! what is this?" said the general, with a grim smile.
"Are you not old friends?  Little as I know of young hearts myself, I
know that she saved your life and you saved hers.  It is thought you
were lovers, you have been so much together, ever since the storming
of the city.  But, in any case, there is no man on my staff to whom I
can so confidently intrust these noble women on an honorable mission
as my gallant Digenes Akritas.  I have summoned them to my
headquarters to hear my purpose.  It is a thing fixed," said
Nicephorus, in a tone that no man in all that host had ever ventured
to dispute.

"Lovers!" muttered the lord warden; "could I love any but a true
Christian, or any but--" and his lips moved silently.

When they returned to headquarters, the noble ladies were at once
introduced and presented to the general--Fatima, her sister and her
cousins, the daughters of the Saracen emirs, with their slaves and
attendants.

"Ladies," said Nicephorus through an interpreter, "it is the will of
our sovereign lord, Romanus, to send an embassy to treat of terms
with the illustrious Caliph Abd-er-Rahman at Cordova in Spain.  With
that embassy we send you, to be returned to your own people in honor,
as a pledge of our good faith, and in proof that the servants of the
Immaculate Virgin Mother make no war upon her sex, and respect the
women of those whom they have conquered and slain."

At these words Fatima stood forward and spoke.  She was dressed in
robes of deep mourning, and lightly veiled.  Her whole bearing was
one of profound dejection and self-abandonment, and her voice
thrilled the circle of fierce soldiers by its tones of poignant
misery:

"The will of God be done," she sighed; "be it as my lord, the
general, orders.  We are his captives; we listen and submit."

"What would you wish other, my daughter?" said Nicephorus, in some
surprise that Fatima should show so little joy at her return to a
Saracen court.  "Where could you be so well bestowed?--not here in
Crete, nor in the empire of his Majesty?"

"I am content--and thank my lord," she said--and sighed.

"The mission," said the general, "will be under the command of the
lord warden of the marches, for whose safety the Roman army owes you
thanks, my daughter; and that noble officer, who can speak your own
tongue and has kinsmen in your own race, has personal charge of the
safe conduct of yourself and your ladies."

At this announcement the whole bearing of Fatima seemed to change.
Her veil hardly concealed her blushes or the joy that lit up her eyes.

"The lord warden," she said, in a voice broken with emotion, "nursed
my own brother on his deathbed with tenderness and generosity, and
the sister could be in no better care than in his;" and she raised
her veil, and with a look of rapture that was more than gratitude,
Fatima beamed her thanks to the lord general, to whom she bowed in
reverence, with lowered eyes and quickened breath.

"Withdraw with these ladies, my lord warden, and explain to them
freely in their own language what is the imperial purpose, and how
completely their comfort and their dignity will be considered in the
mission of which you have command."

Digenes, who foresaw all the difficulties and risks of the situation,
knew the general too well to dream of changing any set purpose he had
formed.  His chivalry was deeply touched at being appointed guardian
of the woman to whom he owed his life, while his loyalty to the
imperial princess at home made him shrink from the society of the
beautiful Saracen with whom his lot seemed so strangely thrown.  He
resolved to execute the commission with which he was intrusted with
all possible brevity and reserve.

"Surely," said he, in the tones of a judge rather than of a
lover--"surely, fair Lady Fatima, it can give to you and your
kinswomen and followers nothing but happiness to be restored to your
own people of the Arab blood and the faith of the Prophet; and it is
my charge to see that everything shall be done to bring you to them
in safety and in honor."

"The purpose of the lord general is most kind, and I know that these
ladies with me are full of gratitude and pleasure.  But for me--I
have lost father, mother, brother, and have none to care for, or to
care for me.  Cordova is not Chandax; nor is this caliph of Spain the
real commander of the faithful or the true successor of the Prophet.
Where to find that true successor I know not.  Nor does any man know.
Islam seems passing away in rival sects and hostile parties.  I have
heard the Christian women who have been in captivity with us solace
their afflictions and sufferings by calling on Mary, whom you hold to
sit beside your Allah in heaven.  We Moslem women have no Mary to
invoke.  Our Allah is the God of men--of soldiers--he is no God to us
poor maidens who sorrow and despair!"

"What!" said Digenes, in astonishment which he could not control, "do
you mean that you might learn in time to call on the Blessed Mary
yourself, and take comfort in the example of all the holy women who
have devoted themselves to the Mother of God?"

"Did the emir of Edessa forfeit his honor when he bowed the knee to
the crucified Redeemer?"

"God forbid! lady, my father was a noble chief and a true man; and if
he forsook the Prophet for the Immaculate One, it was a conversion
inspired with love of the best and purest maiden in the Roman Empire,
as all men called my sainted mother!"

"So it is the privilege of men to forsake the faith of their fathers
for the love of a woman.  Such a one is not called a renegade, if his
conversion is the result of--of love!"

"Lady Fatima," said the lord warden with pride and almost with a
trace of warmth, "the followers of the Prophet did justice to my
father's honor as fully as did the followers of Christ, into whose
ranks he passed and among whom he lived and died.  The dwellers of
the Cilician marches, where Christian and Moslem meet in perpetual
combat, have learned to value each other, and to know that the true
believers in Koran or Gospel have each much to be proud of, and each
have much to envy in the other.  Your brother, whom I nursed on his
death-bed, and I had but one heart and one mind in many things.  We
might have been sons of the same parents instead of being, as we
were, sons of a brother and a sister.  Soldiers who have lived their
lives in doing battle for their own faith are of one creed and one
race in Asia as in Europe, in Syria as in Thrace!"

"And we poor women have no such privilege?  It is not permitted to
women to change their faith out of gratitude, or sympathy--or love?"
she said, with a melting tone, as her eyes grew dim and her voice
died away in sighs.

"The women of Islam," he answered, with deference, "do not go forth
into the great world, we are assured, but live a life of retirement
in their homes and their harems.  They accept the faith and the
worship of their fathers, their brothers, or their husbands.  They do
not busy themselves with mysteries of religion or the sacred books of
saints and martyrs.  They may change their creed when they change
their home, but they do not listen to controversies about sacred
things and holy persons."

"And Christian women do this, you mean to tell me, and busy
themselves with the things of heaven and the care of their souls?"

"It is natural that it should be so, my dear lady, when you come to
think that next to God the Almighty, and His Son, the Redeemer of
mankind, the first and holiest of beings is the Immaculate Virgin,
Mother of God, who ever sits enthroned in glory with holy
martyr-women and saints around her.  In Christendom, in our churches,
in our worship, in our sacred books, there is quite as great a part
for women as for men--nay, a part greater and more beautiful!"  And
the akritas now spoke with something of the fervor of a priest
pressing conversion on a willing penitent.

"Ah! how could a poor, captive girl of the Saracens come to hear
something of this blessed company of holy women?  How could she learn
something of a truly religious life as open to an ignorant maiden who
had heard of little but the Prophet and his warriors?  How could she
be brought to feel some touches of the trust and passion with which
Christian maidens I have seen in sorrow fling themselves on the mercy
of the Blessed Mary in heaven?  Mary--Mother of God--it is a name of
exquisite beauty and tenderness!  Could even I be taught ever to
utter it?"

"Nothing more easy, more natural, more truly blessed," said Digenes,
eagerly, quite carried away with the sudden hope that the princess
seriously contemplated her possible conversion, and at the time, in
the warmth of his hopes for such a result, quite unable to read the
girl's heart.  "I could at once enable you to make the attempt.
Follow us with your sister and ladies to the capital.  There you can
be placed in charge of my own sister, the Lady Theodosia Comnena, who
is now living at her husband's castle in the Propontis.  Nothing
easier than that I should introduce you to her family, and place you
in her charge.  We are cousins, are we not, even if of different
creeds?"

"Yes--we are cousins," she said, slowly, lingering on that word with
a sense of rapture and hope that she struggled to master and conceal.
"If we are cousins, your sister, the Lady Theodosia, is my cousin,
too!"

"Certainly!  how came I not to see all this at first?  And you would
be willing to renounce the caliph at Cordova, and forget the return
to your Saracen kindred and your Moslem life?"

"Utterly, joyfully, forever!  To be taken to your sister, to my own
cousin, to be taken into her family!  Oh yes! if heaven were offered
me as an alternative I would accept with joy!  Let those who will go
to Cordova.  I would see Rome, the Roman world, and Roman life!"

"Ah! if you could only see our city, our churches, our altars, and
the sublime mosaics of Christ, His Mother, archangels and apostles,
and our mothers and sisters before the ikons and holy figures of
Mary, you would know what it is to be a Christian believer," said
Digenes, quite carried away by the thought of a new and so
illustrious a convert.

"And are you sure that the Lady Theodosia and her family would
welcome me?" asked the Saracen princess somewhat archly, as if in
real doubt.

"She would rejoice to have you in her care, and would treat you as
her own sister, just as she has now in her safe charge the Princess
Agatha, who has escaped from a convent prison and is securely placed
with my sister."

"And who, then, is the Princess Agatha?" asked Fatima, abruptly.

"Who?" said Digenes, impetuously, "who but the sister of our
sovereign lord, Romanus, whom cruel counsellors caused him to drive
from his palace, and more cruel priests consigned to a living death
in a nunnery of women."

"And what is she like?"

"She is like the Blessed Mary herself in beauty, in purity, in mercy,
and every grace--the sweetest, best, and noblest woman in the empire
of Rome, whom the jealousy of palace counsellors seeks to snatch from
wedlock and motherhood and to consign to the solitary cell of a nun;
whom these hypocrites and bigots dare to call a bride of Christ.
Never shall these fanatics endow their convents with the noblest
bride that Rome has ever borne!" and the lord warden's look of heroic
passion flamed in his eyes and brought the blood into his olive
cheek.  "Never, never, if I live!" he cried, hardly thinking to whom
he spoke, in his indignation and excitement.

"And whose bride is she destined to be, this peerless, this
incomparable star of Rome?  Is she the promised bride of any of your
Roman heroes?" asked Fatima, looking keenly into the eyes of Digenes,
and eagerly awaiting his answer, as of a message of life or death.

The lord warden answered not a word.  He tried to speak.  He began
some broken words.  His embarrassment could not be concealed.  He now
saw all the false attitude into which his own want of discernment,
his impetuosity, his love, had betrayed him.  He had nothing to
answer.  He was dumb with confusion and humiliation.

Fatima watched him closely and in silence, and seemed to read his
heart.  Her attitude of eagerness and of trust and hope passed away.
She fell back into her previous condition of abasement and silent
despair.  The light passed from her eyes, and her voice resumed its
tone of piteous sorrow and hopeless humility.

"Cousin," she said, at last, in broken and low tones, "I am deeply
grateful.  The sister of your sovereign lord is too great a person to
look on the poor captive whose people he has conquered, whose father
his commander has slain.  She shall not look down on her in pity.
Rome and its court is no place for the daughter of Ben-Senoussi;
Fatima will abide with her own people.  Leave her in Crete, or
conduct her to Spain.  She will ask no charity of Christian maidens.
Farewell, kind helper of my brother, the preserver of Fatima's life
and honor!  Forget her forever!  Let us never meet again!  Remember
only that she will never forget you!"

And so, drawing close round her the mourning robes, and the long veil
over her face, with slow and weary steps, without another word,
Fatima passed over to her own tent.




XIII

The Caliph of the West

The great embassy to the Spanish caliph arrived at Cordova under
command of Digenes Akritas, and was received with all the pomp and
dignity that the mighty sovereign of the peninsula could display in
his Andalusian capital.  It was the policy both of the Roman and of
the Arab statesmen to seek to impress their rivals with a full sense
of their own high civilization, vast resources, and generous spirit.
The deadly feuds that raged between the Ommeyad caliphs of Spain and
the Abbassid caliphs of Bagdad, and also with the Fatimite dynasty of
Mauritania, inclined the politic Abd-er-Rahman, who, the first of his
house, had assumed the sacred and historic title of "Commander of the
Faithful," to cultivate a good understanding with the Roman emperor
at Byzantium.  While Rome was carrying on the internecine warfare
with the Moslems of Asia against the redoubtable Seif Eddauleh, the
hero of the Hamdanide dynasty, the Basileus was a useful counterpoise
in the divided world of Islam, on the principle that "the enemy of my
enemy is my friend."  The high intelligence of the great caliph and
the prosperity of his kingdom, based upon a vast Mediterranean
commerce, had made any fanatical hostility to Christians an obsolete
and discredited infatuation which the sagacious sultan of Spain
repudiated.

The mission which Nicephorus had despatched under orders from the
Sacred Palace, but which he neither advised nor approved, was
organized on a great scale.  Many officers of rank and civil
officials were included, and among them Bardas Skleros, commander of
the Armenian guards, his young friend, the Varangian Eric, the poetic
deacon, always in search of epic "motives," and some of the
financiers and diplomatists, who were attached to every great
imperial expedition.  The Princess Fatima, dejected and indifferent
for herself, had been induced to join the party for the sake of her
young sister and brother and the ladies of her race, whose obvious
interest it was to return to a Moslem court.

At Malaga, the seaport at which the embassy disembarked, it was met
by a splendid array of emirs, chamberlains, and officers deputed by
the caliph to conduct the Romans to the capital.  Even to men
accustomed to the shipping of all kinds that filled the Golden Horn
and traversed the Hellespont, the fleet, docks, and warehouses of the
Arab realm were an impressive sight.  The vizier Ahmed conducted the
lord warden and his staff by leisurely stages to Cordova.  And he did
not fail to draw attention to the dense population along the rich
valley of the Guadalquivir (or, as they call it, al-Wad ul-Kebir),
the profusion of its products, and the active state of agriculture
and of manufactures.  On the morning of the third day the cavalcade
were able, from an eminence, to descry the towers of Cordova itself,
as it lay washed by the noble river and surrounded by the spurs of
the Sierra Morena mountains: The vizier watched in dignified silence
the astonishment of the envoys, which they did not seek to conceal.

The royal city of the Ommeyad caliph appeared, indeed, vast and
magnificent even to the inhabitants of Byzantium itself.  Far as the
eye could reach in that clear and sunny air, the towers, palaces, and
mosques of the capital continued in endless variety and picturesque
confusion.

"What may be the extent of your city?" asked Digenes of the vizier.

"One of our historians has calculated that it reaches twenty-four
miles one way and six on the other, and beyond the city walls are the
suburbs in twenty-seven quarters, each quarter having its mosques,
markets, and baths for the use of those who live in the district."

And here the poetic deacon, ever keen to get accurate information,
begged to be told the number of the inhabitants.

"I would rather not charge my own memory," said the vizier,
indifferently, "but my librarian here, Ibn Khaldun, can doubtless
give you the figures you seek."

"The inhabitants of the capital," said Ibn Khaldun, "are reckoned now
to exceed a thousand thousand.  There are three thousand eight
hundred mosques, sixty thousand palaces and mansions, two hundred
thousand houses of the common people; and for their convenience the
city and its suburbs contain seven hundred baths and eighty thousand
shops, together with markets, hostelries and caravansaries for
merchants and their trains."

The poet, who was already resolved on a description of their visit,
in verse, transferred all this to his notebook, when he had been
assured by the librarian that it was not the exaggeration of Oriental
eulogy, but the sober calculation of economic and historical writers.

At last the entire embassy reached the city, where they were received
with interest and curiosity in the crowded streets.  The Lady Fatima,
her kinswomen, attendants, and slaves, had been consigned to the
personal charge of the young Varangian, with a fitting retinue of
male and female servitors.  Eric, who had received strict
instructions to see that the Cretan captives of all ranks were cared
for with every possible honor, gazed upon the Lady Fatima with mute
adoration; for he was unable to communicate with her in a single
word.  If he had any instructions to give they were interpreted to
her by one of her attendants, who spoke the tongue of Rome, of which
Eric himself had but a smattering.  The contrast between these two
young creatures, the finest types of Northern and Southern beauty, of
Scandinavian strength and of Arab fire, struck every eye that fell on
them, as they met and exchanged a dignified salute.  The Cordovan
monarch, like the Byzantine, had long maintained a bodyguard of
Northern warriors, mainly Scandinavians, Alemans, or Slavonians, sold
as slaves in youth, like the famous Janissaries of modern Turkey.
The Spanish Saracens were familiar with the bone and sinew of these
fair-haired Norsemen and mountaineers, but they rarely met one of
such perfect symmetry and brilliant color as distinguished the young
viking in his superb mail of gold.  Nor could all the houris of
Andalusia match the Lady Fatima in high-bred grace and the pensive
and searching power of her eyes.

On the appointed day the ambassador and his following were escorted
in state to the caliph's hall of audience.  For Digenes himself, and
for some of the higher officers, such as Bardas Skleros, of the
Armenian guard, men who had seen the most renowned cities, both of
the Saracen and of the Roman empires, the magnificence and beauty of
the palace of Cordova was not so surprising.  But the secretaries,
diplomatists, and, above all, the poetic deacon, could not restrain
their sense of awe and admiration.  The patriotic heart of the poet
almost misgave him as he asked himself if the city on the Golden
Horn, "guarded of God," and the Sacred Palace of the Basileus itself,
really outshone the city and residence of Abd-er-Rahman III.  He even
put the question in private to Michael, the protocolist, by his side,
one of the acutest intellects in the Byzantine chancery.

"Yes, the courts of the caliph have almost as much gold as that of
our Cæsar, and their fantastic richness of decoration may astonish
the vulgar.  But it is the profusion and intricacy of embroidery and
lace.  There is nothing here of the majesty of the massive colonnades
of Santa Sophia, nor of the Golden Gate on our outer walls."

"But what miracles of color and of filigree design do we not see in
those painted slabs and carved ceilings," said the poet; "it is like
a grove of roses and myrtles in stone and enamel."

"Too much like the silken robes of our parakeimomenos, which cover a
huge but emasculated frame," said Michael.

The poet laughed uneasily and looked round instinctively, for even in
Spain he felt the risk of a jest at the expense of Bringas.

"And then you will not find there those sublime images of our saints
and of Christ and His Mother, such as give so solemn a power to our
Christian temples.  These Saracen figures, where any living thing is
shown, are conventional grotesques.  There is neither statuary nor
painting of any kind--least of all of women and of the Mother of God.
These Hagarenes are worse than our rabid iconoclasts themselves."

The embassy passed on through a series of courts, surrounded by shady
cloisters and rich with flowers and blossoming shrubs, along
corridors and halls lined with troopers in coat-of-mail and with
chamberlains and ushers in embroidered robes, till at last they
reached the great hall, where the mighty caliph sat in audience.  The
salutes and obeisances on both sides were duly performed with all the
stately ceremony of Constantinople itself, and with even more grace
and reserve of manner.  And those who have seen a state durbar in
India may attain to some idea of the spectacle it afforded.

The great caliph, the Charlemagne of Saracen Spain, was now at the
close of his long rule of half a century.  He was seventy-three years
of age, and a life of incessant toil and of continual warfare had
caused him to look at least ten years older than his actual years.
The reception of Digenes was almost the last act of his public life;
but, in spite of his infirmities, he insisted on taking his place and
doing honor to the lord warden, of whose family history and personal
prowess he was perfectly aware.

Abd-er-Rahman III. still looked what he was, the greatest ruler of
his age and the noblest type of the Saracen race.  In fifty years he
had reduced the rebels and traitors within his own dominion, had made
vassals of the Christian princelets of north Spain, and had driven
back the Mauritanian invaders from Africa.  He possessed a
magnificent fleet, a powerful army, and a treasury of twenty millions
of gold pieces.  The police of his realm secured perfect order and
peace; the state of agriculture was in the highest degree thriving;
commerce and manufactures were equally advanced.  Supported by his
son and successor, Hakim, and his able minister, Ghalib, the aged
monarch received the lord warden right royally, and motioned him to a
throne beside himself on the dais.

Then the credentials issued by Nicephorus were read by the chief of
the protocol service:


"Illustrious and renowned sovereign, commander of those faithful to
the Prophet, I am ordered by our Imperial Majesty, Romanus, to send
to your capital city a mission of the chief officers and
administrators from the army of Crete, to treat of urgent affairs
between our respective realms.  I have placed at the head of this
embassy the chivalrous lord warden of the eastern marches, Basil
Digenes, the akritas, in whose veins are mingled the blood of Saracen
emirs and of Armenian princes.  He and the noble and learned envoys
in this mission will fully explain the objects in view, which are to
secure amity and reciprocal concessions between your Majesty and our
own Sovereign Lord.  We send to the court of your Majesty many
eminent persons of both sexes, whom the issues of war, which God
above us decrees, have placed in our hands.  And we seek an exchange
of an equal number of those followers of Christ who are now detained
in your realm.  Finally, we propose an agreement between our two
councils for the better disposal of those Moslems who remain under
our rule in Crete, and also of those Christians who abide under your
rule in Spain.  The issues of the great struggle between the
followers of Christ and of the Prophet are in the hands of God, whom
we all alike worship and obey.  We are His servants and His
creatures, and we can do nothing of ourselves save what He permits.
In this we can unite in one purpose.  And it is our fervent hope that
He Who has given your Majesty power and authority so great may guide
your counsels to meet in a spirit of amity the proposals we are
ordered by our sovereign lord, the Basileus, to submit to your
wisdom.  And may God the Merciful, the Just, bring this mission to a
right end!"


The aged and now infirm caliph bowed his head solemnly, and his white
beard flowed over his royal robes; but his eyes showed some of their
ancient fire as with a trembling voice he said:

"No envoy from the Basileus of Rome could be more welcome to our
court then yourself, lord warden of the marches, whose very name
reminds us all of the blending of the races of Christ and of Islam,
and whose deeds of valor and chivalry of soul are sung by the poets
of Europe and of Asia.  It was most fitting that an agreement between
our two powers should be intrusted to one who embodies in his own
person and in his career of service the qualities which both people
so deeply respect.  The illustrious lord general of your Basileus is
as well known to Islam as to Rome itself.  We cannot wonder and
complain if his people name him 'the Victorious,' for the most
redoubted soldiers of the Prophet have too often felt the weight of
his sword.  Islam has never met any adversary whom it has reason to
hold in such respect.  We well know the fiery zeal which burns within
his soul, and we can see in the despatch that has been read how
little to his taste is the proposal of amity that he has been ordered
to submit.  But this shall not prevent our willingness to treat and
to agree to equitable terms.  As Commander of the Faithful, we have
our own duties of peaceful government as well as the defence of our
realm in war.  Our court has statesmen as well as warriors.  Peace
hath its victories, as well as war.  The proposals of your Basileus,
with whom we have as yet many bonds of good understanding, shall be
referred to our counsellors and not to our soldiers.  Nicephorus,
'the Victorious,' has subdued in Crete a tribe who were but rebels to
our dynasty, outcasts and fugitives from our rule in Spain.  Now that
he speaks words of peace, however little they seem natural to his
soldier's mouth, they shall be considered and answered by our men of
peace.  When the time comes he may find in the sons of Arabia and
followers of the Prophet a zeal as fiery as that with which he
himself is consumed.  When that day shall dawn, tell your illustrious
general that it is the daily prayer of the Commander of the Faithful
that God, the Just, the Almighty, may give the crown of glory to the
right."

The aged caliph was visibly affected by the effort he had made to
receive the mission; he sank back on his divan exhausted, and was
only prevented from fainting by the care of his son, Hakim, and the
staff around him.  The durbar was hastily closed, and officers of the
mission withdrew with appropriate salaams and compliments.  They were
now placed in the hands of the vizier's secretaries and the
librarian, Ibn Khaldun, who were directed to escort them to view the
chief sights of the capital.  After exploring all the courts and
halls of the caliph's palace, they were taken to the famous mosque,
which still remains in part in the singular cathedral of Cordova.
The vast and stately Court of Oranges had recently been completed,
and was adorned with a thousand orange-trees in bloom, at which the
Byzantines gazed in delight and wonder.  This splendid fruit was not
yet acclimatized in Europe, and had been introduced but recently into
Andalusia from Syria by the care of Abd-er-Rahman himself.  Mixed
with roses from Damascus, the groves of oranges in the quadrangular
court, shaded with a rich cloister, seemed to the Romans a vision of
paradise.  Close by rose the exquisite Campanile, which resembled the
lower part of that which we know as the Giralda at Seville, though it
was in a style of art more solid and severe.  And the centre of the
Court of Oranges was occupied with the beautiful fountain of African
marbles, porcelain, and enamel, which the caliph had only finished
within a few years.

But all the surprise of the Romans was doubled as they entered the
great mosque itself, which was still being further enlarged and
adorned.  They found themselves in a forest of marble columns bearing
arches in fantastic forms, with exquisite patterns traced in relief
and bright with enamel and gold.  Again the deacon had recourse to
his note-book, and was anxious to learn their number and origin.
"There are said to be twelve hundred columns, arranged in eleven
aisles; and they have been collected from temples and palaces of the
ancients in Spain and Africa, or they have been carved by our
artificers from antique models," said the librarian, "but his
Highness, the Lord Hakim, is even now enlarging the aisles and
carrying them on to double their extent."

Thence the visitors were led into the chapel, adorned with mosaics
obtained from Byzantium direct, through the easy munificence of
Romanus himself.  In the Ceca they were shown the pavement of pure
silver, and the exquisite marbles and alabaster with which the shrine
was adorned.  By special grace of Prince Hakim they were even
permitted to look on the sacred copy of the Alcoran which had been
used by the Caliph Osman, the successor of the Prophet, and stained
with his blood when he fell.  From the roof hung two hundred
chandeliers, containing ten thousand lamps.  And as they passed out
into the court-yard from this forest of marble and gold, a vehement
debate arose between Michael, the protocolist, and the poetic deacon,
whether the solemn vaults of the Holy Wisdom of Justinian could hold
their own against the myriad shafts and arabesques of the mosque of
the Caliph Abd-er-Rahman.

The younger members of the mission were then conducted through a
country crowded with villas, gardens, and orchards, for an hour's
ride to the vast palace of Az-zahra, or "The Beautiful," built by the
great caliph for his favorite wife.  It was constructed entirely of
marble of various hues--white, onyx, rose-colored, and green.  The
courts and fountains were adorned with gold and enamels, and gardens
and shady cloisters stretched around.  In the palace were four
thousand three hundred columns of marble.  Into the great hall of the
caliphate were eight lofty doors, overlaid with plates of gold and
studded with precious stones.  And the walls were adorned with carved
traceries in alternate squares of ebony and ivory.  The separate
apartments numbered more than a thousand, and the service of the
palace was conducted by thirteen thousand male and six thousand
female domestics, while the guard and watch were kept by Slavonians
and Northern Janissaries, who were said to number no less than three
thousand seven hundred and fifty in all.

In the mean time the deacon, Michael, the protocolist, and other
secretaries were conducted by the librarian, Ibn Khaldun, to the
great library of the caliph, which at that time was reckoned as the
largest and most important collection in the civilized world, and was
said to contain four hundred thousand manuscripts.  All the works
which had been collected by Haroun-al-Rashid and the caliphs of
Bagdad, by the Ommeyads of Damascus, as well as by the dynasty of
Spain, were here gathered together.  Lexicons, biographies, grammars,
histories, geographies, rhetoric, works on chemistry, geometry,
medicine, astronomy, and poetry--all were in turn exhibited and
discussed.

But what impressed the diplomatists most strikingly was the great
library of Greek works, from Aristotle and Plato downward,
Theophrastus, Galen, Hippocrates, and Appollonius, and complete
collections of the astronomical and mathematical works of Archimedes,
Hipparchus, Eudoxus, Diophantus, and Ptolemy.  These Greek
philosophers and physicists were far more highly valued and better
understood by the savants of Islam than by the Christians of the
empire.  The deacon and his diplomatists were not so much astonished
to see in the book-cases of Cordova the entire works of Aristotle,
Theophrastus, Hipparchus, Galen, and Heron, as a modern scholar would
be, for these writers were still to be found for the most part in the
libraries of the empire.  But they saw with pride and no small
surprise that the entire extant writings of the philosophers and
physicists of Greece were the ordinary equipment of a Saracen library.

The members of the mission were occupied for days in surveying the
capital of the great caliph--its resources, architectural,
mechanical, commercial, artistic, and literary.  They were shown over
the great aqueduct which Abd-er-Rahman III. had recently erected to
convey to the city pure spring water from the mountains of the Sierra
Morena.  His predecessors had already supplied Cordova with abundant
aqueducts, fountains, and baths, so that it almost vied with ancient
Rome in the age of the Antonines, and was quite as well supplied as
Byzantium in the age of Romanus.  The new aqueduct had only been
completed twenty years before.  It rose on three tiers of arches,
similar to those of the Aqua Claudia, which spans the Campagna at
Rome, and it discharged a constant river of pure water into a vast
central reservoir, which supplied public fountains and private
palaces.  Every mansion of any importance had its garden, fountain,
and flowing rivulet.  The hydraulic system was, indeed, more complete
than what Rome had known in the age of the Cæsars, for the Arabs of
Spain were the first engineers of that age.  The poet and the young
guardsman were particularly delighted with the gardens of Rusafa,
which had been stocked with rare plants and flowers from all parts of
the world, especially from the gardens of Syria, Persia, India, and
Egypt.  The orange, the lemon, citron, the almond, and the palm,
laurel, and myrtle, were cultivated in sheltered spots and were a
never-failing delight to the northern visitors.  But that which most
fascinated the Byzantines were the wild animals confined in houses
connected with the gardens, especially the various kinds of gazelles
of the East, the golden-pheasants, the ostrich, the white ibis, the
cheetahs, and the lions.  The young Varangian was quite excited out
of his natural placidity by a hunt of deer by the cheetah, as now
used in India, while the poet was equally excited by a kind of race
between antelopes which were allowed a free run in an enclosed course.

In the midst of the festivities and the hospitalities a sudden event
plunged the whole city in gloom.  The aged caliph, exhausted by the
effort he had made to receive with dignity the envoys of Nicephorus,
had been seized with a succession of fainting fits, in the course of
which he had died.  His death had been concealed even from the
foreign mission until the succession of his son, Hakim II., had been
duly secured.  And this was carried out with great energy and
despatch by the Grand Vizier Ahmed and the commander-in-chief, the
Emir Ghalib.  In due time the new caliph, having been recognized by
the heads of the army, the mosques, and the administration, received
in audience Digenes and his officers and suite.  After official
compliments and addresses, Hakim admitted Digenes to a private
audience.  With all the zeal of his father for good government,
peace, prosperity, and order, the new Commander of the Faithful had
an even greater devotion to art, science, and literature, and was
conscious that he had a harder task and inferior powers.  In reply to
the felicitations of the lord warden on the glory of the late
caliph's rule, and on the noble empire to which he had now succeeded,
Hakim replied, with a sigh:

"Yes, my royal father ruled over his realm for fifty years; and those
who look at the power, wealth, renown, and splendor of his caliphate
may be disposed to call him one of the happiest of men, with a double
measure of the goodness of Allah.  But I, who have lived in his home
and for long years shared his duties, know too well that he was the
most sombre, if not one of the most miserable of men.  His favorite
wife, for whom the palace of Az-zahra was built and after whom it was
named, died before it was completed, and since the death of my elder
brother, our father was never seen to smile."

"But was not your brother killed in the hour of victory?" said
Digenes.

"Not my eldest brother, Abdallah.  He had been so infatuated as to
put himself at the head of a revolt, and suffered himself to be
proclaimed as caliph by rebels.  When defeated and captured, our
father in solemn council decided that he must die the death of a
traitor to Islam.  Our sacred faith is being put in peril by treason
in the families of the descendants of the Prophet.  It was held to be
fatal to our empire of the West if treason were suffered to prosper
in the house of the Ommeyads of Andalusia.  I myself, my mother and
my sisters, threw ourselves on our knees in tears at my father's feet
and implored his mercy for my brother, who had been formally named as
his successor.  It was not to be.  He said, 'I am caliph first, and
father afterwards.  As father I shall weep tears of blood for my son
all my life, but as caliph I must purge this fair land of a traitor!'
So our brother was bowstrung in the court of the palace, and my
father never had a happy day after.  Here, see," said Hakim, with
tears filling his eyes, "this is a paper attached to my father's
testament.  It runs thus, and is inscribed in his own scholarly hand:
'Fifty years have I been on this throne.  Riches, honors, pleasures
have been poured on me, and I have drained them all to the dregs.
The sovereigns who are my rivals respect me or fear me--both envy me;
for all that men desire has been showered on me by Allah, the
Bountiful, the All-merciful.  But in all these years of apparent
felicity, I can only count fourteen days wherein I have been truly
happy.  My son, meditate on this, and judge at their true value human
grandeur, this world, and man's life.'"

"Our priests talk thus," said Digenes, "but I never heard of an
emperor who spoke such words."

"Remember," said Hakim, "that a caliph who descends from the Prophet
and occupies his place, is at once a Prophet of Allah and sovereign
lord--priest, king, and commander!"

The whole mission were present at the funeral of the great caliph,
which was conducted with extraordinary magnificence.  Forty thousand
troopers in full array on black barbs guarded the procession from the
palace to the royal burial-place in the hills outside the walls.  The
whole population of the city, the suburbs, and the country round came
to honor their deceased chief.  Banners and trophies of war were
displayed in profusion.  The funeral procession itself was on foot.
First came long files of imaums, sheiks, and learned elders, then a
crowd of dervishes, who chanted dirges of plaintive sound, slaves,
attendants, and ministers, and, at last, Hakim, the new caliph, on
foot and alone before the bier.  The coffin of Abd-er-Rahman was
covered with a carpet that had once been a relic in the mihrab of
Mecca: it was borne on a platform raised on the shoulders of twelve
gigantic guards in the uniform of the palace troops.  The envoys of
Rome gazed on a sight which, accustomed as they were to the vast
extent of Constantinople, and to the vehemence of a Byzantine
populace, astonished them both by the enormous numbers of the people
and by their frenzied expressions of grief.  The deacon roundly
insisted that more than one million of men and women had witnessed or
taken part in the funeral ceremony.  As the bier of the great caliph
approached the crowd, and even long after it had passed, cries of
grief and despair, of Asiatic pungency, and wild notes of agony
re-echoed along the streets and across the squares of the city.

"We have seen the passing of a great man--of an emperor truly beloved
by his people," said Michael, the protocolist, in a low voice, to the
deacon.  "What would the funeral of our own beloved lord and master
be like, think ye, my friend?  Ay, and what would be the funeral of
his successor, if successor he is to have?  Is it certain that Christ
and His Blessed Mother have ordained that the Cross shall prevail
over the Crescent forever?"




XIV

The Conquest of Aleppo

Some months have passed, and the scene changes to Asia.  Nicephorus
Phocas was now in supreme command of an immense host echelonned along
the Cilician frontier, having its headquarters at Cæsaria in
Cappadocia.  He bluntly refused the offer of the politic prefect to
occupy the prefecture within the city, and he had his quarters placed
in the centre of the great camp, which lay in the plain beyond.
Cæsaria was at that epoch a great and splendid city of the empire,
well situated on a branch of the noble river Halys, and within sight
of the snowy peak of Mount Argæus, the highest point of the Taurus
range.  But Nicephorus disdained both for himself and his army the
comforts of a luxurious city, to which he had forbidden all access by
the troops.  As a wealthy and populous centre of trade, as the point
of junction for all the great highways, north, west, and south,
Cæsaria formed an admirable base for a great expedition.  The general
himself had for his own use a small and simple camp-tent, rudely
equipped, and in no respect superior to the rest of the service
baggage.  Near it stood a larger tent, in which he held councils and
conferred with his staff and officers of rank.

His return to Byzantium after the conquest of Crete, and his ovation
in the Hippodrome, where he presented to the Basileus the aged
kouropas of Crete and his son, Anernas, as prisoners of war, had
called out such an explosion of popular enthusiasm that the inner
cabinet of the Sacred Palace was alarmed, and Bringas, the
parakeimomenos, was filled with jealousy and rage.  Unable to stem
the torrent of public favor towards the victorious commander, Bringas
persuaded the emperor to order Nicephorus to the Asian frontier.  The
wily eunuch took care to load with honors and titles the enemy whom
he was sending as far as possible from the capital.  Romanus heaped
on his victorious general magnificent presents, overwhelmed him with
gracious words, and gave him a rank equivalent to "generalissimo of
the army-corps of the east."  The interviews between the soldier and
the sovereign had been of a sort little known in the Sacred Palace.

Debauchery, excitement, and exhausting fatigues had wasted the
splendid frame of Romanus.  Pale, with wild eyes in their sunken
sockets, and limbs trembling in all their joints, the young Basileus
received his great officer with all the grace and good-nature for
which he was conspicuous.  He lavished on him every honor and every
promise that he could imagine as likely to tempt the veteran; and,
without sharing the jealousy of the court eunuch and without
understanding his device, Romanus pressed on Nicephorus the command
of the eastern armies.

"My Lord Basileus," said the soldier, "I have done my duty to my God,
and to my sovereign, and by the blessing of Christ and His Mother in
heaven, I gave the best years of my life to this empire of Rome.  I
am now about to retire to take thought of my own soul, to atone for
the life of battle, of blood, and ruin in which it has been passed.
I am resolved to take vows of monkhood, and to end the bitter dregs
of life that are left to me in a hermitage on Mount Athos.  My lord,
when you next summon me, you will learn that I am no longer your
officer, but the solitary servant of Christ and of her who bore Him."

Neither entreaties nor promises nor commands could move the stubborn
soul of the soldier.  He left the presence with the barest observance
of the prescribed ceremonies, saying: "Do not forget, mighty king of
Rome, that there is in heaven above us a King over all kings, and on
earth, beside each of us, there is the angel of death, who but waits
the signal from on high to strike."

As Nicephorus stalked away down the corridor amid lines of excubitors
and cubiculars, who could hardly decide whether to honor the great
hero of the day, or to slight the enemy of the all-powerful eunuch, a
chamberlain from the empress brought him a summons to attend her in
private audience.  With a muttered excuse Nicephorus passed on with
hastened strides.  But at a turn of the corridor Theophano herself,
radiant with smiles and in all the charm of her superb grace,
confronted the veteran in his very path, and beckoned him into her
closet alone.

"I overheard your terrible resolve," she said, in a voice thrilling
with entreaty as well as indignation, "but I will not believe that
one who is the only hope and bulwark of our country can deliver it
over to the sons of Hagar and the followers of the False Prophet.
Will you rest in peace in your cell, and whine out your Kyrie,
eleison, when you see the accursed Chamdas defile the altars of God
and chant prayers to Allah under the dome of the Holy Wisdom?  Did
the Mother of God vouchsafe you power to gain such glorious victories
over the camel-driver and his race that you thus abandon her people
and her shrines to the abomination of desolation?"  And she looked
down on him, majestic and inspired, like the Cumæan Sibyl in
Raphael's fresco at Rome.

"There are swords as good as mine," muttered the veteran, visibly
abashed and humbled, "and younger men than I, who have not my sins to
wash out."

"Nicephorus, victor, hero," she cried with rapture, seizing his
brawny hand in both of hers, "the army will follow none but you!
You, you are the hero of all Rome and of all its tributary races.
The rest are boys or martinets.  Save us, protect us, comfort us, or
we poor women may yet be swept into the harems of the infamous
libertines of Islam!"

Nicephorus was speechless; a shudder shook his huge breast, but he
could find no words.

"Have you no eyes?" she whispered, with that silver tone of
fascination that was her peculiar secret and gift; "have you not seen
that wine, lechery, and furious sports have marked that fribble you
have just left to a premature doom?  He will never see another
summer.  And when I am no longer Augusta, who will protect me and my
babes?  To whom could I look but to the hero whom all Roman men
delight to follow, whom all Roman women trust and honor--trust and
love?" she whispered, looking into his eyes and drawing herself
slowly towards him till she gathered him in her arms and sobbed upon
his shoulder.  "Go to the Asian frontier, crush the Hagarene!  You
shall have from the palace absolute power and authority, military and
civil.  You shall be the true Basileus in the field, before you
return to be the Basileus in the palace!"  Then she rushed away in
tears, and left the chieftain quite dazed, drunk with perplexity, and
mad with passion.


So Nicephorus took up the command on the eastern frontier, having
received from the Basileus and his ministers plenary authority to
raise and equip an army, with power over all the forces and all the
reserves of the empire, civil and military, in any theme of Asia.
For some months he worked incessantly at his task, and mustered the
most powerful army known to his age.

Nicephorus was now seated in the larger tent, to which he had
summoned in council his chief officers.  First came Basil Digenes,
the warden of the marches, again chief of the general's staff.
Beside him was Bardas Skleros, commander of the Armenian guard, Leon
Balantes, Bourtzes, and other generals, and last entered the
illustrious John Tzimisces, the rival and ultimate successor of
Nicephorus.  An Armenian noble of the highest rank--his real nickname
was Tchemeschguig, or the Little, a sound which no Greek throat could
utter--John was the hero of a hundred desperate combats.  His courage
was even more reckless and romantic than that of Nicephorus, and, as
a mere cavalry leader, he was almost the equal of the great chief.
Short of stature, he had prodigious strength, with the activity and
suppleness of an acrobat.  Matchless in all military exercises, and
unrivalled in the lists, his frankness, generosity, and affable
temper made him the idol of men, while his fiery beauty, grace, and
high spirits made him the idol of women.  In the matter of
temperance, chastity, and piety, John was the very opposite of
Nicephorus.

Nicephorus opened the council thus:

"My comrades and commanders of the eastern corps, I have summoned you
to hear the plan of campaign, and to take counsel as to the task
before each contingent of our host.  The latest field state shows
that we have a force of all arms of two hundred and thirteen thousand
men, of whom forty-two thousand are cavalry, with one hundred and
twelve thousand horses, mules, asses, and camels; and these are in
cantonments along the range of Taurus over against Cilicia, extending
nearly one hundred Roman miles.  The details of the numbers and their
exact position of encampment will remain for the present known only
to myself and my secretaries.  When the hour of advance has come, due
orders will be issued to the commands which are to invade the enemy
and to those which will remain in reserve."

"And may we know the day and the line of the advance, my lord
general?" broke in the impetuous John Tzimisces.

"The day and the place of invasion, my noble friend," said
Nicephorus, with a dry smile, "must remain known to God above--and to
me.  In a campaign such as this we must rely on overwhelming numbers
and lightning rapidity of execution to secure our end.  The divided
state of the Hagarenes will prevent them from meeting us in great
pitched battles.  But it is a vast territory in which they are
settled, and the most difficult to invade in all God's earth.  It
bristles with forts on inaccessible rocks, with mountain defiles and
dense woods, and is defended by a girdle of fortified towns.  We have
to pour down over these passes on all sides at once, like the snows
in spring when they rush down the gorges of Taurus; we must overwhelm
these forts and towns like a sudden flood, and all Cilicia will be
again within the fold of Rome--and of Christ!"

"And when we have won back Cilicia we shall have gained but a corner
of the empire of Chamdas, whose realm reaches to the Euphrates,"
broke in Bourtzes, somewhat surlily.

"Most true, my Lord Bourtzes," replied the general, with a voice that
vibrated with fervor and faith, "but that corner is the key of the
power of Islam in Asia.  When we hold Cilicia as a base, we will
descend over the ranges of Amanus, even as we are about to push
through those of Taurus.  Then--Syria is ours again, is Christ's
again.  The sacred land in which our Saviour deigned to be born as
man, the hill of Calvary whereon He died, the tomb wherein His body
lay till the third day, shall no longer be polluted by these dogs of
Ishmael.  After all these hundred years the Holy Land shall again be
hallowed with the Cross; Antioch, Aleppo, Damascus, Jerusalem shall
again be consecrated to the Blessed Trinity and the Mother of God.
We will push on to Mesopotamia, beyond Euphrates, till the empire of
Rome has no frontier on the east but the Tigris, and no frontier on
the south but the dry deserts of Arabia, into which the unholy race
of Hagar shall be driven and made to abide.  The empire of our
founder, Constantine, of Justinian, and of Heraclius, shall be
restored in all its majesty and power, and the dogs who follow the
False Prophet shall be kennelled again with the jackals of the
desert."

Generals and secretaries listened in silent respect to this outburst
of their chief, who spoke like some priest at the altar, rather than
as the leader of a mighty host arrayed for war.

"We are all eager to be at them!" cried John Tzimisces, passionately.
"Give us the hour, and our marching orders, and we will saddle this
coming dawn!"

"In good time, my valiant Lord Joannes.  I well know your noble ardor
for the fight.  There are a thousand things that a commander-in-chief
has to prepare, and a few of these are still wanting.  Our
siege-train is not yet complete and we have at least fifty forts to
capture; the remount chargers in reserve are not quite filled up, the
reserve of arms is nearly full, the transport service is ready, and
the hospital-train, but the reports from the eastern defiles of the
Cilician Clisuras have not yet all come in.  There are still seven
companies of vedettes who have yet to complete the intelligence
survey of the distant passes."

"Will it be three days more, twice three days, as many weeks yet?"
asked Bourtzes, in his blunt way.

"God in heaven knows, my dear general," said the chief, with his grim
smile.  "In the mean time, I have copies ready of the _Hand-book of
Tactics_, which I have been compiling during the last three months.
Every commander of a division shall have it; my orders are that every
chief officer shall thoroughly understand the rules of this kind of
warfare--to which there are three main keys--rapidity of movement,
exact knowledge of all the facts, foresight of every detail."

All next night the general sat in his tent, with none but Basil
Digenes and his chief secretary.  He had called for the final
recension of his book on _Tactics_, which he was explaining to the
lord warden as he ran over the heads of the twenty-five chapters.

"'Everything lies in this first chapter on scouting and the distances
between the vedettes,'" said the general, reading; "'in a very broken
country they must not be more than three or four Roman miles apart.
The scouts may have to be away from the main army fifteen days, and
must carry provisions for that time.  They must explore every hill,
stream, and road in the district they survey, never be stationary,
but always on the move, and always in touch with the force they are
serving.  Then take care they master that third chapter on "Occupying
heights that flank a pass," and "On flank attacks on an enemy
discovered to be on the march."  Then that eleventh chapter will be
of the utmost importance in such a march as we shall make through the
defiles of the Taurus--"How to survey and occupy in force the points
that can command a defile which is to be forced."  Many and many a
Roman army, from the time of the Caudine Forks down to that of
Gongyles in Crete, and poor Pastilas this very last year, has been
lost by neglecting this caution.'

"Listen to this, my son," the chief continued, reading from his own
book: "'This war is one of cavalry.  Victory does not depend on
numbers, but on prudence, on rapidity, on ingenuity, so that a stroke
may be delivered when and where it is least expected by the enemy.
War against these children of the desert, on their own light horses,
and with camels as transports, has wholly changed since the epoch of
pitched battles.  If you are swift enough, alert enough, keen enough,
if you are well served by your scouts, spies, and signallers, you may
defeat a battalion with a mere detachment, and an army with only a
battalion.'

"'Then attend to your signal-service.  Pick the sharpest eyes, the
keenest brains in your force, and take care that the chain of signals
is never broken.  The one thing essential is to conceal from your
enemy your own movements and your objective.  Every advance must be
covered by feints.  March as far as possible by night, and choose
moonless nights.'

"'Then as to night attacks.  These are exceedingly dangerous, unless
carried out with fitting conditions, which are a thorough knowledge
of the ground attacked, assaults delivered simultaneously on many
sides at once, trustworthy guides, and intelligent officers.  The
assaults must converge to an instant, they must be invisible till
they strike, and they must be directed by a single mind.'  In this
war we must constantly resort to night assaults," said Nicephorus, as
he handed the volume to the lord warden.

"The first thought of a general, my son, is to have his men well
rationed, honestly paid, well clothed, and well mounted.  It is a
scandal how these courtiers and clerks at home stint the soldier of
his food, his pay, and his rewards.

"You may wonder that I think it needful in our days of glory to
recite at such pains the way in which these accursed infidels are to
be defeated.  Ah, who can say what is before us in the future?
Bardas Cæsar and my mother's brother, Constantine Meleinos, won
victories by these tactics, and I myself have seen them successful in
six hundred fights, great or small.  If you follow these precepts, my
dear young warden, you will win an equal success--remembering always
this, that it is not thou who art victor, but that the victory is
given thee by Christ, our Saviour, very God and very man."

The general now sat alone in his tent studying the reports and rough
sketch-maps sent him from a score of advanced posts.  His secretary
brought him a missive just received by a relay of royal posts from
the Sacred Palace.

From the parakeimomenos (lord high chamberlain) to the grand domestic
(or marshal) of the army-corps of the east, Nicephorus, the
Victorious, and so forth--after compliments, eulogies, and promises
in profusion--the mighty Bringas proceeds to explain that the council
of his Majesty, the Basileus, are so anxious that nothing should
imperil the life and glory of the general-in-chief, that they desire
him to remain in reserve with an army in Cæsaria, and to intrust the
advance into the enemy's territories to the illustrious commander,
John Tzimisces, whose failure to succeed would not so fatally
endanger the safety of empire--and more excellent reasons for keeping
Nicephorus in the background and idle.

"So ho!" said the general to himself, with a grim smile; "he would
pit John against me, and throw me into the shade!  Too late, my
honest eunuch, too late!  The orders to march at dawn have gone forth
this very night.  But is Tzimisces a party to the plot?  Never! he is
too noble a spirit.  I would trust John with my life."

Another missive now came in, brought by a private messenger.  It was
from Leo, the brother of Nicephorus, who was watching his interests
in Constantinople.

"The voice of all Rome is loud for the House of Phocas, and the name
of the victor of Crete is on every tongue.  But the arch-eunuch is
plotting night and day against you, turning now to the exiled prince,
now to Tzimisces.  Our autocrator himself is nearer than ever to his
God.  It is thought he will keep his Christmas in heaven, and they do
say that art is assisting sin and disease to make an angel of him.
Strike--and strike quickly, and be careful that you celebrate a
triumph in the Hippodrome within three months.  Three months is the
longest period that it is safe for you to be absent!"

"Yes, in three months' time I shall be in the Golden Horn--or in my
grave," said Nicephorus, and he flung himself on his couch with a few
prayers as he kissed the ikon of the Mother of God.  As he raised his
eyes he saw a slip of parchment that, without his knowledge, had been
hung at the foot of the image.  It was folded and addressed: "To the
Hero of Rome and Defender of Christ."  Within were these words, in
the Armenian tongue: "She who loves thee warns thee to win a glorious
victory over the Hagarene and then to hasten back to Rome.  The
Augusta is racked with anxiety and foreboding.  In three months she
will be a widow.  There is but one who could protect her and console
her."

The general crushed the parchment in his fierce grip, and then thrust
it into his breast.  He tossed on his couch for hours, with a storm
of passions chasing each other across his soul.

Before dawn the great host had begun its advance.  The general, in
the centre of his staff, was receiving and despatching mounted
couriers, who every minute came and went to and fro.  Through seven
different passes of the Taurus, mainly through that known as the
"Cilician Gates," the various corps debouched down upon the Saracen
province that had once been the Cilicia of Augustus and Trajan.  The
different armies had separate objectives, but were kept in close
touch with one another, and each was preceded by an outer screen of
light cavalry, which pressed on in front and scoured the whole
country.  As the parallel forces poured down like a deluge on the
rich plains, the miserable people fled before them or crowded into
the forts; the Saracen troops of all arms were seized with panic, and
made no effort to stem the current.  Fort after fort, walled towns,
castles, and camps fell rapidly into the hands of the invading
Christians.  The overwhelming numbers that Nicephorus had collected
covered the country for a hundred miles.  By light siege-train,
hurried forward, they captured fortresses by escalade.  Tarsus,
Adana, Mopseutia, and Seleucia were taken by storm.  The gallant emir
of Aleppo, Seif Eddauleh, of the dynasty of Hamdan, the hero of the
Saracens of Asia in the tenth century, whom the Greeks called the
"Accursed Chamdas," yielded before the avalanche.  He ordered his men
to retreat inland towards Syria and to attempt nothing but separate
and small encounters to harrass the lines of communication.  The host
poured on, the Arab historian declares, "like hungry wolves,"
ravaging the land, burning villages, and destroying all crops and
stores which they could not use.  Karamountis, the emir of Tarsus,
attempted a pitched battle, but was utterly defeated and left five
thousand of his men dead upon the field, the rest being prisoners of
war.  All the calculations of the Roman general were fulfilled, every
order had been carried out to the letter, every corps reached the
point at which it was directed at the appointed time.  The whole of
Cilicia was swept as by a tornado, and within twenty-two days, the
Arab historian, Aboulfaradj, relates that fifty-five fortresses and
fortified towns had fallen into the hands of the Christians.
Enormous booty and tens of thousands of prisoners were taken, and
after three centuries the rich and broad land, watered by the Cydnus
and the Pyramus, and lying between the range of Taurus and the
Mediterranean Sea, passed again into the realm of Christ and of Rome.

There was a halt to concentrate the forces, collect the booty, and to
reinforce or refresh the army after its tremendous rush, and secret
despatches had again reached the commander.  An unsigned missive in
the Armenian tongue warned him again that the Augustus was in
delirium, at the verge of death, that the Augusta commanded his
return to save the empire and herself from ruin.  A later missive
from his brother Leo assured him that the Basileus had revived and
might live yet some months.  "Go on and conquer!  Drive the accursed
blasphemer, Chamdas, from his last lair in Syria.  Then return and
triumph!"

Nicephorus resumed his onward march in earnest.  He had now received
reinforcements of twenty thousand fresh cavalry, bringing up his
effective force to over two hundred thousand troops, including thirty
thousand engineers and sappers, with ample engines of siege and
storm.  As the vast range of Taurus had lain between the empire and
the Saracen in Cilicia, so now the range of the Amanus divided it
from the provinces of Syria, Damascus, and Aleppo.  Anazarba, Sis,
and other strong forts were swept away, their defenders ruthlessly
slaughtered, and their homes sacked, but nothing could arrest the
invaders till they poured over the passes of Amanus down into the
valley of the Orontes and reached the great plains which stretch away
from the "Gates of Syria" to the Euphrates.  Once across the defiles
of the Amanus range, Nicephorus concentrated his whole force for a
plunge upon Aleppo, the seat and capital of "the accursed Chamdas."

Aleppo, which the Greeks called Chalepe and the Saracens called
Haleb, was then the most splendid and the richest city of Asia,
having some quarter of a million of inhabitants, and was the centre
of the trade between East and West.  Its magnificent palaces, in the
midst of gardens teeming with all the flowers and shrubs of the
Asiatic plains, its immense circuit of walls, towers, domes, and
minarets, were crowned by the tremendous fortress on the almost
precipitous acropolis that rose above the plain in which the city
stood.  At a glorious sunrise, early in December, Nicephorus gathered
his principal officers around him on an eminence from whence in the
distance the white towers of Aleppo could be clearly seen.  "There
lies the lair of the blaspheming Hagarene who has wrought such havoc
upon the people of Christ and the realm of Rome!  Within those proud
walls are the savage horsemen who have burned a thousand homes and
have slaughtered ten thousand of our brothers!  Ay, and within those
gay and lordly palaces, with their smiling groves and terraces, there
are ten thousand of our sisters, daughters, and boys who have been
ravished from Christian hearts and turned from Christ to defile
themselves with the False Prophet, his lies and his fornications!  By
God and His mercy, we will keep Christmas like Christians, within the
very walls and mosques where He has been blasphemed these long three
hundred years!"

The city was now entirely invested.  All the efforts of the emirs to
relieve it were cut off with immense losses, and almost on the eve of
Christmas Day the order was given for a combined assault.  The walls
were carried in a dozen places at once, the gallant Chamdas was
driven back step by step into the citadel on the heights, and by
nightfall the splendid city of Aleppo was entirely in the hands of
the Romans.  The booty was enormous, for the rush of Nicephorus upon
the capital had been so sudden that nothing had been removed.  Three
hundred and ninety thousand gold pieces were found in the Saracen
treasury; thousands of horses, mules, and camels in the barracks.
Gold plate, exquisite damascened work, jewelled arms, brocades,
embroideries, ivories, carpets, vases, robes, and painted manuscripts
were tossed about in wild confusion.  For days the scene of plunder,
bloodshed, and destruction raged.  The superb palace of the emir,
filled with precious things, was sacked, and then consumed with fire,
and everything which the victorious troops could neither use nor
transport was burned or destroyed.  The ramparts of the great city
were levelled, the mosques were ruined, and the minarets thrown down
in the dust.

The general, with fierce exultation, surveyed the annihilation of the
terrible enemy who had made the Roman empire reel to its foundations,
and he saw that the frontiers of Rome were destined to extend again
to the Euphrates.  Thereupon he ordered a solemn Te Deum to be
chanted in presence of a great muster of chiefs and chosen
detachments of his army.  Before the crucifix, which was raised
beside the central altar, the fierce soldier of the Cross thrice
prostrated himself in the dust, and offered up a silent prayer of
thanksgiving; and then the psalm of praise was chanted forth by ten
thousand voices in unison.

As Nicephorus returned to his headquarters he found a missive to him
from Constantinople.  It was unsigned, and in the Armenian language
and said that the throne of Constantine and Basil would be vacant
before the message could reach its destination.




XV

Empress and Chamberlain

It was a gloomy day in March, 963, when an unwonted stir of
officials, chamberlains, and equerries was seen to throng the gates,
corridors, and chambers of the Sacred Palace.  The empress, in her
private apartments, lay pale and feeble on her couch, after the very
recent birth of her fourth child, Anna, destined one day to be the
wife of Vladimir, prince of the Russians.  The roses on Theophano's
cheek were now faded to a marble hue, and, as her lovely head lay in
sleep, she looked like one of the dying daughters of Niobe as carved
by the hand of Praxiteles.  But the noise of urgent messengers at the
door roused her from her slumber, and in her soft voice, which
retained its imperious tone with all its exquisite modulation, she
bade them tell her what was being reported.  Her deep eyes seemed
even more lustrous and penetrating than ever, as they shone from out
the unwonted pallor of her face.  "Tell me, Glaucopis, what they
say," she murmured.

"Most august lady," said the nurse, "the physicians have strictly
forbidden us to disturb your Majesty with any news."

"Romanus is dead?" she gasped out with a fierce gleam in her eyes as
she raised herself on her arm from the pillow; "when--how--where is
his body?"

"Madam, the emperor is being brought into the sacred chamber--not
dead, but fainting, unconscious, and, they say, dying.  He insisted,
in spite of all the warnings of his physicians, on going out to hunt
the boar last night in the forest, and he was seized with a
fainting-fit early this morning.  We can hear the bearers of his
litter even now in the corridor."

"And has my messenger returned from Cæsaria?" asked the Augusta,
eagerly, catching her breath with excitement.

A small, sealed slip of parchment was handed to the empress.  She
tore open the scrip, and a fierce gleam shot from her eyes as she
read the Armenian words "I come."

She raised herself on her couch with a strange force of will, and had
herself supported between two black eunuchs of the chamber and
carried into the sacred koitôn, where at that very moment they were
bearing to his death-bed the still unconscious form of the Basileus.
The gaunt limbs of the once stalwart Romanus were a sight hardly so
pitiful as his emaciated and bloodless countenance, now plainly
stamped with the hue of death.  As the physicians and chamberlains
carefully stripped off the rough accoutrements of the chase, and laid
him gently in his silken robe on the bed, his wife gazed intently
upon him, with a look of penetration and anxiety rather than of
sorrow or of love.  Was he dead?  Was he dying?  What space of time
could she count as her own?  To whom could she turn for help?

"Madam," whispered the chief physician, "he still lives.  His
marvellous strength of constitution, and strict care, may even yet
save him for a short space.  The one chance of life is perfect rest,
absolute silence.  The slightest exertion, the smallest excitement,
will be instantly fatal.  He asks for a draught of strong Samian
wine, but we dare not give it; it will be certain death.  Let us
implore your Majesty to leave him to us, to spare him the shock of an
interview.  It would be his death."

Theophano did not move nor answer; she gazed intently into the face
of the dying king.  At last his eyes opened and the flicker of a
feeble smile played round his drawn lips.  She bent down and kissed
them.

"Anastasia," he murmured, "forgive me, pardon all my wrong.  I have
always loved you--ever since I went mad for your sake in the hermit's
chapel of St. Demetrius in the Asian forest, and for love of you
risked the golden throne which I am now leaving to you.  May you be
happy in it, my early love, my only love, and guard our children till
they can fill it better than I have done!"

"Are you leaving it to me, indeed?" asked the empress, eagerly; "have
you sealed such a will?  Is any testament signed?"

"It shall be, if you wish it," murmured the dying man; "send for my
secretaries and the keeper of the archives."

Here the physician drew the empress aside and earnestly whispered in
her ear: "It would be certain death for him to make such an effort.
His one chance of life is absolute rest."

"It is the will of his Majesty," said Theophano, imperiously, "that
all present should withdraw, all--save this scribe," she added,
turning to a secret agent of her own.  "Close and secure these doors
in the name of your sovereign lord!" she called aloud to the ushers
and guards of the sacred koitôn.

"My will is that my beloved wife, the empress, be regent of this
empire during the minority of my sons, the Basileis, Basil and
Constantine," murmured, or, rather, gasped the dying man, almost
mechanically repeating the words that Theophano dictated aloud to
him, or nodding a feeble assent, while the scribe copied them down in
official form.

A loud altercation was now heard at the door of the chamber, and a
terrified chamberlain announced that the great parakeimomenos
himself, the eunuch Bringas, insisted on his right to enter the
chamber by virtue of his office--that of the imperial "Bedfellow."

"It is the will of his Majesty that he withdraw and wait in the
anteroom," hissed the empress.  "Guards, do your duty, in the name of
your sovereign!" and Bringas was forcibly thrust back from the
chamber.

"Bringas--will be--your counsellor--your minister," gasped the dying
king, as he heard the name of his terrible master.

"And shall not the glorious lord general of the east be confirmed in
his office?" whispered Theophano, with the eagerness of frenzy.  But
the strain of this interview had already overcome the flickering
strength of the dying man, who fell back in another fainting-fit that
almost seemed death.

Then Theophano bade the scribe fetch from her own chamber a flagon of
strong cordial that stood beside her bed.  She moistened the lips of
her dying lord, and as he sipped a few spoonfuls of the drink a last
spurt of life came back to him.  He opened his eyes, and even raised
his head, hoarsely calling for the cup.  A mouthful seemed to give
him new strength.  "Since you desire it, my beloved," he gasped, "I
confirm the lord domestic of the east in his supreme command.  To
Nicephorus I leave this throne, my children, my wife.  He alone is
worthy to possess them.  They are his.  May he keep them."  He then
grasped the flagon nervously, and with hungry eyes besought his wife
to give it him--besought with his eyes, for he was now speechless.

Theophano knelt down beside the low couch, and, folding her arms
round her half-conscious lord, she raised him on his pillows.  Then
she held the flagon to his lips and gave it him to drink.  He sucked
in the strong wine like a beast that has been dying of thirst, until
the action of swallowing had ceased to be possible.  The last dregs
of the cup oozed out of the corners of his mouth and poured over his
bare throat.  He lay back--dead.

Theophano gazed on him with a look of triumph.  Then she seized the
parchment whereon the scribe had written down the last will of the
emperor.  She took up the pen and placed it in the still soft hand of
the dead man; holding his hand in her own, she made the pen rudely
inscribe his name--

  _Romanos, Basileus Romaiôn._


For a brief space she stood there over the dead body of her husband,
herself pale and faint with the effort, looking like a marble statue
of the angel of death, as she pondered what should be her next act,
for she well knew how tremendous a crisis was at hand.

Her meditations were broken by loud and angry altercations at the
door, and soon there burst into the chamber the gigantic form of the
parakeimomenos.  The eunuch Bringas had now placed himself at the
head of the chief officials and members of the council of state.  He
brought Michael, the chancellor of the exchequer; Symeon, the chief
secretary; Sisinnios, the head of the senate; magistroi, patricians,
protospathaires, basilikoi, with a strong force of ushers and palace
guards.  The physicians proved the death of the emperor, and closed
his eyes.  Theophano, at the first sound of the interruption, had on
her part summoned from her private apartments her own creatures,
secretaries, chamberlains, and guards.  The two factions now
confronted each other, ranged on opposite sides of the imperial
couch, whereon lay the yet untended corpse of the Basileus, Bringas
at the head of the council of state on the one side, Theophano on the
other side, holding in her hands the last testament of the dead king.

"As parakeimomenos, grand chamberlain of his late Majesty, and
president of the council of state, it is my right to order the
ceremony for the burial of our late lord Romanus, and, furthermore,
to provide for the urgent needs of this empire of Rome until the
accession of our young Basileus," said Bringas, in a voice of proud
command.  "You, madam, for whom our late revered sovereign has made
no written provision, as I am authorized to declare, may withdraw to
the apartments reserved for the secluded widowhood of the relict of
an autocrat of the Romans."

With a will as strong and a voice as clear, Theophano replied: "Here
I, as Regent of the empire by the last will of my late beloved lord
and emperor, summon the council to receive my commands.  There is no
great chamberlain of any dead man.  The death of an emperor dissolves
his council of state.  Here is the testament of my lord Romanus,
signed by his own hand, as these secretaries and lawyers who were
present at the execution of it will testify on the sacred Gospels and
the ikon of the Mother of God."  And with a look of triumph and
defiance Theophano held aloft the scroll, and in a firm voice read it
aloud to the amazed and hesitating throng.

"A forged document!" shouted Bringas.  "I know that no such testament
exists.  Its authenticity must be proved by something more than
Gospels and ikons.  Let us have this document, madam, and it shall be
duly examined by the judges of the law."

The eunuch and his party advanced to wrest the parchment from the
empress by force, when a new interruption arose, and another large
party entered the chamber.  It was the patriarch Polyeuctus, bearing
the miracle-working crucifix from the high altar of the Holy Wisdom,
with his canons and acolytes carrying the host.  He had hastened to
the palace on the news of the agony of the emperor, and was
profoundly shocked to find that he had arrived too late to administer
the last rites.  In words of passionate grief the venerable prelate
deplored the terrible calamity which had fallen on the royal house by
the sudden death of the Basileus, unhouselled, unanealed, in his
sins.  He bitterly reproached both factions, who stood beside the
untended corpse of their sovereign, contending for mastery.  He
listened to the claim of Bringas, he inspected the testament which
Theophano still held in her clutch, and he suffered two scribes to
swear on the ikon that they had heard the emperor dictate the words
and had seen him sign it with his own hand.

"My children, my daughter, princes, senators, and officers of Rome,"
said the venerable patriarch, "it will bring down on us and on this
empire the judgment of God and His Son, that we should strive for
power among ourselves, while the unanointed body of our late lord
lies here in its abandonment.  Our first duty is to provide for the
funeral rites.  As to the succession to this throne, the regency of
the empire, it is the appointed task of the senate and patricians to
ordain these in due course of law and custom.  The senate has been
convoked and is now about to meet.  Thither let those who have the
right to sit in it repair.  As I hurried past the Augusteon hither, I
saw the streets filled with excited crowds of citizens.  I would warn
you both, who stand here in contention such as this city will not
witness with any patience, that we heard no shouts of 'Long live the
venerated Augusta!' nor of 'Long live the lord great chamberlain!'
The only name that now echoes through our city, where men congregate
and speak, is the name of Nicephorus Phocas, the ever-victorious
general of the eastern armies."

The keen intellects of Theophano and of Bringas at once perceived all
the risks of a popular revolution in the midst of a disputed
succession; and both factions admitted the force of the patriarch's
appeal, as well as the imminent peril to the state and to their own
lives, if the government remained unsettled for another hour.  At the
meeting of the senate, which immediately followed, the eloquence and
authority of the patriarch succeeded in securing a settlement which
was in the nature of a compromise.  Theophano was duly installed as
regent during the minority of her two sons, but she was forced to
accept the mighty eunuch and his confederates, the late ministers,
and to reappoint them to the offices they held.  Bringas saw himself
thus invested with practical mastery of the state, while the
patriarch and the majority of the senate supported the demand of the
regent, that Nicephorus should be retained in supreme command as
grand marshal of the east.

The duel between Theophano and Bringas was only withdrawn from public
view; it was carried on as fiercely as ever.  The Regent despatched
messenger after messenger to the general to hasten his return to the
capital.  The eunuch, on his side, was exerting all his arts to keep
the great soldier on the frontier and secretly to put him away.  At
the next meeting of the council, which the woman was unable to
attend, prostrated as she was by the desperate efforts she had made
in her delicate condition, the wily Bringas thus spoke:

"Lords of the council and ministers of state, our first duty after
providing for the funeral of our late sovereign, the august autocrat
now with God, will be to secure the throne of his infant children,
the Basileis, to whom the succession falls of right and by his own
device.  Their rights are menaced by many enemies, both without and
within the realm, perhaps not least by the disordered ambition of one
who ought to be their most disinterested friend.  But of all the
disordered ambitions by which this empire is beset, the danger most
urgent and imminent is to be found in the far east.  A fortunate
soldier, intoxicated with the favor of his emperor and--may we not
say?--the smiles of his empress, has seduced the giddy populace of
this city to welcome him as their idol and prepare to raise him to
the very purple itself.  I hold the evidence of this conspiracy to
bring about a revolution and proclaim him as Basileus.  The
government, the dynasty itself, stands on the edge of an abyss.  His
triumph would mean confusion in this city, exile,
confiscation--death, no doubt--for each of us.  My lords, I propose a
peremptory order to Nicephorus Phocas to prosecute the war towards
the east, and not to come west of the Anatolian theme on pain of
attainder and death."

"If this evidence is made public," said Michael, "the people will
soon forsake their favorite and justify the precautions we take."
And the councillors seemed ready to accept the proposal.

The wily eunuch saw his opportunity, and sought to push it home.
"Indeed, my lords," he said, with an insinuating tone, "it would be
wiser perhaps if we went further and secretly named some illustrious
soldier with authority to supersede and arrest so dangerous a man.
The late reigns of our autocrats Constantine Born-in-the-Purple, and
his son, Romanus, have introduced a dangerous laxity towards treason.
Time was when a popular general, suspected of rebellion, was seized
and deprived of his eyesight.  Methinks we should all feel our heads
safer on our shoulders if the hero of the hour were treated as was
Belisarius when he was degraded by the great Justinian, or as another
Phocas who was justly put to death by our ancestors."

But here the eunuch overshot his mark.  The arch-priest of St. George
of the Stoudion vehemently protested against such language as applied
to the victorious chief who had laid Islam low; and the rest of the
council dreaded the fury of the people if the hero were sacrificed by
his rivals.  The council parted; nor could Bringas obtain from it
anything more than a peremptory order to Nicephorus to prosecute the
war to the borders as far as the Tigris and the Euphrates.

The astute minister was not easily beaten from his purpose, knowing,
as he did, that his hold on power, and perhaps his liberty and even
his life, depended on the issue.  Profiting by the enforced absence
of the regent, whose exertions had brought on a dangerous collapse,
he inveighed at every council, in public and in private, against the
ambitious schemes of the great commander of the east, and he opened
secret negotiations with officers on the general's own staff.  These
intrigues were countermined and reported to Nicephorus by agents of
Theophano, who spied out all the machinations of the eunuch.  He and
his partisans still believed the general to be preparing for a fresh
advance into Syria; they were sitting in council in the privy chamber
of the cenourgion and considering a new scheme to isolate Nicephorus
from his friends, when loud shouts were heard in the streets and
squares, and even from the palace itself could be seen a crowd of
small craft and boats under the very walls of the Boucoleon Port.  A
chamberlain burst into the council-hall with the tremendous news that
Nicephorus himself was in the act of landing from the Asiatic shore
and was actually making his way to the palace by the new basilica
built by the Emperor Basil I.

"Our agents have played us false, then," stammered Bringas, "in
keeping his journey secret.  But he cannot have brought his army, or
even a division of it, without our knowledge."

"My lord," said the chamberlain, "we have certain intelligence that
he has hurried hither by forced posts--alone, or with only a few of
his personal followers."

"The Lord has delivered him into our hands!" shouted Bringas in
triumph; "we will have him seized as a traitor and a rebel before he
can rouse the city or gather an armed force.  Put out his eyes, and
he will give no more trouble!"  And the swarthy countenance of the
eunuch glowed with a fierce gleam, as a beast of prey that has seized
his victim.  The roar of the populace outside grew louder and nearer,
minute by minute, and more than one councillor shrank from signing
the order which Bringas had already got prepared for the executioners
whose duty it was to blind prisoners with red-hot needles.

Suddenly the door of the hall was thrown open, and Nicephorus Phocas,
in the military uniform of his service, burst in upon the council,
attended only by his faithful Digenes and three or four other
officers.

"In the name of our sovereigns, the Basileis, I order the arrest of
this traitor and rebel!  He is conspiring against their throne, and
is defying the command of the state to remain on the Asian frontier.
Guards, seize that man and bind him fast!  I answer as lawful
authority for this order!" said Bringas, in a voice of thunder.

"I am no traitor nor rebel!" said Nicephorus, proudly, with slow and
measured utterance.  "I come here as magistros and grand domestic of
the eastern armies to swear allegiance to our young Basileis, and to
their mother, the lawful regent by the will of our late emperor.  I
come to claim my right to a public triumph for my victorious
campaigns in Syria against the infidel, and I come to claim my right,
by the will of our late lord, to be invested as general-in-chief of
the armies of the east."

"The pretexts of a traitor!" cried Bringas, fiercely.  "Guards, do
your duty and seize this rebel!"

Nicephorus stood almost alone in the midst of a hostile council of
his enemies, supported by ministers of the state and by a strong
armed force.  Fearless as he was, the general now felt that his
precipitate act had driven him into a veritable den of wild beasts
thirsting for his blood.

Again the door opened, this time on the side of the empress's
apartments, and Theophano appeared, pale as death, and hardly able to
stand, with a proud gleam in her royal eyes.  She was borne along by
chamberlains, and attended by her own officials, and by those members
of the council of state on whom she could count.  She calmly moved
towards the imperial throne and took her seat as president--empress
and regent by undisputed right.

"My lords," she said, with dignity, "the general of the eastern
armies is here by our imperial summons, to take the oath of fealty to
myself as regent and to my sons, the Basileis, to be duly invested in
the great command which my late lord committed to him, and to present
to the people, as of old, the triumph in the Hippodrome for the
victories by which he has justified his title to that high office."

"Surely, madam," the eunuch broke in, "the triumph should be
adjourned until the campaign of the east is concluded.  The accursed
Chamdas is still unbroken.  He yet holds his inner fortress of
Aleppo, and it is to be seen if he will not be soon as formidable as
ever."

"My lord great chamberlain and lords of the council," replied the
regent, "the victories that the marshal of the east has won are the
most glorious of which Rome can boast since the ages of our
ancestors, Heraclius or Justinian, of pious and immortal memory.
Crete has been restored to our empire after lying for a hundred and
fifty years under the iron heel of the infidel.  The spoil, the
wealth, the stores that are the prize of war exceed anything ever yet
seen in New Rome.  The boundaries of the empire have been moved again
east to the rivers of Mesopotamia.  No captain since Belisarius has
ever won such renown, and, let me remind you, such popular favor and
trust.  We must decree him the triumph that is his of right; for let
me warn you that to refuse it, while the city is wild with excitement
and our bravest troops are making their cantonments resound with
shouts for their 'ever-victorious commander,' would be to imperil the
security of our state, to shake the dynasty to its foundations, and,
indeed, to risk the very lives of those who are known to be his
public enemies."  And she turned with a dangerous flash in her eyes
upon the eunuch.  "And for the loyalty of the lord general, my
lords," she added, "I myself, Augusta and regent, am ready to answer."

Here the roar of the vast crowds around the palace, and shouts borne
over sea and land, of our "Ever-victorious Nicephorus Phocas!" joined
to the powerful and indeed unanswerable appeal of the empress, made
the council waver, and drove dismay into the soul of Bringas.  He
dared no longer to resist openly, and made politic excuses while he
signed the orders for the installation of the chief as generalissimo
and for his immediate celebration of the triumph.

"The council has risen," said Theophano, in her grandest tone, "and
the ceremony of homage to ourselves and to our sons and the
installation of the grand domestic shall take place forthwith in our
privy chamber," and she beckoned imperiously to Nicephorus to attend
her at once.

Homage and installation were duly performed according to the
ceremonial of that most ceremonious of courts.  All were at last
dismissed, but a secret message from the empress recalled the general
to a private interview alone in her own cabinet.

He fell on his knees, and, seizing her hand in his, he kissed it with
passion.  Looking up to her with all the fervor with which he had
ever invoked the Mother of God in his prayers, he murmured: "My
queen, my savior, my good angel, you have saved my life and my honor!"

"I have saved your life, indeed, and at the risk of my own.  I may
die of this battle for your sake, but I shall die with joy.  My hero,
my lord and master, you and I are henceforth one.  We will rule Rome
together, side by side, or die in each other's arms."

Then Theophano bent down to the hero, as he knelt at her feet; she
threw her bare arms round his neck and printed on his brow a long,
melting, fervid kiss, which thrilled through the veteran to the
marrow of his bones.

At this moment the curtain over the door of the cabinet was half
pushed aside by a massive arm in an embroidered robe.  Bringas had
ventured to make a last appeal to the Regent, and had suddenly sought
her in her privy cabinet.

Standing behind them, himself unseen, he watched the embrace, and
stealthily withdrew without a word.  It burst on the astute mind of
the eunuch like a thunderclap how it was that he had been outwitted
and rebuffed.  He saw his own danger, and the forces arrayed against
him.  He was no longer dealing merely with the intrigues of a woman
and the ambition of a soldier.  He saw that the man and the woman,
who of all Rome had the greatest influence, were now bound together
in love as well as in policy.  He felt how strong was the combination
against him, but it made him more fiercely resolved to win in the
strife.

The wild excitement of the great city would not suffer the triumph to
be delayed beyond the days required to bring across from Asia picked
detachments of the victorious army, the principal prisoners of war,
and the trophies, spoils, and standards.  The ceremonies began with a
solemn Pannychid--a succession of magnificent Te Deums chanted in the
great church continuously all through the night, in presence of a
crowd of dignitaries, senators, officials, soldiers, and prelates,
adorned in state robes, amid a blaze of lamps from a thousand
chandeliers, while the ladies of the court crowded into the galleries
beneath the mosaic domes of the Holy Wisdom.  Then took place the
triumph itself, on a scale even more magnificent than that which
Nicephorus had celebrated on his return from Crete.  From the country
round, and from the towns on the Thracian and Asian shores and on
both sides of the Bosphorus, masses of people poured in, so that the
enormous city was one continuous throng from Golden Horn to Golden
Gate.  From early dawn the vast procession of troops on foot and on
horse, of prisoners in chains, camels, horses, trophies, and gold and
silver vessels, was extended along the "middle" street, which had
been decorated for the occasion with wreaths, flowers, tapestries,
flags, and Byzantine, or what we now call "Venetian," masts.

At length the Hippodrome was reached.  On its tiers of seats up to
the marble colonnades were seated one hundred thousand spectators in
gala dress, according to their rank.  The cataphracti or mailed
cuirassiers came first, and were followed by detachments of
light-armed bow-men from the Anatolian mountains, and Macedonian
shield-men in close phalanx.  After them advanced Thracian and
Albanian spearmen, wild Scythian Cossacks, and at last a corps of
Varangian battle-axe foot-soldiers of the guard.  Next were led
detachments of the finest Arab chargers, taken from the stable of
Chamdas's own palace, with their brilliant trappings, arms, and
accoutrements of gorgeous tones and Oriental fantasy of ornament.
Then came the camels taken from the Saracens, bearing the
embroideries, standards, pennons, carpets, tents, kettle-drums, and
trumpets, with the general spoil of variegated colors and in confused
mass.  A wild shout arose from the benches on either side as the
Hagarene captives in white tunics were driven forward; and, as they
were forced to prostrate themselves in the dust before the imperial
balcony, the whole circus, at the signal of the precentors of the
factions, broke out into the ceremonial chant as ordained in the book
of rites:

"Glory to God who has given us this triumph over the children of
Hagar!  Glory to God who has laid in the dust the cities of the
Saracens!  Glory to God who has confounded those who mock at the
Mother of God!

"By the just judgment of God our enemies have been thrust down!  The
horse and his rider hath He cast into the sea!

"Thy right hand, O Lord, hath become glorious in power.  Thy right
hand, O Lord, hath dashed in pieces the enemy.

"Who is like unto Thee, O Lord; who is like Thee, glorious in
holiness, doing wonders?

"Thou in Thy mercy hast led forth the people which Thou hast redeemed!

"The Lord shall reign forever and ever!"

So the Te Deum rang, led by the trained choirs of the factions, each
under their musical directors.  The entire audience of the circus
joined in, and the familiar chant was taken up by the vast crowds
outside the Hippodrome, until from some hundred thousand voices in
unison the song of triumph was borne across the waters far away.

It was a scene that combined the barbarous splendors of a triumph by
the Scipios and Cæsars of old Rome, the fierce exultation of the
tribes of Israel recorded in the book of Exodus, and the majestic
pomp of a Te Deum celebrated as a religious rite with all the fervor
of the Orthodox Church.

The long procession of the trophies and spoils of the Saracens of
Syria and Aleppo was closed by that trophy which, to the people of
Byzantium, outweighed in value all the gold and silver, the gems, the
embroideries, the Damascene arms, and the enamels.  This was a
silver-gilt and jewelled case containing battered fragments of the
camel's-hair tunic of St. John the Baptist.  This inestimable relic
had fallen into the hands of the infidel on the capture of the Holy
City by Omar.  For more than three centuries it had remained in the
hands of the Hagarenes.  The recovery of this precious relic had
seemed to the delighted populace a glory to be placed beside the
restoration of the true cross to Jerusalem by the Emperor
Heraclius.[1]


[1] This holy tunic of the Baptist was kept reverentially in
Constantinople for 240 years, when it became the prize of the Latin
conquerors in 1204, and was carried off by Robert de Clari to the
abbey of Corbie.


As the last notes of the chant died away, the hero of the hour was
seen to enter the Hippodrome from the Forum of Constantine, from
whence the roar of the people had already reached the expectant
crowds in the circus.  Nicephorus, in his golden panoply, covered
with the crimson military cloak, stood in the brazen chariot of state
which was drawn by four milk-white chargers led by grooms on foot.
As he advanced slowly round the vast circus, the shouts of the
assembly broke out with a frenzy of cheers; and the choirs took up
the chant again: "Long live the ever-victorious commander!  Son of
God, give him many happy years!  Son of God, strengthen his arm in
battle!  Son of God, give the victory to this Thy people of Rome!
Long years to our Basileis, whose loyal servants we are!  May this
holy empire of Rome be preserved forever and ever!"

With these prayers to Heaven resounding in the great amphitheatre,
the victorious marshal advanced to the eastern end, at which stood
the cathisma, or imperial tribune, where Theophano, in her robes of
state, blazing with gold brocade and jewels, sat between her two
infants, the joint Basileis, Basil II. and Constantine VIII., as they
were destined to become.  The milk-white chargers were reined in and
the car was halted at the foot of the stairs.  Then Nicephorus,
escorted by chamberlains and officers, both military and civil,
stepped from his chariot and ascended the staircase to the imperial
throne.  There he ungirt his sword and laid it at the feet of the
empress; and, prostrating himself on the ground, he offered his
homage by kissing the fringe of her robe and by placing his hands
upon the knees of the two wondering royal children.

Amid thunders of applause from the vast arena and renewed chants of
"Long life to the ever-victorious commander!  Long years to our
august Basileis!  God preserve this holy empire of Rome!"--the
soldier rose to his feet.  His queen beamed down on him from her
jewelled throne with looks of mingled love, triumph, and admiration,
that burned into his inmost soul.  And as he retreated slowly
backward from the royal presence he saw the cruel glare of envy and
hatred which Bringas and his partisans cast on him.  The smiles of
the queen and the scowls of the ministers were alike full of warning
and charged with destiny.  If the hatred of the mighty statesman was
a menace to his life, the favor of the sovereign seemed to summon him
to mount to a dizzy and perilous height.

Shaken to his soul by a storm of forebodings, amazement, hope, and
passion, Nicephorus drew himself free from the throng of flatterers,
friends, and rivals; and, wrapping himself in a trooper's cloak, so
as not to be recognized, the triumphant general had himself rapidly
borne away to his own modest home in a distant quarter of the city.
There, tearing off his accoutrements and all insignia of office and
rank, he flung himself on his simple couch in solitary seclusion;
and, falling on his knees before a small ikon of Mary, he prayed to
the Mother of God to guide his steps in the dark wilderness in which
he found himself entangled.  Transported out of himself far above the
vociferous pageants of that exhausting day, Nicephorus gave himself,
with all the mystical imagination of his Oriental nature, to visions
wherein he beheld the Queen of Heaven offering him a place among the
blessed saints who had forsaken things of the earth for that peace
which the world cannot give.




XVI

Cæsar at the Rubicon

All through the night of that eventful day of his triumph the general
tossed in a tumult of conflicting emotions, while the noisy crowds
surrounded his abode with shouts of, "Our ever-victorious commander!"
and again, "Nicephorus to the Sacred Palace!" and even "Nicephorus,
our Basileus!"  He refused to show himself to the people, denied
access to all, sent for the monk Athanasius in order to confess, and
had himself clothed in the rough garb of a postulant.  He now fully
understood the imminent peril to his liberty and his life which the
hatred of the ruling faction involved.  He felt, with a burning sense
of shame, that with all her fascinations the empress sought him
rather as a tool than as a husband.  And he saw before him the
whirlpool of revolution, civil war, calumny, and crime that he must
face if he suffered himself to be looked on as an aspirant to the
throne.  He fell back, with groans and prayers, on his old purpose of
seeking rest in a cell as a simple monk or hermit, as his own uncle
had been before him.

At last the faithful Digenes succeeded in forcing his way to the
chief.  The whole city, he said, was now in wild excitement, calling
for the general to assume the government and displace the hated
eunuch.  Bringas, he said, was well aware of the danger to himself,
and was conspiring to arrest and destroy his rival.  There was but
one course left.  To save his own life, to protect his friends, to
restore the empire, the general must grasp the power that all Rome
and the army thrust into his hands.

"It cannot be," said Nicephorus, calmly; "I am about to retire from
this world of blood, struggle, and evil passions.  I have sent for
the holy man of Mount Athos, who is preparing for my admission to
their order.  When my enemies find that I withdraw from the contest
and have no more part in things of earth, they will leave me in peace
and soon forget me.  I shall be forgotten--ay, by those," he added,
bitterly, "who now profess to care for me.  It shall never be said
that a Phocas turned rebel to the dynasty of Basil and plotted to
drive an infant Basil from the throne of his fathers, or made himself
the tool of a woman's ambition.  Go, my son; go and tell them in the
city and in the palace that Nicephorus has now become the hermit,
Father Zachariah."

"It is too late," said Digenes, with a groan--"too late to save you
from arrest, mutilation--it may be death!"

Here the colloquy was interrupted by a messenger, who brought the
general a formal missive from the Sacred Palace that the council of
state craved the immediate presence of the grand domestic of the east
to confer on urgent affairs of the empire.

"Tell them," said Nicephorus, with proud contempt, "that I have done
with council, palace, empire, politics, and arms.  I go to my cell.
I leave it to them to save Rome.  I will not come."

Digenes withdrew in despair; and now the hermit Athanasius was again
announced as craving an interview.

"Let him come," said the great soldier, as he flung himself down in
abasement beneath the ikon; "all will withdraw, and see that no man
enter here."

"Holy father, strengthen me in my purpose," groaned the chief, as the
hermit stood behind him, still completely enveloped from head to foot
and concealed in an immense black cloak.

Slowly the hood of the mantle was thrown back and disclosed the pale
countenance of Theophano herself.  Her eyes flashed with excitement;
her features shone with looks of eagerness, entreaty, and love; her
voice shook with anxiety, passion, and fear.

"My hero," she broke out, spasmodically, "your life is at stake, and
I cannot save you from these fiends.  They have already set the
vermilion seal to an order to have you arrested and deprived of
sight.  They will seize you if you set foot in the palace, and our
friends there are not strong enough to save you.  They will seize you
even if you stay here.  Rush for sanctuary to the great church and
claim the protection of the patriarch.  I came here myself at every
risk, for I dared not trust a messenger, and I know well, my hero, my
master, my saint," she added, in her sweetest voice and with a look
of love, "that Nicephorus is a man of iron, who will not be turned
from his purpose even by his best friend."  And Theophano put her
hand upon his shoulder as he still remained on his knees before the
ikon, and, passing her soft fingers over his burning brow, she looked
down into his eyes.

"Madam," he said, slowly, "I am dead to this world.  I am dedicated
now to God and to heaven."

"It shall not be!" she replied, passionately.  "If you choose to
sacrifice yourself, will you leave the Rome you have saved to the
mercy of these wretches, to the savagery of the infidel?  Will you
doom to a prison and mutilation my poor children, your true and
lawful sovereigns?  Will you abandon me to degradation, to a life of
torment, to the worst shame that the eunuch or the Hagarenes can
devise--me who offer you everything that the love of woman and the
authority of an empress of Rome can offer a soldier of the Cross?
Nicephorus, son of the hero Bardas, of the noble race of Phocas, can
you abandon to shame and ruin the widow of your sovereign and the
children of the house of Basil?"

He sank on the ground before her, and taking the skirt of her robe in
his hands he pressed it to his lips with veneration, as if it were
the girdle of the Mother of God.

"I go," she murmured; "I dare not stay; they will send their guards
here in a few moments.  Rush to the church.  Claim sanctuary.  I bid
you in the name of Christ--do this for me--and for mine."

Theophano disappeared as silently and mysteriously as she had come.
And now Digenes broke in again with news that the palace guard were
already on their way to seize the general.  He concealed Nicephorus
in a military cloak and forced him into the church of the Holy
Wisdom.  Then he rushed to the patriarch to implore his protection
for the fugitive who had taken sanctuary in the most venerated temple
of the city.  Polyeuctus summoned his whole chapter, and, bearing
aloft the miraculous crucifix, took Nicephorus under his
guardianship.  In the mean time Digenes called together the partisans
of Nicephorus, and appealed to the people to protect their hero from
the vengeance of his rivals.  Furious mobs gathered round the
cathedral, shouting, "Long live the victorious chief!" "Death to the
eunuch!" "Nicephorus, our king!" and they offered, by their mass and
violence, effective resistance to the guards who attempted to enter
the church and arrest the chief.

Polyeuctus, with his austere virtue and genuine patriotism, had long
desired to put an end to the corrupt and savage reign of the powerful
eunuch, and he flung himself into the defence of Nicephorus with all
the energy of his fiery and generous nature.  He vehemently denounced
his purpose of retiring to a cell, refused him absolution, and
menaced him with excommunication and every spiritual penalty unless
he continued to do his duty to the state.  Dragging the general with
him, girdled by a crowd of priests bearing sacred images and relics,
in the midst of an immense mob of citizens cheering the hero of the
day, the patriarch forced Nicephorus into the senate, which had been
already convoked by the regent's will.

There Polyeuctus, with the general standing beside him, poured out an
impassioned appeal, of which this is the substance: He gave a moving
picture of the decay of the empire and the ravages of the infidel by
sea and land until the invincible arm of Nicephorus had driven them
back to the far east.  He spoke of the orgies of the late reign and
of the corruptions that had eaten into the heart of the government.
The prime-minister, who had suffered--nay, encouraged--all this
corruption, he said, now claimed to be undisputed master of the
empire, and was affecting to be the real Augustus in the name of an
inexperienced woman and her two babes.  "Let us close this era of
corruption and fraud," he continued, "by giving absolute power to the
hero who has twice saved our name and faith from its deadly
foes--this stern and pious soldier who is feared as much for his
honesty by the evil crew of the palace minions as he is feared for
his invincible prowess by the Hagarenes of Abd-el-Aziz or of the
accursed Chamdas, the enemy of Christ.  Senators, magnates, and
officials of Rome, there is but one man who can restore this empire
and confront its secret enemies at home as well as its open foes
abroad.  Let us confer, as our forefathers of Rome would do of old,
dictatorial power on the one man who is worthy to wield it."

This fervid and bold appeal was received with cheers by a majority of
the Senate, but the party of Bringas met it with furious opposition.
Amid the storm of conflicting voices, Nicephorus himself came forward
to protest that he would accept no office or task which in any way
trenched on the rights and prerogatives of the regent or menaced the
succession to the throne of their lawful sovereigns, the infant
Basileis.  With his hand on the holy relics, which the deacons had
carried before the patriarch into the senate house, Nicephorus swore
in presence of the entire senate, the priests, and ministers
assembled, that he prayed God to strike him down with the foulest
form of death, and to consign his soul to eternal damnation, if he
ever should break his faith as a loyal subject of the regent and the
two Augusti.  On their side, the senate, by its chief officials,
swore to maintain in his office the grand domestic of the east, to
suffer no act of state, no appointment to office, and no dismissal
from office to be made without his sanction and advice.

Nicephorus was saved.  So far as words and oaths could go--and they
did not go far in the city "that God protects"--he was practically
invested with despotic powers.  But in face of the savage enmity of
Bringas and his party, and without any adequate body of troops
devoted to him, the general knew how precarious was his life in the
capital.  He hurriedly withdrew and hastened to his headquarters in
Cappadocia, where his friends gave out that he was busy organizing
his army for a fresh expedition into the east.  The struggle between
Theophano and the eunuch was carried on by both sides with desperate
energy and unscrupulous arts.  The regent now took into her favor
Digenes, the akritas, as a trusty partisan to Nicephorus, and had
even sanctioned his marriage with the Princess Agatha.  Theophano now
saw the advantage of gathering to her faction the relations of her
late husband, whose legal successor she claimed to be.  She restored
to their rank and liberty the sisters of Romanus, now aunts of the
Basileis de jure, and ranged round her all the friends of the
chivalrous akritas and all the partisans of the princesses of the
Basilian dynasty.  On his side, the astute lord chamberlain was
straining every nerve to find rivals to Nicephorus, who might act as
a counterpoise.  He was even suspected by the regent of looking to
the deposed family of Lecapenus, the late emperor, for a possible
pretender to the throne.

After the revolution, which had driven out the sons of Romanus
Lecapenus and restored to his legal rights Constantine
Born-in-the-Purple, Stephanus Lecapenus had been a state prisoner for
nearly twenty years in strict seclusion.  He was now kept under rigid
surveillance in the island of Lesbos.  In the church of Methymna he
was suffered to attend the solemn mass on the eve of Easter Sunday.
He was led to the altar, and there was offered the consecrated
elements by the archpriest officiating.  As he drank the cup he was
seen to stagger and fall, and before the rite was concluded he lay a
corpse in the church.  The report of his death was a three days'
wonder at Byzantium, and a fruitful occasion for suspicion,
recrimination, and gossip.  But the sudden death of royal prisoners,
deposed sovereigns, and possible pretenders was too common an
incident in such times to cause any serious commotion.  The faction
of the regent accused the eunuch of the murder.  The faction of
Bringas laid it at the door of the regent.  Its only effect was to
make each more suspicious of the other side, as well as more
desperate in their own schemes.

Nicephorus was now working night and day at the reorganization and
equipment of his veteran army.  His ulterior plans were undecided.
But he saw that, both for his own life and freedom, as well as for
the defence of the empire, his command of an army perfect in
discipline and ready for instant action was an indispensable
condition.  Whether he was to crush the Saracen forever, whether he
was to save his own life, he must be at the head of troops devoted to
himself and perfectly ready to fight.  Michael, a secret emissary of
the regent, had just left his tent with an urgent appeal from
Theophano to hasten back to the capital with a powerful army, in
order to save her and her children from the machinations of Bringas.
Thrusting aside his maps, plans, and the reports of his officers,
Nicephorus brooded over the tremendous issues at stake--equally full
of peril whether he advanced or drew back.

Hour after hour the general meditated, torn in opposite ways by love
and doubt, by eagerness to obey his enchantress and by horror at the
sin of plunging the empire in civil war.  In despair he flung himself
down with groans on his couch.  Suddenly there burst into his tent
John Tzimisces, in a state of wild excitement which made him defy all
the courtesies of life.  "What! are you sleeping, general?" the
impetuous soldier broke forth--"asleep, when that wretched eunuch is
plotting your death!  Up, or it will be too late; there is not an
hour to lose!  March, or enter the prison in which Bringas has
ordered us to fling you!"

"Prison! what prison?" said Nicephorus, stupefied by the violence of
the furious Joannes.

"Read this," said John; "and a similar offer is made to General
Courcouas!"

The letter was a long and formal document, signed by Joseph Bringas
in the name of the council of state, over which he presided,
detailing the facts of the vast conspiracy that they had discovered
in Byzantium to do away with the infant Basileis and to place the
popular general on the throne of Basil.  This plot, it was added, was
directed by Nicephorus in person, while pretending to march against
the Saracen, and his agents and partisans had already been arrested
and put to torture.  His father Bardas was in prison, and his brother
Leo was about to be arrested.  The arrest and punishment of so
notorious a rebel was the duty of every loyal officer of the empire.
And the council charged the Lord General Joannes, strategus of the
Anatolian theme, and the Lord General Courcouas, strategus of the
Cappadocian theme, to put away this public enemy by all and every
means in their power.  When they had fulfilled this service, John
should be duly appointed marshal of the armies of the east, in place
of the traitor, and Courcouas should have supreme command of the
armies of the west.  "Seize him, and force on him the tonsure he
pretends he desires, and immure him in a frontier monastery for life;
or send him in chains to us at Byzantium; we shall know how to deal
with him."  And the letter to Tzimisces was inscribed within, "To the
lord marshal of the east, hereafter to be named Basileus of the
Romans."

And here General Courcouas burst in with the second letter to the
same effect.  He was as much excited as Tzimisces himself, and
equally enraged at the treachery of Bringas.

"What can we do?" said Nicephorus, gloomily; "they hold the official
authority of the palace; to wrest it from them means rebellion,
anarchy, and civil war."

"What can we do?" roared Tzimisces, aflame with passion.  "What!
shall chiefs such as we are, at the head of the finest army in the
world, suffer ourselves to be the slaves of a vile eunuch, a
miserable Paphlagonian?  Are we going to be crushed by the infamous
tricks of the palace harem?  There is not an hour to lose, I say.
Advance, or perish!  Put the imperial diadem on your brow and march
for Constantinople this very day!"

So, too, said Courcouas, with furious gestures.  And, beside
themselves with rage, the two generals drew their swords and pointed
them at the bare breast of Nicephorus.

"March!" they shouted, "or take this sword and die as a Roman general
should die rather than be made a captive and a slave!"

In the midst of this madness the officers of the staff burst in, with
a wild, insubordinate crowd of troopers, for John had already
communicated to his own following the infamous proposals sent by the
eunuch.  The news flew round the camp and excited an uproar.  John,
Courcouas, and their comrades seized Nicephorus as he was, and
dragged him to the exercising plain, where already the troops had
been hastily called to arms.  They mounted their commander on a
shield and carried him round the squadrons and battalions with a roar
of cries: "Ever-victorious Nicephorus!" "Autocrat of the Romans!"
"All-powerful Basileus!" "Long life to Augustus, our sovereign lord!"
"Long may he reign!" "God protect our invincible emperor!"  And this
was followed by a roar as loud and as spontaneous from ten thousand
throats at once, as spears and swords glistened in the sunlight and
the eagles were shaken in the air: "To Rome! to Rome! to the city of
the Cæsars!"

Nicephorus, indeed had crossed his Rubicon.




XVII

The New Basileus

It was a glorious morning of summer, and the sun had just risen over
the crests of the range of Anti-Taurus, when the most brilliant army
of that warlike age was drawn up on the plain of Cæsarea for the
installation of the new emperor.  Nicephorus advanced to the tribune,
surrounded by the counts, strategi, and captains of his eastern
force.  He had suffered them to place on his feet the vermilion
buskins clasped with their golden eagles--the sign of majesty--but he
resolutely refused to accept the diadem and the purple mantle they
sought to force on him.  Then he commanded silence, and, with that
voice like a trumpet that had so often rung along their ranks, he
spoke thus:

"Comrades, it is with no desire to be a tyrant that I have taken up
these imperial trappings; it has been forced upon me by your summons
and the will of the army.  You are my witnesses how unwillingly I
assume the task of preserving this our realm of Rome, and, indeed, my
own life.  Almighty God above us knows that I am ready to give my
life for you, and no suffering or danger can turn me from my purpose.
You have resolved that I shall not be crushed by the insolent devices
of that upstart eunuch, who presumes to play the despot over all.  He
holds my venerable father Bardas in his prisons; he is hunting to
death my brother Leo and my friends; he has sent orders to our
gallant generals here to send me in chains to the capital, there to
be blinded or murdered.  I am going, not in chains, but at the head
of my brave soldiers, to wrest the power of the empire from the cruel
hands of this usurper, to rescue my father and my brother from his
clutches, to restore the government to its lawful princes.  You know
how I love you, my children, and will stand by you till death.  Rise,
and put your hearts into the fight.  There is stern work for us to
do.  I cannot tell you that it can be done without shedding of your
blood.  I am leading you this day, not against Cretans or Scythians
or Arabs, whom you have so often beaten, but against Romans.  We have
to capture, not a hill-fort, but that great city of the Cæsars on the
Golden Horn, which has walls and towers, garrisons, riches, stores,
and splendor such as no other city on earth can show.  God is with
me, for my cause is just.  I go not to dethrone our young sovereigns,
but to be their guardian and to secure their throne.  It is not I
that break my oath.  It is the perjured villain who breaks faith with
me, and is plotting to kill me and mine.  I have led you to glory in
many a fight of old.  Follow me now to Rome, where a nobler triumph
awaits us, the cause of justice and of God above!"

These words roused a frenzy of excitement in the troops, who replied
with shouts of applause, with the brandishing of their lances and the
crash of arms.  Their beloved general, like the great Ironside he
was, would mingle appeals to battle and to God in the same speech,
for he well knew his Armenian and Anatolian veterans to be as keen
for fight as they were God-fearing in heart.  "These words of his,"
says Leo the deacon, in his chronicle, "stirred the army to an
indescribable state of excitement, making them eager for the most
desperate adventure.  The soldiers adored him frantically and gloried
to serve under him.  Bred to war from his youth upward, he not only
was the bravest of the brave in battle and endowed with marvellous
personal dexterity in arms, but he had that genius for inspiring men
with his own zeal that no one of that age could be compared with him
as commander-in-chief."

That very day the great march to the Bosphorus began.  Exercising at
once the rights of emperor, Nicephorus, with politic generosity,
conferred on Tzimisces and on Courcouas the very dignities with which
the eunuch had proposed to purchase their treason.  John was promoted
to be magistros and grand domestic of the eastern armies, and he was
placed in command of the Asiatic frontier to hold in check the
Saracens of Syria.  From headquarters there issued a stream of
imperial despatches, nominations to command, orders to march, and
official requisitions.  Every high-road and every dominant post was
occupied with adequate detachments.  The passes, the fortresses, and
the ports were all taken over by trusty officers of the new
sovereign.  The army was mobilized and concentrated, and was hurled
in columns by forced marches upon the shores of the Propontis.

The whole of the Asiatic themes being thus in secure possession of
the new sovereign, and the seaboard closed against any carrying of
intelligence, Bishop Philotheus was sent in advance with imperial
missives addressed to the patriarch at Constantinople, to the senate,
and to the great chamberlain at the palace.  The despatch to the
latter was thus worded:

"You will prepare to receive me, Nicephorus Phocas, your sovereign,
now duly invested with imperial authority.  My care will be to watch
over the infant sons of our late sovereign, Romanus, and to protect
them as their guardian until they come of age.  I shall devote myself
to the service of the state, and I undertake to increase the power of
the Roman empire by deeds of arms.  They who resist my will must take
the consequences of their folly, for this issue must be fought out to
the death.  Their blood will be upon their own heads if they choose
the wrong in place of the right."

So skilful had been the dispositions of the new autocrat, and so
perfect was the discipline of the Asian government, that, according
to the chronicle, no rumor of the resolution that had taken place at
Cæsarea reached the capital until the bishop presented his despatch
to Bringas in council.  The eunuch, beside himself with rage, stormed
at the venerable prelate, as if he had been a rude messenger from
some barbarous frontier chief.  He flung the poor bishop into prison,
proclaimed Nicephorus a rebel and an outlaw, and prepared for a
desperate defence.

Bringas was not the man to yield without a stout fight.  As his
overtures to John and to Courcouas had failed, he turned to leading
nobles and captains in the west, whom he inspired with jealousy of
Nicephorus.  He sent for Marianos Apambas, once commander of the
imperial forces in Italy, to whom he committed the defence of the
city.  He secured also Paschal, a former strategus, and Nicholas and
Leo of the noble house of the Tornicii.  The vast ramparts of the
city, with their three hundred towers, were made ready for assault,
the city gates were barred, and a boom was cast across the Golden
Horn.  The imperial guard was called under arms, and contingents
brought in from Macedonia and Thrace, who were known to be always
jealous of the eastern divisions.  Bringas got a sentence of
excommunication against Nicephorus; he obtained an imperial order in
the names of the infant Basileis declaring the family of Phocas and
his partisans as outlaws.

The empress, meantime, shut herself close in her own wing of the
palace, guarded by the most powerful force she could muster to her
defence.  There the Princess Agatha rushed into her room in a state
of acute agony with the news that the party of Bringas had drawn up
an order for the arrest of Basil Digenes, the akritas, whom it was
intended to mutilate or murder.  "Find some way to save him," she
cried in despair, "for we owe him this service.  With his heroic
spirit, he neglected all the warnings of his friends to escape in
time.  He thought he could still aid the cause of his chief by
watching his interests here--and I fear that he lingered still for my
sake--though I pressed him to think of the danger he incurred.  Save
him, Augusta, save the truest friend of the general and the noblest
soldier of Rome!  He may be killed or blinded before an hour is
passed."

"Where is he now?" asked Theophano.  "I was assured he had made his
escape into Asia to the army."

"But he came back secretly and managed to reach the apartments of my
sister and myself--in order," she added, with a blush, "to induce me
to fix a day for our marriage, if he lived through the turmoil of
these times.  We have concealed him for the moment, but we cannot
protect him long."

"He shall be put in charge of our own cubiculars of the royal
chamber, and he shall be enrolled under another name in the corps of
palace guards whom I have mustered for defence of myself and my
children.  We will not be beaten without a sharp fight."

The news now ran through the great city that Nicephorus, with the
vanguard of his army, had reached the shores opposite.  He was
actually in possession of Chrysopolis, the modern Scutari, and his
ensigns could be seen in the summer palace of Hieria, on the shore
that now faces Seraglio Point.  The excitement in the city grew
intense.  Vast crowds filled the streets day and night, restrained
only by the Macedonian troops, whom Bringas had posted throughout the
city, which was declared to be in a state of siege.  The passions of
the multitude rose to fever pitch when it was discovered that the
astute eunuch had taken care to have all ships, barges, and every
kind of craft removed from the Asiatic coast, and that no means as
yet existed by which Nicephorus and his forces could cross the
straits.  At dawn it was found that the venerable Bardas, the father
of Nicephorus, had escaped from his prison and had sought sanctuary
in the cathedral, where the patriarch had taken him under his
protection.  The guards of Bringas were sent to drag the veteran out
of the church; but angry crowds, with arms, stones, and staves, drove
back the troops, who sought to force their way into the temple and to
seize their prisoner.

It was now the morning of Sunday, August 9th, and vast crowds filled
the church of the Holy Wisdom, where the service of the day had
begun.  Bringas, puffed up with overweening pride in his own
authority and confident in his military strength, rode down in person
from the palace, and with a body of his guards tried to force his way
to the very choir.  He harangued the people with daring insolence and
threatened them with his vengeance and an embargo on corn.  This
roused the citizens to fury, and Bringas and his men were driven out
with insults and missiles.  He made his way back to the palace, with
magnificent audacity, still defying the mob, and even ordering the
corn market to be closed and no bread to be sold or issued.  But
finding that Theophano and the royal princesses were strongly guarded
and barricaded in a large part of the vast edifice, where Basil
Digenes had assumed the chief command, he felt himself no longer safe
there, and shut himself up with his guards in his own palace.

The city thereon broke out into revolution, and for three days and
nights desperate street fights ensued between the bands of citizens
who sided with Nicephorus and the Macedonian guards who remained
loyal to Bringas.  By degrees armed detachments of Nicephorus's
partisans made their way into the city, and some bands managed to
cross the Bosphorus.  Polyeuctus, with his clergy and masses of
citizens, bore the aged Bardas in triumph to the imperial palace, and
there installed him in a strong position of defence.  In one of the
desperate street fights which raged throughout the city, a woman
threw a heavy vase from a top window, which clove the skull of
Apambas, the commander of the Macedonians.  His death demoralized the
last defenders of the eunuch.  The mob now stormed his palace, sacked
and burned it; and the defeated tyrant, in turn, fled for sanctuary
to the great church which his intended victim had so recently left.
His partisans were hunted by the populace and thrown into prison.
The streets of the capital ran with blood.  For three days and nights
massacre, pillage, arson raged unchecked through the mighty city
"protected of God."  Nicephorus, with his officers and troops, on the
Asian coast, without vessels to cross the straits, watched from afar
the tumult which they were powerless to quell.

The party of the new Basileus at last found a leader.  Basil, natural
son of the former emperor or usurper, Romanus Lecapenus, by a Russian
slave of the harem, had long been in high office under Constantine.
He was created a patrician in that reign, captain of the guard,
president of the senate, grand chamberlain, and general in the war
against the Saracens.  He had been prepared in childhood for high
office short of empire by the barbarous rite of emasculation, which
was regarded as a grotesque form of lay tonsure.[1]  But he had
wonderful energy, courage, and sagacity--a born statesman.  Before
the accession of Romanus he had been displaced by his rival, Bringas,
disgraced, deprived of office and rank, and consigned to obscurity
and strict surveillance.  He naturally hated the eunuch who had
overthrown him.  And his hour of retaliation had come.  Arming his
own household, his slaves and followers, to the number of three
thousand, he patrolled the city in force, beating down the remnants
of the Bringas faction, proclaiming the new emperor, and restoring a
regular police in the devastated city.


[1] Such persons, even if they were of royal blood, could be
intrusted with the highest office and power, without risk of their
aspiring to the throne, from which by law and custom they were cut
off as disqualified.  Throughout the whole history of the Byzantine
empire, as of the sultanate, they often rose to almost despotic power.


Thence he led his men to the Golden Horn, seized the ships in port,
and despatched them across the straits to transport the army of the
new sovereign.  The imperial fleet, barges, vessels of all kinds, and
open boats, carried over crowds of citizens, who flocked to hail the
rising sun of empire with shouts of "Long live our glorious and
ever-victorious Nicephorus!"  On Sunday, August 16th, exactly a week
from the outbreak of the revolution, the new emperor was escorted by
the new grand chamberlain and a swarm of functionaries to the capital
to be crowned.  The imperial galley, gilt from stem to stern, dressed
with silken banners and awnings, had a deck bridge adorned with
figures and emblems and an image of St. George at the prow.  There
sat on his throne the new chief, as his oarsmen, with gilded sweeps,
slowly rowed the state vessel beneath the city walls round to the
suburb of Hebdomon, south of the mighty ramparts.  Thence through the
Golden Gate, the autocrat, in golden armor, rode in procession to the
church of the Holy Wisdom.  He sat on a white charger, caparisoned
with housings of purple, gold, and jewels.  The long route of many
miles in extent, thronged with vast crowds cheering the new
sovereign, was adorned with wreaths, banners, and triumphal arches.
At various points on the course the emperor dismounted to prostrate
himself in many a venerated church before some miraculous image, and
placed lighted tapers in sign of adoration.  At other spots he had to
be disarmed from his military accoutrements and invested with the
imperial scaramangion, or mantle of ermine and rare furs.  His sword
was then laid aside and the sceptre surmounted with the cross was
placed in his right hand.  At the Golden Gate the Saracen prisoners
fell into the cortège, and the factions met him with their eternal
chants of "Hail, victorious chief!" "Nicephorus, king of the Romans!"

It would be tedious to narrate in detail the interminable ceremonies
of that long day of triumph and consecration.  It was all carried out
minutely, according to the book of ceremonies, in the solemn and
sacramental forms that had been used at the installation of Romanus
four years before, forms that had been used in the city of the
Constantines for some five centuries already, that were destined to
be used there for some five centuries more.  These secular rites have
been servilely imitated and adapted by all the monarchies of the west
and of the north for a thousand years since.  It was the same
elaborate consecration of a king by the high-priests of the state
church, of which we lately witnessed the revival in an age which
claims to have outgrown Byzantine servility, superstition, and gaudy
display.

In those days kings and their people attached a mystical importance
to the sacramental character of those acts of consecration.  And the
new Basileus was himself a mystic among mystics.  Accordingly,
Nicephorus duly prostrated himself before the miracle-working image
of the Mother of God; the tapers were duly lighted; the incense
ascended from the altars; the royal vestments were duly exchanged for
the imperial tunic.  The diadem was bound round the grizzled head of
the new sovereign; the military greaves were then solemnly changed
for the vermilion buskins.  And thus on foot the emperor entered the
porch of the Holy Wisdom, where he was met by the patriarch and all
his chapter.  The true cross, which St. Helena had recovered, and
which, ultimately, at the fourth crusade, passed to St. Louis, in
Paris, was solemnly borne before the monarch amid the adoration of
the worshippers around.  Again and again the royal vestments were
changed, after being first solemnly blessed by the patriarch.  Then
the emperor was conducted by the priests to the ambon, where the
prayers and offices of consecration were said, and the holy oil of
anointing was poured on the royal person; and at last the imperial
crown was solemnly placed on the veteran's brow amid chants of "Holy,
holy, holy, glory to God in the heaven, peace to men on earth!"

But the very enumeration of the endless stages in the rite becomes
intolerable.  Nor can modern patience endure the recital of the
perpetual acts of reverence, homage, symbolic gestures, of the
processions, feastings, and gala courtesies of that prodigious
ceremonial.  Hour after hour the chants went on with a rhythm that
combined Oriental prostration to a despot with Christian litanies of
adoration: "Hail, Nicephorus, autocrat of the Romans!" "Hail, mighty
sovereign of the Romans!" "Hail, thou who hast put to flight our
enemies!" "Hail, thou who hast destroyed the cities of the foe!"
"Thou hast thrust Ishmael into the dust!" "God hast shown pity on His
people, in that He has placed thee on the imperial throne!" "Rejoice,
thou city of the Romans!" "Receive him whom God has crowned!" "The
people desire Nicephorus to be their king!" "The law requires him to
reign!" "The palace asks for him to rule!" "The senate calls for
him!" "The army cries out for him!" "The whole world craves for
Nicephorus to be its sovereign lord!" "Hear us, O God, when we call
to Thee!" "Hear us, O God, and grant long life to our king!" "Give
him long life, O Christ!" "God preserve him!" "Long may he reign!"
"May God keep this Christian realm in His holy keeping!"

Such were the chants and litanies which hour after hour rang through
the domes of the Holy Wisdom, rang through the streets and porticos
of the vast city.  They were chants which, in a few short years, were
turned into execrations and comminations.  But they are the very
words which for a thousand years the peoples of Europe have shouted
to high Heaven on the day when they have to welcome a new master and
ask the blessing of God upon his reign.

When the portentous ceremonial in the church of the Holy Wisdom was
completed, the imperial procession was formed again, led by a
body-guard consisting of one hundred Varangian halberdiers and one
hundred young nobles.  The sovereign was escorted to the hall of the
throne, where the homage or "adoration," as it was called, was duly
performed.  The chief dignitaries of the empire prostrated themselves
at the feet of the new lord.  An endless stream of courtiers
followed, in their ranks, as marshalled by the masters of the
ceremonies.  At last Nicephorus was carried back to the Sacred
Palace--now "autocrat of the Romans, the equal of the apostles,
successor of the pious Constantine, of him who had founded the city
and endowed the church, the vicegerent of Providence on earth."
There he was joined by the empress, radiant and triumphant, who
received him with a smile that, to him, was of more value than the
blessings of a thousand priests and the cheers of a hundred thousand
citizens, a smile which promised him a crown more precious than all
the glories and the powers which the empire of the world had to give.




XVIII

Emperor and Patriarch

The first act of the new emperor was to hold a council, at which he
made a series of appointments to fill the offices of the empire.  He
dispensed with the elaborate code of etiquette which for centuries
had surrounded every act of the Augustus.  He took his seat at the
council-board as if he were still general holding a council of war
among his officers rather than as a ceremonial successor of Justinian
and Theophilus.  He did not fill up the appointment of
parakeimomenos, or grand chamberlain, the office which had made
Bringas the real master of the empire; but he created Basil, son of
Lecapenus, president of the senate, and practically invested him with
chief power.  Bardas, his venerable father, whose life had been saved
in the revolution, was now created Cæsar, a title revived from an
earlier age of the Roman empire.  John Tzimisces was confirmed in his
office of domestic, or grand marshal of the east.  Leo, the brother,
was created a magistros and curopalates, or grand marshal of the
palace--_i.e._, practically, commander of the imperial body-guard.
Bringas was deported to a distant monastery in Asia, where he lived
in obscurity for years; but he was not otherwise punished, and was
not confined in an actual prison.

Nicephorus then ordered his own household.  He refused to use the
sacred koitôn, or bedchamber of the emperors.  He had his camp-bed
placed in a small and simple cabinet adjoining his private office.
He bore in public the imperial robes, but beneath them he had the
hair-shirt of a penitent.  Ever since the tragic death of one as dear
to him as life, he had sworn off the use of meat and of wine.  His
private table was still served as before with the food and drink of a
hermit; for he felt himself in his own eyes a monk upon the throne, a
humble follower of St. Theodore, one of the soldier-martyrs of the
faith.  On the first day of his reign he had admitted to audience the
prelate Antony, syncellus (or abbot) of the great monastery of St.
George of the Stoudion, who came in the name of the patriarch and of
the chapter of the Holy Wisdom.

"Most august Basileus," he said, after the formal compliments and
statement of his mission, "the venerable patriarch, the abbot
Anastasius of Mount Athos, and myself of the Stoudion, have
earnestly, but faithfully in our duty to God, resisted your desire to
enter our ranks as a monk, for we hold that the safety of this realm
requires you to act as its commander in war and as its ruler in
peace.  The duties of a monk are one; the duties of a sovereign are
other.  It is impossible to be both monk and king.  This palace has
been for ages the scene of royal festivities and pomps.  The citizens
will not endure to be deprived of such holidays and shows; and
government of the realm could not be carried on if these things were
suddenly suppressed.  We churchmen are the first to honor the pious
purpose of your Majesty, to show an example of temperance, chastity,
and godliness in halls which have long been the scene of frivolity
and vice.  But the austerities of a hermit do not become a king and
are prone to be a subject of mockery and malice.  It is ill wearing a
hair-shirt beneath the mantle of a Basileus in the golden
throne-room.  And it is in vain to eat dry bread and drink plain
water at a state banquet in the hall of the nineteen couches.  Eat,
live, sleep with temperance, not with austerity--as a soldier, not as
a monk.  This magnificent palace has for centuries been the court of
an Augusta as well as of an Augustus.  It is to be feared that
scandals may arise if it be given up entirely to men, to courtiers,
to soldiers, and their followers and lackeys."

"Dost thou, indeed, counsel me, holy father, to take to myself the
late regent?" asked Nicephorus, with an eagerness that was almost
fierce.

"God forbid!" replied the monk, sternly.  "She it is whom we fear.
It is but five months since she became a widow.  And did not her
widowhood now forbid such an alliance, her youth and her career make
it impious to harbor such a thought.  Most august sovereign, we have
not offered to your Majesty a suggestion so unworthy of your
inviolable name."

"What, then, is your meaning, my father?" asked the Basileus, sternly.

"That the ex-empress, the widow of the late Basileus, must cease to
reside in the palace of the unwedded emperor, to whom she is not wife
nor sister nor kinswoman."

"And if I choose that she shall remain--being mother to the infant
Basileis," asked Nicephorus, proudly, "who will say me nay?"

"The people, who will say that their hero has taken to himself not a
queen--but a mistress; the nobles, who will hold that Nicephorus
rebelled against his lawful sovereign in order to lie with his wife;
and the Church, which will forbid you the holy things as one who sets
an example of evil living on the throne of Rome."

And with that the monk left the presence of the sovereign, who
stifled his rage, perplexity, and bitterness.

Nicephorus controlled himself sufficiently to commission the monk to
repeat the decision of the Church to Theophano in person.  He did not
dare to brave the chance of such a scandal.  Nor did it suit
Theophano to risk such an issue.  She formally withdrew from the
Sacred Palace with all her retinue and officials, and was duly
installed in the monastery of Petrion, at the upper end of the Golden
Horn, in the quarter now known as that of the Phanar, which was
almost a suburb of the capital.

Her widowhood and seclusion did not last long.  There had been a
passionate scene when the monk had insisted on her leaving the
palace, and Theophano rushed to Nicephorus and plied him with tears,
blandishments, and entreaties.  She fell on his neck and adjured him
not to consign her to a life of the cloister.  She had saved his
life, she had placed him on the throne, she had loved him for years.
Her dying husband, she swore, had named his beloved general to be his
successor on his throne and in his bed, and to be the guardian of his
infant children.  As a stranger to the family of Basil, Nicephorus
would be tempted and even counselled to put the children away.  As
their step-father, and husband of their mother, he would be their
natural guardian.  Finally, in a torrent of tears and passionate
appeals, she refused to quit the palace unless Nicephorus swore that
he would make her his wife at the earliest time that was possible.

The earliest time came very soon; and the patriarch, however loath,
was obliged to perform the ceremony in person.  The customary rites
were gone through, but somewhat abridged, first, by the dislike of
Nicephorus for all forms of display, and then by the fact that
Theophano had already been crowned as Augusta, and was only to be
formally restored to the high place she had occupied so brilliantly
for years.  But the litanies and the chants, the blessings of the
vestments, the homage of the lords and ladies of the court were by no
means curtailed.  When the ceremony was complete, Nicephorus advanced
as of right and custom to the bema, and was about to pass through the
iconostasis, or screen, to prostrate himself before the high altar
within the chancel.  Such was the right of the emperor alone of
laymen--a right which no man could value more profoundly than the
imperial hermit himself.

As the emperor attempted to enter within the Holy of Holies there
confronted him the patriarch Polyeuctus, with all his clergy, clad in
vestments of high office and bearing the sacred emblems of their
worship.  The venerable patriarch boldly thrust back his sovereign
and barred his progress within.  Stretching out his right arm, in a
voice that rang through the domes of the gorgeous church crowded with
courtiers and officials, Polyeuctus cried: "Basileus, whom God has
crowned, thou shalt not come within this holy place.  If thou dost
force a way to the altar, thou wilt incur the greater excommunication
from all sacred things.  Thou knowest well the canon which imposes a
year of penance upon those who enter into a second marriage.  To that
state of penance thou hast condemned thyself by the act of to-day in
marrying the widow of our late king.  Not till a year and a day have
passed can I suffer thee to enter here or to touch with thy lips the
altar of Christ!"

A profound silence fell on the crowded church as the courtiers heard
the prelate defy the sovereign in the hour of his pride and glory.
Amazement, awe, wrath stirred the assembly.  For a full minute the
Basileus glared at the priest who had dared to inflict on him a
rebuff such as the proud soldier had never in his whole life had to
endure.  For a short space Nicephorus was speechless.  But with a
great effort he smothered his wrath and concealed his astonishment.
"Priest," he said, firmly, as he stood his ground, "the king, chosen
by the Romans, and crowned by God, has the right by virtue of his
office to approach the altar.  Stand back, I charge thee, ere I order
thy arrest as a traitor!"

"Basileus," replied the patriarch, with a shrill but clear-cut voice,
as his meagre form seemed to be lighted up with a divine fire within,
"there is no king within this holy place but God, whose servant and
messenger I am.  Advance one step nearer to God's holy altar, and I
pronounce against thee full sentence of excommunication from all
rites of the Church."

The congregation stood aghast, struck dumb, as courtier faced priest,
soldier confronted monk--as loyalty to the hero-king struggled
against profound veneration of the sacred rites.  But in that age,
and with a ruler so deeply imbued with that reverence in its severest
form, the issue could not be doubtful.  The emperor mastered his
passion and submitted with majestic self-control.  He slowly took his
way back to the palace with a bitterness in his soul that had made
him a new man.

While this was going on in the church, Theophano was holding a high
court to receive the homage of the ladies of rank.  Seated on a
golden throne, attended by her eunuchs and dames of honor, the
empress was robed in imperial garments of silk damask in diaper
pattern adorned with pearls and rubies.  On her head was the diadem
with the triple rows of pearl pendants; in her hand a jewelled
sceptre.  Nicephorus sought to assuage the fire that consumed him
with the sight of the radiant happiness of his queen; nor would he
suffer her day of glory to be clouded by any report of the affront
that had been inflicted on himself.  With a bitter heart and a
gnawing sense of all the humiliations and sacrifices to which his
love was too certain to expose him, he suffered himself to be taken
through all the ceremonies of the occasion, and the day was ended by
a gorgeous banquet of two hundred and forty guests in the famous
triclinion, or hall of the nineteen couches.  There Augustus and
Augusta sat in state beneath the mosaic dome that covered the
accubiton, or raised dais of state.  Even there, Nicephorus had
ordered them to serve him his accustomed supper of oatmeal-cake,
rice, and herbs.  "Taste this, if you love me," whispered Theophano,
bending to her husband with a look that pierced his senses to the
very bone, and she pressed on him a rich dish of savory meat.
"Pledge me in a cup of Chian wine on this day of our wedlock," she
whispered again, as the golden goblet was handed by the imperial
cup-bearer.  "In token of our love," she murmured.  That night
Nicephorus ate flesh and drank wine, neither of which he had tasted
for many a long year.  It was the first step of a new life, the
prelude to many another thing.  That night he violated all his oaths,
and he knew it: for in spite of himself he heard the words ringing in
his ears--"The woman gave me to eat, and I did eat."

The woman gave him many more things of which he had small desire and
no experience.  Theophano insisted on having the new reign
inaugurated with an endless succession of festivals, games, shows,
gifts, and court ceremonials.  Basil, the prime-minister, and Leo,
the curopalates, pressed on the emperor in council the need of
gratifying the people and nobles by brilliant displays, in order to
allay the irritation already arising from the rigid economy in the
finances of the empire.  On this Nicephorus had insisted with a view
to maintaining the vast drain of his eastern army.  He toiled day and
night with his military staff and his expert officials in organizing
the armies of east and west, and in restoring the fleets and arsenals
of the Mediterranean, while he suffered the empress and the state
functionaries to arrange a series of public festivities.

Day after day the Hippodrome was the scene of shows, each surpassing
the last in novelty and splendor.  The familiar and furious
chariot-races were followed by marvellous displays of acrobats,
wrestlers, jugglers, and dancers from India, Nubia, Arabia, or Syria,
clad in many-colored robes of Oriental fantasy, with lithe
contortionists, rope-dancers, pole-climbers, and various exotic
performances which held the people spellbound.  Then would be
produced displays of horsemanship, first by Cossacks and then by
Bedouins, feats of polo, archery, and the Arab game of jerid.  Next
advanced troops of Russian mimes in shaggy furs, drawn in on native
sleighs with characteristic sham fights and uncouth weapons.  On
another day wild beasts from Asia or Africa were shown to the
wondering populace, Bactrian camels, leopards held by chains,
giraffes, gazelles, zebras, and even an elephant, a rhinoceros, and a
crocodile.  At all these shows the new Basileus was forced to preside
in state, in costume of ceremony, and seated aloft in the cathisma,
whence he solemnly waved his blessing to the people, gave the signal
for the race to begin, or awarded the prizes to the charioteers amid
the everlasting shouts of the factions: "God bless and give long life
to our august Basileus."

The religious ceremonies were assuredly not forgotten; and these
Nicephorus performed with far greater willingness and interest.  In
solemn procession, attended by his palace officers and escorted by
bands of priests, choristers, and acolytes, the Basileus visited the
great temples of the city, mounted on his milk-white charger in
gorgeous caparison of state, riding side by side with the patriarch,
mounted on his less martial mule--symbol of the union of State and
Church.  He made pilgrimage in turn to the cathedral of the Holy
Wisdom, to the church of the Apostles, the old burial-place of the
emperors, to such famous convents as the Stoudion, or the Pegee, or
to the venerated shrines having pictures "not made with hands," and
images that were counted to effect miraculous cures.  Or, again, he
performed, with a faith that his predecessors had too often lacked,
some antique function of the imperial ritual, at the season of the
birth of Christ, or that of the crucifixion, or such as the
ceremonial bath in the holy water of Blachernæ, at the north-western
extremity of the capital.  But no ceremony, no care of state, no toil
of his office, could turn Nicephorus from the Theophano whom he had
won for his own by such sacrifices and so many desperate struggles.
He lavished on her all she asked--jewels, tapestries, palaces,
villas, and domains--imperial splendor and boundless wealth.

The influence of the empress over her husband, and the change of life
that was visible in Nicephorus, who from an armed anchorite seemed to
be fast adopting the habits of a Byzantine autocrat, caused much
searching of heart in the venerable patriarch.  On her side,
Theophano could never forget, nor suffer her husband to forgive, the
deadly stigma which the Church had inflicted on her second marriage.

Polyeuctus and the Basilissa were now open enemies.  But a more
terrible struggle was at hand.  The marriage festivities were still
in progress when the court chaplain, Stylianos, hurried to Polyeuctus
to inform him that Nicephorus had acted as godfather at the private
baptism of the infant son of Romanus and Theophano, at which the
chaplain had officiated.  The patriarch bounded with exultation.  "It
is within the prohibited degrees," said the fanatic monk, "for the
godfather to marry the mother of his child-in-God."  "It is
incestuous by the canon of our sixth council, held in the time of
Constantine V.," said the patriarch.  Polyeuctus hastened to the
palace and insisted on an immediate audience with the Basileus.  Once
admitted, he bearded the king with all the passion of his fanatical
faith.

"It is my solemn duty to inform your Majesty that Holy Church
declares to be incestuous the marriage you have attempted to contract
with the mother of your child-in-God, the infant Basileus.
Constantine," said the patriarch, firmly, "thou must put her away
forthwith and forever, and do penance for the incestuous union that
has been begun in the ignorance of the true facts that the Church had
not time to repair."

"Put away her to whom I have been joined by thy own act, by the
solemn words--till death do us part?  Put away my wife, dost say,
venerable patriarch?"

"The canon of the sixth council is precise and conclusive," said
Polyeuctus.

"And if I refuse to accept this fantastic rule of spiritual
affinity?" asked the Basileus.

"It will be my painful duty towards God to pronounce on your Majesty
the most terrible sentence of excommunication known to Holy Church,
to forbid you all access to the house of God, to the altar of Christ,
to the shrine of His Mother--to deprive you of every rite or
privilege of Christian man.  Basileus of the Romans, I warn thee,
thou wilt be in worse case than the Hagarene and the pagan, who at
least have something they believe to be divine that they can adore."

Nicephorus was himself so deeply saturated with reverence for the
mysteries, and had so long been accustomed to bow down before the
piety of the patriarch, that he mastered his emotion on hearing this
tremendous sentence, and desired time to reflect.

"Venerable patriarch of the Mother Church of our empire, withdraw
from our presence.  We will take counsel on this matter," said the
Basileus, with stern dignity and wonderful self-control.

He took no counsel but of his own heart in the storm of passion which
shook his soul hour after hour, upon this cruel shock to his pride,
his love, and his fear of God.  Long he paced the chamber, foaming
with rage, like a caged lion.  As night fell, he summoned a trusty
cubicular and bade him tell the patriarch that the emperor would not
part from the empress while breath was in his body.  Then he hurried
to the harem of the great palace and flung himself into the arms of
his beloved wife--that paradise for which he was willing to brave
eternal damnation.

The cubicular returned with the formal message from the patriarch
that excommunication would be pronounced in full conclave on the
following day.

Nicephorus was not the man to give his enemy time to attack.  By
daybreak he had summoned a council of all the prelates of the distant
provinces who had come up to the capital to do homage to the new
sovereign, and to them he added leading members of the senate and
nobles.  The Basileus himself presided; and he demanded a formal
response to his question if his marriage, solemnized in church by the
patriarch and his chapter, were not an indissoluble union by the laws
of God and man, overriding any figment of spiritual affinity
contracted by a mere ritual form.

The council, overshadowed as it was by the authority of the autocrat,
discussed the question at great length and with prodigious learning.
The senators and officials urged the assembly to pronounce in favor
of the Basileus; but not a few of the bishops clung to the sacred
authority of a formal canon of a general council.  This seemed to
them imperative, and incapable of any dispensation or avoidance.
Nicephorus with difficulty suppressed his impatience, fearing that by
the delay the patriarch might anticipate him by a formal sentence.
But here a highly ingenious prelate, the bishop of Cæsarea, a
compatriot and devoted supporter of the family of Phocas, arose and
said:

"August Basileus and venerable prelates of our holy Church, lords,
senators, and ministers of state, methinks we are forgetting the date
and origin of this canon which is appealed to in order to annul the
solemn consecration of marriage between our gracious autocrat and the
Augusta.  The canon in question was formally promulgated in the reign
and by the authority of the ill-omened usurper and enemy of the
Church, Constantine, of evil name and infamous memory, as part and
parcel of his abominable tyranny and persecution.  The canon was
decreed as binding on the Church by those heretics and miscreants who
attempted to suppress the use of holy images in our worship.  Now, it
is known to all men that the acts of the iconoclasts, whether
sovereigns or patriarchs, have been formally pronounced by Church and
by State to be null and void and of no authority or effect.  This
canon, even if well and lawfully approved by the Church, has never
been promulgated by any but a sacrilegious and heretical usurper of
the throne of the Romans.  And I call on you, reverend fathers in
God, and honored lords, to declare that the canon is no bar to the
lawful and most religious marriage contracted by their Majesties at
the altar of God and in presence of the reverend patriarch himself."

This speech was received with such a tumult of approval and relief by
the imperial party in the council, that Nicephorus abruptly declared
the proposal of the bishop of Cæsarea to be adopted, and he took care
to have it instantly conveyed as a judgment to the patriarch.
Polyeuctus was not the man tamely to submit to such an evasion, and
he fiercely inveighed against an attempt to set aside a canon which,
for two hundred years, had never been directly impugned or set aside.
In this contention he was supported by his own chapter of the Holy
Wisdom, and a state of indescribable excitement arose in the Church
and in the city, as a conflict seemed imminent between the
metropolitan, supported by his clergy, and the emperor, supported by
the senate and provincial prelates.  For a whole day the storm raged
round Church and palace, and men feared that the horrible scandals
were about to be renewed as in the old days of the image-breakers,
when the Church and all those, both clerical and lay, who clung to
the patriarch, defied the iconoclast emperors and their court, and
endured cruel persecution in defence of their holy and
ever-to-be-venerated ikons.

In the midst of this confusion the court chaplain, Stylianos,
unwilling to suffer disgrace and exile, and hopeful, perhaps, of
future promotion, bethought him that in the ceremony of baptism,
which had been hurriedly and privately performed owing to the
precarious health of the new-born infant, Nicephorus had simply been
present as representing his aged father, Bardas, who was the true
sponsor of the infant prince.  Nicephorus remembered that such had
been the intention, but what passed in the haste of the impromptu
ceremony had escaped his memory.  And Bardas, when appealed to,
called to mind that Romanus, the autocrat, had sent him a summons to
attend the ceremony, which his age and infirmities had prevented him
from doing at the time.  Polyeuctus was persuaded by the
prime-minister Basil, by Stylianos the chaplain, and even by the monk
Athanasius, to accept this solution of the imbroglio, on condition
that Nicephorus himself should swear on the relics of St. Theodore
that he had attended the ceremony of baptism as his father's proctor,
and that Bardas also should swear on the relics that he had been
summoned as real sponsor of the prince.  This was done in presence of
the patriarch, who, thereupon admitting on sworn testimony that no
spiritual affinity, in fact, existed between Nicephorus and
Theophano, consented to withhold his terrible ban.  With a mind full
of foreboding, he recognized the imperial marriage as valid, though
nothing could induce his stern and devout nature to relieve the
emperor from the penance of being forbidden to enter the holy place
of the temple till a year had passed after contracting a second
marriage with one who had so lately been the wife of another.

The storm passed, and the open breach between empire and Church was
avoided, or, at best, postponed.  But Nicephorus to his dying day
remembered the public stigma which had been passed on the marriage
for which he had sacrificed so much; and the patriarch, with gloomy
misgivings, looked forward in pain to the issues of a reign which he
had done so much to promote, but which had opened with such sinister
omens in the house of God and in the eyes of Holy Church.




XIX

The Saracen Peril

The emperor now applied his whole mind to affairs of state with all
the burning energy of his nature; and he sat day by day with his
chosen officers in secret council, dictating orders to his
proto-secretis.  Though he submitted with the best grace he could
command to the public ceremonials and pilgrimages which policy and
the traditions of his office required him to perform in person, his
absorbing task was the organization of his army, the navy, the
finances, and the imperial administration.  And, though the wound so
ostentatiously inflicted at once on his pride and his love by the
fanaticism of the patriarch lay deep in his mind as an open sore, he
remained unshaken in his devotion to Holy Church, and in profound
regard for the hermit of Mount Athos.

The very day after this fierce struggle, Nicephorus was closeted with
Digenes, and was imparting to him his great schemes for the
restoration of the Roman name.

"From the time of our mighty predecessor, Heraclius," said he, "for
more than three hundred years, the children of the False Prophet have
been gaining, step by step, upon the children of Christ.  A few
generations more and they will have blotted out the Church of God and
His Mother.  The prophet of the Lord may well say to the Hagarene,
'Hast thou killed and also hast thou taken possession?'"

"Nay," interrupted the ardent young warden, "such victories as those
of thy father Bardas, of thy grandfathers and kinsmen of Armenia,
and, above all, thy own most glorious achievements in Crete and in
Syria, in Cilicia and Aleppo, bear witness that Christ will not
forsake His people forever, and that the days of glory of the Prophet
are no more."

"We beat them back time and again, and the tide has turned on our
side within the last indiction.  But as I look back over these
centuries stained with all the savage tyranny of the image-breakers,
and the follies of our Isaurians, Amorians, Arabians, and Khazars on
the throne, Michael 'the Monk,' Michael 'the Stammerer,' and Michael
'the Drunkard,' I see that the Crescent is steadily driving back the
Cross.  One or other will assuredly perish in the long combat at
last."

"At what point will you strike them first?" asked Digenes, abruptly.

"The power of the great Asian caliphate has been weakened by
rivalries, rebellions, and divisions, but it is by no means broken.
The accursed Chamdas snake is scotched, but not killed.  The
Hamdanite family is still as active and fierce as ever.  Aleppo,
Antioch, Edessa, obey their victorious emirs, and persecute our
believers.  While Syria, with all its cities and resources, is a
stronghold of the Hagarene dynasty, our eastern themes are ever open
to their cruel raids and devastating incursions.  I tell thee, my
son, my first and greatest task is to crush the Chamdas, who seems to
rise ever stronger after every defeat."

"Seif Eddauleh! a hero worthy even of your sword," said the warden.

"Hero it may be, but a deadly enemy of Christ and His people," said
Nicephorus.  "He or I must fall in this death-grapple.  My officers
are now mustering upon the Anatolian frontier the most numerous army,
and the best equipped, that Rome has sent forth since the time of
Heraclius.  The moment it is ready, I shall put myself at its head
and march upon Syria, into which we shall pour as we did when we
swept back the Chamdas into his rock-bound citadel as a hunted lion
is driven to his pathless lair."

"Will it be Aleppo, Antioch, or Edessa, that you strike first?" asked
Digenes, eagerly.

"God in heaven knows, my son," replied the general, solemnly, with a
touch of irony in his voice, "and we shall all know in His good time."

"But you will not leave to the Prophet the Holy Land of Abraham, of
David, and Christ Himself?  Have you no care for Damascus, Beyruth,
and Jerusalem?--the tombs of the holy ones and the scene of the birth
and death of the Lord Himself?"

"Be not too eager, my son.  How are we to reach these holy places,
lost to Christ all these hundreds of years, until we have driven the
Hagarene swarms from the passes of the Amanus and the Libanon?
Assuredly Jerusalem and Bethlehem are our ultimate goal which the
Cross shall one day enter, though it is a sight that I shall never
live to see; no, nor your son's son.  But there is that which to a
soldier, if not to a priest, is more sacred than the manger of
Bethlehem or the hill of Calvary, and that is the rescuing from the
dungeons, and harems, and slave-markets of the infidel the men and
women, girls and children, of our Christian people.  There is a care
more urgent on an emperor of Rome than the recovery of any relic or
any place of pilgrimage, and that is the safety and enlargement of
the Roman realm."

"There are victorious realms of Islam to the south: in Africa, in
Egypt, and in Tunis," said the warden, sadly; "and these last are
pressing even to death and slavery the last remnant of the Christian
defenders of Sicily, to say nothing of Spain, where you sent me of
late to the splendid kingdom of the caliph of the west."

"Yes, our brethren in Sicily are in great danger of destruction, and
I am preparing another great army and another fleet to relieve and
succor them.  This indeed will be despatched before another moon, and
will take precedence even of my own campaign."

"And will the Catholic sovereigns of Alemaine, who have annexed so
much of the Italian dominions, do nothing to save their
fellow-Christians in Sicily in the hour of their distress?" asked
Digenes.

"Nothing," said the emperor, fiercely, "nay, worse than nothing.
These Saxon barbarians beyond the Danube aim at the destruction of
our holy Roman empire, of which they usurp the titles, and copy the
practices and institutions.  It will be a black day for the city and
throne of Constantine when Frank and Latin marauders shall dare to
assail them in force.  They talk still of alliances, exchange of
courtesies, and even of intermarriage; but they mean in their hearts
rivalry, treachery, and war.  They are biding their time till they
can blot out the Byzantine name and Church."

"And the bishop of old Rome on the Tiber, who calls himself Pope, and
supreme head of Christ's Church, will not he intercede for the
suffering remnant of the Christians of Sicily?" asked Digenes.

"What, he!" broke forth Nicephorus, passionately.  "The son of the
old harlot, the bandit, the assassin, the catamite, who pollutes that
Vatican cloister which is now a brothel and a gamester's hell!  The
Catholic Church is the deadly rival and foe of our Orthodox Church.
It is ever plotting our ruin and inciting its royal patrons to
destroy us.  It is more deadly than either Saracen or Saxon.  They
indeed may end in working our ruin.  But the Catholic Church, while
ever working to our ruin, is ever bearing false witness to vilify,
calumniate, and ridicule all we have and all we do in Church or in
State, in war or in peace.  We stand on the Bosphorus between two
sleepless enemies--fierce unbelievers on the east, and traitors to
Christ in the west.  And we who have defended the Roman name and the
Christian faith for three hundred years against the onslaught of
Islam, we, the bulwark of Christ and the Mother of God, we are ever
being assailed by the masters of the Latin provinces; and forever we
are being maligned by the degraded prelacy which has usurped the tomb
and see of St. Peter.  No, my son, the Romans of the east had better
invoke the aid of Satan, Moloch, or Beelzebub, the father of lies,
before they trust the words of a Latin priest."

"But on the north we have dangerous enemies as well, and even more
near to us--Bulgarians, Slavs, Huns, Patzinaks, and Russ.  They have
ere now swept down on Byzantium like a winter snow-storm from the
Euxine, and they may sweep down again.  Have you given thought to
them, sir?" asked Digenes.

"Much thought, my son," replied the emperor, "but though they are
nearer than Saracen or Latin, they are quite disunited, and full of
fierce rivalries, jealousies, and ambitions.  If one is our enemy, it
makes the rest our friends.  When the Bulgarian becomes dangerous, we
will hire the Turk or the Russ to fall upon his back.  The whole
Balkan peninsula is a den of savage beasts, who are ever snarling at
each other, and waiting to spring on each other unawares.  If they
could only agree for an hour, they would join in a combined attack
upon us; and their vast hordes and limitless cavalry might make them
a formidable foe to beat.  But we will take them one by one and
swallow them at leisure, as one eats the leaves of an artichoke.
Before the Bulgarian can move, we will take care to have the Russ
upon his back.  I can hear in my day-dreams the roar of our people in
the Hippodrome on the day when a Basileus of New Rome shall be hailed
on his victories over the northern realm of Crumn and of Symeon as
'the victorious lord,' 'the slaughterer of the Bulgarians,'" said the
emperor, with prophetic fervor deepening his voice.

"And the Russ of Kiev and the coasts of the Euxine and the
Chersonesus?" asked Digenes, "are they not within your plans?"

"The Russ and Patzinaks who swarm along the northern rivers which
flow into the Euxine are too far off us, too restless and nomad, and
altogether too loosely organized as settled nations to endanger the
Roman empire," said Nicephorus, proudly.  "The Russ make fine
guardsmen for us, and are willing to do our service for proper reward
at any time.  We will civilize and Christianize them and teach them
to keep Bulgarians and Turks in order.  Ah," he went on, musing with
something of prophetic strain, "Byzantium may fall before the
infidels of the east--nay, even before the schismatic Latins of the
west--but before the northern barbarians never!  If they strove for a
thousand years these Varangians shall never seat their czars upon the
Golden Horn."

"Then wherein lie the great dangers of the empire?" asked the lord
warden.

"In the corruption of officials, in malversation of the finances, and
in the womanish spirit of the people of the great cities of the Greek
peninsula.  The mongrel mobs which fill our Forum and Hippodrome here
in Byzantium, the Hellenes of the Peloponnese and the Ægean islands
and seaboard, are good only to tax--or to row ships--not to bear arms
and defend their country.  Happily we can fill our armies with good
men and true from the highlands of Thrace, Epirus, and Macedonia,
from the plains and hills of Asia Minor, and from all the wild
tribesmen who swarm in the frontier themes of the empire."

"Where then is the difficulty, if there are men enough and men good
enough?  For I ask for none better than the troopers I have led in
Cilicia, Crete, and Syria," said Digenes.

"The enormous efforts we have to make against a circle of foes, the
vast armies and fleets we need to raise--to say nothing of the
subsidies we have to offer to barbarian tributaries--absorb immense
sums which drain the wealth even of this, the richest empire of the
world.  Our immediate need is strict administration of the finances.
Thrift! thrift! my son, is the first of duties to a king, even while
gold is poured forth like water from the imperial exchequer, but so
that all serves to purchase money's worth and solid results.
Victories are won and conquests are made--not alone by stout hearts
and strong arms--but by honest handling of unlimited wealth."

"And is not the Roman empire wealthy?" asked the lord warden.

"But not wealthy enough for all its needs," the emperor rejoined,
with passion, "while half its lands are held by lazy priests and
monks, who neither serve in arms nor pay their taxes, while half the
people of the luxurious cities of old Hellas wear the cowl or the
stole.  Half monk as I am myself, and monk and hermit as I have
striven in vain to be, my very first care will be to curb this
dry-rot in our people, this flinging away in idle monasteries of the
precious wealth of the empire, this consecration to hypocritical
sloth of so large a part of our people.  It is not God they worship,
but some heathen idol--some sacred hog--as the apostle himself says,
'evil beasts, slow bellies.'"

But here the colloquy was interrupted by a messenger from Basil, the
prime-minister, craving immediate audience on urgent matters of
state.  Nicephorus received him alone in private.

The great eunuch had hurried to the palace to inform the emperor of
the receipt of grave news from Sicily, and the arrival of envoys from
the distressed Christians of Messina, who came to implore immediate
help.

One of the first acts of Nicephorus, after his victorious campaigns
over the Saracens of the eastern caliphate, had been to denounce the
treaty of peace made in a time of weakness with the Saracens of
Africa, who were now masters of Sicily.  He had insisted on refusing
further payment of the eleven thousand pieces of gold with which the
governor of Calabria had sought to buy off Saracen invasions.
Thereupon the Fatimite Caliph Mouizz of Tunis ordered an immediate
investment of Rametta near Messina, which was the sole remaining hold
of the Christian power in the island.  In Rametta, a rocky fortress
in the mountains west of Messina, the last defenders of the Cross had
taken refuge, and with them were all that had escaped the destruction
of the cities of Sicily.

"The news is indeed grave," said the prime-minister; "no spot in all
Sicily remained to us after the terrible storming of Taormina and the
loss of Messina, except this fortress of Rametta, which is now
closely invested.  In Italy the empire holds effective possession of
little but the themes of Calabria and Apulia on the southern and
eastern seaboards.  If we lose all territory west of the Dyrrhachian
coast and the Hellenic islands, the name of Rome will be brought low
indeed, and all western Europe will be divided between the Saracen
and the Teuton."

"True," said the emperor, "it is our first duty to save the brave
outpost at Rametta, and the expedition already being fitted out must
be pushed on night and day with special haste.  See to it, my lord,
the vanguard with a hundred ships and ten thousand men will sail from
the Golden Horn on the third day from to-night."

"It is impossible, sire," replied Basil, after making some brief
calculations in his note-book.

"Nothing is impossible," said Nicephorus, "it will be done.  And send
to-night our swiftest despatch-boats with orders to the governors of
the Peloponnesian theme, of Bari, and of the Calabrian theme, to meet
the new force with every man and every ship they can spare with
safety."

"They shall sail within an hour," said Basil, "and whom do you
destine to command the expedition?"

"I have already commissioned Basil Digenes to the task, to take up
command when the entire armament is ready to start.  But things are
so urgent in Sicily that it might be best to send him with the
advance force which is to go at once.  His heroic and dashing temper
will fire the whole army he is to lead."

"He is sorely needed still in the city to organize the expedition in
all its details.  We are sending out the biggest men-of-war that have
ever left our docks, with every munition and engine of war that our
engineers can devise.  We have equipped more than forty thousand of
our best men, of whom nearly half are cavalry."

"Remember, that in this crisis speed is of more importance than
numbers, and dash is more needed than strategy," said the emperor.

"With such a foe, rashness would be fatal," replied the minister,
gloomily, "but I go to carry out your Majesty's orders," said Basil,
hesitating.

"They are my last words," replied Nicephorus, peremptorily, as he
closed the interview.  "I have ardently desired to command this
expedition to Sicily in person.  But it cannot be.  The vast and
growing power of the Saracens of the east, on our Syrian and Cilician
borders, is even more menacing and more urgent than the rescue of the
brave Sicilian garrison in the west.  It is a matter of myriads in
the east rather than hundreds in the west--the loss of a rich
province, not of a fortress.  I must reserve myself at home to
organize the armament for Asia until I go to lead it myself."

As the minister withdrew, Theophano herself entered the emperor's
cabinet.  The stern and anxious look which his face had worn during
the conversations with Digenes and Basil on the crisis of the state
passed off like a summer storm-cloud as the form of his adored wife
appeared.  He started from his seat, rose, and went to meet her with
arms outstretched.  He took both her white hands in his huge grasp,
drew her towards him, and looked with love and inquiry into her eyes.

"And what would my queen have?" he asked.  "All that I have is
hers--all that I can win shall be hers."

She fondled him and patted his cheek, piercing him with her radiant
eyes, and said: "Does my hero think I come to ask for jewels,
palaces, or provinces, or any woman's toy?  I am the helpmate of my
lord, the Basileus.  Together we mounted to the throne of Rome, and
together we will raise its eternal name to a higher glory.  I come
not to ask for gewgaws, but to take counsel on affairs of state."

"You have heard the black news from the far west?" asked Nicephorus.

"I have.  And I come to say that the emperor must not be tempted to
go to the succor of this distant fort; he has his great expedition,
into Syria to prepare.  He must not desert his capital, his army of
the east, his council of ministers--his wife--her from whom these
priests seek to part him."

"Your wishes and your counsels exactly jump with my own, my empress,"
said Nicephorus, smiling and joyful.  "I have work here more urgent
even than the relief of Rametta.  My place will be well filled by the
akritas Basil Digenes, whom I have decided to despatch at once with
the advanced force."

"Surely not," replied the Augusta; "Basil Digenes is an honorable man
and a noble soldier, but his marriage to the Princess Agatha will
make him a prince of the Basilian dynasty, uncle of my sons, an
inevitable rival to them, a possible rebel to yourself."

"Digenes is the soul of honor," said Nicephorus, warmly; "I would
trust him with my life.  I would trust him as I trust my God--as I
trust you, the saint of my prayers."

"He seems to be even better trusted--better loved," she said, with a
bewitching air of jealousy.  Theophano continued to pout.  Silence
ensued.

"My hero of the eastern wars little knows the quicksands and
whirlpools of our Bosphorus, and all the intrigues of this palace and
court and people.  A successful soldier, after a great triumph over
the Saracen, will find himself forced into the vermilion buskins by
the shouts of the people and the swords of his men, and driven to
head a palace revolution, however much he struggle against it
himself.  Is it not so, my Lord Basileus, who dethroned me and my
sons, however much he sought to bury his glory in a cell on Mount
Athos?"  And the woman shot forth alternate beams of reproach and
admiration, irony and love.

Nicephorus felt himself in a world of intrigue that he could not
understand, which he despised but could not master.  He remained
silent and in deep meditation.

"You must name for this office," she said, "members of your own
family and close allies of yourself."

"Whom have I?" said he, sadly.  "I have no kinsman competent whom I
can spare.  I have no creatures of my own.  I never had, I never will
have."

"Nay," said she at once, "you have a cousin, one of the bravest and
most dashing soldiers of Rome, the patrician Manuel, son, at any rate
in blood, of your uncle Leo Phocas, of him whom the usurper Lecapenus
treacherously seized and blinded forty years ago.  Manuel is bound to
the house of Phocas forever; his bar-sinister makes any rivalry
impossible.  He is a man of the most fiery nature, one whom the
soldiers love to follow."

"Too fiery, perhaps," said Nicephorus, musing; "but the crisis
demands the most reckless valor."

"Then put him in charge of the vanguard, and let the general command
be reserved for Nicetas, one of our protovestiaries, and brother of
Michael, who served us so often as messenger."

"What!  The eunuch Nicetas?" said Nicephorus--"a man of hearty piety
and profound learning, but hardly fit to lead a forlorn hope."

"No; Manuel will lead the charge," said Theophano.  "No captain in
your whole army a more desperate fire-eater, and Nicetas with his
wisdom and coolness will keep the hot blood of Manuel in restraint."

"I will think of it," said the emperor, who himself had often been
inspired by the wild courage of his young kinsman--"I will consider
what you urge."

"No," said the temptress.  "Promise me this, if you love me."

Nicephorus did not promise; but in the end he committed the great
expedition to his cousin Manuel as cavalry leader, with Nicetas as
admiral of the fleet; and to them he added a prelate, Nicephorus, one
of the ablest administrators in the empire.

The issue was a terrible disaster.  The expedition was hurried to the
Sicilian waters, where the unenterprising Nicetas wasted it in petty
divisions round the coast.  Manuel forced his cavalry across the
straits of Messina, and captured that city.  He dashed down along the
coast, recovering Taormina, Leontini, Termini, and Syracuse.  Then,
mad with triumph, and not waiting for the whole of the force to join
him, he rushed to the rescue of Rametta.  As the morning sun rose, he
could see the rocky citadel still uncaptured, as it stood proudly in
the midst of a vast amphitheatre of precipitous crags.  The three
defiles which led into the plain were forced one by one by the
impetuous charges of the Byzantines; and thence Manuel, intoxicated
with victory, plunged on to the walls of the beleaguered city.  Here
he was met by the Saracen general in person, who had gathered round
him his reserve--a band of swarthy sons of the desert in snow-white
tunics, wielding lances and swords of perfect temper.  A desperate
hand-to-hand combat ensued wherein Manuel fell in the midst of a
mingled heap of Africans and Byzantines.  The loss of their
hot-headed chief threw the whole cavalry into confusion, for their
leader, instead of keeping them in hand and directing their
movements, had scattered them far and wide over the plain.  Confusion
turned to panic--panic became a massacre.  As night fell, ten
thousand Byzantines lay on the bloody field, for the Saracens made no
prisoners.  The relieving expedition was repulsed, the captured
cities were retaken, Rametta fell, and a dark cloud rested on the
reign of the new emperor: his grievous error sank into his soul.




XX

An Emperor's Day

Day after day the emperor rose at dawn, and with his staff rode forth
to the strategion, the great review ground of the city--the Campus
Martius of New Rome--to exercise troops newly arrived as contingents
for the army of the east.  The day after the sailing of the Sicilian
expedition (destined to end as ill as another famous Sicilian
expedition), there was a lively stir in the palace to witness the
manœuvres of a division of five thousand horsemen recently arrived
from the upper Danube--Magyars as we call them, Turks as they were
then named--a tribe which had been admitted to settle within the
limits of the empire.

Basil Digenes, Bardas Skleros, with our young friend Eric still at
his side, and a crowd of officers rode into the ground on the staff
of the emperor.  The strategion, or review-ground, stood on the low
land to the west of the modern "Seraglio," close to the Golden Horn,
between the Stamboul end of the floating bridge and the present
railway terminus.  Bardas called Eric's attention to the typical
monuments with which it was adorned--the equestrian statue of
Constantine the Great, and the pillar bearing the imperial edict,
whereby New Rome had been endowed with the name and privileges of the
city of the Tiber.

"Six hundred and thirty years have passed," said the general to his
young follower, "since our immortal founder placed us here on this
Golden Horn beneath the new Seven Hills, and more than a thousand
years had passed before he moved Rome from the Tiber to the
Bosphorus.  These various subject tribes, allies, and tributaries,
whose arms and ensigns cover this great plain to-day, change and
pass, form new nations, and go from one seat to another; but Rome
exists forever.  In one thousand seven hundred years she has never
met her conqueror, nor even her match."

Eric's history was far too slight and vague to enable him to follow
this bold boast, much less to dispute it; but, where all was
wonderful and gigantic, he accepted the antiquity of the city with
awe.  His mind was wholly occupied with the martial sight spread out
before him.  In front of headquarters, where stood what we now call
"the saluting-point," was stationed a detachment of the Varangian
guard, who to-day were told off as an escort to the general, to keep
the ground and mark the lines.  Opposite to them, at the farther
limit of the ground, was the position of the Macedonian heavy-armed
shieldsmen.  Hirsute Abasgians and Iberians from the southern valleys
of the Caucasus, on mountain ponies and in shaggy sheepskins and
furs, held another side of the ground.  But the main interest of the
day was a series of cavalry charges and evolutions by the mass of
Magyar mounted archers, which was the latest body of troopers
enlisted in the imperial army.  The emperor glowed with pride and
hope as he shouted the word of command, which was repeated in
Hungarian dialects by the interpreter, or captain of each squadron;
and as he watched the rapid movements and consummate horsemanship of
men, who then, as now, were accounted to rank with the finest cavalry
of their age.  Nicephorus, a cavalry-man from youth, called his staff
round him, and enlarged with enthusiasm and in detail on the
paramount importance on the mounted arm in war, and he forced on them
those lessons as to scouting, rapidity in advance, and the system of
successive charges which are laid down so authoritatively in his own
book on _Tactics_.

As they rode with the staff in the exercises, Eric plied his general
with inquiries and amused him with his naïve remarks.  The young
hero, who had seen active service with several different nations, had
already that soldier's eye which distinguished him so much in after
years in the campaigns of Basil II. against the Bulgarians; when,
under the adopted name of Nicephorus Ouranos, he gained so splendid a
victory over King Samuel.  What amazed the young Norwegian was the
complicated evolution whereby a whole cavalry division of five
thousand troopers was regularly divided into four lines, the first
the fighting line, the second the supporting line, the third behind
them as another reserve, and, fourthly, detachments on both wings.
And small squadrons were detached to lie in wait and were called the
"outlying guard."

"The force now engaged in manœuvres," said Bardas to his young
aide, whose military genius he had already perceived and resolved to
train, "the force on the field, is what we call a division (or
turma).  Each division, you observe, is composed of two brigades (or
drungi).  Each brigade of five regiments (bandas).  The senior
general of division, whom we call a turmarch, leads the front line,
stationed in the centre of it with his standard-bearer, orderlies,
and trumpeters.  Then you will see the intervals between the
regiments, to enable the reserve to pass through or the front line to
retire in order."

"Oh, but this is a complicated order of battle indeed," said Eric.
"Is all this quadruple and quintuple disposition observed on the
field in actual war, or is it a mere peace manœuvre to practise
discipline?"

"This is but the abc of tactics, my son," said Bardas, smiling.  "Of
course, a Roman army on the field of battle is drawn up as you see it
here, with all of these rules--all of them and a great many more.
All this is what you have to learn, my young friend."

"But it is difficult to follow it with the eye in the clouds of dust
and the rapid manœuvres of the squadrons," said the youth,
perplexed by the amazing variety of the interlacing movements he saw.

"Well, you must study your books of military science.  You don't
suppose a Roman general is to be made without hard study of rules and
formations in our manuals of the art of war.  There is the excellent
_Strategicon_ of the illustrious Emperor Maurice, which, old as it
is, is still to be read.  Then there are the _Tactics_ of the Emperor
Leo, the Learned, ancestor of the young Basileis minors; and, above
all others, there is the _Tactics_ of our present Augustus, which I
have myself drafted at his dictation, and which is being now
circulated to the army chiefs in the rough.  Pore over that by night,
my boy, and practise its rules by day, and you may one day lead a
Roman army yourself."

"But I never saw or heard anything of all this _science_ as you call
it," said Eric, puzzled.  "I have seen hard fighting with Danes,
Russ, and Bulgars.  I have seen the Frank knights on the Seine.
Indeed, I was a squire of Rudolph when he marched to join the great
king of the Germans in the expedition wherein he routed the Magyars.
And I saw the flower of the Saracens of Spain when the Caliph
Abd-er-Rahman was buried at Cordova.  But we never heard anything of
divisions, brigades, and regiments, much less of first, second, and
third lines of attack, reserves, and flank charges.  With Russ,
Franks, Saxons, and Saracens each chief leads his own men-at-arms,
and they follow his pennon as close as they can."

"Why, of course, you never heard of all this among those wild men,"
cried Bardas, aloud, with a hearty laugh.  "The Roman army is the
only army on earth that is scientifically equipped and led by
officers who are masters of their art.  These outlandish barbarians
are brave enough and strong enough and proud enough, God knows, but
they know less of the glorious arts of war, of tactics, manœuvres,
and stratagem than any one of those transport details you see waiting
there with the carts and spades and shovels, or, indeed, less than
any common bearer from the ambulance train.  A Frank or Saxon knight,
even a Saracen emir, would think he knew the whole of his business
when he could sit his charger, wield his lance and his sword with
dexterity, and lead a mob of his own followers pell-mell in a furious
charge."

"Ay, I have seen Saxons, Franks, and Lombards charge like a herd of
wild bulls in the Thuringian forests," said Eric.

"Oh, heroic enough, no doubt," said Bardas, with a sardonic smile.
"These knight-errants would prefer to lose a battle amid prodigies of
valor rather than to win it by craft and science.  To us Byzantines
craft and science are two-thirds of war."

"And is the whole Roman army thus organized in divisions, brigades,
regiments, and attendant corps, and has each squadron and regiment a
distinctive arm and uniform of its own?" asked Eric again.

"Certainly," said Bardas; "a Roman army consists of regulars,
regularly drilled, equipped, and armed.  They are not a levy of
countrymen or a casual muster of followers, tenants, vassals, and
tribesmen."

As the heat of the day began to strike, the corps were paraded,
distributed, and marched off to barracks.  The young Varangian was
amazed at the ease and precision with which so large a force was
drawn off the review-ground to barracks in various quarters, and the
exact order which each arm and detachment observed.  Light and heavy
cavalry, bowmen, shield-men, and foot-guards drew off in turn, with
the regularity of a modern review, each corps attended by its own
followers, engineers, transport, and bearers, with carts,
pack-horses, and camp utensils, spades, picks, saws, arrows, and
bolts--the whole equipped to take the field.

The following day was appointed for the reception of embassies from
foreign rulers, tributaries, and tribes, who had been deputed to
congratulate the new sovereign.  Bardas Skleros was on duty in the
court of the emperor, and he desired to impress the imagination of
his young follower, whose great promise as a soldier of keen
intelligence and strong character he had begun to recognize.
Accordingly, he placed Eric under the charge of his honor, Symmachos,
a silentiary, or gentleman-in-waiting of the chambers, who undertook
to coach the young Norseman in the ceremonies of the day.  No part of
the imperial system was more important than the practice of the
military officials to attract new blood into their service and to
impress on outlying tribesmen of all nations a sense of the power and
culture of the empire.

Eric entered the Sacred Palace from the Augusteum through the brazen
porch of Chalce, where he was now known to the guards and porters,
and, making his way through the triclinium of the scholares--_i.e._,
the guardroom of the body-guard--into the great, open, outer court,
he passed through the bronze gates there, where he was met by
Symmachos in the spacious cloister in which there stood, apart from
the main palace, the sumptuous court known as the Magnaura.  He was
allowed to witness the passage of their Majesties through the Gallery
of the Forty Saints, adorned with colossal mosaic representations of
the chief martyrs and glories of the Orthodox Church; and so on
through the sigma, or great oval, to the long corridor of the Daphne.
The emperor and empress were escorted by their cubiculars,
spathaires, vestiaries, lords and ladies in waiting, gold-stick, and
sword-bearers, all marshalled by the grand master of the household.
All were in state robes and gold-embroidered mantles, with collars
and badges, according to their rank and office.  From the long
corridor of the Daphne, their Majesties passed into the Church of our
Lord, which in former dynasties had been the private chapel of the
palace.  There they received the lighted wax candles which they
placed before the sacred emblem, and prostrated themselves in worship
at the altar over which stood the grand and pathetic figure of the
Redeemer of Mankind.

While their Majesties were engaged in their devotions, the silentiary
took the young guardsman into the great Hall of Magnaura, which he
had not previously seen.  It stood, as we have said, apart from the
Sacred Palace itself, in the gardens to the north, and it abutted on
the senate-house and Church of Mary of the copper mart, which lay
between it and the Cathedral of the Holy Wisdom.  This magnificent
basilica was in the oblong form, with a semicircular apse and a
raised platform, of which examples remain to us in Rome, Pompeii, and
in Greece and Asia Minor.  On each side six porphyry columns
supported the gilded cornice and formed the openings to seven lateral
exedras, or recesses.  Beside the terminal apse there rose from the
platform on which stood the throne four vast monoliths of the lovely
green marble of Sparta--in groups of two each on either side.  The
walls of the hall were entirely covered with panels of Proconnesian
and Phrygian streaked marbles, as we see it to-day in Aya Sophia.
The capitals were mainly of bronze gilt, in form such as we see at
St. Mark's at Venice.  The central doors were also of bronze gilt.
The roof was covered with mosaic designs made of glass and gilt
tesseræ, having figures of the Saviour, Virgin, and saints, mixed
with arabesque patterns of vine leaves, acanthus, Greek crosses,
monograms, and exquisite geometric traceries.

As Eric entered and surveyed in mute awe this grand edifice, glowing
with soft radiance like a sunset, for its supreme splendor of color
was harmonized into a tone of solemnity and peace, the royal
architects were just giving the last touches to the special
adornments of the day.  Gilded chains were suspended from column to
column, and from each chain was hung a huge candelabrum of silver,
each bearing twenty-five lamps.  Tapestries and curtains were hung
over the doorways and lateral recesses and partly concealed the
golden organ and choir of the emperor on one side and the silver
organ and choir of the factions on the other side.  Rich rugs, of the
design we now call Persian, were strewn over the marble flooring of
the hall and across the steps and the dais whereon the imperial
cortège was to stand.

That which, to the untutored but imaginative mind of the young
viking, was the most beautiful and mystic work before him was the
throne of Solomon, which served as the emperor's seat.  It had been
exactly reproduced from the account of the first book of Kings,
chapter x.:


"The king made a great throne of ivory, and overlaid it with the best
gold.  The throne had six steps, and the top of the throne was round
behind: and there were stays on either side on the place of the seat,
and two lions stood beside the stays.  And twelve lions stood there
on the one side and on the other upon the six steps: there was not
the like made in any kingdom."


The emperors of the Romans, who claimed to be, in a sense, the
successors of the chosen people, and who are often represented in
illuminated manuscripts in royal robes as kings of Israel, had
carefully restored the throne of Solomon as their seat of high state.
The chair itself was of ivory and gold, and the lions which supported
the arms of the chair were of silver gilt, as were the smaller lions
which acted as supporters on the six steps below it.  Such a throne
was taken as a pattern throughout the west; and the famous seat of
Dagobert in the Louvre is supported by lions in the same way.  The
throne of Solomon, however, was not a curule chair, but a much more
solid and magnificent erection, having a high back adorned with gems
and enamel enrichments.  Eric gazed in amazement and awe at the
splendid hall; but he was presently dragged by his guide to witness
the procession that was forming in the court-yard outside the
Magnaura itself.

The magistri, the patricians, and the senate in a body, with a crowd
of officials of various ranks, awaited the summons to attend the
court.  A silentiary having given the signal, Eric and Symmachos were
able to enter the hall and view the approach of their Majesties.
Before they took their seats on the thrones, the imperial crowns,
with their long pendants of pearls and gems, were placed on their
heads, and the royal mantles were thrown over their state robes.
Nicephorus himself sat on the throne of Solomon, Theophano at his
left hand, and the two child-Basileis on low stools behind them.
Around them were placed the secretaries and notaries to take a report
of the words spoken, with the logothete, or finance minister, and the
chancellor.  In the rear behind the throne stood a crowd of
cubiculars, silentiaries, and the lords-in-waiting and gentlemen of
the golden banqueting chamber.

When the royal party were all seated and placed, the master of the
household gave the signal for the sacramental cheer; and from the
choirs behind the curtains and from the crowd at the end of the hall
broke forth the ritual chant, "Long, long live our Basileus!  Long
live our Basilissa!  Many--many--happy years give them, O Lord God!"
At another signal from the master of the household, the
gold-stick-in-waiting introduced the first "curtain"--_i.e._, the
magistri, or marshals, who had been stationed in the nearest recess.
The magistri advanced to the throne and prostrated themselves before
the steps.  A second usher introduced the second "curtain"--_i.e._,
the patricians, who stood next in rank--and so on, the senators and
each successive order in due turn drawing aside the curtain which
served to mark their place in the ceremonial.

It was now the turn of the foreign envoys, the first of whom were
from the powerful caliph of Cordova, now Hakim II., with whom
relations of amity were still maintained.  The master of the
household again signalled to the gold-stick, who, with great
ceremony, introduced the mission, at the head of which was the Emir
Ghalib, supported by the learned Ibn Khaldun, the same who had
escorted Digenes and his companions in the capital of the Spanish
empire.  The emir was accompanied on his right hand by the catepano,
or master of the ceremonies, on the left by the master of the horse,
and was attended by an interpreter and his secretaries.  The envoy of
the mighty caliph was permitted to make his obeisance in his own
way--while the envoys of the rude tribes of the north or the east
were required to prostrate themselves at full length before the
mystic throne.

As each ambassador advanced and made his salaam, the organs pealed
forth a triumphal march, and as he rose from the ground the
kettle-drums crashed a sonorous welcome.  The chancellor then
addressed the ambassador, and inquired of the health of the sovereign
or chief whom he represented, and the ceremonial compliments of
friendship and congratulation were duly recited.  Then the golden
lions around the throne were made to utter sounds in imitation of a
roar of the beast by an ingenious mechanism, which was nothing but
the stop of an organ concealed beneath the floor.  To Eric and to the
untutored envoys of the north the sounds issuing from the throats of
the lions seemed little less than miraculous.  To the citizens of
Constantinople, with whom the wind-organ and other instruments of the
kind were familiar, the mechanical roar of the lions on the throne
and the twittering of the golden birds in the canopy above, which was
also a favorite device, had ceased to be anything but a useful toy,
that amused the groundlings and amazed the barbarians.

The envoy of the caliph was succeeded by a prelate despatched from
old Rome by the Pope (or anti-Pope) Leo VIII., who was struggling
amid horrors of every sort to dispossess the infamous Octavian
claiming to be Pope John XII.  Nicephorus, whose detestation of the
degraded and servile papacy was boundless, had been persuaded with
difficulty to receive the opponent and rival of the ferocious
murderer who now desecrated the Latin see.  Basil and the astute
council of the empire had warned their proud chief not to rebuff the
candidate for the chair of St. Peter, who was chosen by the
all-powerful Otto I. of Germany and Italy.  Nicephorus listened to
the hollow congratulations of the Italian prelate in silence, and
directed his chancellor to reply to them with the best grace he could
assume.  The Roman prelate was followed by envoys from Venice,
Amalphi, and the dukes of Beneventum and Capua, who still admitted a
shadowy bond of vassalage to the successor of Justinian at Byzantium.

The Italian envoys were succeeded by a crowd of deputies from various
nations, tribes, and princelets north of the Ister and the Euxine
Sea, or such as lay beyond the eastern frontier of the empire.  They
were first Patzinaks, then Russ; then Chazars, Alans, and "Turks," or
Hungarians, as we call them to-day.  All were in uncouth and
picturesque native costumes, shaggy skins, tall and pointed
head-gear, and strange ornaments.  They each brought presents of
various sorts--embroidered garments, embossed arms, enamelled vases,
horses, performing bears, and white boar-hounds, which were paraded
in the court outside, then announced with much solemnity, and
received with equal curiosity and interest.

The long reception was continued for hours as the envoys were
presented from the kings of Armenia proper, the dwellers around Mount
Ararat and the plains of Lake Van; from the Abasgians and Georgians
of the Caucasus, the Lazi, and the chief of the Iberians, who had
been honored with the right to assume the Byzantine title of
curopalates.  Long before the stream of introductions had ended, with
its ever-varying changes of language, costume, and manner, the young
Scandinavian had been quite lost in the babel of tongues and the
moving panorama before his eyes.  The impression had been fully
driven into his open mind, which the subtle politicians of
Constantinople ever sought to extend--the impression of the
world-wide relations of the Roman empire, and its claim to be the
centre of power, culture, and Christian civilization.  It was the
policy embodied by Constantine Born-in-the-Purple in the fifty-three
chapters of his work, _The Administration of the Empire_, which he so
laboriously--and so uselessly--prepared for the instruction of his
feckless son.

There is a pathos to-day as we read the dedication and preface to
this work, recalling, as it does, so much profound state policy and
such wasted hopes.  "_Constantine by grace of Christ the King
Everlasting, Emperor of the Romans, these to his only son, Romanus,
crowned of God and Born-in-the-Purple, Emperor._"  He begins: "A wise
son rejoices the heart of his father, and an affectionate father has
delight in a thoughtful son.  Now, therefore, my son, listen to my
words; and if you take to heart these lessons you will be counted as
wise among the thoughtful and as thoughtful among the wise.  The
people will bless thee, and many nations shall call thee fortunate.
Take to heart that which it behooves thee to understand, so shalt
thou wield the helm of this empire like a wise ruler.  And do Thou, O
Lord my God, whose heavenly kingdom is indestructible and
everlasting, vouchsafe to guide in the right way this son whom I have
begotten by Thy grace."  Alas! the bright youth, so beloved and so
promising, was guided rather in the wrong way by Theophano, by
Bringas, by Chærina, and many devils like unto them, into the
bottomless pit where he lay the scorn of after ages.

At the very end of the audience a scene of extraordinary violence
roused the whole hall to a state of wild excitement.  The envoys of
the sovereign of Bulgaria, the Czar Peter, had the right, as the Czar
was allowed the title of Basileus, to be presented before all other
foreign ambassadors.  To-day they had been purposely kept to the
last, in spite of their remonstrances and indignation.  Peter, when
nearly forty years before he had succeeded to the throne of his
father, the powerful Symeon, had made a treaty of amity with the
Byzantine kingdom, and had married a granddaughter of the Emperor
Lecapenus, a cousin of Romanus II.  By this treaty the Bulgarian
sovereign was entitled to receive a yearly subsidy in consideration
of his protecting the empire from the incursions of the Magyars on
the other side of the Danube.  The Bulgarian kingdom now extended
from Belgrade to Adrianople, which under Symeon had been a terrible
incubus to Constantinople, had become weak and peaceful under Peter,
and a docile imitator of the arts and manners of Byzantium.  The
subsidy was regularly paid; but the Bulgarian monarchy had been
little able to restrain the incursions of the Danubian raiders.  To
all the remonstrances of the empire, they alleged their own weakness.
Nicephorus in council had resolved to refuse any further payment;
and, indeed, he had secretly decided on a policy which should bring
the Bulgarian kingdom to its knees by force of arms.

When at last admitted to the hall of audience, the Bulgarian envoys
committed the imprudence of adding to the formal compliments to the
new Basileus the exasperating demand for payment of the annual
subsidy, which they spoke of as "the tribute they had been sent to
claim."  Nicephorus, who wanted but a pretext of the kind to justify
a rupture with the kingdom, rose from his throne, and in a tone of
indignation, which he had no need to feign, for the very word
"tribute" had roused him to ungovernable passion, he broke out thus:
"Foul shame would it be to us Romans, to us who in arms have driven
before us every enemy who has dared to meet us, if we consent to pay
'tribute' as if we were slaves buying their freedom by coin--ay, pay
tribute to a horde of Scythians, this miserable and unclean tribe of
barbarians."

This extraordinary outburst, so unusual in a man as taciturn and as
self-controlled as Nicephorus, electrified the audience; for only the
privy-councillors, and but few of them, knew of the emperor's settled
purpose to bring on a war with the Czar Peter.

Then the emperor, kindling with his own passion, in a voice of
thunder that he never used in public councils, turned to his aged
father, Bardas, as if to recall some by-gone incident of the
Lecapenian usurpers, and said: "What on earth do these Mœsians
mean, my father, by talking about tribute as due to them from
Rome?--'tribute,' do they say?  What, sir, am I not your own
true-born son?  Am I, the august emperor of the Romans, to be a
tributary--the tributary, forsooth--of a pitiful and ungodly tribe?"

The audience held their breath in awe.  The Bulgarian envoys cowered.

"Here!" roared Nicephorus.  "Ushers, bring your rods and drive these
fellows from our presence!"

Nicephorus was now choking with rage, and attempted no longer to
restrain himself.

"Be off with you!" he cried, hoarsely.  "Go tell your master, whose
food is the leather and whose garments are the hides of his own
cattle, they say--go back and tell him that the mighty and
irresistible Basileus of the Romans is now about to march from his
own country into his, and he will himself bring the tribute that is
demanded of him--tribute that your people will little care to have.
Now learn, slaves as you are, with slaves for your fathers and your
grandsires--learn to address the sovereign of the Romans as your lord
and master, and never dare in this palace to talk to him about
tribute, as if he were a caitiff and a serf."

The emperor closed the audience, and the hall was forthwith emptied.
Excited groups gathered outside to discuss the meaning of it all.  No
one was more amazed than Eric, and meeting the general Bardas Skleros
in the throng, he ventured to ask him what it portended.

"It portends," said Bardas, quietly, "that war will be declared
against the Bulgarian kingdom this very day.  Rome, in her hour of
victory, will not suffer those savages to threaten our very existence
from the passes of the Hasmus.  We will crush this Bulgarian kingdom.
The emperor crosses their frontier to-morrow at the head of the
advanced army.  In ten days we shall reach their so-called capital on
the northern side of the mountains.  I am to command a brigade, and
you shall be on my staff."

So Eric began his service in the long, secular duel between the
Bulgarian and Byzantine kingdoms--a duel wherein he himself was
destined to play so heroic a part, a duel wherein the child-Basil who
had witnessed the rebuff of the envoys of King Peter was destined to
earn his title of "Slayer of the Bulgarians."




XXI

Islam and Cross

The sun was high over the Asian Olympus, bathing in its glow the calm
waters of the Propontis, and the rocky islets that we now call the
Islands of the Princes.  The islet nearest to Byzantium, and within a
few miles of it, still bears the name of Prote, or "the first," from
the capital.  It commands a glorious panorama of that superb scene,
crowded with hills, rocks, bays, cities, and towers, as it fronts the
lower opening of the Bosphorus, and the southern side of the city
with its battlements, palaces, and domes.

High on a headland of the islet stood a large edifice of stone, which
had once been a monastery--but for many years had served as an
imperial summer lodge, and of late was used as a ceremonial retreat
for state prisoners and fallen princes.  There the deposed emperor,
Romanus Lecapenus, had passed in peace the last years of his
checkered career; and, since the capture of Chandax, it had served as
the palace and the prison of the defeated kouropas, or governor of
Crete, the aged Abd-el-Aziz, and his family.  As he had duly gone
through the abject forms of prostration before the emperor in the
triumph at the Hippodrome, and had fully submitted himself to the
conquerors, Romanus and his politic advisers had given the old hero
an adequate estate, offered him senatorial rank, and the honors of a
princely retreat.  His submission was real and final; he had suffered
his son Anemas to accept rank in the imperial guard, and his daughter
Sophia to enter as a pupil into a nunnery, where she had acquired a
perfect Greek education.  Both had been baptized, and followed
Christian rituals.  But the old man himself, a Syed of the blood of
the Prophet, stoutly refused to abandon the faith of his race, and
patiently accepted the position of a state prisoner, under an
honorary seclusion and military guard.

To-day he sat alone on the covered terrace of his mansion, looking
down upon the garden below, across the rippling waters, where he
could see the proud towers of his conqueror, now Basileus of Rome.
All was a scene of perfect peace and beauty.  Trellised roses
clustered in profusion round the arcades of his terrace, filling the
air with perfume; violets, lilies, hyacinths, narcissi, and oleanders
nestled in recesses beneath it.  As the slopes, ornamented with
balustrades, vases, and statues, fell downward to the sea, they were
shaded with fruit-trees, pomegranates, acacias, cedars, and ilex.
And at the bottom, where lounged on formal sentry a huge Varangian
guardsman, an avenue of cypresses half concealed the garden wall.

The old kouropas mused in silence, his white beard flowing down over
his embroidered khaftan, for he retained his Saracen dress and
habits.  His work was done, and he waited in peace for the summons of
Allah; pondering on the inscrutable decrees which seemed to be
confounding on all sides the hopes of Islam since the fortunes of
Rome had passed to the hand of the invincible Nicephorus Phocas.  As
he mused, his daughter stole gently in upon her father to see if he
were sleeping in a siesta, or had any need of her help.  She was a
sweet girl of seventeen, tall, elegant, of olive tint, with the full,
dark eyes of her race.  Sophia, for she adopted the Greek spelling of
her name with her change of habits, after five or six years of
training in the capital, was now in every sense a Byzantine, and wore
the embroidered silk robes of a lady of the court.

"What can I do for you, my dearest father?" she asked, in the musical
tones natural to an Arab maiden.

"Nay, come and sit below my divan here, my child," he said, "and tell
me of all you have seen and heard in the great city and their Sacred
Palace."

The girl softly nestled down beside her father, and, looking up into
his eyes, she poured out the tale of all she had seen in her recent
visit to the court.  She had just returned from admission to the
suite of the Princess Agatha, who had taken her to the imperial dais,
at a reception of the foreign ambassadors.  Since she left her home
in Crete, at the age of twelve, she had seen little beyond the
cloister of the nuns of St. Basil, who had brought her up; and her
girlish imagination had been profoundly impressed by all she had seen
and heard.  "Never could I have believed any city was so vast," she
said: "such endless crowds in the street, such magnificent halls,
corridors, terraces, and gardens, to which those of Prote were a mere
toy.  And the long lines of soldiers in splendid uniforms, father,
and the Danubian cavalry on their chargers, lining the streets--tens
of thousands of mailed giants, all as big and fierce as that
fair-haired Varangian there below in the garden--and the organs and
choirs in the hall--and the magnificent robes of the emperor and his
court, and his imperial guard--the Immortals--in gilt mail--and
Anemas was there, on duty, and looked the most like a soldier of them
all."

"Ah!" said the old emir, with a soft, sad smile, "it is natural that
you young ones should be dazzled with the power and splendor of Roum.
Allah has sorely chastened the rebellious people of Islam, whose
quarrels and treasons reach upward to the throne of grace.  In his
mercy and his wisdom he has decreed to give victory to the
Nazarene--victory for a time--his will be done.  I submit to it for
me and mine.  His inscrutable purposes may bring together all his
children in the end."

"Father!" said the girl, with a solemnity beyond her years, "if you
could only enter into the great church of the Holy Wisdom, and, while
the choir chant their 'Holy, Holy, Holy!' look up to the figures of
Christ the Saviour, and the Mother of God, you would feel that it is
not false when they say that the faith of the Cross is a spirit of
love, mercy, and reconciliation, and that it offers a new heaven to
us poor women, and makes us in religion the true peers and helpmates
of men!"

Struck by a tone so strange in a Saracen girl, by the earnestness of
his daughter's appeal, the old chief turned to his child with a
searching look, and said, "But you have no thought, my best beloved
one, of remaining for life in that convent, of becoming what they
call a bride of Christ?"

"Never will I take the veil.  I am not worthy.  I should never be at
peace there," she replied, with deep emphasis, but in broken
sentences, "Never!"  And as the old man searched her look, a soft
blush seemed to show itself in her olive cheek.  Silence followed,
and both of them thought.

"But, oh, how sweet and good and wise is the Lady Agatha!" the girl
suddenly resumed; "she has taught me so much, helped me in all
things, and made me feel as if I were a sister, one of her own faith
and race.  She knows by heart the Greek poems of Homer, both those
about Troy and about Ithaca, of Achilles and Priam, and of Odysseus
and Penelope, and Hector and Andromache; and yesterday she recited
part of the tragedy of 'Œdipus at Colonus.'  She is so sweet and
thoughtful and brave, after all she had to bear.  And, father, I am
to be one of her bridesmaids when she is married next month, if the
empress will consent."

"And whom is she about to marry?" asked the chief, carelessly.

"Why, don't you know, father, it is the Lord Basil Digenes, the
warden of the marches, the favorite lieutenant and friend of the
emperor!"

"What! the son of the emir of Edessa, he who struck us so hard at
Chandax," said the old chief, with a groan.  "Yes, yes; he who was
saved by the daughter of Ben Senoussi in prison, and who saved her in
the great defeat.  So, the blood of the Prophet of Mecca, after all,
is to be mingled with the blood of the Constantines of Roum.  It is
the will of Allah!  Let us bow to it with reverence and submission."

The old emir rose, and, going to his prayer-carpet, turned towards
the tomb of the Prophet, devoutly prostrated himself, and performed
his mid-day devotions.

The girl meanwhile drew aside in silence, crossing herself, and
fingering her own chain and cross, she uttered fervent prayers to the
Mother of God.

When Abd-el-Aziz returned to his divan she took his hand, kissed it,
and said, "Father, does it give you a pang to think that one of our
people, if truly converted to the faith of the Cross, should mate
with a follower of Christ?  What would you say if my brother Anemas
took him a wife from the Byzantine court?"

"What Allah decrees it is not for us to gainsay," said the emir,
somewhat oracularly.  "The warden of the marches is a noble soldier
and a true knight, be his faith what it may.  But I thought he might
have wedded the Lady Fatima, whom he saved, and who saved him from
death."

"He was born and bred a Roman and a Christian," she said, "and he
loved the Lady Agatha before she was my age.  I saw him at the court
reception, looking every inch a hero and a prince, along with his two
lieutenants, who seemed worthy of such a place."

"And who are they?" asked the chief, quickly.  "Anemas, I know, is
one, but who is the other?"

"Do you not know?" she answered at last, distinctly blushing as her
father watched her.  "The other is the young Norwegian prince, just
promoted to be colonel in the imperial guard."

"And is he, too, Roman and Christian?" asked her father, promptly.

"He is high in honor with the emperor, and was baptized as a youth.
He has seen battle in five countries; for all that he is but
four-and-twenty.  He is the tallest of all these battle-axe
guardsmen, and as fair-skinned as the fairest lady of the court.  But
he can hardly speak Greek yet, and does not look in the least like a
Roman or a Greek.  He has blue eyes and long hair, of the color of
silk from the cocoon.  And his battle-axe is so enormously heavy that
when he let me take it in my hand to feel its weight, it fell to the
ground with a crash," the girl rattled on.

"Have you spoken with him, my daughter?" the old man peremptorily
asked.

"Once," she said, "in the open court, as we came from the Magnaura; I
was with the Lady Agatha, when the warden and his officers came up,
and Anemas presented to me his young comrade in arms.  He bowed, and
smiled, and said nice things in his broken Greek, but he looked so
tremendous in his golden coat of mail, and his casque and plume, that
I could hardly answer him, father," she murmured; and, as the sire
still looked at her, she blushed again.

"And did you see the famous empress?" asked the father, wishing to
make the girl talk of other things.

"Oh yes! the crash of the battle-axe, when I let it drop on the
marble pavement, amused the royal circle.  The little boy princes
laughed aloud, and Basil cried out that girls should not handle
weapons, and the empress stepped forward and flashed upon me with her
great eyes, and asked who I was.  She is the most beautiful woman in
the world.  Those beside her look like slaves.  But when she stared
at me with her imperious look, I felt that I should faint, if Anemas
had not taken my arm and led me away.  Father, there is nothing in
all Rome so lovely, so bewitching, so terrible!"

"And she is absolute mistress of our conqueror.  Allah! the just, the
merciful, thy stricken people will be avenged at last!"

Here the conversation of father and daughter was interrupted by the
entrance of Anemas himself.  The old emir's son was now about
five-and-twenty, of the finest Arab type, spare, sinewy, and finely
proportioned.  His limbs, hands, and feet were delicate and supple.
His features were sharply cut, handsome, and intelligent; the tint, a
pure brown, with keen, black eyes, and a short, curled beard of jetty
hue.  He resembled the lord warden, but was slighter and darker, for
he was of pure Fatimite descent, and had no European blood in his
veins.  He wore his uniform as an officer of the body-guard, and bore
himself as what he was, a brilliant soldier of that splendid and
renowned corps.

He greeted his father with profound respect and affection, for, Roman
and Christian as he had become, he held fast to the ceremonial
traditions of his ancient race.  He kissed his sister, and, by a
look, encouraged her to leave them for a conference alone.

"Father," said the gallant youth, standing before his sire's divan in
an attitude of deep respect and affection, "I am come to ask your
blessing and to claim your advice.  I was preparing to be ordered
with my own corps on service in the new Bulgarian war, and I burned
to show these proud Byzantines that a son of Abd-el-Aziz can hold his
own with the bravest swords of Rome.  For three years I have worn the
imperial uniform, but have never yet seen action in their ranks.
They shall see the son of the great emir challenge to single combat
the foremost champion in the enemies' host.  And the name of Anemas
shall live in the annals of Byzantine glory."

"Go, my son," the old man broke in, "go and prove yourself a true
soldier of the race of Ali.  Even in the uniform of our conquerors
you will do honor to our blood."

"But, alas! my father, there is an obstacle to my joining my corps.
The emperor has need of some diplomatic relations with the Fatimite
caliph of Kairouan.  You know that, after the disasters of the
imperial armies and fleet in Sicily, and the death of the emperor's
cousin at Rametta, the general-in-chief, Nicetas, was taken prisoner,
and has been detained by Al Muizz, the caliph, in El Mehdia, on the
African coast.  Nicephorus ardently desires peace with both caliphs
of Kairouan and of Cordova, as all three kingdoms are closely pressed
by the growing power of Otto, the Teuton emperor of the west.  And he
is anxious to obtain the ransom of his beloved officer and friend,
Nicetas.  The embassy to Muizz is to be headed by the patrician
Nicholas.  But they designate me, as a descendant of the Prophet, to
be his secretary and second, and persona grata, to a Fatimite
sovereign.  As an officer of the guard, I cannot refuse such a
command.  But if I go to Africa, I shall lose all chance of joining
the Bulgarian campaign.  I come to beg you, father, to petition the
emperor that he may employ my sword in war, and not my tongue in
diplomatic wrangles."

"You are young, my son," said the old chief, in a meditative tone, as
if weighing the future in his mind; "you will have ample
opportunities of meeting in battle these barbarians of the
north--your day of glory may come--ah! only too soon it may be, for
your father's peace--but the opportunity of seeing our own people
again on the African coast is not to be lost.  It will be noble
revenge for me that our conqueror has need of my son to restore his
honor, and to rescue his commander from a Saracen prison.  You will
never have such a mission again.  You have twenty years yet to fight
the Bulgars.  No; go to Kairouan, and take to the caliph there a
message from a Roman prison, that the defeated emir of Crete does not
despair of Islam."

The son submitted, and took a dutiful and loving farewell of his
sire; and, seeing his sister in the terrace below, he hurried forth
to give her his news.  The young Sophia, who now had but dim memories
of her life as a Saracen child of the harem, was far more truly
converted to Rome and to the Cross than her brother, and had absorbed
the religion of the Virgin Mother with all the ecstatic fervor of a
Christian girl.  Her keen intelligence, and her experience of the
Sacred Palace, showed her the importance such a mission would prove
to her brother, her father, and all the survivors of Crete.  She
warmly pressed her brother to make the most of his good fortune, and
by no means to attempt any escape from the task.

Long and tenderly the brother and sister poured out their hearts to
each other, till at last Sophia found courage to say, "Brother, I,
too, have a mission for you in the far west.  There is another
caliphate in Andalusia--how many more caliphs there may be in Asia
and in Africa I know not--but Hakim, the new caliph of Cordova, whose
ambassadors are now in the city, is on terms of amity with Rome.  At
his court still lives, in strict seclusion, as a Saracen girl must
do, Fatima, the daughter of Ben Senoussi, my own dearest cousin, from
whom I have had, as I have told you, sad but loving greetings.  Go
from Africa to Spain with the embassy about to start, under
Theodosius the deacon and Michael the secretary; obtain a place in
their mission, but contrive a meeting with Fatima.  I will trust you
with presents from me.  Urge her from me to come to visit us here in
my father's mansion.  I long to see her.  I yearn to try if she can
be led to see how much a woman gains when she accepts the Cross and
learns to pray at the altar of the Mother of God."

"It is impossible.  She would not see me--she would not listen to a
word from me, if she did see me.  It is impossible.  Sister, say no
more," said the young guardsman, with an air of dejection.

"Anemas, you have not ceased to love her?  You loved her, you have
told me, when you were both of the same age, and I remember how fit
to be loved she was."

"Yes; she was kind, good, merciful, but she never really loved me,
much as we had been together.  But from the hour she saw the Roman
prisoner, her cousin, the Lord Basil Digenes, she could think of no
one but him, and for his sake she has lived in solitude ever since."

"He will have been married to Princess Agatha long before you can
reach Spain.  Seek her again, Anemas, urge your own love, and when
she hears of this marriage she will listen.  Bring her to me.
Anemas, she shall be your bride, or else the bride of Christ!"

Anemas was despatched on his mission to the caliph of Kairouan, Al
Muizz, then at the height of his glory.  The Roman embassy, after
touching at Messina and Syracuse, crossed to the port of El Mehdia,
then in its era of prosperity and power.  The Roman envoys were
amazed to find on the African coast another Saracen kingdom, almost
as splendid and as flourishing as the caliphate of Andalusia itself.
The docks of the African seaport were crowded with ships from Syria,
Alexandria, Sicily, and Spain, with galleys from Venice, Pisa, and
Amalphi.  The palaces of Muizz and of his chief emirs were almost as
rich and luxurious as those of Abd-er-Rahman himself at Cordova.  The
culture of the Fatimite court of Kairouan was not equal to that of
the Ommeyads of Spain, and the civilization of the African people was
not so advanced as that of the long-settled Cordovan dynasty of the
west.  But the military energy and movement of troopers was even more
conspicuous.  For at this very season the caliph was preparing the
vast expedition which a few years afterwards was destined to march
into Egypt, and, under the famous commander Jouhar, to transfer the
dynasty to the banks of the Nile, and to found at Kahira the modern
city of Cairo.  It was the preparation for this great revolution in
the world of Islam which the young Anemas was able to witness.

The mission was successful; peace was made between Muizz and
Nicephorus, for both had other enemies to meet and other conquests to
win.  And Anemas, in returning, adopted his sister's advice, and had
no difficulty in finding an honorable welcome in the Andalusian
capital of Hakim II.  As the son of Abd-el-Aziz, the old kouropas,
and as the brother of Sophia, he had at last obtained an interview
with Fatima, who lived with her sister and aunts in a retired villa
that had been assigned to them in the mountains of the Sierra Morena,
north of Cordova.

Fatima received Anemas in the terrace of their garden looking out
towards the east upon the mountains of Granada.  She was accompanied
by her young sister, as if she had resolved not to listen to a word
of love.  Fatima was now in the full maturity of her beauty, to which
a life of meditation and solitude had given a peculiar aspect of
spiritual refinement.  She had always refused that close veiling and
seclusion of women which had begun to spread over the Moslem world.
She asked rapid questions as to her dear Sophia, whom she remembered
almost as a child; as to the aged emir, who had so stoutly defended
Crete, the nature of his imprisonment, and the treatment that the
Cretan captives had received at Byzantium: Was dear little Sophia
really a Christian, and about to be a nun?  Was she happy?  Had she
quite forgotten her father's faith and people?  Was the kouropas held
in honor, and was he at peace, and was he satisfied with his lot?

These and such questions she eagerly poured out to her young
compatriot from the Byzantine court.

Anemas answered her questions truthfully, and at length.  And, in
turn, he put to her some similar questions of his own:

Was she satisfied with her life in a Spanish retreat?  Would she live
and die in a mountain hermitage?  Was this the destiny of Islam?
Were not the followers of the Prophet as much divided among
themselves as the followers of Christ?  Could true believers in the
Koran still feel that Allah was purposed to lead them ever on to
victory?  Could she wonder if a soldier felt that true religion
taught him to serve his commander and be faithful to the standard
under which he was sworn, and to the land in which God had destined
him to live?  Did she not think that an officer was doing his duty if
he gave his life to his service, and left the mysteries of Heaven to
the imaums of Islam, or to the patriarchs of Christ?

"There is but one God," she said, with profound earnestness; "I know
but one God, and I care not if he be named the Trinity or Allah.  I
have lived so long in this Andalusian caliphate, I have seen enough
of the Romans of the empire."  She sighed as she uttered that name.
"I have seen and heard enough to know that Christendom and Islam have
each much that is godlike and good, and much that is of Sheitan and
evil.  This splendid capital of Cordova is in many things, in most
things, the counterpart of Byzantium, as rich, as luxurious, as
corrupt, as elegant, as turbulent.  These Ommeyads here execrate the
Fatimites--Abbasides from the first contend with Kharijis.  There are
as many sects among Mussulmans as there are among Christians, as many
dynasties, as many wars.  Bagdad, Damascus, Haleb, Antioch, Edessa,
Fostat, Kairouan, Andalusia, war on each other as often as Byzantine,
Bulgarian, Lombard, Calabrian, Frank, or Saxon.  Whether it be Allah
and his Prophet or Christ and His Mother who inspire these rivalries
and combats, I know not.  All that I know is that it is not the one
God."

"Does not Christendom, with its culture and its freedom, its poetry,
its art, its ritual, offer, at least to women, a richer, nobler life?
So my sister Sophia asserts, and longs to show you.  Oh! that you
could be persuaded to visit her in my father's house at Prote, and
see our Byzantine world, our Christian Church!"

"The Byzantine world," she said, sadly, "differs not so very much
from our Cordovan world.  It may have more art, more ceremony, more
priests and nuns I dare believe, but it has less poetry, less
science, less philosophy, less learning.  Its women have a freer
life--it may be a happier and a wiser.  Its men are less chivalrous,
and faithful, and resolute.  There may be more saints in Christendom.
There are more heroes in Islam."

"Has not Christendom its heroes, too?" he asked, suddenly, looking at
her with passionate devotion.

"God forbid that I should doubt it," she said, with a deep sigh.
Silence ensued, and each could feel the tremor in the soul of the
other.  Rapturous memories and cruel sorrows crowded through the mind
of the woman.  Eager hopes rose in the mind of the man.  They gazed
upon each other in silence.  At length, as she looked at the young
chief, Fatima saw again in the young Anemas the strange blending of
the Saracen and the Roman, that figure which, for long years, had
been the warrior-saint of her inmost dreams and devotions.  Anemas,
too, was now spiritually a Digenes himself, with the heroic temper of
Saracen and of Crusader compounded in one.

"Can I never hope to utter those words which have been on my lips in
my long journey to this land?" he said, and, seizing her hand, he
held her close to him--gazing into her eyes with passion and
devotion.  "Can I hope?"

She suffered her hand to remain for an instant in his grasp.  "It is
too late in my life for me to change my creed--my home--my people.
It is too late in life for me to think of happiness.  I will live and
die here a lonely woman, who has known too much sorrow to dream of
being happy, or of making any one happy."  She paused, and, looking
at the young soldier again with tender compassion, she added, "I must
think over my message which I mean to send your sister and your
father.  Yes; I will see you again before we part."




XXII

The Stars in Their Courses

It was midnight of a dark and still evening on the Bosphorus, and
peace had, for the most part, descended upon the great city; the
lamps in the houses were extinguished, and the tramp of the sentries
and the challenges of the watch alone were heard.  The harbor lights
in the Golden Horn, at the point of Keras, burned steadily, and
across the straits shone the imperial light-house of Chrysopolis.
Within the walls of the Sacred Palace the central pharos stood forth
in its lofty tower and cast its glare far out into the Propontis.
Out of the gloom there passed, within the circle of its rays, a light
skiff rowed by stout boatmen, wherein were seated two men, closely
wrapped in long, dark cloaks, which served as a disguise.  One was
blindfolded, and was patiently listening to the instructions of his
companion and guide.

Psellus, a cubicular attendant attached to the person of the
Basilissa, was explaining in a low voice the business on which his
charge, Aaron Ben Ammon, had been summoned to exercise his art.
Aaron was a Jew, originally of Alexandria, in Egypt, who had studied
astrology, necromancy, alchemy, and many of the black arts, first
from heretical anchorites of the Thebais, and afterwards in Bagdad
and Damascus, as well as in Armenian and Byzantine cloisters.  His
profound learning in the casting of horoscopes, in extracting
prophecies by occult sorceries, in the procuring love philters, and
occasionally, it was whispered, even more insidious drugs, had gained
him a sinister fame, which made him in great demand in the Byzantine
world of fashion, while it made his profession one of personal risk.
The growing taste for these unholy experiences among the great ladies
of the empire had caused the government of late to be strict in
putting the law in motion, while the patriarch was even more keen to
punish the adepts of these arts by the resources within the power of
the Church.  Aaron, therefore, had willingly submitted to be carried
disguised and blindfolded to an interview with a person unknown, in a
spot that he would not be able to reveal.

"Most learned doctor," said Psellus, as he slipped into the hand of
Aaron a heavy purse of bezants, "a lady of wealth, whose name, abode,
and position you will forbear to seek if you value your life, and who
will double and treble this largess if you act with absolute
discretion, will herself explain to you in person her purpose, and
she desires to receive from your own hand the horoscopes of those
persons of whose nativities I have already given you the exact day
and hour.  Of these you are now to bring the result of your astral
investigations."

"Lead me to her ladyship; her will is my law.  Silence, discretion,
disguise are as needful to me as to my client--ay, much more so, were
it not that Ashmodai watches over the lives of those whose eyes he
has opened."

Psellus listened intently to these last words of the astrologer, for
part of his instructions had been that on the return journey, if the
sign had been given, he was to have the Jew drowned in the Bosphorus,
to secure his absolute discretion.  They now passed into the imperial
harbor of Boucoleon, and, mooring the boat to the quay, after giving
the countersign to the guard, proceeded to ascend the path up from
the sea towards the pharos, which now shone over the chrysotriclinium
of the imperial palace.  Guiding the Jew with his left hand, Psellus
drew him past the chapel of Elias and the oratory of St. Clement, to
the corner of the terrace of the new basilica.  There a small
robing-room stood in the great garden surrounding the new church, and
communicated by a winding staircase with the upper rooms of the
Sacred Palace.  Psellus now removed the bandage from Aaron's eyes,
placed him on a couch, and desired him to wait the approach of his
client.  Nor was there anything visible in this garden dressing-room
to distinguish it from an ordinary apartment in any of the mansions
of the city or suburbs.

Presently a majestic and graceful woman glided into the room--she was
wrapped in a great black cloak, and closely veiled.  She motioned to
the attendants to withdraw, and to the astrologer to approach.

"Most learned doctor of astral science," she said, in her clear, soft
voice of command, "you have brought me the calculations your learning
has enabled you to make as to the future of the persons whose
nativities were supplied to you?"

"Your Eminence shall be satisfied.  The horoscopes of both are the
most wonderful that our science has ever revealed to me.  They
indicate most amazing changes of life, incredible splendor of ascent,
and signs of imminent peril."

"Call me simply lady--I am no more," said Theophano, "and give me the
details of each horoscope."

The astrologer was a swarthy, spare old Hebrew, with hooked nose and
fine features, distinguished by eyes of intense keenness, though they
had a sinister aspect, like those of a trapped beast.  Theophano
watched him behind her yashmak as closely as he did her, for ever and
anon he stole furtive glances at her, hoping to penetrate her secret.

"The first whose nativity I have calculated is that of one born
fifty-six years, one hundred and thirteen days, and seven hours, from
this moment.  It was a birth under the sign of the Lion, at an hour
charged with vast possibilities in the future.  At that instant the
zodiac was moved by portentous lights, and the earth shook with
tremors, as I have ascertained in the records of our art that are
stored in the great observatory at Antakia in Syria.  There lived and
studied the mighty seer, Mohammed Ben Djafar, of Batan, my ever
revered lord and master."

"But what has been the horoscope of this child of miracle and
wonder?" she said, hurriedly, caring little for the pompous claims of
the Jew.

"'The right ascension into the mansion of life and glory' tells of a
career of battle, victory, and fame, which, at the hour wherein we
are, forms one unbroken career of success and triumph."

"Most learned doctor," said the empress, peremptorily, "what are the
signs of the future?  What is passed and gone we all know without the
science of Mohammed of Batan, whom here we call Albatenius, and
without the aid of your most profound self, Doctor Ben Ammon.  What
of the future of this person, I ask?"

"Madam, I hesitate to impart to you what I have found," said the Jew,
with a cunning look as he sought her eyes; "it is terrible.  The
declination to the 'house of death' stands close to the right
ascension to the 'house of life.'"

Theophano gave a sudden start in spite of her self-control.  Her
piercing eyes, which she unveiled to watch the Jew, gleamed with a
light of joy.  She stretched out her hand from her wrappings to take
the scroll, whereon the astrologer had marked the rise and fall of
the star record.  As she put out her arm, the keen astrologer noticed
the flash of a superb armlet of rubies, such as he well knew could
only be found in the imperial treasury.  And now, having his first
suspicions confirmed, he felt sure that he recognized the wonderful
eyes of Anastasia, the daughter of Craterus the Laconian.  Years ago,
Ben Ammon had frequent dealings with Craterus, whom he had supplied
with amulets, charms, trinkets, and gems from Egypt, Syria, and
Mesopotamia, and had often noticed the beauty of the girl, and,
indeed, had cast her horoscope with a brilliant future.  Aaron now
felt sure that he was confronted by the empress herself.
Astrologers, in ancient as in modern ages, have been far more
physiognomists than astronomers; and, in his further conversation,
Aaron thought only to indulge the humors or the passions of his
sovereign, and repeated the jargon of his "science" only to mislead
and excite her.

"Lady," he said, with profound solemnity, watching her expression
intently, "it is my duty to tell you that a second year cannot pass
from this hour before this person shall find death--death, sudden,
alas! and shameful."  She gleamed again, and her frame thrilled.
Aaron continued in the same voice of a prophet.  "He (or is it she?)
will die hated, unlamented, and despised.  The stars so reveal to us
the book of fate."  Silence ensued.

"And now, what of the second nativity you have calculated?" she
asked, at length.

"It is even more wonderful than that of the first.  For twenty-nine
years, less three months and thirteen days, the stars have shown in
the ascendant.  Born under the culmination of Venus, coincident with
her superior conjunctions at every stage of life, this horoscope is
plainly that of a woman, of the most beautiful woman on God's earth,
a woman whose beauty has been one long triumph, with but one darker
sign in all its course."

"And that is what?" she asked, with an audible gasp.

"Lady, I hesitate to tell it; there is at this very time an ominous
sign.  The gorgeous planet Venus, who rules the sky by her
brilliance, is passing now from east elongation towards inferior
conjunction.  She is now being obscured by too close attendance on a
lower and less honorable star."

Theophano held her breath.  "What comes after?" she whispered.

"Lady, the synodic period of Venus is almost complete, and it
portends a new epoch of effulgence.  This woman, for these
conjunctions can belong only to a woman, is about to free herself
from an unworthy planetary connection, and will soon ascend again
into a house of glory and joy still greater than before."

"When shall that be?" she gasped.

"Lady, it may be retarded by events or it may be hastened by art."

"And what is destined to be this superior conjunction of which you
spoke?"

"Lady, the lore of astral combinations does not reveal such things.
But palmistry may give signs which the constellations disdain to
show.  Deign to let me trace the lines in the palm of your hand."

Flinging aside all disguises, Theophano, in her eagerness, put her
palm in his.  He bent over it with an air of profound mystery,
muttering, "the line of life, the line of love, the line of strength.
Lady, these lines make it manifest that you are mated to one unworthy
of you, and that your happiness will not be assured till you are the
bride of one who is more youthful, more glorious, more loving."

"But when--with whom--how will it be brought about?" she gasped.

"It is not revealed to man or to woman, when, with whom, or how
happiness can be won.  But art may assist; it may hasten; it may cut
the knot which binds us to misery.  Here, lady, are two rare drugs,
each worth a king's ransom, which I had from the great Abu Djafar
Achmed ben Ibrahim.  One is in silver, one is wrapped in lead.  The
silver charm is a love philter, the leaden packet will relieve one of
an enemy.  No man on this side of the Orontes has these medicines, or
ever has had.  Nothing less than the jewel on your arm to-night would
buy them," said Aaron, with a gleam of avarice in his eye.

"Give them to me," she said, in a cold, firm voice, and slipped the
ruby armlet from her wrist into his trembling fingers.

"Farewell, learned doctor," she added, with cruel abruptness, "guard
yourself with care, for the city is full of cutthroats."  And she
summoned Psellus and her guards.  "Conduct the learned doctor to his
rest, and be careful that _he sleeps soundly to-night_."

"Ashmodai, my lord and master, guards his servant, lady," said Aaron,
fawning, and yet with a certain subdued vein of menace.

Psellus looked steadily at his mistress, with inquiry for the
concerted sign.  She did not blench, but repeated again, "_See that
he sleeps soundly to-night_.  I am sure that Ashmodai longs to see
his own."  She passed swiftly behind a curtain up the winding stair,
and Aaron allowed himself to be blindfolded with a heavy shawl, over
which Psellus and his assistants slipped a stout, silken noose.  This
rapid manœuvre Aaron, busy with the fingering of his priceless
rubies, neither saw nor felt.  Then they two passed into the night,
and the skiff shot away noiselessly into the blackness of the waters
of Propontis.

As the morning dawned, some fishermen, dragging their net for tunny
off the rock we call the "Tower of Leander," pulled up the body of an
old man clad in a loose Oriental gabardine.  The city police found in
his wallet a purse of one hundred bezants, and also a bracelet of
rubies of the rarest water.  At noon, the bazaars rang with the
gossip of the hour, that a thief, who had broken into one of the
imperial chambers, and stolen some jewels, had been caught, and flung
over the southern battlements, but some insisted that he had been
drowned in trying to escape with his plunder.  The next day a new
crime and a fresh scandal occupied the forum and the wine-shops,
while Aaron Ben Ammon "slept soundly" forevermore, in the bosom of
father Ashmodai.

Theophano, who cared little for the mystical jargon of astrologers,
necromancers, or palmists, could not free her mind from dwelling on
prophecies which so curiously agreed with her inmost desires.  The
ascetic nature of Nicephorus, his devoutness, his zeal in the great
work of the crusade to defend Christendom from Islam--all were
profoundly odious to his wife, and had turned her, by rapid stages,
from indifference to coldness, from coldness to contempt, and from
contempt to loathing.  She longed for a life of youth, adventure,
gayety, and pomp.  Romanus, with all his graces, had nothing heroic
about him but his passion for the chase.  Nicephorus had nothing of
the lover, for night and day his thoughts turned to councils of state
and preparations for war.  The dreams of Theophano were visions of an
Ares, who flung aside his weapons when he flew to the bower of his
own Aphrodite.

While the emperor was absent on his short Bulgarian expedition, he
had intrusted to his empress, the regent, full powers of authority.
And these she had used under various pretences to throw obstacles in
the way of the marriage of Princess Agatha and Basil Digenes, the
lord warden; as, being a princess of the royal house, and, indeed,
after her infant nephews, an heiress presumptive to the throne,
Agatha could not marry without the imperial consent, nor, in truth,
could the lord warden, as a great official, thwart their majesties by
acting in defiance of them.  Consent had been withheld on various
pretexts from time to time, and no sooner was Nicephorus across the
Balkan frontier than the empress discovered a reason of state which
caused her to issue a peremptory rejection of the warden's demand.
Theophano insisted on marrying Agatha to the Magistros Sisinnios, one
of the imperial marshals, a man of birth and wealth, and now entirely
a creature of her own.

A stormy scene had just taken place between the princess and the
empress.  Agatha refused pointblank to marry any one except the lord
warden.  She insisted on knowing the ground on which their majesties
had withdrawn the consent, which had been virtually given long ago,
and on what charges the lord warden's suit had been rejected.

"His Imperial Majesty," said Theophano, "had now discovered the
dangerous ambition which his own indulgent favor had aroused in the
mind of his former favorite lieutenant.  It was now seen that, in
aspiring to the hand of a Basilian princess, he was preparing a claim
to the throne itself."

"It is false," retorted Agatha, with passion; "let those who make so
infamous an accusation against the most loyal spirit in this empire
produce their evidence of any such thought or attempt."

"The emperor has had his eyes opened, and his ministers will in good
time produce the proofs which their vigilance has collected.  He
cannot suffer an officer convicted of such dangerous ambition to
acquire the manifest advantage of alliance with the house of Basil."

"The lord warden can prove his innocence the instant he has audience
of his emperor.  It will be easy to show him that his mind has been
abused with monstrous calumnies."

"Agatha, child, fool, listen to me," said Theophano, with a cruel
smile.  "I am empress here.  No man knows when Nicephorus will return
from the war.  I and my council have resolved that Basil Digenes
shall never wed a daughter of our dynasty.  The throne, the lives of
my young sons, would not be safe for an hour--"

"It is monstrous--it is inhuman--it is Satanic," broke out Agatha,
with passion; "the sons of my own brother, am I to be their
murderess?" and she sobbed with indignation and rage.

"Well, your husband might easily be their murderer.  Uncles, and even
aunts, have been known to plot against the thrones of their nephews.
But listen, Agatha, there is another thing which has decided my
council.  They hold that at the opening of a new crusade against the
Moslem it would be a scandal and a danger to show the court of
Byzantium mingling the race of the Constantines and the Basils with
that of a Saracen emir."

"Mother of God," cried Agatha, in her agony, "do you hear the
blasphemy and the calumnies they utter?"

"Agatha, listen to me, and cease these idle wailings and revilings,"
said Theophano, with cold and deliberate words.  "On the third day
from this you marry the Marshal Sisinnios."

"Never!" burst in Agatha.

"Then our will is that you be made a nun and confined in a convent on
the coast of the Black Sea.  Again I say--marry Sisinnios--or be for
life a solitary bride of Christ."

"Never!" she gasped.  "I will choose death rather than such a
marriage.  I will marry none but Basil Digenes."

"Basil Digenes," said Theophano, with her cold, cruel voice, as if
she enjoyed the torture she was causing--"Basil Digenes, let me
inform you, is now under arrest as a traitor to his sovereigns, and
will be dealt with as I and my council direct.  You know what happens
to prisoners who are suspected of aspiring to the throne.  You will
never see the Digenes again in this world--and be very certain that
he can never see you," and she laughed a cruel, mocking laugh, such
as comes from the devils when they seize their victim.

"Mother of God," shrieked Agatha, "dost thou hear this?"

"Marry Sisinnios," said Theophano, hoarsely.

"None but my Basil!" screamed Agatha, wild with horror and wrath.

The empress struck the door twice with her jewelled baton, and three
black cubiculars rushed in, seized Agatha, now speechless, and almost
fainting.

"Take her away, and carry out my orders," said Theophano.

"Fiend, I defy you!" shrieked Agatha, as the huge eunuchs carried her
off, and closed her mouth with their unholy hands.

After this stormy interview, which took place in the privy boudoir of
the empress, Theophano sent for her tiring women, and, having had
herself divested of the stately robes she had worn, she was bathed
with rose-water, and had her long tresses combed and plaited.  Then
she was dressed in the diaphanous folds of silk gauze, which
displayed to the best her magnificent form, and left free the
dazzling whiteness of her neck and arms.  It was little, indeed, that
art could do to enhance the radiance of that countenance which the
symmetry of a Greek bust and the glow of health and life had made a
model of perfect beauty.  But all that the cosmetic art of Byzantine
luxury could achieve was now brought into play.  And, as she watched
the effect in her steel mirror, with its enamelled frame, Theophano
felt conscious that she had never in her life looked so like a
goddess of the old Olympus.

"Bring in the prisoner," she said to her cubiculars, "if he has
tasted the cup I sent him to drink."

Two great palace guards accordingly led in a man heavily manacled
with a chain attached to the arm of each of his guards.

"Loose all these bonds," said the empress, imperiously.

"All, madam?" the attendants asked, as if in doubt of her meaning.

"All," she said, again.  "Leave him quite free."  It was done.  The
attendants and guards stood alert and on the watch, for a state
prisoner quite unbound was an experience unknown in the Sacred Palace.

"All will leave us," she said, peremptorily.  They looked at her with
inquiry and in surprise.  "Leave us quite alone.  Withdraw, and close
all doors," she added.

To leave the empress alone with a young and very powerful prisoner
was something strange and perilous, they thought.  But she looked at
them steadily till every step was gone and all doors shut.

Theophano stood alone with Basil Digenes, "Gallant lord warden," she
began, in silvery tones, "our council here, in the absence of my
lord, the Basileus, have insisted on having you arrested on a charge
of aiming at the throne by pressing your claim to a marriage with the
Princess Agatha."

"Madam," said the warden, with a proud smile, "my beloved lord and
chief knows me too well to listen to suspicions so empty and absurd."

"You will never think, Basil," she said, in her most insinuating
tones, "that I who know you, I trust, quite as well as does my lord,
can personally believe such treason to be possible to the noblest
hero in the armies of Rome.  I know you to be the most loyal servant
of your Basileus--ay, and of your Basilissa--"  And she stepped
forward and offered him her hand to kiss.

The guileless warden bent on his knee, took those radiant and yet
deadly fingers in his own, put them to his lips, with the words,
"From all my heart, I thank thee, gracious queen."

"You may trust to my intercession with the stern Basileus to save you
from the charge of treason.  Rely on my friendship, my Lord Basil,
for you little know how suspicious, how capricious, how resentful, is
Nicephorus Phocas.  But I will save you, will protect you from his
vengeance, if any mortal can."

"My chief, my friend, my sovereign, will need little persuasion the
very moment he sees me before him," said the warden, with a sudden
air of disdain.

"You little know him," she said, bitterly.  "But the danger is too
immediate to yourself.  The council have already sealed an order that
endangers your life--at least, your eyes," she said, watching him as
a tigress might watch a kid.

"What!" cried the warden, with a start--"my life, my limbs, and
senses!  Are they mad?  Do they know who I am, and who is my liege
master, my comrade in a hundred fights?"

"Basil, I am your friend, and only I of those who rule here to-day.
Your liberty and life are in the hands of those who rule in the
absence of the Basileus himself.  I can save you from their envy and
their malice, but on one condition alone.  There is one thing that
they cannot yield, one thing wherein I could not save you."

"What is that?" he said, with a fierce air of resolution.

"You must renounce all thought of the princess.  The council will
never suffer you, with your name and fame and birth--your glory, your
invincible charm, Basil, to be allied with the sister of the late
Basileus."

"Never will I renounce her--never!  I will face death, imprisonment,
mutilation, torture, but never will I give up my Agatha in life."

"Basil, it is too late.  She has renounced you; she consents to marry
the Marshal Sisinnios, and the ceremony takes place to-morrow."

"Impossible.  I will not believe it.  She is as true as steel, as
good as a saint, as brave as a virgin martyr.  I must see her, must
hear this from her own lips.  It is false."

"Would that I could think so, Basil, for her sake and for yours.
Listen to reason; hear the truth from one who admires your glory and
yearns to serve and to save you.  You cannot save her, and you may
destroy the noblest Roman of this empire, which we all know you to
be.  Agatha, poor child, is powerless here, and can do nothing to
save you, to help you, or to raise you.  I have placed one soldier on
the Golden Throne.  He has proved unworthy of it--"

Here Basil burst out into furious words, for the Jew's drug had begun
to excite and confuse his brain.  Theophano drew back and fingered
the poisoned stiletto she had concealed in her bosom.

"Basil," she said, in a voice of deep feeling, "he may die--he may
become the hermit he desires to be--within a month.  Where should
Rome find a Basileus then, save in the most noble, the most splendid
soldier of this realm?  Where could I and my babes find a protector,
a friend, a counsellor--if it be not in the hero whom a thousand
bards have praised as the 'bravest of the brave,' whom all Byzantium
and the Golden Palace admire--and love--as the most brilliant
cavalier in this royal court?  Basil, hear me, Rome and Rome's
mistress, all that is greatest and most beautiful on earth is yours!
Say but one word, and seal it with one kiss!"

He listened like a man in an evil dream, who cannot move or speak.
The drug had begun to make him delirious.

She advanced towards him, opening her white arms, that glistened with
jewels, and sought to wrap him round and draw him towards her.

He gasped with shame, awe, and rage, speechless with indignation and
amazement and stupefied with the potion.  He staggered backward,
shrinking from her with loathing, as from something poisonous and
unclean.  He stumbled back towards the door, which was violently
opened behind him.  And as Digenes staggered back he fell against the
Basileus himself, who rushed into the arms of his wife, shouting, "My
queen, my wife, my love, I have hurried back without notice in
advance of my guard and men."


The unfortunate Digenes sank down exhausted and senseless.  He was
now in high fever, delirious from the effects of the potion and the
spasms of fury and amazement through which he had passed.  The
silentiaries called the guard, who bore away the unconscious chief to
a bed, whereon he long lay overcome with a dangerous illness, and
unable to remember what had happened.  Nicephorus gave strict orders
to his own physicians and attendants to nurse him.  He listened in
silence full of doubt and bewilderment to the artful story poured
into his ears from the ready brain of Theophano.




XXIII

The March on Antioch

The dawn had not appeared when the peace of Byzantium was roused by a
sudden commotion.  The reveille was sounding from all the barracks of
the guards.  Citizens rushed from their houses to the wider streets
and forum to hear the news.  The beacon fire across the Bosphorus, on
the heights above Chrysopolis, was blazing in the sky.  And the
palace and its precincts were bright with lamps and torches, as
messengers, troops, and attendants hastened through the corridors and
courts.

The young guardsman, Eric, hurrying to headquarters, chanced in the
crowd to meet his friend, Symmachos the silentiary, attended by Leo
the historian that was to be, then a young student at college.  "What
does it mean?" he asked.  "What does it mean?"--"Can you ask?" said
Symmachos.  "Do you not see the blaze of the beacon across the
Bosphorus there?  Do you not know that this is the signal from
Cæsarea in Cappadocia that the great army of the east is ready to
march, and awaits the coming of the Basileus?"

"I knew the signal was expected, but I did not understand it had
arrived."

"Yes!" said Symmachos, "it has come--just an hour ago, having started
from the banks of the Halys about this very midnight.  I have just
been sent to summon General Bardas to the palace."

"You have never seen our telegraphs at work before?" said Leo, the
scholar, who was already well versed in all the machinery of the
empire.  "Mount Argæus, whence this signal started, is full thirty
days' march from the city.  In a few hours the beacon-fire has leaped
across that space."

"Yes," said Symmachos, "the palace pharos communicates with that of
Chrysopolis; thence it flashes to Nicomedia, Nicæa, Dorylæum,
Laodicea, till it reaches Mount Taurus, and from Taurus the concerted
signals are returned."

"Does it not remind you of the famous scene of the beacon-fire from
Troy, in the 'Agamemnon' of our Æschylus?" said Leo, with all the
conceit of a young student.  "You know those glorious lines, my
lord?" he asked.

"Not I, my boy," said Colonel Eric, with a laugh, "Greek prose is too
much for me as yet, and as for your Æschylus, I would rather wrestle
with a Russian bear than struggle through his break-jaw lines."

"May Apollo and the Nine Muses forgive you, most terrible son of Thor
and Odin.  Oh, listen to these majestic verses that the poet puts in
the mouth of Clytemnestra:

  'From Ida's top, Hephæstus, Lord of Fire,
  Sent forth his sign; and on, and ever on,
  Beacon to beacon sped the courier-flame.
  From Ida to the crag, that Hermes loves,
  On Lemnos; thence, unto the steep sublime
  Of Athos, throne of Zeus, the broad blaze flared
  Thence, raised aloft to shoot across the sea,
  The moving light, rejoicing in its strength,
  Sped from the pyre of pine, and urged its way,
  In golden glory, like some strange new sun,
  Onward, and reached Macistus's watching heights.'"


As the young student, all aflame with his tragic enthusiasm, rolled
out these lines to the bewilderment of Eric, the courtier Symmachos
watched him sharply.

"Beware how you talk of Clytemnestra within sight of our palace, my
young friend, or you may be a Cassandra yourself," said he.

"Ah," said Leo, "how every line of the tragedy haunts one; of a
truth, there never was, there never will be again on this earth, such
a tragedy as that!  But our Agamemnon, king of men, is going forth to
Asia to a triumph; he is not returning home after long absence.  And
yet how the weird cries of the chorus ring in my ears:

  "'Wherefore, forever, on the wings of Fear
      Hovers a vision drear
  Before my boding heart? a strain,
  Unbidden and unwelcome, thrills mine ear
      Oracular of pain.'"


"Keep your visions in your heart, as we do," said the silentiary,
sharply, "and do not let them pass your lips, or they will prove
oracular of pain, indeed, and you will have no eyes to see visions at
all.  But come, enough of this; our friend the colonel here is not
listening to you.  He is staring at the crowd before the Gate of
Bronze."

They pushed their way through the by-standers, who stood watching an
unwonted and stirring sight.  On either side of the bronze door of
the palace stood two huge Varangian battle-axemen on guard,
motionless as statues.  Above them, high on the face of the closed
doors, hung the gilded corselet of the emperor's armor of state, with
the sword and the shield.  The crowd below came and went, gazing on
it with murmurs.

"And what means that?" Eric asked his guides.

"It is the ceremonial notice to his people," said Symmachos, "that
the emperor is about to march and take command of his army in person."

"An ancient custom?" asked Eric.

"From time immemorial--at least, since Theophilus the Magnificent
marched forth against the children of Hagar.  The rite is all exactly
prescribed in the appendix to the first _Book of Ceremonies_ of our
ever-revered Constantine Porphyrogennetus," said Symmachos, with an
air of authority, as if that had settled the matter.

The day had now begun to break, and the streets were crowded with
long lines of guards hastening to the points of embarkation.  The
forums were filled with eager sightseers, with caravans of beasts of
burden, orderlies flying in every direction with orders, and endless
processions of priests and acolytes to the shrines and miraculous
oratories and temples.  The main army was already gathered round
Cæsarea.  The intermediate camps were crowded with troops, stores,
ammunition, beasts, corn, and sheep, for food.  Nothing remained to
be moved from Byzantium across the water except the strong body-guard
of the emperor, and the vast train and baggage apparatus, tents, and
servitors ordained in the _Book of Ceremonies_, when a Basileus takes
the field in person.

To carry all these across the straits to the Asian coast, there were
gathered a fleet of transports, barges, and galleys, which crowded
round the ports adjoining the palace, and again covered the Golden
Horn with their many-colored sails and long banks of oars.

In the mean time stormy scenes had been taking place within the
Sacred Palace, and, indeed, in the privy chambers of the emperor and
the empress themselves.

To explain the situation, it is necessary to go back somewhat in time
to the moment described at the close of the twentieth chapter, when
Nicephorus so unexpectedly burst out against the envoys from the king
of Bulgaria, and his sudden attack upon that kingdom.

The emperor judged it unsafe to start on his far eastern campaign
while leaving the Bulgarian kingdom, with all its resources and
possible allies, planted within a few days' march of his capital.  He
silently resolved to strike down the power of so dangerous a neighbor
by a sudden onslaught, of which none but two or three of his intimate
council had any warning.  His unexpected rush had utterly paralyzed
the unwar-like Czar Peter, who had lived all these years in a fool's
contentment.  Forts, towns, and stores fell into the hands of the
Romans, who seemed to be making a military promenade on the Bulgarian
capital.  But it was no part of the policy of Nicephorus to occupy
himself in the Balkans a single day after the completion of his
eastern preparations.  Accordingly, he sent a mission to the young
Czar of the Russ, son of the great Czarina Olga, and induced him, by
promises and enormous bribes, to fall upon Bulgaria from the north
across the Danube.  Sviatoslav forced his way on.  Crushed thus
between Romans on the south, and Russians on the north, Bulgaria lay
helpless and prostrate.  Thereupon, Nicephorus had dashed back to
Constantinople in advance of his men, as suddenly and as unexpectedly
as he had begun the attack.  He was now free to give himself entirely
to the great campaign beyond the Taurus the moment the fire-signal
should warn him that all was ready to march.

Theophano succeeded in throwing on the privy council the
responsibility for the arrest of Digenes, and for the opposition to
his marriage with Agatha.  The unfortunate warden, tossing on a bed
of sickness, and quite delirious with fever, was unable to give any
explanations whatever.  Agatha, who was occupied intently with
superintending the nursing him to life, was still ignorant of the
monstrous advances that the empress had made to Digenes.  And the
persecuted princess, in her agonies of anxiety and excitement, was no
match for the daring brain of Theophano.  Nicephorus peremptorily
cancelled the imperial order to marry Agatha to Sisinnios, who
narrowly escaped condign punishment for allowing himself to be made a
party to the scheme.  The formal authority was given to the suffering
warden of the marches to marry the princess as soon as he could be
restored to health.  On her part, the noble-minded Agatha, overjoyed
at her deliverance from the palace plot, and absorbed in saving her
beloved Digenes from death, forbore to torture the mind of the
emperor, at the moment of setting forth on his great campaign, with
all that she knew and more that she suspected of the designs and
intrigues of Theophano.  And in this magnanimous resolve she was
confirmed by the sudden decision of Nicephorus as to the regency,
which struck the whole palace and its inmates with surprise, fear, or
hope, according to the party each supported.

"My beloved lord and ever-victorious hero," broke out the Basilissa,
when at last they two were alone and the immediate orders had been
given, "well wert thou named Nicephorus, thou who bringest victory
ever in thy hand!  Thou returnest from a new triumph over another
enemy, who treacherously professed to be our friend.  But to me, thy
wife, thy servant, thy lover, thou bringest back that which is to her
more dear than victory.  Thou hast brought life and light and
joy--thou bringest back thyself!"

Nicephorus listened in silence with a clouded brow.  At last he spoke.

"I do not know if my coming brings joy to this palace.  I purpose
that it shall bring peace.  I will do my best that it bring life at
least to one who is more dear to me than any soldier in my empire.
But, you will remember, that I do not come to stay.  I hurried back
from the Balkan on news that all was on the eve of readiness on the
Taurus.  Hour by hour I expect the beacon-fire to flame.  And twelve
hours after that light I shall be in Asia."

"Oh, my Lord, my life, say not so soon!  Am I to be widowed again in
so short an interval?  Have you thought of all the anxieties I have
suffered while filling your seat at the council?  Do you care nothing
for all the toils that a regent has to bear--and that regent a weak,
inexperienced woman?  Cannot you imagine, dear my lord and master,
all the loneliness that a widowed wife has to suffer in her silent
chamber, in her deserted couch?"

"You will have no longer all these toils."

"What say you?" she almost shrieked.  "Who can sustain the regency in
your absence, who but your wife who lifted you to this throne and who
alone knows all its cares, its resources, and its perils?"

"One who knew all this before you yourself were born--one who, for
two generations, has been a chief bulwark of Rome--one who is honored
and beloved by every honest Roman," said Nicephorus, quietly, and
with a tone of decision.

"Your father, Bardas?" she gasped; "but he is decrepit with age and
infirmity."

"He is wise, brave, firm, and the idol of the people.  But I have
named as his colleague in the office of regency, my brother Leo, the
curopalates.  He has the youth, life, and force that years may have
taken from my sire.  They two, as joint regents, will form a
government that all men can trust--such as I can trust when I leave
for the far east."

"And cannot you trust your own wife?" she broke out.

Nicephorus uttered not a word, nor did he make a sign.

"It cannot be.  Has it come to this?  Have I not saved your life from
Bringas?  Have I not set you on this throne?  Have I not imperilled
my all, my own life and liberty, my very soul, for an Armenian
soldier of fortune--I, the daughter of ancient kings and heroes, the
wife, the mother of emperors of Rome?"  She spoke with passion,
seeking, if she might, to overwhelm him with her majestic presence.

Nicephorus spoke not a word; slowly he drew from his robe the diploma
with its vermilion seal that created Bardas the Cæsar, and Leo the
curopalates, joint regents of the empire, during his own absence from
Europe.

She strove to snatch it from his hand, with fresh reproaches and
remonstrances.  "Let me tear it; listen to reason; will you show such
cruelty to your wife?  Nicephorus, remember all that you owe me!"

At length, having exhausted appeals, invectives, and threats, she
returned to blandishments again, with a mind recurring to the large
opportunities for ambition and intrigue which the palace would offer
her in the absence of its imperial master.

"Cruel man, hard-hearted husband, faithless lover," she broke out
with sobs, "you little know or care for all the wretchedness of a
wife, deserted for years, it may be, abandoned to the evil arts of
her rivals, her enemies--ay, maybe of her suitors and false friends."
And she wept, with all the art and pathos of a consummate actress.

"Fear not," said Nicephorus, quietly; "you go with headquarters into
Asia yourself.  All fitting preparations for your journey are already
being made."

"What?" she screamed.  "Am I to be dragged across Asia in the rear of
an army, in this terrible campaign into Syria?  Am I to be a follower
of the camp, a hostage, a prisoner, an exile?"

"You go with all the honors, the state, and fit appliances of an
empress of Rome.  Does a Basilissa dread to face a campaign against
the enemies of Christ, when the Basileus in person leads his armies
to war?"

"Do you take me with you, do you mean?"

"The Basilissa will be at headquarters, I say, though the
commander-in-chief may not know from hour to hour whither he may be
called in the field."

"And are my poor children, the infant Basileis, to be torn from their
mother, to be left here exposed to all the machinations of their
rivals--to the humiliations and the plots that your brother may
contrive, to all the contaminations of this place--when the love and
care of their mother is far away?"  And she sobbed and wept tears of
mingled wrath and fear, tears not wholly feigned.  "They will
imprison them, they will mutilate them, they will murder them--my
babes, my hope, my pride, my sons of Constantines, Basils, of
Leonidas, and of Lycurgus!  The Armenian conspirators will slay them
and seize their inheritance."

"Fear nothing, madam," at last said Nicephorus, coldly.  "The
Basileis go with you, with ample imperial state and retinues.  Your
terrors are as needless as they are unjust.  Your sons shall have all
a mother's care, all a mother's love you can give them.  Nor will you
suffer any loss of dignity if you cease to be regent.  You are
empress in title and in act, and will be honored as reigning empress,
whether in Europe or in Asia; you and your sons will be in the eyes
of all men the true sovereigns of this empire.  It is time that these
boys, who are to inherit this throne, should see with their eyes the
kingdom they will have to rule, and to hear the shouts of a Roman
army as it marches to battle against the infidel.  For me, while this
war endures, so long as the caliph holds the Holy Land where Christ
the Saviour lived, taught, and died for men, it is enough for me to
be commander of the armies of Rome, of the soldiers of our crucified
Redeemer."

Long did the wily sorceress try all her arts in turn--entreaties,
invectives, tears, threats, blandishments, and pathetic reproaches.
Nicephorus remained immovable.  Bewildered as he was by the
incoherent and contradictory tales he heard as to what had passed in
his absence, grieved at the long illness of his friend, overwhelmed
with cares of state and the duties of the campaign, he resolved to
postpone further inquiry into the conduct and schemes of his wife.
He insisted on carrying her with him, to be near him, and under his
watch and guard, but no longer to be at his side or to be treated
with any show of affection.  Henceforth she ceased to be his wife,
though to the world she remained his empress.  To passionate love and
devotion there had succeeded deep distrust and even dread.  But even
distrust and dread were not strong enough to stifle love.  He was no
longer her slave.  He could not cease to be her lover.  He could not
cease to be her lover in the silent recesses of his heart, hard as he
might strive to tear up by the roots the memory of his fatal passion.

Soon after noon that very day vast crowds collected in the Middle
Street, in the forum of Constantine, and in the Augustaion, and all
round the walls of the Sacred Palace.  The whole city was wild with
excitement, and the streets were decorated with banners and emblems.
Hour after hour since dawn the guards had been paraded and mustered
on barges.  Long caravans of sumpter-mules, laden with the tents,
furniture, baggage, and robes of the empress, of her two sons, and of
Nicephorus, passed through the imperial gate down to the port, where
they embarked for the Asiatic shore.  But the densest crowd of all
was gathered round the harbor of Boucoleon, where the imperial
cortège was to take ship.  At length, amid the clang of trumpets and
cymbals, the procession was formed.  Magistroi, patricians, and
prefects, selected by the emperor to form his court, among whom were
our friends Bardas Skleros, attended by young Eric, Bourtzes, and
Balantes, and other generals, chamberlains, and ushers, accompanied
Nicephorus to the imperial galley.  It was gently rowed out from the
port to a short distance, where all could be easily seen, and spoken
word could be heard on shore.  The walls, banks, towers, terraces,
and every available spot were crowded, while the patriarch, his
priests and acolytes, with their crosses and pictures, waited at the
point of the quay.  The emperor ascended the steps to the raised
platform on the quarter-deck of the state dromon.  He was in full
panoply, over which fell, in long folds, the imperial scaramangion of
his office.  He turned towards the east, and, reverently raising his
right hand aloft, he thrice waved over the city the sign of the
Cross.  Profound hush fell on the vast multitude.  Then he clasped
his hands in the attitude of adoration, and, in a ringing voice
across the waters, poured forth the prayer prescribed in the book of
rites:


"O Lord Jesus Christ, my God, into thy hands I commend this city of
Thine.  Guard her against all enemies, all disasters, that may seek
to come against her; guard her against civil war, and against
invaders from the Gentiles.  Keep her safe from capture and safe from
pillage: for in Thee we place all our hopes, inasmuch as Thou art the
Lord of all mercy, the Father of all pity, the God from whom alone
cometh all consolation.  Thine is all mercy, all salvation,
deliverance out of all temptations and all perils, now and forever
and evermore.  Amen."


At these words the choir responded from the shore with long chants of
"Amen!  Amen!  Holy, Holy, Holy, One Triune God!"  And the vast
crowds on the walls and terraces sent up to the sky resounding shouts
of "Amen!  Amen!  Long live our ever-victorious Basileus!"

The imperial fleet set forth at once with sails and oars across the
Propontis, and, amid crowds of boats, caiques, and light galleys,
passed over that lovely inland lake between the Princes Islands and
the Asian coast, marked with endless headlands, bays, woods, and
towers.  It sailed on eastward into the landlocked bay of Nicomedia,
and disembarked at Pylæ (the Gates of Asia), a little north of the
famous city of Nicæa in Bithynia.  This was now practically the head
of the great military road which led from the Propontis into Syria,
the road which so many armies, proconsuls, and officials of the Roman
empire had traversed for ages--along which the advancing flood of
Islam came, step by step, for seven hundred years--the road traversed
by the vast and motley host of the First Frank Crusade, one hundred
and thirty years later, on their way to Antioch and Jerusalem.

Here the imperial host was attended and watched by two young and
observant spirits, both of whom were deeply stirred by the character
and exploits of Nicephorus Phocas, both of whom have left us records
of his achievements.  One of these was the young student, Leo, long
afterwards destined to become a deacon of the Church, and to transmit
to us, after a thousand years, the only contemporary history in prose
of these events.  Though still but an undergraduate at college, his
historical zeal had caused him to obtain permission to follow the
imperial train, at least as far as Cæsarea; and he was already taking
ample notes of everything he saw, and was diligently inquiring into
every detail of the armament and its equipment.  His companion was
one Joannes, called Kyriotes, and usually known as "the Geometer,"
from his mathematical learning.  He, too, ultimately took priests'
orders, and became, late in life, Bishop of Melitene, in Cappadocia.
We still have verses of his in the form of epitaphs on Nicephorus,
his uncle Malemos the Hermit, and the Patriarch Polyeuctus.  At the
date of this journey he was a young courtier--a protospathaire, in
fact, unattached--and his father, Theodore, a great official, had
procured for his son, John, and his young friend, Leo, permission to
join the imperial suite and to follow all the movements of the host.
It is by the keen eyes and active brains of these two literary
enthusiasts that we propose now to follow the crusade of the tenth
century.

As soon as the immense convoy of baggage and camp furniture was fully
landed on the main-land, the emperor in person held a review of the
train of sumpter beasts, their drivers, and their packs, under the
superintendence of the prefect of the stables.  Leo and Joannes
followed in the emperor's staff, John as the elder, and already an
experienced official, pointing out and explaining each section of the
equipment.

"The first inspection is to register the proper number of the sumpter
beasts sent in to the rendezvous," said John.  "The prefect of the
stables and his lieutenants and subalterns are responsible.  Every
official, from the captain of a theme to the lowest grade of the
vestiaries, is charged to produce so many horses, so many mules.  The
counts of the guard, scholares, excubitors, immortals, and the
obsequians, are all assessed, and so on throughout."

"Is the number of each requisition fixed by law, and always the same?"

"Certainly, it is all noted in the appendix to our first _Book of
Ceremonies_."

"There are no imperial sumpter animals then?" asked Leo.

"Certainly there are.  The emperor is now inspecting the contingent.
Two hundred horses and two hundred mules from the imperial stables of
Asia and Phrygia.  The great stables and paddocks are over there at
Malagina, under Mount Olympus.  The bishops and archbishops have to
send another hundred, and the great monasteries another hundred.
Altogether we have here nearly one thousand beasts."

"That is not enough for the army?" asked Leo.

"Oh no! the army is already well on its march, or in the intermediate
camps along the line, ready to fall in.  Their baggage animals are by
this time well ahead towards Cæsarea.  These we see are for the
imperial retinue, staff, and service.  The whole have been mustered
at the state paddocks, where they have been gelded, branded with the
state cipher, and passed by the surgeons.  They must be above five
and under seven years, shod, bitted, and furnished with saddles or
packs, halters, and tethers.  Those that are sick or sorry have been
rejected, and are left in the paddocks in the veterinary hospital."

"What is the emperor stopping for now in that group?" asked Leo.

"He notices, perhaps, that the beast is short of proper clothing, or
has a sore back, and that his harness has not been properly stamped.
No!  I see now, he has noticed a mule with a load too heavy.  See, he
has it taken off and weighed!"

"Why so?" asked the curious Leo.

"No horse or mule can have laid on his back a weight exceeding eighty
measures of corn.  Yes!  They find it is exceeded.  The Basileus has
called for the driver's check, which is forfeited, and he is ordering
the fellow two dozen lashes."

"He is rather more tender to his mules than to his men," said Leo.

"Not he," said John.  "Nicephorus is a man of iron to himself first
and to others next.  To himself, his soldiers, his beasts, he is the
same.  In discipline he is as sharp and as severe in punishing as any
emir of the Hagarenes or czar of the Bulgars."

"Inexorable as Rhadamanthus or Achilles," said Leo, whose mind ran on
his Hellenic classics.

"Well, do you not see," said John, "it is not a matter of tenderness
at all.  Tender is a word not known in the vocabulary of the Sacred
Palace nor of the Roman army.  But a mule with a sore back, a cracked
heel, or with an excessive load, will soon drop.  With it goes its
pack, and when this failure spreads, the expedition is delayed or
weakened.  Hence our administration for centuries had prescribed the
exact harness, clothes, condition, age, of every baggage-beast, and
the weight he has to carry, and provides good stables, clothes,
drugs, and veterinary surgeons.  And Nicephorus Phocas, let me tell
you, is the man in all this service the most keen to mark any case of
default, and the most inexorable to have it exposed and punished.  I
have heard him say that the feet of a soldier are just as essential
as his hands, and the legs of his mount may decide a battle quite as
much as his lance or bow."

The huge caravan passed on with sure and rapid steps from one camp to
another, the troops in each camp joining up on the march, through the
plain round Nicasa, to the station at Dorylæum, a district the scene
of so many desperate combats--and after a hundred and thirty years
the scene of the triumphs of a Godfrey and a Tancred.  The empress
and her sons were conveyed with speed and without fatigue in horse
litters, and they had their tents, guards, and retinue distinct from
that of the emperor.

It was at Dorylæum, after a severe day's march, that Leo and Joannes
were permitted to visit the tents of the emperor himself.  Two were
pitched and ready furnished at each station, awaiting his
arrival--one for his meals, the other for the night.  They were of
purple, lined with silk, and supported on stout tent-poles with
gilded knobs.  Within they were already filled with couches,
folding-tables, cushions, rugs, and furs, with all the utensils
needed for the table and service--stamped with the imperial
cipher--baths, books, maps, almanacs, prayer-books, reliquaries, even
cases of medicines, and surgical instruments.  Nor was there wanting
immense chests of robes, of state armor, silk and linen garments,
even unguents and pastils, lamps, parchment, writing-materials,
seals, and stamps.  All this vast apparatus was strictly required by
the laws and custom of the Sacred Palace.  Nicephorus, who despised
it, and rejected its use, suffered it to be taken as far as Cæsarea.
When the campaign began in earnest, he left it behind him, and fared
as simply as any regimental officer in his army.

Just as they had been admitted to view the imperial tents and
fittings, the guard for the night was being posted.  The commander of
the vigils, or watch, ordered out a detachment of one hundred guards,
who patrolled the external circuit of the imperial tents.  The inner
circuit, from the cords of the tent-poles, was guarded by a hundred
men from the corps of the hetæri, or body-guard.  From the moment
when the emperor had withdrawn within, no man could pass the barrier,
which was indicated by the shields hung outside the tents.

"From the day that the Basileus enters the enemies' ground," said
Joannes, "these guards are doubled, and a more rigid surveillance is
enforced.  An emperor of Rome is not to be caught napping in his tent
like a madcap king of the Franks, or a rough-and-ready czar of the
Russ."

And now the Basileus approached, passing through the lines of men
already halted round their quarters.  The brigadiers, colonels, and
officers dismounted and joined his staff.  The infantry fell on their
knees and prostrated themselves before their august autocrator; the
cavalry sat motionless on their chargers at the salute.  Nicephorus
would halt and address each detachment.  "Soldiers, I trust all goes
well with you!  How fare ye, my sons?  How fares it with your wives,
my daughters-in-law, how fares it with your children?"

And the men answered in the appointed words, "In the light of thy
majesty, if all goes well with thee, all goes well with us, thy
servants."  And the Basileus replied, "Thanks be to God Almighty, who
preserves you in health!"

With these words he passed into his tent.  The captain of the watch
asked him for the password.  That night it was "St. Michael the
Archangel."

At night he summoned his principal officers and staff to sup with
him.  The young Joannes and Leo were even admitted to attend at the
repast.  Nicephorus was now hastening to take command of a great
army, which he knew was worthy of its task--to make head against the
swarms of Islam which now reached from the Indus and the Caspian to
the Taurus, and from Morocco to the Holy Land.  He had thrown off all
the cares and vexations of the capital, all the miserable ceremony of
the Sacred Palace.  He was again a soldier, about to complete the
mission of his life; and the young students rejoiced to observe in
all his words and his looks a spirit of hope and confidence that for
two years had never lighted up the countenance of the hermit
sovereign.

As the two students left the tents of the Basileus, they passed over
to those of the Basilissa, who had just arrived in her litter from
the day's march with a long train of guards, pack-horses, attendants,
and baggage servants, and her two sons, with a like retinue.  As she
was in the act of descending from her litter to pass into her tent, a
strange, wild figure pressed forward against the guards with loud
outcries and appeals to the empress to suffer him to approach and
address her.  It was an old man, gaunt and haggard, with long white
hair, the upper part of his body was almost bare, and showed
emaciated and torn limbs, while he was girt with a coarse and ragged
garment from the waist downward; but his legs and feet, like his
arms, were naked, and presented the look of a skeleton exposed to the
winds of heaven.  His cries and wild appearance, much like that of an
India fakir, caused Theophano to halt and ask who he was and what did
he seek.  He was said to be the famous eremite, Daniel, of Mount
Olympus, who had lived in solitary caves or huts for forty-three
years, had once had a great reputation for sanctity, but was now
believed to have been driven crazy by his austerities.  He had lived
in a desecrated tomb by the side of the road, and was afflicted with
dreadful fits of epilepsy.  He claimed to possess the gift of
prophecy, which was vouchsafed to him by the Jewish prophet whose
name he bore.

The promise of hearing prophecy caused Theophano to order that the
venerable hermit should be permitted to approach her.  He advanced
towards the royal seat, and, standing on a rock and throwing up to
heaven his shrunken arms, he began with loud cries, "Hear the word of
the Lord God, which He spake by the mouth of Daniel, prophet of the
Most High.  I have seen in a vision the things that shall come upon
this land, for its abominations and all its sorceries.  Thus saith
the Lord: 'There shall come up against this land a king of kings from
the rising sun, with horses and with horsemen, and he shall set
engines of war against thy walls, and with his axes he shall break
down thy towers.  The walls shall shake at the noise of his horsemen
when he shall enter into thy gates.  With the hoofs of his horses
shall he tread down all thy streets.  He shall slay thy people with
the sword.  They shall make a spoil of thy riches, and make a prey of
thy merchandise.  They shall break down thy walls and destroy thy
pleasant houses.  I will make thee a terror, and thou shalt be no
more.'"

The prophet foamed at the mouth, and paused from sheer exhaustion.
The attendants attempted to seize him.  But the empress motioned them
to suffer him to speak.  Again he screamed out:

"Thus saith the Lord.  I have seen in a vision a great host of men
and horses coming from the setting sun, and I hear the crash of
battle and of fierce slaughter; and all the ground whereon thou now
standest shall be a lake of blood.  And the bones of the slain shall
cumber this valley, and its end shall be a land of desolation."

Again he shouted, as his long arm pointed at Theophano:

"Thus saith the Lord.  Thou art covered with silk and bedecked with
ornaments.  Bracelets are on thy hands and chains on thy neck, jewels
are on thy forehead and ear-rings in thy ears and a beautiful crown
upon thy head.  Thou wast exceedingly beautiful, and thou didst
prosper into thy kingdom.  But thou didst trust in thy own beauty,
and playedst the harlot because of thy renown, and pourest out thy
fornications on every one that passed by."

The courtiers groaned out their indignation, but Theophano sat
motionless like a statue of Clytemnestra.

"Wherefore, O harlot, hear the word of the Lord.  Because thy
filthiness was poured out, and with all the idols of thy
abominations--I will judge thee as women that break wedlock and shed
blood are judged; and I will give thee blood in fury and jealousy.
And they shall strip thee of thy clothes, and shall take thy fair
jewels, and leave thee naked and bare.  And they shall stone thee
with stones, and thrust thee through with their swords.

"Thus saith the Lord.  Hast thou killed and also taken possession?
In the place where dogs shall lick the blood of him thou shalt slay,
shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine."

These dreadful fragments of biblical imprecation were shrieked forth
by the fanatic in piercing tones, while his weird, inhuman look and
voice thrilled those who heard them, so that they were afraid to
move.  Theophano listened in seeming patience, with a look of
disdainful mockery in her face--somewhat distracted within by her own
contempt for the wretched maniac, and lingering desire to hear what
she might of inspired or diabolic presage.  But as the violence of
passion had disordered the brain and nerves of the ascetic, he foamed
at the mouth in a fit, and, with violent shrieks and struggles, he
was borne away by the terrified attendants.  To the eye of those
around, and even to the searching glances of Leo and Joannes,
Theophano herself was the one person present at this scene who had
borne it throughout with indifference and contempt.




XXIV

Love and Falsehood

By rapid, preconcerted stages, the imperial headquarters was moved on
from Dorylæum and the valley of the Sangarius into that of the upper
Halys, and soon round the salt lake of Tatta to Cæsarea, where a halt
was made.  It was practically the military route long before
traversed by Alexander, and so many chiefs of old and new Rome, and
in part by the Crusaders under Walter the Penniless, and Godfrey,
more than a century afterwards, when their bones whitened the plain.
Cæsarea had been refortified and crowded with immense contingents and
vast stores as the grand base of the expedition into Syria.  There
Nicephorus held a series of inspections, musters, and reviews.  At
many of these Leo the student was present, under the guidance of his
friend, Joannes, and he occupied himself with careful notes as to all
the nations and tribes which he there saw in arms.  The musters of
the Charsian, the Armenian, the Cappadocian, and Anatolian themes
were there gathered--and with them contingents from the independent
Armenians, Georgians, Abasgians, and Iberians.  Beside them marched
men from Europe, Dalmatian Highlanders, Calabrians, and Beneventan
levies, and a strong force sent from the vassal republics of Venice
and Amalphi, from the lords of Gaeta, and Naples.  Here, too, the
emperor rejoined John Tzimisces and his somewhat exhausted force,
which had been for a year engaged with the Saracens on the Syrian
frontier, meeting alternate success and reverse.  That army was,
indeed, so much shaken and reduced by its hard service, that
Nicephorus was compelled to leave John at Cæsarea to recruit his men
and to organize the reserves that were to follow as required.
Against this the ardent John protested in his own furious way, but
the Basileus forced him to submit.

From Cæsarea the army prepared to enter an enemy's country, and the
imperial paraphernalia, state tents, baggage and equipment, had been
left behind.  Nicephorus was now in active campaigning order.  All
the heights and forts commanding the passes of Mount Taurus had been
occupied in strength, and the main army descended into the plains
through the tremendous defiles of the Cilician Gates.  This narrow
gorge, cut through the limestone precipices of the range by the
headwaters of the Cydnus, was just such a defile as are those which
we all know to-day in the Alps, having a furious torrent roaring over
huge rocks, crowned by jagged pinnacles, and clothed with pines,
junipers, and cedars.  Through these sombre gorges, amid the thunder
of incessant cataracts and rapids from the melted snows, the whole
army poured with ease and safety, for it was summer, and every point
commanding the pass was already defended by a fort amply manned and
provisioned.  The passes once surmounted, the whole army was at last
securely concentrated and posted in the broad and teeming valleys of
the Cydnus, the Sarus, and the Pyramus.  The whole of this rich
country fell into the hands of the Romans.  Anazarba, Adana,
Mopseutia, and twenty strong places, as Leo recounts, were taken by
storm.  Placing a strong force to invest Tarsus, Nicephorus pressed
on to Issus.  This captured, the road was open at last to Antioch.

The triumphant march of this army corresponded with its numbers,
which Leo seriously placed at the enormous total of four hundred
thousand.  They ravaged the country far and wide, driving the
wretched inhabitants before them into the fortified places, or
reducing them by myriads into slavery.  Leo the historian gives us a
terrible picture of the campaign and all its horrors.  The followers
of the Prophet fought on with courage and obstinacy behind each
fortress; they had neither numbers nor equipment able to meet the
Romans in the field.  Famine, pestilence, and the tremendous engines
of the invaders slew the Saracens by thousands.  When cities were
taken by storm, all soldiers in arms and still resisting were
butchered; and the civic population, women and children, were
expelled by force, sometimes into captivity, sometimes into exile.
Nicephorus sternly refused conditional terms of capitulation to a
besieged city proposing surrender.  "A venomous serpent," said he,
"in the winter season lies torpid--one would think it dead; the
warmth of summer returns, and it is alive and as dangerous as ever.
These inveterate enemies of Christ and of His people must be crushed
once and forever!"  So the work of slaughter and extermination went
on till the conquering host had reached the confines of Syria and the
Amanus.

This career of sanguinary triumph was now suddenly arrested by a
cause the truth of which was never allowed to be known, and for which
both in that day and since many different explanations have been
given.  It was rumored through the host that the emperor had
countermanded the advance, and gradually the news spread that he
himself was retracing his steps.  One night, as Nicephorus had
presided at the storming of a fortress on the coast, and had with
difficulty made an end to the orgy of pillage and slaughter, an
urgent petition was brought to him from an officer of rank, who
pressed for a private interview on a matter of life and death to the
welfare of the empire.  Nicephorus bade them admit him to his tent.
It was Joannes, "the Geometer," who had been left with the reserves
at Cæsarea, and had now hastened up to headquarters.

"My gracious sovereign," said John, "let me speak freely of matters
of high treason and your own life.  I answer for my truth and loyalty
with my head, which I place in your hands."

"Speak," said Nicephorus.

"John Tzimisces, sire, whom you ordered to remain at the base to
recruit his own army and to reorganize the reserves, has conceived
the most passionate wrath against your order and even against
yourself," said Joannes.

"He broke out upon me with tears, and almost with curses, when I gave
him the order," said Nicephorus; "it is the way of our fiery John.
He will cool down in time."

"Sire, he has not cooled down; he has flamed up more fiercely than
ever; he has been tampering with the loyalty of the troops."

"Your proofs," said the emperor, sternly.

"Sire, I have brought you copies of two missives that have been
secretly passed round the two new battalions of Armenian levies.  I
was present myself when Tzimisces reviewed them, and I saw him smile
with joy and without a word when the ranks saluted the commander to
the cry of 'John, our Basileus!'  I have been through their camps and
round their watchfires, and I have heard them say, 'Our John has been
betrayed--Nicephorus is jealous of him.  Down with Nicephorus--Long
live John!'"

The Basileus listened in silence, read and re-read the circular
appeals.  "Ay," he said, to himself, "it is ever so.  The new levies
go after a new man--and they ever follow a man of their own tribe.
What is the evidence, my young friend, that John Tzimisces has lent
himself to treachery, or has ceased to be my loyal colleague and
officer?"

"Only this," said Joannes, at last.  "Some devoted servants of yours,
sire, watched the quarters of Tzimisces, and one night there was
found a man near it whom we knew to be an emissary from your imperial
retinue.  We seized, searched, and, as he resisted with weapons, we
slew him.  In a fold of his belt we found this writing.  We do not
understand it, nor do we know whence it comes."  He handed a slip of
parchment to the emperor.

Nicephorus understood it.  He knew whence it came.  He knew what it
meant.  It was in the Armenian tongue.  It was in a handwriting that
he knew well.  It ran thus: "_From the prison of Drizibion, one who
has need of thee, and one who can serve thee, calls thee to come at
once, for counsel and for protection._"

Nicephorus was struck dumb with horror and indignation, and hardly
maintained his footing or his senses.  But he concealed his spasm of
shame and wrath from his visitor.  "We will reflect on this.  Keep
absolute silence as to all you know and all that has passed," said
he, slowly.  With assumed calm he dismissed Joannes for the night.

When Nicephorus was alone he passed some terrible hours of agony and
despair, turning over in his mind every catastrophe that threatened
the army by a revolt in his rear--and the wickedness of the false
wife for whom he had suffered so much--whom even now it racked him to
believe so cruel and faithless.  After hours of a storm of passion
and perplexity he summoned his confidential secretary--and gave
orders for preparation to be made for his own return by forced posts
to Cæsarea at daybreak the next day.

What had happened was this.  During the halt at Cæsarea, the emperor,
being his own commander-in-chief and superintending every stage of
the expedition, had been incessantly occupied by his duties and had
little communication of any kind with Theophano.  More than once he
had noticed her presence at the inspections and parades held by
Tzimisces, and he had been glad to see her take new interest in the
army, and even admit to her court so gallant a soldier and so true a
friend as the "domestic of the eastern armies."  As these visits
became more frequent, Nicephorus resolved to carry on the empress and
her sons, and not to leave them as intended at Cæsarea.  Against this
resolution Theophano had vehemently protested, but in vain.  But her
indignation was unbounded when, after penetrating a day's march into
the northern defiles of the Taurus, she found that she was to be left
in the rocky fortress of Drizibion.  This was a castle of impregnable
strength, perched on a precipitous cliff in the centre of the pass
that led to the Cilician Gates.  A stormy interview had passed
between Basileus and Basilissa:

"What!" she said.  "Am I, the Augusta, to be a prisoner in this wild
mountain den?  Am I to be hidden out of sight, as if it were a
convent of nuns?  Are my poor children to be shut up in this dreary
fort, to pine away in exile, perhaps to be murdered?"

"Madam," said the Basileus, gently, and yet with decision, "in such a
campaign as that which is before us, with all its perils, fatigues,
and hardships, it would be cruel to expose a lady and two children to
such a life.  When we have conquered a safe and fitting place for you
and the little ones, you will follow.  I and my army will not be so
very far.  But your safety and that of the young Basileis is my first
care.  Here you will be in absolute security, and, indeed, in
luxury--in a place which, in this season, has everything pleasant.
You will have all the retinue you brought hither, and the whole of
your attendants and staff."

"Why was I dragged from Cæsarea?" she asked, with bitterness.

"Cæsarea to-day is a mere camp of exercise.  It is no place for the
court of an empress."

"Am I a prisoner?" she asked again.

"You are the wife of the Roman emperor," said Nicephorus, with firm
voice, "and while I live his word shall be law."  With this he closed
the interview, and went forth with a weight as a stone upon his heart.

Theophano watched him as he left her with eyes flaming with rage.
From that hour she nursed in her heart plans of implacable revenge.

On the morning of the third day after the dreadful revelations given
him by Joannes, Nicephorus approached the castle of Drizibion.  He
had hurried on in front of his escort, almost unattended, travelling
night and day, and torn with contending emotions.  Passionate love,
indignation, jealousy, pity, shame, and horror, filled his soul by
turns.  Even now he could hardly resolve upon a course of action.
Should he confront Theophano with the evidence of her guilt?  Should
he discard her and immure her in a remote convent?  Should he seize
and execute Tzimisces?  Would the faction of the Basilissa in the
capital raise an insurrection in his absence?  Would the army, or
half of it, side with the brilliant and popular Tzimisces?  Should
the chiefs of Rome in this death-grapple be fighting each other?
What then would be the issue to the crusade against the Saracens?
What would be the future of the motherless children--of the heirs of
Constantine and Romanus--of the Roman empire itself?

He was still revolving in his mind all these questions when, about
noon, he reached the foot of the outer bulwarks of Drizibion.  He
amazed the guard to whom he disclosed himself, and ordered them to
remain silent, as he intended a surprise visit to the empress.  He
was told she was now in the garden of the castle with her children.
With a sign to the door-keepers Nicephorus passed in.  It was a
lovely spot.  Perched five hundred feet above the bottom of a
mountain valley, along which the military road was cut beside the
tumbling waters of the torrent, the garden was shaded with chestnut
and limes and beech trees, adorned with flowers and blossoming
shrubs.  It commanded a varied spectacle of jagged pinnacles of
limestone, forests of pines and larches, and in the far distance
peaks of snow.  'Twas a glowing day of summer.  Nicephorus paused.
And now he saw his Theophano in all the blaze of her beauty, in her
airy robes of silk gauze, sitting in the shade of a chestnut-tree and
caressing her younger child.  Basil, the elder boy, was in his little
uniform of a cataphractic trooper, playing with his toy sword and
slaying the heads of the poppies.  The mother gazed on the children
with delight, fondling the weaker one by her side, and watching the
martial spirit of her Basil.

"One day, my darling," she was saying to the elder boy, "they will
let us go away from this dull place, and we will all be back again at
the palace at home, where you shall be treated again as the Roman
Augustus, and your mother will again receive the homage of a
civilized people, and not of these uncouth barbarians, such as you
can see on guard below."

"No, mother," cried the little Basil, "I do not care for civilized
people!  I want to lead these splendid fellows in battle.  I want to
use a real sword.  I want to be with father in the front!"

The mother smiled, much as if she had the soul of an Irene within.
It was a scene of pure beauty, peace, and love.  It struck Nicephorus
to the heart with a new flood of pity, of affection, and pride.

Who was he to consign such loveliness and motherly instinct to a cold
convent?  Could such grace, such tenderness, be treacherous and
false?  Could he blast the young lives of these children by
destroying their home and driving their mother into exile?  Still
uncertain what he would do, Nicephorus stepped forward, and stood
before her with a look of profound sadness and reproach.

"My lord, my sovereign, my deliverer," cried Theophano, rushing
forward to her husband when she saw his look of sad and stern
reproof, "you have come to take me away from this prison, this exile,
this wilderness, where I and my babes have lived in sorrow, while you
have been adding fresh glory to your name, and new life to Rome?"

The little Constantine climbed his knee, and the boy Basil pulled his
arm to show his father how many stalks of the enemy he could slash
off with a single blow.

He stood irresolute and confounded.  Theophano fell on his neck, and,
weaving her arms round him, she sobbed on his breast, murmuring,
"Take us from this prison."

"Whom did you count on to take you from this prison, to whom did you
write to deliver you?" said Nicephorus.

"To whom but to you--to my sovereign--to my husband," she said,
quickly--"to whom else could I look?  You had all the urgent letters,
petitions, messages I despatched to you in the field?"  Nicephorus
looked silently and sternly, and said not a word.

"No?" she said, with a gasp; "you did not receive them?"  And then
she added, "You did not receive even my last short summons in
Armenian, in the form in which I used to write when I made you
Basileus of Rome?" she said, proudly.  "You did not even receive that
love-letter of mine?  I thought it might touch you at last."

"Do you mean this?" said he, and took from his bosom the Armenian
script--"'_From the prison of Drizibion, one who has need of thee,
and one mho can serve thee, calls thee to come at once, for counsel
and for protection._'"

"Ah!" she cried in triumph; "then you did have the last, and it
brought you!  My lord, my husband, and my consoler!"

And she moved to embrace him again.

"Madam," he said, quietly, "this was sent not to Tarsus, where I was
in the field at the siege, but to Cæsarea, to the camp of reserve."

"Yes! the messenger whom I sent was an attendant of my own; he had
orders, if he could not learn where the emperor was in the field, to
go on to Cæsarea to ascertain from the officers in command where the
emperor could be found.  By the Holy Spirit, I swear that he had
strict orders to hand this writing to no one but the Basileus
himself.  You see he has done so, and you have come."

"Madam," said Nicephorus, at last, slowly and calmly, "I have come,
and I have come as the result of this very message.  But your
messenger did not hand it to me.  He died in the execution of his
orders.  The parchment was handed to me by the man who killed him,
and who found it in his belt."

A long and terrible silence ensued.  At last Nicephorus spoke.  "I
have come to take you back to Cæsarea, and to place you there in
safety, till this war is settled, and we can return to the capital.
We will say no more.  There is the miserable thing," and, tearing it
to fragments, he flung them over the precipice into the cataract
below.

"Nicephorus," said she, in a voice of intense anxiety and fear, "you
will not slay me--nor mutilate my children--nor put us away in exile?"

He turned from her in stern silence, and now almost with loathing and
scorn.  At last the fire of love that consumed him was almost burned
out to its embers.

Having given orders for the guards, retinue, and attendants of the
empress and of her sons to be at once moved down to Cæsarea,
Nicephorus hastened thither in person by forced marches, and
straightway summoned John Tzimisces to his quarters.

Tzimisces came dashing in with that jovial air of hearty
good-fellowship which made him the idol of the army.  He was still
chafing under the injury the emperor had done him by ordering him to
remain behind in camp, but he recovered his temper on learning that
Nicephorus now ordered him to start for Tarsus at the front, while
the emperor in person remained at Cæsarea to organize the levies.  He
admitted that his Armenians had raised disloyal cries at parade, but
he satisfied the emperor that he, John, had been no party to the
movement.  "Examine my staff officers," said Tzimisces, "and see if
you can find a trace of treason on my part against my sovereign, my
chief, my friend.  It is true that he cruelly wronged me in keeping
me here like a raw recruit, while he revelled in glory himself.  It
was a burning shame, and I have told my own comrades all the
bitterness I feel.  But as to plotting treason to overthrow the
Basileus--no!  I am not yet come to that!  John has a hot temper and
a sharp tongue, and will strike when he is struck, but he is not a
back-stairs conspirator like those eunuchs and cubiculars of the
palace."

"You have had no cubicular at your own quarters?" asked the Basileus.

"What, I?" replied the fiery John.  "He would be kicked forth like a
dog if he came to my tent," said John, hotly and frankly.

"You had no missives from Drizibion?" asked Nicephorus.

"From Drizibion?" said John.  "What is that?  The castle that
commands the pass north of the Cilician Gates?  I know not who
commands there, nor what can he want from me.  From Drizibion?  Who
was stationed there?"

"The Basilissa and her sons," said the emperor, "and all their guards
and retinue."

"What!" said Tzimisces--"the empress at Drizibion?  I thought you
carried her and all her retinue across into Cilicia, and kept her
beside you at headquarters."  And John looked straight into the eyes
of Nicephorus, with such a genuine face of frankness and truth that
the Basileus now saw that Tzimisces, at any rate, was no party to the
plot--if plot there were--was not guilty of dishonoring his sovereign
and his friend.

Nor was John false, nor as yet at all seduced by the arts of
Theophano.  Nicephorus reflected that, according to the story he had
heard, Tzimisces had never received the intercepted missive.  There
was no undoubted proof that it was addressed to Tzimisces at all.  No
name was written, and Theophano had sworn that it was addressed to
her own husband.  Be this as it may, there was no proof that
Tzimisces had anything to do with it, nor that he had, either before
or since, received anything of the kind.  No proof; but doubt, gloom,
and despair, lay ever deep down in the inmost soul of Nicephorus
Phocas.  At all times he was rarely seen to smile.  He never smiled
again in life.




XXV

Love and Troth

Far different were the scenes which, during this time, were being
enacted in Constantinople itself.  Leo, the curopalates, and his
father, the venerable Bardas Cæsar, maintained strict order and good
government in the capital, and carried out all the urgent orders of
Nicephorus for the safety of Digenes the lord warden, and of Agatha
the princess.  The unfortunate warden, still in the height of his
fever, was carefully removed in a litter to the palace of his
sister's husband, the Lord Comnenus, of the family which ultimately
was raised to the throne.  There his sister, the Lady Theodosia
Comnena, and the Princess Agatha, with their attendants, nursed him
in his illness, and there he was treated by the famous physicians
Theophanes Nonnos and Synesios.  The one was the author of an
important _Encyclopœdia of Medicine_, the other had studied under
Arabian physicians, and translated their works into Greek.  All that
the science of the age, combined with all the love of two noble
women, could do to save the life of the patient, was lavished for
many an anxious week, while the warden lay in great danger and in
continual delirium.

At times he would fancy himself at the siege of Chandax, shouting to
his men to plunge the scaling-bridge from the great tower--"Down with
her--clear the gangway--another ladder there--water on that burning
roof--On, my men, for Rome--Christ!--Mother of God!"--and then he
would sink back on his pillow exhausted, groaning--"All is lost--has
our God delivered us into the hands of the Prophet?--Thy will be
done--hallowed be Thy name."

At other times he would fancy himself in a dungeon, while he could
hear the battle raging in the walls round him, and he would cry
out--"Loose me from these chains, O my God!--I hear the Romans at the
charge--am I chained forever like a dog?--give me my sword--leave me
but one hand free--let me strike one blow for Christ--oh! this is
worse than death--give me one hour of life and air again--then let me
die and be heard no more."

The women sat beside him, silent, in tears, watching his ravings with
pain and fear, and besought the learned physicians to try some
calming drug.  With this, on other days, he would be in a gentler
mood, though still in delirium.  He would stare at Agatha with eyes
open, but not recognizing who she was, and would murmur,
incoherently--"Sweet lady, you have saved me--let me save you,
too--come with us to Rome--learn to pray to Mary--all good women love
Mary--it is so beautiful to see them in the gallery there in Hagia
Sophia--Theodosia will be so glad--if you only knew Theodosia--and I
think Agatha will be glad, too!  Agatha is so kind to girls she
loves--My father was of Arab race, you know."

Agatha listened to all this with pity, wonder, and at last with a
sense of pain.  "Of whom is he talking?" she whispered.  "I have
heard of a Saracen girl who saved him in the prison in Crete.  Oh!
she is in his mind.  He thinks I am she.  He loved her then, and not
me," and she burst into a flood of tears.

"No, no," Theodosia broke in, "he has always loved you, dear, but he
has often told me how the emir's daughter, Fatima, saved his life,
how he saved her honor, and how he hoped she would consent to become
a Christian, and would come to visit me here in our castle in the
Princes' Islands.  My brother has always loved you, Agatha.  Even in
the emir's dungeon he prayed to Saint Agatha, and saw her in a vision
smiling upon him."

"Was Fatima so very beautiful?" asked Agatha, suddenly.

"Very beautiful," said Theodosia; "she was thought to be like her
brother, Hassan, who died in our father's castle in Cappadocia; and
Digenes, you know, was his cousin, and singularly like him in
countenance."

"He loved Fatima," cried Agatha, in agony; "he thinks now that I am
Fatima, he is dreaming of her now; see his lips move with words of
tenderness--he will die loving Fatima.  I will go into a nunnery and
end it all."

"Oh! speak not thus," cried Theodosia; "my brother never loved woman
save only you.  He is very kind and generous, and the soul of honor
and chivalry.  He did all he could to serve the woman to whom he owed
his life.  If she loved him, I know not; I am told she was overjoyed
when the general charged Digenes to take her and her sister and
followers to Spain.  But this I know, that Digenes never loved woman
but his own Agatha."

"Ah, yes! the lord warden was chief of the embassy to the caliph at
Cordova, and Fatima was in that mission," and Agatha covered her face
with her hands and softly wept silent and bitter tears as she watched
the utter exhaustion of their patient.

The fever had many intervals of abatement and then of relapse.  One
night, when he had seemed all day to be stronger, and had taken more
food than usual, his delirium broke out in a terrible form.

"Take her away!" he shrieked again and again.  "It is a fury!--it is
a fiend!--She seizes my hand!--it burns me to the bone--never, never,
will I be false!--away! away! her eyes are like red-hot iron--her
hair is full of hissing snakes--she is the daughter of Satan--away
from her!--away from her!--she shall not touch you, Agatha, even if
she roast me to a cinder!  Mother of God, save me from her!  Saint
Agatha, save me!"

The two women looked at each other with wonder and horror in their
faces.  Neither spoke.  They knew nothing of what had passed.  They
imagined things dreadful and unholy.

"He thinks only of you, Agatha, as his protector and saint," said
Theodosia, at last.

Again and again their patient, who had a violent relapse, broke out
with gasps and convulsive agony--"There is blood dripping from her
hands!--she holds a cup of poison!--she calls in the assassins!--she
is smiling with joy!--there, they are stabbing him in the back--Help!
help! treachery! butchery!--it is the blood of the Basileus himself
that chokes me!"--and he sank back groaning out the words in gulps of
rage--"she-devil! murderess! harlot!"

The women cowered in terror and shame, and implored the physicians to
try some means of reducing the delirium.  Theophanes Nonnos watched
these recurrent fits with minute observation, and at last he noticed
how the patient, in these wilder moments of violence, kept his eyes
fixed on the ceiling of the apartment.  He frequently pointed with
his hands, as if he saw actual figures aloft, and he continually
waved his arms as at some terrible sights above his head.  Now,
Theophanes Nonnos was a diligent student of Hippocrates and Galen,
and prone to watch the reaction of external surroundings on the
nervous system of his patients.  He then saw that, on the frieze of
the noble apartment to which Digenes had been carried, and facing his
bed, was a mosaic decoration which had been copied from the same
original as the mosaic wall at Ravenna, which represents a ceremonial
procession of Justinian the Great and the Empress Theodora.  This
picture Nonnos ordered to be covered with a curtain of neutral tone.
This done, the spasms of the patient rapidly subsided.

In a few days the physicians were able to assure the watchers that
the worst of their anxieties was past, and that a period of quiet
convalescence had set in.  Hour after hour, so far as his returning
strength permitted, Digenes poured out to Agatha his protestations of
unbroken devotion; he told her how in Asia, in Crete, in Spain, and
in Thrace, in camp, in battle, in prison, in the palace, and in
church, the image of the saintly Agatha had been his consolation and
hope; he told her how the Basileus had given his formal consent to
their marriage, and had given orders for its celebration with the
highest honors, so soon as the warden was restored to health.  His
health now, he murmured, wanted but one thing to be as good as ever.
Would she say what day, next month, he might call her his own?  Would
she bend down to his pillow, whisper it in his ear, and seal it with
a kiss--one kiss--the first she had ever vouchsafed to him?

Agatha listened with rapture!  She did bend down and whisper in his
ear, and suffer her lips to rest on his.  She did not tell him how
often, during his long delirium, her lips had touched his burning
forehead and his fevered hands, as she stooped down to bathe them
with attar of roses and orange-water.  But she was very slow, indeed,
to believe that her Digenes had never loved the fascinating houri of
the old emir's castle--not for a time--not for a day--not just a
little bit in all chivalry and faith?  Nor could anything persuade
her that the Lady Fatima had not loved her Digenes, loved him
passionately, truly, in all honor and in all sincerity.  It was quite
impossible that a woman of feeling and goodness could owe so much to
her Digenes, could be on such terms of sentiment and confidence, and
be half converted to his religion, and not love him.  Any woman so
near must love him, would love him, ought to love him.

At last, one day, Agatha was finally convinced that she had the whole
heart of Digenes, and had never ceased to have it, from the hour when
she first met him as a girl in her father's court, and had seen the
young hero, whose feats and chivalry the poets commemorated in song.
The lord warden was now very much restored to health, and wholly to
his reason and consciousness.  Agatha had read to him some of his
favorite pieces, the parting of Hector and Andromache in the sixth
_Iliad_, and the parting scene from the "Alcestis" of Euripides.  He
had even asked her to recite the famous lines of Sappho--from the
poems which were then all extant--

  Φαίνεταί μοι κηνος ίσος Θεοισιν--
  ("_that man seems to me the peer of gods_")

--but she archly refused, as he was not strong enough to listen to
such fiery poetry, and she was not going to recite such pagan stuff.

To them entered the lady Theodosia Comnena, who gayly saluted her
brother with the words, "News, news, something that will interest you
both, something I trust that will give you, brother, as much pleasure
as it will give Agatha."

"A conundrum," said they both; "we give it up."

"A rival of yours, Agatha, a flame of yours, brother," said
Theodosia, with a peal of laughter.

"That dear girl, Sophia, the daughter of the old Emir Abd-el-Aziz,
has just come to see me.  Her brother, the captain, young Anemas, who
was sent on the embassy to Fez, and afterwards to Cordova, has
persuaded the Lady Fatima, your ladylove in Crete, brother, to accept
the pressing invitation of Sophia and her father, to visit them in
Prote.  She is to come with her brother and sister, and within six
months Fatima shall go with us to hear the Patriarch perform divine
service.  And before a month more is passed she shall marry Anemas,
before he joins the Basileus in Syria.  So think no more, brother, of
your tawny angel.  She is to stay with the whole blood of the
Prophet, Christian though she will be, and Christian as Anemas
already is."

"Thanks be to Mary of the Daphne," said Digenes, with hearty
rejoicing.  "Has she promised Anemas?"

"Not yet, to marry," said Theodosia, "but that is an incident.  She
has promised to come, brother, and she believes that you are married
by this time yourself."

"Who told her that?" said Agatha, quickly.

"Well, I strongly suspect that Anemas told her, as an indispensable
condition of proposing marriage with himself."

"Ah! then I was right, after all," said Agatha, with a deep sigh, and
looked earnestly and almost reproachfully at Digenes.

"My beloved," said the young hero, with deep feeling, "your
suspicions were true, perhaps, in part.  But as to me, I have been
ever true throughout."

"Another piece of news," said Theodosia, "if you two can keep a
secret which is not to be blurted out to these palace gossips: Eric,
the young Varangian, will one day marry Sophia when he comes back
from the wars, where he is winning glory on the staff of the Basileus
in Asia.  There may be two weddings on the same day.  Nay, brother,
perhaps there might be three on the same day, and the Basileus
preside in person at the ceremony!"

"Tut!" cried Digenes, with animation, "not for us.  I do not wait
till Eric and the Basileus return, nor till Anemas can wring a 'yes'
from his bride."

"No, nor till Fatima can be persuaded to visit her cousin in Prote,"
said Agatha, archly.  She was now at last convinced that Digenes had
never failed her in thought or in word--no, not for an hour; but she
still meant to be married before Fatima could reach Constantinople.

By slow degrees, and in very guarded and modified ways, Digenes
allowed Agatha to know as much of what had passed in the palace as he
could remember, and as much as he thought it kind or prudent as yet
to tell to the pure and gentle spirit with whom he was to be united.
The astrologer's potion had confused his brain to such a degree that
he had but a broken memory of the interview with Theophano.  His long
illness, with its continued delirium, had left him with a mind
troubled as with a series of terrible and incomprehensible dreams.
He could not shock the girl in her happiness with all his horrible
suspicions and recollections.  Nor would Agatha, on her side, as yet
trouble his mind with all that she suspected and feared.

At last, having exchanged confidences as far as they each thought it
kind and wise to speak, it was agreed between them that in the
tremendous crisis of the great war, in the weight of cares that beset
the Basileus day and night, they would not harass him with the
torture of fresh revelations, of which the formal proofs would not be
easy to find.

"Agatha," said Digenes, solemnly, one day, on receipt of the
inexplicable news of the sudden retreat of the Basileus to Cæsarea,
in the very midst of the campaign, "the Basileus has called me to the
front by special messenger.  I start for the camp in an hour."

"Go," she said, with a deep sigh, "if it must be.  I will wait till
you come again with fresh renown.  The cause of this Empire of Rome,
of God, of the Mother of God, shall not be hindered one hour by the
love of one feeble girl."

"Think me not unkind, my love, my hope, my saint," cried the young
hero, with the light of battle for Christ and His people in his
eyes--"think me not unkind if I have to hasten away from the holy
shrine in which your love has suffered me to kneel, to worship, and
to adore; think me not cold if I hurry off to my sovereign and my
command.  I could not love thee so well, if it were not that I loved
my duty even more."

With one long kiss they parted--nor did they meet again on earth.




XXVI

Old Rome

The scene now passes from the Imperial Palace of New Rome on the
Bosphorus to the Catholic Basilica of Old Rome on the Tiber, where
the greatest of the Saxon line of emperors was about to claim the
inheritance of the Cæsars and to instal his house as supreme in all
Italian lands.  It was Christmas eve, 967, on a bright morning of
winter, when snow lay on Mount Soracte and on the higher ranges of
the Sabine and Alban mountains.  The Flaminian way, from the city
gate under the Pincian hill, for the two miles to the Milvian bridge
over the Tiber, was thronged with a motley crowd of the populace of
Rome, bearing visible signs of its heterogeneous origin and lawless
habits, along with officials, civil and ecclesiastical, in their
state robes and with emblems of office, and strong detachments of
Northern soldiers, both horse and foot, whom the Roman mob regarded
with terror as monsters of ferocity and force.  The prefect and the
senate of Rome--a strange contrast from the senators who had gone to
welcome Julius and Octavius some thousand years before--were hurrying
along to meet their German emperor, intermixed with the
standard-bearers of the Roman militia, the long processions of
priests and choristers, and the counts and barons of the Italian
fiefs in military array and fantastic armor.  It was a strange jumble
of races, types, and various characters.  The mongrel and craven
descendants of African, Syrian, or Slavonian slaves jostled the
degenerate heirs of the ancient patricians, and both looked on with
awe and wonder at the huge, fair-haired barbarians who took their
orders from no man but their mighty chief, the Saxon Otto.

At the northern end of the Milvian bridge there had been erected a
rude and hasty kind of triumphal arch, decorated with the emblems and
colors of the emperor-king.  Near it was posted, waiting to see the
imperial procession pass, a small band of spectators, whose speech
and garb proclaimed them to be foreigners at Rome.  One was our
friend Michael, the protocolist, who, with Joannes Kyriotes, the
geometer, had been despatched by the ever-watchful Chancery of
Constantinople on a roving and secret commission to observe the
current of Italian politics, and especially to study the real feeling
of the papal court, and also of the democracy of Rome.  With them was
Symeon, a learned divine, who was travelling to obtain traditions and
legends for his great collection of the lives of saints and martyrs.
A fourth foreigner was Alexios, an artist in mosaic decoration, who
had been called from Byzantium to Rome to superintend the restoration
of the dilapidated mosaics in the Church of St. Cosmas and St.
Damianos.  They were being personally conducted by Guido, a Sicilian
long settled in Bari, in the Lombard Theme, a loyal subject of the
Byzantine emperor.  The whole party had their own armed attendants,
as well as a small body-guard from the municipal police, for the
state of Rome was far too unsettled to permit of distinguished Greeks
being safe in the midst of a turbulent crowd.

"Is it possible," said Michael to Joannes, "that these battered walls
of old Rome can have kept at bay for a single day the mighty King of
Germany?"

"Well, they helped Belisarius to beat off the Goths," said Joannes;
"but then they had our soldiers under a great chief inside them."

"I dare say they may serve to baffle Goths and Germans," said
Michael, "but, though I am no soldier, I can see that these obsolete
and now ruinous walls never could be compared for an instant with the
mighty fortifications we could show them at home on the Bosphorus."

"The walls of old Rome are poor enough," Guido now broke in, "but the
castle of the Archangel, with the chapel on the top of the old
Mausoleum of the Antonines, that is a pretty stronghold, I assure
you."

"I admit that that is a tremendous fort," said Michael, "and the
sight of its tiers of colonnades and battlements makes one understand
how Theodora and Marozia, Alberic and Octavian, managed to command
the city and even defy both Lombard, Tuscan, and German."

"Ah," said Guido, "you honorable and reverend sirs in New Rome cannot
conceive the pandemonium that has raged in old Rome ever since I can
remember and all through my father's time.  One Messalina after
another, the daughter, the concubine, and the mother of a pope has
made her lovers or her children despots of the city, bishops, or
popes, as the fancy seized her.  Every other year this Roman
populace, which is no good at fighting, but has a diabolical genius
for riot, breaks out and overturns consul, prefect, pope, and
emperor, as the German king calls himself.  Thereupon down comes an
army of these hairy barbarians from Lombardy, over the Apennines or
the Alps, bursts into these tottering gates, crowns a new pope,
instals a new count as governor, massacres, hangs, tortures, and
burns every man they find in their path."

"How many popes have you seen, Master Guido?" asked Symeon.

"John X., strangled in prison.  Then Leo VI. and Stephen VII., both
creatures of the foul woman who killed John.  Then she made her own
son pope by the name of John XI.  A few years after this Marozia's
son, Alberic, made Leo VII. pope, and, after him, Stephen VIII. and
Marinus II. and Agapetus II., in succession.  Then John XII., the
grandson of Marozia, was the worst of them all--denounced by a synod
as guilty of murder, perjury, incest, sacrilege, and magic.  When
John XII. was deposed, came Leo VIII., then Benedict V., who was also
deposed, and now the successor of St. Peter is our Holy Father, the
venerable John XIII., whom God, in His infinite goodness, give to
live the years of St. Peter."

"Why, that makes as many as twelve Holy Fathers of Rome within forty
years," said Michael, with a sneer.

"Such is Rome," said Guido; "and half of them were the lovers, sons,
or nephews of a bloodthirsty harlot, at whose orders they sell
bishoprics, blind, mutilate, torture, and crucify their opponents and
rivals."

"And they call this the universal Church Catholic, and ask ours, the
earliest Church of Christ, to submit to their sacred prerogative,"
said Michael, bitterly.

"Ah!" sighed Symeon, "it is a fearful backsliding.  But God in His
mercy will bring about their repentance in His good time.  We, who
compile the hagiographies of saints and martyrs, cannot forget that
under these Roman basilicas there rest the bones of the blessed St.
Peter and St. Paul, that this city has been ruled by Gregorys and
Leos, and is sanctified by the blood of so many virgins and martyrs
of the faith.  The Church of Christ will be restored one day, and
Rome again will be the centre of Christendom in Europe."

"I will not attempt to prophesy against your reverence," said Guido;
"I can only speak of what is and what has been in all living memory.
This famous city is now a den of bandits, the haunt of infamous
women, and a scene of bloodshed and torment.  These barons live in
their castles amid gangs of hired ruffians, till they ride forth to
fight one another or to plunder their neighbors.  I have seen these
gray walls hung with the carcasses of their victims, and these
streets, churches, and streams run with blood, whenever the horsemen
of some pretender to the throne or of the German princes come down to
sack the city or to quell an insurrection of the citizens.  I have
seen popes made and unmade at the order of a profligate woman or of a
murderous despot.  I have seen one crowned pope trample on another
crowned pope, break his crozier and tear off his robes in presence of
an emperor and of all his court.  I have seen the prefect of Rome
hung by his hair from the statue of Constantine and dragged through
the streets naked on an ass.  I saw twelve 'captains of the regions'
hung on gallows, while other leaders were blinded, some decapitated.
Some were torn from their graves and their bodies cast to the dogs.
This is the modern rendering of the Pax Romana, and all is done under
orders of him whom we are waiting here to see, him whom they call
their 'pacific emperor, Semper Augustus,' and with the blessing of
the creatures whom he pleases to nominate as the successors of St.
Peter."

This conversation of the Byzantines was fortunately not understood by
the bystanders, and it was now broken off by the arrival of the
German emperor and his staff.  Otto of Saxony, who had been emperor
for six years, and had been occupied ever since with the
conspiracies, intrigues, and revolutions of Italian princes,
prelates, and people, was now again entering Rome in martial array.
He was guarded by powerful bodies of his Northern veterans, the
terrible warriors with whom he had established his rule from the
Tiber to the Elbe, with whom he had triumphed over Danes, Slavonians,
and Burgundians, men who had fought with him on the tremendous field
of the Lech, when he saved Europe from the Hungarian flood.  These
gigantic horsemen proudly bore aloft the ensigns of their great
chief, and thrust their way with brutal contempt among the "dregs of
Romulus" in the road.

In the midst of his chivalrous body-guard rode the great Otto in full
panoply, acknowledging the salutations of the people with magnificent
ease, making little difference in his bearing to prelate, baron, or
captain of the urban militia.  By his side rode his son Otto, then
fourteen, destined to lay his bones in early life in the Church of
St. Peter.  And then came the Empress Adelheida, whose beauty and
inheritance had first called the king into Italy.  The imperial
cortège was surrounded by German and Italian barons, and was welcomed
by Roman prelates and nobles, with banners and the chanting of hymns
and the boisterous acclamations of a fickle populace, which was ever
ready to cheer or to revile, as the popular fancy swayed to and fro.

"Do you see that fierce, bull-headed lord on the black charger, and
as proud as a peacock?" said Guido to his friends.  "That is Count
Pandulph, of Capua, now Lord of Spoleto and Beneventum.  He is
traitor to our Basileus--nay, the head of the traitors--and seeking
to win favor from the German Basileus.  That gay Roman prince is
Crescentius of the Marble Horse, and by his side is the Count
Benedict of Palestrina and the rich and beautiful Stephania, the
senatrix.  Now, watch that bishop on the mule in the train of the
king; notice his keen face, his subtle glances all round, his easy
smiles of welcome, how he fawns on the imperial officers, what airs
of importance he assumes as he waves his blessing to those who salute
him and thrusts aside those who impede his path.

"That is the Right Reverend Luitprand, the famous Bishop of
Cremona--Patriarch of Christendom, as he thinks himself, and Lord
High Parakeimomenos of his Frankish Majesty.  Note him and listen to
him.  He talks Greek, Latin, Frank, or Hebrew, I am told--even Arabic
at a pinch.  He has the Cæsar's ear.  We shall hear more of him."

As the Byzantine visitors made their way back to the city, their
guide from Bari was occupied in answering their questions and
satisfying their curiosity.  "It looks as if the whole city had been
destroyed by Saracens," said Michael; "I see nothing but ruins
standing amid dunghills and rubbish heaps.  And those huge towers of
brick, with battlements of stone, rising out of mud hovels and fetid
alleys.  Are those the places of the Roman princes?"

"They look to me like the dens of robbers, piled up out of marble
ruins.  See those Corinthian columns and those porphyry slabs,
awkwardly stuck into a huge barrack of bricks.  These Romans use the
ancient temples of the old gods as lime-kilns, and the circus and
theatres of the Cæsars as so many quarries to make some gloomy
fortress," said Joannes.

"Woe, woe is Rome!" groaned Symeon; "thy glory is departed.
Desolation has made in thee its home!"

"Not only is the glory of Rome departed, but art, culture, letters,
and manners have gone, too," said Alexios, the artist.  "They curse
the Vandals, Goths, Huns, and Lombards; but these Romans to-day are
just as savage themselves, even worse barbarians, for they mangle and
disfigure even their own ruins.  All sense of beauty and all
traditions of art seem to have quitted Italy and taken refuge on the
Bosphorus or the shores of the Ægean.  They could not decorate the
smallest chapel without our help."

Early on the morning of Christmas day the Byzantine visitors were
conducted into the Vatican Basilica to witness the crowning of the
young Otto with the imperial diadem, the ceremony by which the
politic emperor sought to fix the empire as hereditary in his house,
and instal it in effective control of the whole of Italy.  They found
the German troopers strongly posted within and around the Castle of
the Archangel, the frowning bastile which overawed Rome, and rudely
thrusting back the unprivileged mob of sight-seers.  From the Ælian
bridge over the Tiber they traversed the long colonnade which led to
the atrium of St. Peter's, with its fountain and the tombs of popes.
There they witnessed the pope, John XIII., and his cardinals receive
the imperial party on the thirty-five steps of the entrance.  With
martial surroundings and sacerdotal pomp the mighty Otto, his wife
and son, were conducted into the basilica of Constantine, which had
then been the venerated temple of Rome for six centuries and a half.

The Vatican basilica of the tenth century was, of course, wholly
unlike the St. Peter's we see to-day.  It was quite similar to the
restored church of St. Paul's _fuori la Mura_, as we now see it, but
it was some twenty feet longer and a little wider, and had five naves
divided off by four rows of vast monolith columns.  There were
ninety-six in all, of various marbles, different in style and even in
size, for they had been the first hasty spoils of antique palaces and
temples.  The walls, above the order of columns, were decorated with
mosaics, such as no Roman hand could then produce or even restore.  A
grand arch, such as we see at the older basilicas to-day, enriched
with silver plates and adorned with mosaic, separated the nave from
the chancel, below which was the tribune, an inheritance from the
prætor's court of old.  It now contained the high altar and the
sedile of the Vicar of Christ.  Before the high altar stood the
Confession, the vault wherein lay the bones of St. Peter, with a
screen of silver such as the Greeks called _iconostasis_, crowded
with silver images of saints and virgins.  And the whole was
illuminated by a gigantic candelabrum holding more than a thousand
lighted tapers.

The Byzantine visitors were amazed to find the cathedral of old Rome
so utterly different from their own St. Sophia at home.  It was
nearly one hundred feet longer and not much less in width.  Its
mosaics, its monoliths, and its tribune resembled those of the great
temple of Justinian, but its flat roof, long aisles, rude
workmanship, and want of symmetry roused contempt and pity from the
cultivated taste of the Greek artist.  The basilica of St. Peter's
was indeed but a crude adaptation of the law-courts of the Cæsars,
while the Church of the Holy Wisdom was one of the most original
creations in the whole record of human art.

Otto, Adelheida, and their son were conducted by a splendid
procession of nobles and prelates to their appointed places at the
foot of the Confession, where they prostrated themselves in worship,
and then passed on to their thrones.  The emperor--for in Rome, at
any rate, Otto was indeed the sole "Augustus, crowned by God"--was
now not only master of Rome, of Northern and Central Italy, but
practically lord of the pope and sovereign in all causes civil or
ecclesiastical.  Otto bore himself as in very deed the sovereign lord
of the holy Roman empire.  He condescended to beam approval on the
act of his nominee, the holy father, when the pope raised the crown
of gold and placed it on the beautiful head of the imperial boy, whom
he pronounced to be Imperator Augustus, by the will of God.  As these
sacramental words rang through the church, all hushed in profound
silence, the whole congregation burst forth into acclamations of
"Long life and victory!"  Thrice the shout was repeated; and then the
choir broke forth with their "lauds"--reiterated and monotonous
chants to Christ, angels, apostles, martyrs, and virgins, to grant
the new Augustus the aid of Heaven to support him against all his
foes.

"An impudent travesty of the secular ceremonies at the crowning of
our Basileus, I say," Michael, the diplomatist, broke out, as the
great crowd followed the imperial cortège into the atrium.  "They
copy our very phrases and words, as if that could make a barbarian
king a Roman Augustus."

"The Saxon savage seems to fancy himself another Carolus, who,
indeed, was a hero and a Cæsar.  He, at any rate, felt some awe of
the empire, and sought to be a good friend to our Basileus and his
empire," said Joannes, the geometer, who knew history as well as
science.

"Nay," said Michael, "Charles once talked of marrying his eldest
daughter, Erythro, to our Basileus Constantine, and Irene, the
Basilissa, sent over the court eunuch, Elisha, to instruct the baby
Augusta in our language, literature, and deportment."

"Did not the pretender Charles, even after his mock coronation in the
Vatican, actually propose to marry the Basilissa Irene himself?" said
Joannes.

"Would that they would ask for a tutor, a professor, or a silentiary,
eunuch or not, to come over and teach them a little of art, letters,
and courtesy," said Alexios.

"Ah!" said Symeon, "if only that blessed alliance between the
Basileus of our house and a Basilissa of theirs, between a Saxon king
and an imperial princess, could be brought about, what tidings of
great joy would it not bring!--peace on earth and good-will among
men.  The revered churches of Christ would come together again as
one.  The Catholic and the Orthodox faith could then unite to make
Christ and His Cross prevail over the Hagarene, and convert the
pagans of the North and the East!"

The idea of some conciliation--at least some _modus vivendi_--between
the rival claimants to the Roman empire had long floated in the mind
of the politic spirits of the age, and it occupied especially the
designs of that far-seeing statesman Otto himself.  The coronation of
his son and heir brought the problem to an acute stage.  The
following day the emperor held a long and secret council in the
Vatican palace in which he was installed.  The monarch was now in his
fifty-sixth year, his powerful form giving signs of his long career
of toil and of battle; his fair hair was grizzled with years, and his
majestic countenance deeply furrowed with thought and care.  He sat
on a dais with his loved queen by his side, and the young Otto, now
imperial crown-prince, between them.  The lad was auburn-haired, very
fair, bright, delicate, and small even for his years.  He looked but
a puny successor for the mighty ruler of the West.

Otto had called to his council his very politic father, the pope, and
his trusty delegate, the wily Bishop of Verona.  Pandulph, Count of
Capua, was there, and beside him the stout old chief, Duke Burckhard
of Swabia.  One or two Italian counts and prelates held a lower place
at the board, and among them had been admitted a young Cluniac monk
whose learning, experience, and acuteness had already recommended him
to the pope and to the emperor.  He was Gerbert of Aurillac, who was
yet but twenty-seven, but his studies in the schools of Cordova, his
lofty character and profound sagacity, had made him already a man of
mark.  And we know that he was destined, under the name of Silvester
II., to prove himself to be one of the greatest of the popes and the
most politic brain in Europe.

The emperor opened the council thus: "Holy father, right reverend
prelates, noble counts, we have called you to this council to make
known our will and to consult you on the means of compassing it.  In
the thirty years since we have worn the crown of our father, King
Henry, we have welded into a single realm the German and Italian
lands, and in these later years we have restored the empire of our
glorious predecessor, Charles, and revived the dignity of the Roman
name.  The holy father has now conferred the imperial title on our
son, who in due time will have to maintain our office in this holy
Roman empire.  It is true that your Otto is King of all German lands,
of Burgundy, Bohemia, Poland, Suzerain of Denmark and of Hungary.  We
are King of Italy, and Roman Imperator Augustus; but our rule does
not extend, in fact, to the south of Italy, over Apulia and Calabria.
Those fair lands and ancient cities are still held by him who claims
the imperial name, who rejects our right to use it, by that sovereign
of the Greeks who are schismatics from the Holy Catholic Church, who
deny to our holy father the title of Vicar of Christ on earth, as
they deny us the right to call ourselves the representative of God
here on earth.  And beyond the southern limits of Italy lies that
fair and rich island of Sicily, once a bright province of the Roman
empire, but now enslaved by the Saracens and Moors of Africa, who
cruelly ill-use the servants of Christ.  It little boots if we rule
from the Baltic to the Bay of Naples, from the Rhine and the Rhone to
the Danube, if South Italy be not ours, if Sicily follow the False
Prophet, and if the Greek who still calls himself Roman emperor reign
within two days' march of Rome.  Be it by arms or be it by policy, we
are bent on transmitting to our heir all Italy as his kingdom, and
the acknowledged title of sole Imperator Augustus.  Right reverend
and most noble councillors, shall this be done by policy or by arms?"

A long silence ensued, for none knew to which course the emperor
inclined, and they hesitated to thwart his purpose.  Otto looked
round and scanned the faces of the councillors.

"My Lord of Capua and Beneventum," he said, "you look like a man who
knows his own mind, and your fiefs lie next to those of the Greek.
What says the Count Pandulph?"

"My liege," blurted forth the impetuous "Iron Head," "my voice is for
war--open, sudden, and to the knife.  These Greeks are crafty as
foxes and cowardly as sheep.  Hold no parley with them.  Give me the
order to march and twenty thousand lances, and we will sweep them
away to the Bay of Tarentum and the Strait of Messina."

"How say you, my lord bishop, you who speak their tongue and have
seen so much of their capital and court?" said Otto to Luitprand.

"My liege, as a civilian and a churchman, I am disposed to prefer the
ways of peace and of policy.  The brave Count of Capua would prove
his valor against every enemy of your Imperial Majesty; but the
Lombard and the Calabrian themes of the Basileus are countries most
difficult to invade or to conquer.  They abound in mountains,
defiles, and torrents; they are defended by strong forts securely
placed on rocks or on bays of the sea; what is worse is their
fever-breeding plains, which are certain death to the gallant
soldiers of the North.  That which is even more important is this:
the Byzantine fleet dominates the sea; the immense coast line is at
its mercy; they can pour in endless supplies, provisions, arms, and
succor.  My liege, I advise an embassy to Byzantium.  Seek for your
son a daughter of their ruling house, and let the dowry of the Greek
princess be stipulated to be the lands they unjustly withhold from
the King of Italy, the Roman emperor."

"Can you induce their Basileus to yield so much?" asked Otto, with a
smile.  "We fear they hold themselves to be at least our equals in
place."

"The fierce Armenian soldier who has married the widow of his
Basileus is proud enough, self-willed enough, and filled with the
ambition of a rebel angel.  But they tell me he is losing favor both
with Church and with people.  He is beset on the north and on the
east.  Nicephorus is at death grapple with the caliph in Asia; he is
menaced by Bulgarians and by Russians; he has enemies and traitors in
his capital and his very palace.  His people long for peace.  They
are very rich, very politic, and careless of the honor of their name.
If well plied with persuasive words, they will yield.  Demand the
hand of Theophano, the daughter of Romanus, with the Italian themes
as her dowry.  The empire will regain two noble provinces, our
imperial prince will gain a lovely bride, and the grandson of your
Majesties, a third Otto that is to be, will wear the crown of a sole
and undivided empire, without a rival and without an enemy."

"You look gloomy, most noble duke," said the emperor, as he turned
with a keen eye to Burckhard at his side.  "Does this splendid
prospect of our sagacious bishop not approve itself to your valor?"

"My liege," said the duke, stoutly, his huge limbs writhing with
suppressed excitement, "your grace is a German king; I am a German
duke.  Your realm, north of the Alps, is of vast extent, and in
perpetual peril of enemies, traitors, and conspiracies.  Half of it
has only been won or pacified by your own invincible arm and your
unsleeping wisdom.  Danes, Poles, Slavs, Hungarians, and Franks are
not finally crushed.  They may pour in again.  Not while you live, my
honored chief.  But will this fair boy by your side wield the mighty
sword of his father?  Will an unborn Otto be able to control the
brave, free, aspiring races of our fatherland?  Will younger Ottos
curb the restless mob of Rome and the craft of these Italian barons?
My king, return to your German kingdom, and make that secure for your
house and your people.  Let not the house of Henry the Saxon be
drowned in these Italian lagoons, and the blood of Saxon warriors
drench the pestilential plains of Italy.  They are brave as men can
be, but they are not proof against the fevers and the wiles--and the
harlots--of this land of sin, of poison, and of ruin."

"The holy father will not admit this apocalyptic picture of the
Eternal City," said Otto, with a lofty smile; "and you forget, most
noble duke, that we are the Roman emperor, crowned of God by his
holiness here.  We together are charged by Christ, the Son, with the
care of the Church Catholic and this holy empire, of which Italy is
the oldest and fairest part.  What says his holiness?" the emperor
asked, calmly restraining the storm rising between his Teuton and his
Latin councillors.

"Our advice will be given in the private ear of your Imperial
Majesty, as is most meet for the servant of the servants of Christ.
But I will ask you now to listen to my young friend here, this
learned brother, who has seen so much of the courts of Spain, Gaul,
and Italy, whose observations may be useful to your grace."

Otto assented with a gracious smile, and the young monk Gerbert
stepped forward at the summons, his keen face lighted up with genius
and the play of Gallic eloquence dancing in his mobile lips.

"If I presume to speak in this august presence and in so eminent a
council, it is only that I have lived in the lands of the Franks and
in that of the caliph of Spain and have some knowledge of the powers
that lie to the west of the empire and of this Italian kingdom.  The
wealth, the power, the science, and the arts possessed by the people
who obey the Ommayad caliph at Cordova are incredible--not easily to
be conceived by those who have not witnessed them.  The so-called
Fatimite caliph of Africa has power and resources equally great.  It
is he who holds in his grasp the rich island of Sicily.  In Asia the
children of the False Prophet have been gaining for generations on
the people of Christ.  To the north and to the east of the German
realm there lie Poles, Hungarians, Russians, and Slavonians, who are
hardly within the fold of the Church, who care little for our
sovereign lord, the emperor, and even less for our holy father, the
pope of Rome.  It will be a tremendous task to make them Catholic and
Romans.  If all this be so, the union of all Christian princes and of
all Christian churches is the one thing urgent and necessary.  Let us
pray for the day when all Christian rulers and all Christian men may
go forth in a holy war against the unbelievers, to rescue the tomb of
Christ and of His blessed Mother, of the apostles and saints, and to
preserve the people of our Lord from the blasphemies of Mohammed.  It
will soon need all the combined strength of Christendom to protect
the Church of Christ.  That will be a most terrible day when
Christian princes and Christian churches are in death-grip with each
other.  Would that our sovereign lord, the emperor, could make some
alliance with those who rule in Byzantium!  Oh, that old Rome could
be led to stretch forth the hand of brotherly communion to new Rome!
Oh, that one day all those who claim the inheritance of Constantine
might do homage to an imperial descendant of our lord the emperor."

"May I speak, since this matter of state seems to touch so closely
myself?" said the imperial youth, with his sweet smile and bright
look to his father.  "I long for such a bride as the bishop describes
the princess--lovely, graceful, brilliant, with all the charm of that
polished court and all the genius of old Greece.  Her mother came,
they say, from Lacedæmon, and drew her race from the hero kings of
Sparta, of whom I have read with my tutor in old Plutarch."

"His imperial highness speaks the truth with his usual discernment,"
fawned the courtly bishop; "they who have not seen Byzantium cannot
imagine its splendor and the majesty of its state.  An alliance with
the daughter of Romanus, the Basileus, granddaughter of the eighth
Constantine Born-in-the-Purple, as they boast so often, would give
fresh glory even to the son of Otto, to the grandson of Henry.  The
empire of the mighty Charles has been sundered for a hundred years.
If it were merged by marriage in the race of Constantine, it would
shine forth again like the sun risen after a gloomy night."

"What says our empress?" asked Otto.  "For this touches her deeply,
too, and must move a mother's heart."

"My lord," said Adelheida, still beautiful, thoughtful, and loving,
devoted to the hero of her young dreams, "a Greek princess, graceful,
accomplished, and intelligent, would add fresh lustre and culture
even to your throne, mighty as it is."

"But will our advances be well received by him who occupies the
golden palace of Justinian?" said Otto.

"Nicephorus Phocas," said the bishop, positively, "is between the
devil and the deep sea, as our Lombard proverb runs; he has no
choice.  He will grasp your offer.  He has restless Bulgarians on his
northern border and fierce Saracens on his eastern frontier.
Byzantine churchmen and officials now in Rome here tell me that the
people and the Church are weary of him.  The army has a new favorite.
The widow whom he married cares for him no more.  Nicephorus will
yield, if he be pressed by an envoy of superior culture, who knows
how to handle an uncouth soldier."

"We will consider of this embassy and project of alliance," said Otto
as he broke up the council.  "Mother and son, churchmen and
civilians, are for peace, love, and friendship.  My lord of the Iron
Head and of the Iron Hand, with his gallant men-at-arms, is all for
war.  It may not be impossible to try them both, and see which of the
two our friend the Basileus prefers.  My lords and reverend sirs, we
thank you."




XXVII

Old Rome and New Rome--Rivals in Empire

The mighty Otto, after long consideration of the two plans proposed
in council, committed the fatal error of alternately resorting to
both, and, for the first time in his long and splendid career, met
with mortifying rebuffs in negotiation as in war.  Adopting at first
the advice of the politic bishop, the emperor advanced to Naples and
there received the envoys of Nicephorus in state.  The Basileus, who
sought only to gain time while he poured reinforcements and stores
into his stronghold of Bari, lured on the Germans with hopes of
obtaining the hand of the princess and the Italian themes as her
dower.  In the mean time he doubled the defences of Bari and
despatched his trusty lord warden to take command of the provinces in
Italy and to defend them to the last drop of his blood.

Otto, at last, finding himself baffled with hollow promises, listened
to the advice of Count Pandulph of the Iron Head and of Count Gisulph
of Salerno, and, securing his rear at Beneventum, he suddenly,
without warning, dashed down upon Bari with a picked body of his
Lombardic and German veterans.  In his thirty years of reign Otto had
swept his enemies before him from the Baltic to the Tiber, and he
looked for an easy victory in the Lombard theme.  He had made the
expedition an imperial progress, with the empress and their son in
his camp, and the flower of his Saxon, Swabian, and Italian troops.
But he was too late.  The gallant warden had provided at every point
for a desperate defence.  The fortifications of Bari stretched from
sea to sea.  A powerful fleet secured the coast and poured in
provisions and arms; and the population, bound by long tradition and
commercial interest in loyalty to the Byzantine empire, served with
zeal in the defence of their city.  To the summons of the Saxon to
surrender the fort, Basil Digenes returned as proud a defiance.  Otto
had dashed upon it without the means of a regular siege, at the
instance of Count Pandulph the Iron Head and his brother Landulph,
who intended to make it their own.  After weeks of bootless attacks,
which the lord warden repelled at every point, the emperor retired in
disgust and flung himself into the arms of the wily bishop, whom he
sent on a new embassy to Byzantium.

It was a lowering day of June, 968, when the learned and eminent
Bishop of Cremona found himself at the Golden Gate of the
fortifications of Constantinople, as the ambassador plenipotentiary
of the Augustus, crowned of God, the Emperor Otto.  The suite of his
eminence consisted of secretaries, chamberlains, and attendants, and
a select band of men-at-arms, gigantic swashbucklers from Pomerania,
"bravos" in reality, who were familiarly known as the "lions."  The
party were mounted on their own horses, and ceremoniously challenged
the guard to open the Golden Gate to the representative of his
Imperial Majesty.  But no gate was opened.  The sky was now overcast
and the rain descended in torrents, but it did not cool the wrath of
the pompous bishop and his people.  Hour after hour they waited in
the storm, in spite of all their appeals and demands, the bishop
pouring out Ciceronian philippics at the barbarism of his hosts, and
his officials importuning the stolid guard of the gate with
remonstrances that were neither understood nor answered.

Late in the afternoon the silentiary Symmachos arrived, with a
military escort; the gates were opened, but, with positive
asseverations that no foreign person could be suffered to ride
through the streets of the "city guarded by God," the bishop and his
party were forced to dismount, and were taken on foot through gaping
crowds and muddy and unsavory lanes to their lodging in a remote
corner of the city near Blachernæ.  The residence assigned to the
mission was an empty palace of marble, which the irate bishop
discovered to be cheerless, dilapidated, and comfortless, letting in
rain and open to the wind.  The wrath of the courtly prelate, his
disappointment and vexation, could not be publicly expressed; but he
vented his spleen in the turgid Ciceronian epithets scattered
throughout the flowery despatch which he now addressed to his "August
and invincible emperors of the Romans, the Ottos, and the most
glorious and august Empress Adelheida--" a record which, with all its
exaggeration, pomposity, and caricature, is one of the most precious
documents of the Middle Ages.

Two days of delay passed in which the bishop fumed and inveighed
against "the Greeks" and all their tribe, pouring anathemas on the
building, the food, the wine, and the accommodation; on Michael, the
Sicilian, who was appointed their caterer and "steward of the
palace."  His eminence now found that he was practically a prisoner,
and guarded by uncouth Russian sentinels who neither understood his
language nor suffered his attendants to pass or communicate outside.
At last he received an official summons from Leo, the brother of
Nicephorus, and curopalates, who desired to regulate the ceremonial
of the reception by the Basileus.  Again the portly prelate had to
wade through mud and rain on foot; he arrived breathless and in a bad
temper, and bustled into the chamber of the royal palace, proud of
his mastery of the Greek language, and bearing the missive that
contained his credentials from his sovereign.  Luitprand began a
speech that he had prepared in Demosthenic style, wherein he called
himself the envoy of "the august Basileus of the Romans."  But here
Leo peremptorily interrupted him, and said, "There is but one august
Basileus of the Romans on God's earth, and he resides in this sacred
palace.  Your master, we understand, is king of several tribes of the
west, and we could not recognize his envoy under any other style."

"But my lord, who of old was crowned king both in Germany and in
Italy, was lately anointed Imperator Augustus, which in your tongue
is Basileus, by the holy father himself, in the Church of the Apostle
Peter in Rome, and that with the assent of the prelates, barons, and
people of Rome.  Augustus, Trajan, and Constantine had no more solemn
investiture of that holy and sublime office."

"What! do you venture to call that a legitimate consecration which
was attempted by the infamous traitor, John XII.?" asked Leo,
bluntly.  "We heard that your king deposed the apostate priest who
officiated at his coronation and crucified the populace which shouted
at his installation."

"My lord the emperor has indeed had occasion to purge the prelacy and
the mob of the Eternal City, and there can be no better proof of his
imperial authority and his unquestioned title to rule," said the
bishop, stoutly.

"The pretension to assume the title of emperor of the Romans was an
attack on the prerogative of the imperial successor of Constantine
the Great," said Leo, positively.  "And you, my lord, cannot be
admitted to an audience if you persist in claiming for your master
the title of Basileus."

"But _Basileus_ is Greek for king--is it not?" the bishop rejoined.

"No," said Leo; "the Greek word for _king_ is ρηχ."

"That is Latin--rex--not Greek," cried out the learned and
pertinacious bishop.

"It seems that you have come here, my lord bishop, to quarrel and to
insult us, and not to make peace," said Leo, determined to close the
interview.

Seeing no chance of pressing his point, the prelate advanced to hand
his diploma to the curopalates, in order to be laid before the
emperor himself; but Leo, with an air of sovereign disdain, declined
to handle the missive, which he waved to the grand interpreter to
take into his charge.  He abruptly closed the interview, and the
silentiary conducted the disconcerted envoy to his own abode,
muttering his indignation, with tags from Cicero, Virgil, and the
Bible.

"The tall man thinks himself a master of the ceremonies," said the
bishop to his secretaries, "but he is a broken reed, like Pharaoh of
Egypt, as the prophet says, whereon, if a man lean, it will pierce
his hand."

The very next day was Whitsunday; the bishop received the summons to
attend the audience of the emperor at seven o'clock in the morning.
At six he began his weary tramp on foot from the northern end of the
city, and after some delay was ushered into the magnificent Hall of
the Nineteen Couches.  There Nicephorus, in state robes (which the
irritable bishop declares were old and ill-fitting), sat on the
throne of Solomon, with the golden lions on the steps, the young
Basilei sitting on stools behind his left hand.  The ambassador of
Otto, remembering the courtly magnificence of Constantine, had
expected a royal welcome.  His wrath was great when Nicephorus, with
a stern look, and not rising from his throne, motioned to the envoy
to approach the foot of the dais and prostrate himself.  The
Basileus, deeply resenting as an insult the claim of the German king
to usurp his title, and boiling with indignation at the outrage of
Otto's treacherous attack on the Italian provinces, began in this
fierce tone:

"It would have been our right--indeed, our pleasure--could we have
been able to receive your embassy with the amity and the magnificence
this court shows to all friendly powers.  The disloyal conduct of
your master has made that impossible.  He has taken up a hostile
attitude and has invaded our city of Rome, which he claims as his
own.  He has put to death our friend, King Berengar, and his son
Adelbert, in defiance of law and of right.  He has slain many of our
Roman subjects by the sword or by the halter; he has put out the eyes
of others, and driven some into exile.  He has attacked cities of our
empire with fire and sword, and seeks by force to annex them to his
kingdom.  And now, when he finds himself baffled in his treacherous
attempts, he affects to be a peaceful friend, and he sends you--you,
the counsellor and the contriver of these misdeeds--to come to our
court to act as spy rather than ambassador."

The stout bishop, full of pride in his sovereign, the great Otto, and
in the Holy Catholic Church, of both of which he was now the
mouth-piece, was not the man to be cowed by such a fierce diatribe
from the "Basileus of the Greeks"; and he boldly retorted in kind,
though much of the Ciceronian rhetoric he poured into his famous
despatch was spoken in Italian, aside to his secretary, or was
polished at leisure in his closet at home.

"When my master invaded the city of Rome it was not as a usurper nor
as a tyrant, but to deliver the city from a tyrant, or rather from a
gang of tyrants.  Rome was in the hands of debauchees--nay, of
harlots.  Surely your mightiness slumbered--or rather your
predecessors in title.  If they were in fact, and not only in name,
Roman emperors, would they have left Rome a prey to abandoned women?
This court has never hesitated to depose, to oppress the holy fathers
in times gone by, till they have been without means to carry on their
office.  As to Prince Adelbert, he insulted your predecessors on the
throne; he despoiled the Church of the Holy Apostles.  My lord came
down across the Alps and drove out the traitors and the criminals,
doing justice on rebels, as the Roman emperors of old ordained.  As
to Berengar and his son Adelbert, they first made themselves
liege-men of my own lord, and received from him the golden sceptre of
the kingdom of Italy.  Then they turned traitors and rebelled against
him.  They were driven out--but they are not dead.  Your majesty is
wont to treat rebellion in very much such fashion, I trow."

"The champion of Adelbert tells us a very different tale," interposed
Nicephorus.

"Let that be decided by single combat in arms," broke out the bishop,
warmly.  "Any one of my men-at-arms shall to-morrow, if you give us
the lists, prove him on his body to be a false traitor."

"Enough," said Nicephorus, sternly.  "Assume that Adelbert turned
traitor.  Now answer me this: Why did your master break into our land
with fire and sword?  We were on friendly terms, and were
contemplating a perpetual alliance and union by marriage."

"We hold, sire," said Luitprand, proudly, "that the lands claimed as
Byzantine themes are part of the Italian kingdom--Italian by race,
custom, and tongue.  They were held of old by Lombard chiefs, and
Louis, the Frank sovereign, recovered them from the Saracens.  It was
only by arrangement they passed to the rulers of this realm.  But now
my lord and master has sent me to effect a settlement of all these
disputed questions by an alliance of the Princess Theophano with his
own son Otto, on the terms as to her dowry which I am commissioned to
propose."

"We have heard enough of this, and must adjourn the audience," said
the emperor, abruptly.  "It is past eight o'clock, and the procession
of this holy festival of Pentecost is about to be formed."  And
Nicephorus rose and had himself arrayed in solemn state.

The bishop was duly escorted into the tribune of the choir singers,
and relieved his spleen by writing for his imperial sovereigns a
grotesque account of the ceremony.  On his return he found things
rather less acrimonious at court.

Nicephorus had now been advised by Leo, Basil the chancellor, and
other councillors, that it would be unwise to reject altogether the
overtures of the mighty emperor in the west; and Basil and the party
of the empress ardently desired the proposed alliance.  This
Nicephorus and his brother could not brook to accept, but they were
persuaded to play with the ambassador of the Ottos, at least while
the great campaign in the east was hardly at an end.  Accordingly,
Leo was instructed to invite the bishop to the imperial banquet, and
there Nicephorus treated him, not so much with haughty contempt as
with the rough humor of the camp.  The bishop, to his disgust, found
himself placed low at the royal table, and surfeited with the unknown
dishes--the oil, the caviare, and sauces of the banquet.  His spleen
broke forth in Ciceronian epithets about the food and the resinous
wine, nor was he conciliated by the rough banter of the emperor
himself.  The bishop was heckled as to the extent of the German
armies and territories, and he at once opened a high-flown harangue
on the dominions of his master and the prowess of his soldiers.

"Nonsense!" cried Nicephorus, with a loud laugh, for he was resolved
to flout and mock the Latin phrase-monger; "they tell me the cavalry
are but poor horsemen, and the footmen are so overweighted with
corselets, helmets, long swords, and big shields that they have no
mobility in action.  And they eat and drink too much, making a god of
their bellies, though perhaps their drink gives them pot courage, and
they can do nothing when rations are short."  And Nicephorus, proud
of his Cossack troopers and his lithe, mounted bowmen, laughed aloud
as he had done round many a camp-fire.

"Then mark this, my lord bishop," Nicephorus went on, returning to
his angry tone: "Your master has no fleet.  Sea power is ours.  We
make war by sea as well as by land.  We have two arms with which to
strike.  You have but one.  If we go to war with your master we shall
destroy his seaboard cities, and reduce to ashes all that we can
reach by any waterway.  Did we not drive him back from Bari?  He came
there in force--with his wife and his son, with his Saxons, Swabians,
Bavarians, and Italians.  All of them together failed to capture one
petty town.  Do you think they could withstand us, whose armies are
as numberless as the stars in heaven or the waves of the sea?"

The indignant bishop tried to speak, but Nicephorus waved him to his
seat.  "You are not Romans at all; you are Lombards," he shouted.

But this was more than the Italian could endure.  Nicephorus raised
his hand to bid him be silent, but he broke forth: "Romulus, who
killed his brother, and who was born in adultery, gave his name to
the Romans.  Then he opened an asylum to which homicides, debtors,
slaves, and felons resorted, and so he named the mongrel crew his
Romans.  That was the origin of those whom you call the 'masters of
the world!'  We, Lombards, Saxons, Swabians, Franks, Lorrainers,
Bavarians, and Burgundians call a man a 'Roman' when we want to give
him an opprobrious name.  We mean by Roman whatever is most mean,
cowardly, greedy, effeminate, mendacious, and vicious.  As to whether
we know how to fight on foot or on horse, the next war will prove."

This insolent philippic of the wrathful bishop was blurted out in
incoherent passion amid the derisive murmurs of the courtiers.
Nicephorus did not listen to his sallies, and abruptly rose from the
table, ordering the officials to carry the ambassador back to his
lodging.  For days the miserable prelate lay there practically in
prison, neglected, and ill, he declares, from the poisonous wine and
the pickled sturgeon he had received.  His piteous appeal to the
curopalates only gained him an interview with the prime-minister,
Basil, the secretary of state, and the prefect, who told him that the
only terms on which the Sacred Palace could consent to giving a
Basilian princess born-in-the-purple to a Teuton prince would be the
cession of Ravenna, Rome, and the Italian duchies to their lawful
sovereign.  King Otto might have peace if he resigned Rome and all
imperial pretensions.

The diplomacy of Byzantium--the great original of which that of the
Sublime Porte and of Holy Russia have been but feeble imitations--was
employed to play with the wordy prelate, while detaining him
practically as a hostage or a prisoner.  He received a series of
affronts and rebuffs.  He was left whole days without supplies; he
was made to give precedence to "barbarian envoys from Bulgaria,
unkempt creatures in uncouth dress," he said.  Once he was so rude
that he was sent to dine at the inn, where Nicephorus in mockery sent
him from his own table "a dish of kid stewed in pickled fish sauce,
garlic, and spices."  After months of endless negotiations, Luitprand
had a final audience with Nicephorus, to whom he was forced to
prostrate himself beneath the imperial feet.  "Take back our last
word to your king," said the Basileus; "let him cease to usurp our
style and infest our provinces, and then come back to us and bring us
a favorable answer."

When the great Saxon emperor learned how his embassy had been
treated, and received the vermilion and golden-sealed epistle of
Nicephorus, composed in the same disdainful tone, he again invaded
Apulia and assaulted its towns and castles.  The Byzantines had been
preparing for the encounter all through the time of the bishop's
visit.  Basil Digenes was in command of the forces, and he flew from
one stronghold to another, providing its defences and animating the
troops.  Otto made no real way beyond laying waste the Greek themes
and plundering the unwalled towns.  At last the fevers of plains and
the vigorous defence of the castles wore out the strength of his
German veterans.  The emperor withdrew to the north, leaving the
Count Pandulph of the Iron Head to carry on the campaign at the head
of his Lombard and Italian force.  The count gained some successes
and laid siege to Bovinum in the Samnite Mountains.  Basil Digenes
threw himself into the fort and commanded a sortie upon the count's
own camp.  There the Iron Head met the lord warden in single combat,
and a tremendous duel ensued.  The count was dismounted and the
scimitar of Basil clove his helmet at the very instant that the huge
mace of Pandulph crashed into the brain of the warden.  The gigantic
Lord of Capua was taken prisoner, desperately wounded, then bound in
chains and shipped off to Byzantium, in the same vessel that carried
back the lifeless body of his antagonist.  Nicephorus mourned his
friend, comrade, and right arm, for whom he was wont to say ten
victories over the Teuton usurper and his allies would be but a poor
compensation.  In the legends, romances, and ballads of Byzantine
glory, the memory of Basil Digenes long remained as the type of
chivalry and knighthood.  And the Princess Agatha hid her sorrow for
her betrothed in a convent.  And so, after all her adventures, her
hopes, and her struggles, she did at last become the Bride of Christ.




XXVIII

Basileus in Council

Nicephorus was seated in his privy cabinet of the palace at
Constantinople with his judges and officers of the law, for he felt
the internal state of the empire to be as vital as was the defeat of
its enemies on the frontier.  He was in council with Simon, patrician
and chief secretary of state, Eustathius Romanus, another patrician,
chief-justice, and two professors from the Faculty of Law.

"My learned lords," said the Basileus, "I hope that we may now
finally pass the new law that we have in draft on 'Gifts to
monasteries, hospitals, and infirmaries in the Roman empire.'  We
have called you to advise if the 'Novel,' as we propose to issue it,
will fully carry out our imperial design.  We find the whole realm to
be undermined by the inordinate extent to which monastic institutions
have swollen.  Multitudes who ought to serve God and this kingdom in
arms and in useful service drone away their lives in monkish
indolence.  The very existence of this Christian land is in peril,
surrounded as it is by enemies of Christ, Hagarenes, heathens,
heretics, and barbarians, while day by day our people crowd into the
sloth of convents, hermitages, and hospitals for old and infirm.  And
the wealth that should go into the exchequer of our state is locked
up in these unprofitable houses of refuge for the cowards and the
idlers of our people.  My lords, I am resolved to mend it--or to end
it."

"Sire," said Lord Simon, the secretary of state, "the 'Novel' that we
now submit to your imperial wisdom, to be added to the code of your
predecessors on the throne, has been carefully drafted so as to
prohibit the foundation of any new monastic or charitable
corporation, while fully guaranteeing the maintenance of all
foundations already existing.  We conceive it to be no part of the
purpose of your Majesty to suppress the pious foundations of the past
or to confiscate the estates which have been dedicated in law to any
religious uses."

"God forbid that I should lay sacrilegious hands on that which is
dedicated to God and to the saints.  Would that I could recall some
of the follies and the errors of past years; but we will curb this
disease in the future.  Monkery is becoming the dry-rot of our Rome.
Stout fellows who should bear arms in the ranks flock into these
refuges for the ne'er-do-weels, and half the land of our empire is
withdrawn from its due cultivation and its due quota of taxation."

"It will be no part of your imperial will to restrict the alienation
in mortmain of estates for the support of old-established religious
houses?" said Simon, the protosecretis.

"This must be strictly limited to the restoration of houses which
have fallen into decay," replied the Basileus.

"And will this apply to pious gifts to the use of bishoprics and
metropolitan sees?" asked the chief-justice.

"Assuredly," replied Nicephorus, with decision; "there are already
too many.  They are too rich, too luxurious, and too useless.  Our
realm gets no good from them.  There shall be no more founded while I
bear rule in Rome."

"And as to the cells and hermitages of solitary recluses, your
Majesty will not interfere with them?" asked Simon, with some anxiety.

"Not with true and genuine cells," said Nicephorus, somewhat
doubting, "not if the man honestly seeks to live a godly life in
prayer--alone, and forever.  The prayers of such avail us much.  The
blessed Elijah went into the wilderness, and when he lay down to die
under a juniper-tree he was visited by an angel and was fed by
ravens.  And so John, the forerunner of Christ, went into the
wilderness, and his meat was locusts and wild honey.  And Christ
Himself withdrew into the desert, fasting forty days and forty
nights.  Such a life is holy, and may purge the dross out of our
people.  Would that I, too, myself had been suffered to end my days
in such wise.  No, my lords, we approve of a true and sincere
hermitage, of these cells and lauras, as they name them, so that they
be solitary and in desert places, in rocks and mountains, far from
men.  So that no cell be set up anew on habitable and cultivated
ground--this we sanction and approve with our imperial blessing."

And now Basil, the prime-minister, craved an audience, and was
admitted to the council.

"Sire," he began, "we shall have very serious opposition to meet from
the churchmen, especially from the regular orders, in all forms.
There is already within the palace a body of monks and prelates, led
by the great abbot of the Stoudion, who have got tidings of the new
imperial 'Novel,' and loudly demand to be heard.  We shall have
trouble, indeed, if we have this tribe against us."

"Bring them in," said Nicephorus, proudly; "we will meet them face to
face.  The Basileus will not be driven from his purpose by a whole
army of these men of God."

Presently the deputation of the monasteries was ushered in, and
Anthony, the syncellus of St. George of the Stoudion, spoke in their
name in no measured terms.

He said that the whole world of those holy men who wear the mitre and
the cowl were alarmed at rumors of the new legislation proposed.
They could not believe that their most pious and devout Basileus
designed to discourage the religious life of the capital and the
realm.  Nor could he be purposed to annul the gifts of good men and
good women, who sought to save their souls by devoting their
substance to God.

"Most venerable abbot, and you, right reverend prelates and fathers
in the Lord," said Nicephorus, with a quiet smile, "it will not be
believed by any man of sense that we, the Basileus Augustus, by the
grace of God, intend aught of wrong against Holy Church and its
consecrated ministers.  It is known to all men how, after the
recovery of Crete from the children of Hagar, we ourselves dedicated
a large share of the gold spoil to pious uses.  Have we not vastly
added to the venerable monastery of Mount Athos, and made it the
central sanctuary of our realm?  Have we not adorned its church with
trophies of bronze and of marble?  Have we not presented it with
those priceless and adorable relics--a fragment of the Cross of
Calvary and the head of St. Basil, of miraculous power?"

"It is known to all men, sire," said the abbot, pertinaciously, "and
it will be counted to your Majesty at the judgment-seat of God.  But
the report runs that, forsaking such excellent examples in the past,
your council have prepared an edict whereby those pious men and women
who have been blessed by the Almighty with the wealth of this world
are to be restrained from dedicating it to His service for the
salvation of their souls, even in the hour of their death."

"Let them dedicate themselves to His service in life," said
Nicephorus, passionately, "and not withdraw their estates from the
service of the state when they can enjoy them no more.  We intend not
to hurt or to restrain any existing house of religion or of charity.
On the contrary, we provide for the restoration and repair of those
which are decayed.  But we will suffer none to be founded anew.
There are enough of them as it stands--monasteries, hospitals,
chapelries, and bishoprics.  They are rich enough and free enough in
all conscience."

"Sire, there can never be enough of man's substance reserved to God
and His blessed ones above," broke in the abbot, solemnly and even
rudely; "there can never be enough of holy men and holy women whose
lives are passed in prayer and praise."

"Prayer and praise, I warrant," the Basileus broke out, as if he were
in his camp--"prayer for alms and praise of good eating, perhaps!
The streets of our capital swarm with these befrocked and shaven
idlers.  Every village is beset with them.  Every hill-side is
honeycombed with their chantries and their retreats.  We want men,
not drones.  We want men who can fight as well as pray, or one day
these temples of our God may be turned into the mosques of the False
Prophet."

"We come to implore your grace to put no bonds upon those who offer
their gifts to God," said the abbot, stoutly.

"These monasteries and infirmaries, these hermitages and convents,
are surfeited with wealth," the Basileus retorted, with passion.
"Has not the Word of God warned us that a rich man shall hardly enter
into the Kingdom of Heaven?  Know ye not that Scripture--'Take no
thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, nor
yet for your body what ye shall put on!  Behold the fowls of the air.
Consider the lilies of the field.'  And, when Christ sent forth His
blessed apostles, did He not charge them 'to take no thought for the
morrow and to provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in their
purses, neither two coats, nor shoes, nor staves.'  And now, the
successors of the apostles fare sumptuously every day, and are
clothed in purple and fine linen."

And now Nicephorus, giving rein to his indignation and wrath, poured
out a vehement homily, as if he were himself an ascetic preacher in
church.  "It is sheer lunacy--this lust of good things; this
insatiable craving is madness; as the Psalmist saith, 'They are
altogether lighter than vanity'!  They add field to field, grand
mansions, stables full of horses, cattle, camels, mules, and beasts
without number.  These monks, these hermits, and servants of the Most
High give all their care to these worldly things in defiance of the
plain Word of God.  The blessed apostle labored with his hands, and
those with him, and doth he not say, 'We wrought with labor and
travail night and day, that we might not be chargeable to any of
you.'  Was not this also the way of life of the blessed fathers of
the Church, and of those who first taught the Gospel in Palestine and
in Egypt, and in many places of the earth?  They were shining and
burning lights to witness to the faith, living lives so free from
earth's dross that they seemed to be of the substance of angels more
than of men.  Hath not our blessed Lord said, 'Strait is the gate and
narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find
it'?  And on all sides to-day we see crowds of these men of God who
enter in at the broad gate that leadeth to destruction.  But ye of
the monasteries which cover our realm, 'ye lay up for yourselves
treasures upon earth.  Where your treasure is, there is your heart
also'!"

The crowd of portly prelates, obsequious monks, and mendicant hermits
retired abashed and cringing before this tempest of imperial disdain.
But the stern abbot of the Stoudion made a haughty obeisance and
retired with a bitter scowl.  He knew himself to have authority with
the people, now at least equal to that of the Basileus; and he was in
close alliance with the faction of the Basilissa and in secret
conspiracy with Theophano herself.

The politic prime-minister had listened to the outburst of Nicephorus
with no small anxiety and surprise.  He took occasion to warn his
master of the power of the monastic orders and their ill-will towards
any repressive legislation.  And he had fully tracked their
machinations with the superstitious populace and their concert with
the empress and her friends at the court and in the capital.  He
implored the sovereign to moderate the new edict.  He pressed him to
remember how the people and the Church had defied and overborne the
greatest of the Iconoclast emperors in times gone by.

"Ay, well I know that they will bear me ill-will, and bitterly resent
my act.  Do I seek to please men or to please God? as the blessed St.
Paul saith.  I am the servant of Christ.  And of this I am sure,
that, whatever may be said by these pampered men of the cloister, the
wise and righteous will acknowledge that our purpose is most salutary
to all true servants of the Lord as well as to the well-being of this
our realm.  No more of this.  My Lord Simon, you are charged to
publish this edict forthwith, to bear title as the 'First Novel of
our Reign."

Thereupon Nicephorus turned to consider draughts of the other new
edicts, referring to the tenure of fiefs by soldiers and by feudal
chiefs.  His whole mind was bent on founding a great and standing
military order, which should hold lands in perpetuity under condition
of service in arms.  Basil, as Chancellor of Requests and Petitions,
was charged with this "Novel," whereby it was forbidden to a rich
proprietor to purchase a military fief, and by a third it was decreed
that a military fief, abandoned for three years by its tenant, should
revert to the general body of military tenures, and not fall into
private hands.  By a fourth "Novel" it was ordered that the estates
of great proprietors should not be broken up, but remain in
perpetuity estates of magnates.  And, similarly, small farms could be
acquired only by yeomen.  The whole legislative scheme was a rude and
ineffectual effort to erect a system of graduated feudal tenures, and
to found a permanent order of settled warriors holding lands of the
empire on the tenure of defending it in arms.

And now Nicephorus turned to a scheme which he had even more at
heart, but where no imperial edict without the sanction of the Church
could avail.  The dearest wish of his heart had long been to obtain
from the patriarch the right to promise the honor of martyrdom for
Christian soldiers who might fall in the holy war with the infidel.
Polyeuctus was now the enemy rather than the friend or the counsellor
of Nicephorus, and the emperor had solicited the help of Athanasius
of Mount Athos to achieve his end.  The council and the legists were
dismissed and the monk was admitted in private audience.

"Venerable father in God," said the Basileus, humbly saluting his
spiritual director as if he were nothing but a penitent in
confession, "you who have known Nicephorus all these years as a
simple soldier of Christ, you who have so often seen his whole heart
and soul laid bare to your sight as to that of God himself--you know
how real is my reverence for Holy Church and its true sons, how deep
is my resolve to defend the faith to the end.  It is menaced with
ruin, and, in spite of all our efforts to save it, the cross will one
day fall before the False Prophet if we cannot find some new spirit
to fire the hearts of our Roman soldiers in the fight.  They are
brave enough, stouter men than these Hagarenes, and their hearts are
in the cause; but there is one thing they lack--one thing that these
sons of Ishmael have--one thing which makes them men impossible to
beat.  These infidels glory in their death.  To them to die in battle
is to triumph and to be blessed for evermore.  The false promises of
the False Prophet so delude them that they rejoice with their last
gasp that they are passing into paradise, and with their dying eyes
they see the houris of their foul dreams waiting to escort them to
the presence of God.  I tell you, my father, I have seen these
unbelievers on a hundred battle-fields die smiling with joy, as men
smile who have won the prize in the chariot-race, or as martyrs smile
when they see Christ in the sky above the scaffold, saying to them,
'Come, ye blessed of the Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you
from the foundation of the world.'  Our men will face death, but they
do not glory in death, seek for death, long for death as a priceless
glory and certain heaven.  If Holy Church awarded them the palm of
martyrdom, they would be consumed with such fire that they would
sweep the Hagarenes back into their desert.  Verily, they are
martyrs--they witness to the eternal Word of Christ."

"Sire," replied the monk, his worn and cadaverous form in strange
contrast with the massive frame of the Basileus, "I have held long
interviews with the venerable Patriarch, and I find him inexorable
and in bitter opposition to your schemes of reform, and especially to
this."

"Go back to his holiness and press him to consider the imminent peril
of our empire and our faith."

"He will never yield.  He has made it a matter of faith, of respect
for the sacred ordinances of our Church.  The canons of St. Basil
exclude from the sacraments during three years those who have shed
blood."

"What! those who die fighting for Christ in defence of His people and
of His consecrated altars and fanes!"

"It is the law of the Church, which neither sovereign nor prelate can
rescind; and the law of God's Church in council pronounced is the law
of God," said the monk, sadly, but with invincible tenacity.

"But this is to sacrifice the people of God to the decrees of men.
Truly, as the apostle saith, 'the letter killeth, but the spirit
maketh alive.'  The patriarch has entered into the conspiracy against
me; and I know that it is fomented even within this very palace.  My
enemies and traitors are here.  But I will not suffer them to make it
the secret haunt of their designs.  The prime mover of these deeds is
about to be removed."

"My son, what dost thou mean?  Hast thou committed thyself to any
attempt against the life or the liberty of the Basilissa?  Beware, O
King; it is a terrible path thou art about to tread!"

"My father, at midnight this day Theophano will be taken in her
chamber and silently removed to the royal villa at Prote.  No harm or
indignity will befall her.  She will be attended as a Basilissa in
retreat, with ample retinue--but a sure guard.  She will no longer
countermine my government nor plot against my honor and my life.  She
or I must succumb in this long strife.  I am necessary yet awhile to
Rome and this cause, or I would rejoice to be her victim.  Her victim
I may yet be.  I will not be her plaything or her tool.  No! nor
shall she be my dishonor!"

"Nicephorus, my son in God," said the monk, sternly, "thou art
treading the path that leadeth to destruction.  It was foul sin when
thou didst defy the ordinances of Holy Church to wed the relict of
our late Basileus.  Thy abominable sin hath found thee out, and now
thou art rushing into fresh sin in seeking to put her away.  What
cause hath she given thee, what that thou didst not know--or shouldst
have known--when thou hadst her to wife?"

"Father, I say to thee, even as David said to Nathan, 'I have sinned
against the Lord.'  But the woman has been seeking to seduce my best
comrades and officers, and tempting them to betray me and to dishonor
me."

"Has all this been proved before competent judges?  Would his
holiness the patriarch hold any communion with her if he was certain
of her guilt?  What proof have you of her offences and, especially,
of the sin of infidelity to her husband?"

"I can obtain no such proof as would convince the patriarch, who
still holds her undefiled, and even seeks her aid in resisting my
ordinances as to the Church and my soldiers."

"Whom has she seduced?" said the monk, imperatively.

"She seized and then tempted my best-beloved friend and comrade whom
I now mourn as my brother, and then she sought to cast her spell on
my chief general, with whom I suspect she is plotting against my
throne--ay, and I suspect against my life."

"Is this more than suspicion and the fear which ever haunts this
palace?  Is not this more truly, my son of sorrow, a sinful love
turning into suspicious hate?  What proof hast thou of open crime?"

"Speak not of hate, my father, for all her offences and treacheries
have not yet utterly burned out my love.  For the sake of Rome and of
this cause, and the people of Christ, I must live and rule, and to
live and to rule I must put her away.  But it is agony even now, my
father, to part from her.  I would die rather than do harm to a
single hair of her head.  But she must depart from out this house,
from out this city, lest she ruin more men whom this empire needs in
the present sore straits."

"She must not depart from this place, nor be cast out from your
throne.  Part from the bed that it was sin and folly to have entered;
but touch not her imperial rights.  Rome has ever suffered when the
house of its rulers has been rent in twain.  Remember the dark
history of this palace and its dynasties, and all the deeds of shame
and horror which were done of old when husband drove out wife, and
wife conspired against husband, when mother deposed her son, and son
rose against father, and brother murdered brother.  Remember what was
done by an Irene, a Eudocia, a Theodora, a Michael, a Justin, and a
Theophilus.  Begin not a new tragedy in this house, of which the very
walls bear witness to deeds of cruelty, passion, and sin.  To throw
into prison the widow of Romanus would divide this realm into
factions, and would renew the household feuds and horrors which have
ceased now for fifty years.  And these children, the young Basilei,
who must in a few years reign here, how shall they be reared while
their mother is a prisoner?--how will they bear with him who cast her
into prison?"

"I am the victim of a cruel alternative, my father, but I am ready to
die for this cause.  If she has her way, she will ruin it, and, most
assuredly, she will work that ruin by my death."

"Then die, if it be the will of God, but sin not--or sin no more.
Add not cruelty, revenge, and oppression to lust and folly.  Leave to
this woman her undoubted rights as empress, as mother of our
emperors, as your own wife.  Live your own life apart from her as you
choose; but, if you make her your prisoner, the object of your enmity
and anger, the whole force of Mother Church shall be directed to
restrain your violence and to defend your victim."

"And the Church condemns me to death and makes me the victim," said
Nicephorus, sadly and with resignation.

"If you do not yield to its summons," replied the monk, with
imperious tone, "the Church will expel you from its offices, refuse
you its absolution, and abandon you to the spirits of evil to die
unforgiven in your sins.  Choose, Nicephorus, between your passion
and the safety of your soul."

With this terrible word, which was cruel enough to break every spirit
of that age, the inexorable confessor left the presence.

And hour after hour the Basileus, with groans and prayers, looked
down into the black gulf on the edge of which he felt that he stood.




XXIX

The Rising Storm

Nicephorus, in proud trust in his own mission from on high, and
conscious of his own rectitude and devotion to the cause of God's
realm on earth, would brook no interference with his will from his
ministers, his people, or the priests.  He yielded only to the
venerated abbot of Mount Athos, his own beloved friend and confessor,
Athanasius, in the matter of the empress, Theophano.  He abstained
from carrying out his purpose to remove her from the city and place
her in honorary restraint.  And his submission to the saintly hermit
was not a little aided by some lingering, if unconscious, touches of
tenderness for the woman whom he once had loved so passionately, and
so humbly, so blindly, so devoutly had adored.  He was again striving
every nerve to reorganize a vast expedition for a third Asian
campaign, wherein he was finally to crush the dynasty of Chamdas and
secure the Syrian gates of Lebanon so as to open the way of triumph
to the Holy Land itself.

The enormous cost of these levies of men, drawn from all parts of the
empire--from the coast of Italy, across Greece and Asia, as far as
the sources of the Euphrates--of the countless stores, arms, and
equipments they required, strained to the utmost the finances of the
state.  Nicephorus knew nothing of fiscal resources and of ways and
means.  He despised all uses of money unless it were treated as the
sinews of war.  He left to his ministers the duty of devising the
methods of taxation.  All that he insisted on was the perpetual
replenishment of his war-chests--_rem quocunque modo, rem_.  He
ordered the exchequer to exact the taxes to the most rigid point.  He
allowed bishoprics, abbeys, and eleemosynary foundations to remain
vacant, while the revenues were collected by the state.  He withheld
the customary doles to the senators and high officers of the empire,
in the name of public economy and the needs of the war against the
infidel.  Leo, his brother, and Sisinnios, the prefect, were loudly
accused of regrating corn during time of scarcity.  And, worse than
all, they obtained from the ignorance of the emperor a decree to coin
a new _nomisma_, or gold bezant, which was said to be alloyed as to
one-fourth with baser metal, and was henceforth known as a
_tetrateron_, a "quarter-piece."

The popular discontent grew day by day, fanned by disappointed
nobles, voluble demagogues, and fanatical monks.  All day long angry
crowds gathered in the streets, markets, and courts of the churches.
They were roughly handled by the city police or savagely dispersed by
the foreign guardsmen.  The great Armenian soldier himself, his whole
soul aflame with the thought of the holy war, despised equally the
effeminate nobility, the noisy mob, and the lazy monks.  But his
martial eye perceived the defenceless condition of the Sacred Palace,
and he saw the necessity of securing the seat of government.
Accordingly, he undertook a vast defensive work--a wall with towers,
battlements, and gates which cut off the city from the palace.  It
was something like the later rampart we see to-day that stretches
from the Golden Horn to the Sea of Marmora, and separates the old
Seraglio and its dependencies from the rest of Stamboul.  And, not
content with this vast domestic defence, Nicephorus proceeded to
enlarge and fortify the palace of Boucoleon on the edge of the port,
which henceforth became the imperial abode and "keep," as the Normans
would have named it.  It was the real "Bastile."

Crowds would gather round the works, as thousands of laborers,
imported mainly from the Thessalonican Theme and the Greek islands,
toiled over the long lines of masonry.  Here a voluble street orator,
one Simeon, a cobbler by trade, got a number of loafers to listen to
his eloquence.  "What is to become of us, my friends, if everything
in Rome is to be sacrificed to paying soldiers and building
fortresses?  We used to believe this city, with its walls, was safe
enough against all enemies east or west, barbarians or infidels,
whether they came in ships or over the mountains of Thrace.  Are we
the barbarians or the infidels against whom the Basilei must be
protected by walls and towers?  I can remember, my lads, the days of
Constantine, the good, dear old man, who hated war and gave us lovely
shows, and then young Romanus, with his free hand and kind smile,
whom somebody made an end of, they do tell me.  Will fighting in
Syria bring us bread or make trade brisk?  In old days, the court
took care to sell us poor folks corn at a cheap rate in bad times;
but now it doubles the price, while the poll-tax keeps it company at
the same rate.  And nobody gets work but these blacklegs of Hellenes
or the leather-sellers on the Strymon, where they make the troopers'
boots."  But here a detachment of Macedonian spearmen, marching to
relieve the guard, broke in upon the crowd, roughly forcing their way
with the flat of their swords and many a broken head, as they dashed
the citizens aside with their round bucklers.  Amid shrieks, yells,
and curses, the terrified mob took to their heels.

The next day it was Easter Eve, and the city was filled with crowds
which poured in from all the country round to attend the celebrations
of Holy Week, and the myriad churches, chapels, and chantries rang
night and day with "Kyrie eleison," litanies, and wild sermons,
interspersed with hardly veiled attacks on the imperial government
and even person.  In the great court-yard of the Stoudion monastery,
an eloquent brother, Elias, was holding forth to an excited crowd:

"You have heard, my brethren, how they are about to confiscate the
lands and properties dedicated of old by the pious to the Prince of
Peace and to the uses of his poorest servants in order to devote them
to war.  They pretend that it is a holy war, a crusade against the
Hagarene, to rescue our brethren from the False Prophet.  Was the war
against our Christian neighbors, the Bulgars, a holy war?  Was the
war with the Catholic princes of Italy and the German Cæsar a crusade
for the faith?  Are there not false prophets--ay, and cruel
tyrants--among the rulers of a Christian state?  It is a strange way
to drive out the unbelievers to make a dead set at our Mother Church
and seize its poor alms whereby it supports the servants of Christ
and keeps alive the starving and needy children of God.  We have to
feed them, we have to live ourselves, we humble brothers of the
destitute and the sick.  Do my brethren here in these cold cells--do
I?--look like one who is pampered with good things and clothed in
rich garments?  No, my brothers, we are the Lazarus of whom our
Blessed Lord spake; and the rich man of His proverb lords it behind
those golden gates.  Verily, I tell them that we, the poor and the
humble, will be in the bosom of Father Abraham above, and thence we
shall see those who have robbed us cast into hell, being in torment
amid the flames, crying to the Lord to allay their pains."

The crowd broke up with great excitement and gathered in knots at the
street corners and markets.  At one group, a farmer, who had come in
from a neighboring village, was pouring out his griefs to
sympathizing citizens.  "A company of savage fellows from Mount
Rhodope, professing to be new levies for the Macedonian shieldmen,
had plundered his homestead, killed his goats, carried off his best
horse, robbed his chest, and outraged his daughters."  "Had he
brought his plaint to the city magistrates?"  "He had, and the
sergeant of the company got five big ruffians to swear it was false."
"The civil courts can do nothing in the way of justice on a soldier!"
another cried.  "In my case," said another in the crowd, "I had my
plaint laid before a member of the emperor's own staff.  All that I
got for reply was that the holy war had in fact begun, and the
autocrator could listen to nothing but to military crimes."  "Oh, as
to that," whined a shrunken and tattered fellow in the crowd, "I know
that he can be pitiless enough.  I was charged with being asleep on
sentry-go, and got my nose slit, as you see, my masters, and four
dozen rods broken on my bare back.  I was a ruined man from that day,
and have had to beg in the streets ever since.  Even the monks will
not take me with these scars, for I served in the Bulgar war, and am
cut off from the sacraments of the Church.  Masters, I tell you, the
Basileus is drunk with war, mad with war.  To smash the Prophet, he
is ready to sacrifice the people of Christ wholesale."

All this time frequent conferences were being held within the palace
itself, in the apartments of the Basilissa, with her connivance, and
even in her presence from time to time, which constituted a sort of
palace opposition to the imperial policy and decrees.  The patriarch
would often attend.  Two magistroi, and three other patricians, and
the abbot of the Stoudion, joined the conclave.  Day after day the
patriarch would denounce the informal, schismatic, and uncanonical
synod wherein the Basileus had obtained the right to choose for
bishoprics and abbeys those who were presented to his choice by the
Church.  It was the eternal quarrel of the "investitures," between
Church and sovereign, which so often and so long shook the west.
"This man of war, this unlearned and unregenerate soldier,"
Polyeuctus would argue, "can thus put into the sees throughout the
empire creatures of his own; and if we refuse to present churchmen
whom he favors, he can keep the holy office vacant while his fisc
absorbs the revenues to lavish them on the troops."

The fanatical abbot of the Stoudion now broke in.  "He has even dared
to tamper with the dues that are levied by our holy abbey according
to ancient constitutions of the pious sovereigns who succeeded the
sacrilegious race of Iconoclasts.  His officers even ventured to
impound the tribute of oil that belongs of right to the monks of
Mount Athos."

"Father Athanasius," interposed Theophano, "will bring him to reason
there.  He is the one man in Church or in State to whom my lord and
master will listen."

"There is still one woman to whom he gives way," fawned the patrician
Theodore.

"No longer," she replied, hotly, and added, with an air of
resignation, "He has designs upon my liberty--perhaps upon my life."

"Defend yourself, madam," said Theodore; "your life, your full
freedom of action, is now the most precious thing left in Rome.
Appeal to the army, to its gallant leaders, to the senate, and the
nobles of our land."

"Our prerogatives are being torn from us day by day," groaned the
magistros Marianos; "the donations which our bounteous sovereigns
from old time distributed to the nobles at the holy festivals have
been withheld by absurd pretexts of economy.  Not that we need or
value such trifles of the royal favor.  But the public withholding of
them has been a slur on our honor, and has fatally diminished our
influence with the government and our authority with the people."

"A chief must be found who is able to resist this oppression," said
the patriarch.

"Say, rather," said the abbot, "one who is able to replace the
oppressor."

Marianos and the patricians smiled with a complacent and important
air.

"Remember," said Theophano, with decision, "nothing can be done but
by a soldier.  No man can stem the oppression that desolates this
empire if he has not the voice of the army.  None could wean them
from devotion to Nicephorus but a hero, a beloved chief, one who has
led them to victory in a hundred fights."

"Her Majesty speaks truly and wisely," said the crafty abbot, as the
conference closed.  Nor did magistroi or patricians venture to say
her nay.

On Ascension Day, from early dawn, the streets were crowded with
citizens and country-folk hurrying to witness the processions to the
fanes and take part in the ceremonies of the festival.  At the
Neorion port on the Golden Horn near the Strategion, where a body of
new recruits had been exercising, a riot broke out between them and
the sailors of the merchant ships.  These wild fellows from the
Armenian highlands looked upon the capital as a conquered city, and
had begun to plunder the wine, fruit, and meats that were in course
of unloading on the quay.  The dealers, their men, and the seamen
defended their property.  Arms were drawn, and a furious mob assailed
the troopers with every missile within reach.  For an hour the whole
quarter rang with cries of battle and the din of the riot.  The
soldiers at last, outnumbered and surrounded, fought their way back
to their quarters, leaving many dead and dying on the ground.  Nor
was order restored until the prefect arrived with a strong guard and
vainly tried to pacify the crowds of citizens who called for
punishment of the aggressors, carrying in procession the corpses of
their comrades and intending to bear them to the very gate of the
palace.

Week by week the irritation of the city had been increasing, which
Nicephorus, if he noticed it at all, treated with quiet disdain.  On
that very Day of Ascension he made the official visit of ceremony to
the venerated church of Mary, outside the northern rampart, known
then and now as Pege, or the Holy Well.  Leo, our young student, and
his friend, Joannes, "the geometer," had been called out to the riot
and now attended the train of the Basileus.  It was towards sunset
when the imperial cortège returned over the crowded route of many
miles, and at last passed into the narrow streets, at that moment
thronged with citizens making holiday.

"Do you see how those market fellows under the portico of Theodosius
there scowl at the Basileus?" said Leo, to his friend.  "He would not
be safe among them without the guard."

"Hear that yell of rage from the roof of the baker's house on the
left," said Joannes.

"Nicephorus seems the only man in the street who does not notice it.
He rides on with his eyes bent down like a man in a reverie," said
Leo.

"After the bloody street-fight we saw this morning, it would be
strange if the mob were not in a savage mood," said Joannes.  "Ah!
there is a dense crowd in the forum of Constantine beyond.  There
seems to be some one on the steps of the column haranguing the
people."

"I see," said Leo; "it is that mad monk from the Stoudion, Brother
Elias.  He has been preaching against the Basileus again.  We shall
have a pretty row in five minutes, as sure as my name is Leo."

The words were hardly out of his mouth when yells, mingled with
curses and missiles, filled the air.  The guard in front of the
procession roughly forced a path through the crowd, thrusting back
the people with blows and the hoofs of their horses.  The immense
mob, furious with indignation, pressed on the riders with outcries
and menaces.  "Assassin, tyrant, usurper," were the names shouted
forth.  Stones, garbage, and mud were flung at the imperial party as
the guard closed in a ring round the Basileus.

"By St. Andrew, this is too much!" cried Leo; "the pitcher only just
missed his head," as from the third story of a tenement-house a
virago, with horrid curses, hurled a heavy stone-ware jug at the
sovereign below.  And from the same window, at that moment, a girl,
in a loose dress and dishevelled hair, hurled a brass pan down on the
emperor as he rode beneath their house.

"Break into that door!" shouted the captain of police to his men;
"seize the old hag and her girl.  I know them well.  It is a
doss-house for the worst kind of begging monk.  And the women are as
bad as the monks."

"See how Nicephorus there sits his horse and does not even look round
him!" said Leo.  "He rides on as calm and unconcerned in the
hurly-burly as if he were St. George in an ikon.  What coolness and
nerve the man has!  He seems to see their missiles as little as he
hears their curses.  He looks as steady and undisturbed as if he were
the bronze statue of Justinian on his horse."

"And that stone jug might easily have smashed him," said Joannes.
"It just grazed the plume; they might have killed him as they did
Apambas in the revolution."

The guard closed in round their emperor, who rode on quietly, without
a word and without moving a muscle, amid execrations and volleys of
mud.  And night at last dispersed the mob.

The next day the prefect of the city waited on the Basileus to take
his orders as to the punishments to be awarded to the riotous quarter
and the fate of the prisoners arrested by the police.

"Let them go," said Nicephorus, "and leave the citizens alone.  No
bones are broken, and I care nothing for their shouts.  The times are
hard.  We may have been too close-fisted with the corn, and my
Armenians are a rough lot.  But, at such a crisis in the holy war, I
dare not be too hard on my brothers in arms who are giving their
lives for Christ.  If we can smash the False Prophet forever, the
city mobs will begin to cheer me again as of old."

The prefect was forced to abstain from any harsh treatment of the
quarter.  But he kept some of the worst of his prisoners in jail.
And as for the two women whose missiles had wounded some of the
police, and whom he knew to keep a thieves' den, Leo saw them
publicly burned in the circus of St. Mamas--a low, suburban arena--as
a warning to all rioters.

Before leaving the capital for the front, Nicephorus was urged to
give a show of chariot-races in the Hippodrome with more than usual
magnificence.  His council regarded it as a mode of pacifying the
public discontent.  Seated high in the cathisma, the royal gallery,
surrounded by the empress, her sons, and the court, in full gala
trim, Nicephorus submitted with the best grace he could command to
the tedious exhibitions of the arena.  Before the games were over he
thought it well to give the Byzantine public a sight of the new
levies from Macedonia, whom he was about to lead into Syria.  So he
ordered two "bands," or regiments, of foot-soldiers to advance into
the arena, just cleared of the horse-races, and to be paraded in
sections.  For a time the citizens on their benches watched with
amusement the unwonted spectacle of military evolutions in their
Hippodrome.  Warming with the sight of his men in splendid battle
array, Nicephorus now sent orders to charge in a mimic fight, with
levelled lances and the familiar war-cries of their tribes.  As the
companies charged till the lances actually crashed upon the bucklers
and the vast Hippodrome rang with the shouts and clash of arms, panic
seized the spectators.  The cry was raised that the Basileus had
ordered a general massacre, as in the dreadful sedition of the "Nika"
of old.  With shrill yells the crowds rose from their benches, poured
down the gangways in mad confusion, and choked the doorways and
passages.  Shrieks rose far and near, as the terrified crowd trampled
each other to death or were crushed by the weight of those behind
them in the agonies of fright.  Before anything could be done to stem
the torrent, before the emperor, in his lofty gallery, quite
understood what was happening under his eyes, a ghastly mass of
mangled bodies and bloody limbs, jammed inextricably together, filled
the corridors and gateways of the circus, which an hour before had
been a festive scene of beauty and enjoyment.

The Basileus arose from his throne as soon as he comprehended the
cause of the disaster, and, in a voice which overpowered the shrieks
below, gave the word to the troops to halt and stand at attention.
Every sword and every lance was held motionless, as the men stood
like statues in their ranks.  The emperor resumed his seat in order
to recall the people from their panic and imitate his own repose.

It was too late.  All the afternoon the ambulances and the surgeons
with their staff toiled at removing from the quivering mass the dying
and the dead.  Nicephorus, having given all necessary orders, slowly
and sadly went back to his cabinet, feeling that some curse had
fallen on his head, if it were not that God had purposed to end his
reign in ruin and blood.

And for long years the people of Byzantium bitterly mourned over the
death and mutilation of those dear to them, which they placed to the
indifference of their sovereign, but which really was due to their
own folly, cowardice, and panic terror.




XXX

The Last Campaign

Nicephorus was now again in Asia, on his third and last great
expedition to achieve the reconquest of Syria.  Night after night,
the fire-signals across the Bosphorus recorded the rapid stages of
the imperial advance over the passes of the Amanus, and day by day
couriers arrived with despatches to the regents and the council of
state.  It was known that the Basileus was bent on recovering to
Christendom Antioch and Aleppo, finally driving the Moslem from
Syria, and at last planting the Cross again on the tomb of the
Saviour in the Holy City.

The capital was kept in a constant state of excitement and
expectation.  Crowds gathered in the streets and forums discussing
the reports and the rumors, and decorations were hung on the
buildings and public monuments as each new success of the triumphant
army was announced.  The anxiety of the official world was at last
satisfied by a meeting of the senate at which the regents undertook
to make full announcement of the state of affairs.

The nobles and all who had the right to attend or who could obtain
access to the tribunes and approaches crowded into the senate house,
which resounded with loud acclamations as Leo, the curopalate, and
his ministers took their seats.  And the cheers and cries of "Long,
long life!" were redoubled when the venerable Bardas Phocas, the
father of the Basileus, was borne along into the assembly in his
carrying-chair.  The old hero, shrunk to a skeleton, wrinkled and
shrivelled like a mummy--the sarcastic Bishop Luitprand declares that
he looked one hundred--with still some light in his eye, and his
snow-white beard, seemed like a ghost of the past as he was lifted,
tottering and bent, into his place.  And the cries of "Long, long
life!" again renewed, seemed a cruel mockery of his exhausted frame.

When the storm of cheering had at last subsided, the regent rose and
spoke thus:

"Most noble magistroi, patricians, and illustrious senators, we have
received a series of despatches from the august autocrator to the
following effect: With a force of 157,000 men of all arms, 55,000 of
whom were mounted, he passed from Cilicia, as already reported,
across the mountains into Syria, making straight for Aleppo.  His
sudden rush upon the country of the Hamdanites demoralized the enemy,
who fled in every direction, and left their cities and forts an easy
prey to our men.  The terror of their approach called out such
outbursts of fanatical hate against our holy faith that it spread as
far as Jerusalem, where--it grieves us to report--the patriarch John
was savagely massacred with all his priests and many of his flock,
and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, with the other churches of
Jerusalem, was burned to ashes."

At these words groans of grief and cries of rage broke forth in the
chamber from side to side; and the tribunes and corridors burst into
yells of horror and passion.  As soon as the tumult could be
appeased, Leo again resumed his speech.

"But the Basileus has amply avenged the blood of the martyrs and the
outrage on our faith.  He has gained a great battle under the walls
of Aleppo.  Thence he ascended the valley of the Orontes, and stormed
Maaret en Noamen, that rich city named after one of the companions of
the False Prophet.  Thence he swept down upon Maaret Mouserim, on
Kafartab, and Chaizar and the city of Hamah.  All these rich and
splendid cities of Chambdas have been sacked and burned and the
mosques of the False Prophet destroyed.  The land has been laid
waste, and tens of thousands of captives have been carried off, with
enormous masses of booty in coin, gems, valuables, beasts, and
stores."

Loud cheers rang through the hall, with cries of "Long life to our
autocrator Nicephorus, the ever-victorious!"  Leo at last resumed his
address.

"But we have a still more glorious triumph to announce.  The ancient
city of Emesa, which the Hagarenes call Homs, has been captured and
destroyed.  The Basileus and his staff worshipped Christ in the
hallowed and famous Church of St. John the Baptist, and there they
recovered that most venerable relic, the head of the divine
forerunner and herald of the Saviour.  This inestimable prize is now
on its way to our city, and will be offered to the adoration of the
faithful in the Temple of the Holy Wisdom."

At these words there broke forth a storm of shouts of triumph and
joy.  The sitting was suspended till the excitement could be calmed,
while the patriarch offered up an invocation of thanksgiving to God
for the mercy that He had extended to His people.

Day after day fresh successes were made known by the regents.  The
Basileus and his victorious troops had now crossed the Lebanon
Mountains and were descending the coast of Phœnicia.  They were
again on the shores of the sea, and in touch with the fleet at hand
to supply all they needed.  Swift dromons now brought round the Asian
coast the reports of the chief.  Gabala fell to the conquerors, then
Cæsarea; and next Tripoli was invested.  After that Laodicea was made
a subject city of the empire, and the Saracen emir was transformed
into an imperial commander.  With Tortosa and Marakieh the whole
Phœnician coast from Tripoli to Antioch was in the power of the
Basileus.  By the end of the autumn the official report informed the
people of the empire "that eighteen cities, each having large mosques
of the Prophet, had been taken by storm or surrendered; together with
at least one hundred forts, and lesser places which the Basileus has
ordered to be levelled to the ground.  Vast numbers of the enemy have
been removed and taken as prisoners.  In other cases, both along
Syria and the coast, the inhabitants have renounced the Prophet, and
have accepted baptism and our holy faith.  The victorious Basileus
has now closely invested Antioch, the 'City of God,' as it was once
called, and is about to complete the annihilation of the race of
Chambdas and the recovery of the Holy Land and the sepulchre of
Christ."

This last and memorable campaign of Nicephorus did finally effect
nearly all that its author had designed.  The power of Islam in Syria
and the valleys of the Orontes was broken for two generations.  The
progress of the Saracen towards the west was stayed, and the safety
of the empire guaranteed until the fatal arrival of the Turk.  The
Frank crusades had been anticipated by more than one hundred years.
Antioch, "the third city of the world," as Nicephorus himself called
it, was ultimately stormed and captured by his arms, and Aleppo was
taken by his nephew, and became a tributary state; but Nicephorus
himself was not present at either capture.  In the midst of this
series of overwhelming triumphs, the most brilliant and effective of
his whole career, he suddenly again returned to Byzantium for reasons
which his people could not fathom, and which his historians have
never explained.  The cause was one that touched his honor and his
life.

He was completing the investment of Antioch, and building, to
blockade it, the vast rock fort of Bagras, carrying the stones, in
order to lay the foundations, on his own shoulder, to encourage his
men in the work, when he received from his brother Leo a most
momentous despatch.  "Great and dangerous intrigues had been
discovered in the palace itself.  The empress has been in constant
communication with John Tzimisces, who, in spite of the imperial
order to remain in the Cappadocian theme, had secretly visited
Nicomedia, if not Byzantium itself.  John was furiously inveighing
against the Basileus for having kept him in the background, as he
declared, in inglorious and shameful retirement.  In spite of the
triumphs of the imperial arms, the monks of the Stoudion were
exciting the rabble of the city and the mendicant hermits and
hedge-priests to rebellion and riot.  Theophano was the soul of this
conspiracy; and, although they had failed as yet to trace any
criminal intercourse between her and John, there were ominous signs
that she was plotting a revolution which would place Tzimisces on the
throne."

This terrible missive aroused all the indignation and suspicion in
the soul of Nicephorus which he had struggled to smother and dismiss.
He felt the need of instant action to save his government, his honor,
and his life.  With bitter feelings he postponed all his projects to
recover Antioch, Aleppo, and even Jerusalem and the sepulchre of
Christ.  He placed the army of Antioch under the command of General
Michael Bourtzes, a patrician; and he despatched another army to
Aleppo under command of his own nephew, Petros Phocas, son of Leo.
Having made all his dispositions for completing the campaign,
Nicephorus took ship and rapidly returned to the capital by sea.

The return of the Basileus was so sudden and unexpected that no signs
of welcome had been prepared to greet him.  It was the sour evening
of a dull day when he made his way back to the palace, with a very
small and quiet retinue, almost unnoticed.  Even as he passed
hurriedly through the streets, he had noticed monks and demagogues
haranguing small knots of citizens on their distresses and the
cruelty of the government.  Leo came down to the port to meet his
brother.  "The city," he said, "is seething with suppressed
resentment and discontent.  In spite of all his efforts and the
rigors of the police, disaffection was being nursed in the
monasteries and churches, and their privileges made it too dangerous
to prosecute and punish the disturbers of the peace.  Daily the
chapels and courts of the clergy resounded with incendiary sermons.
The official signs of public rejoicing had hardly concealed the
apathy of the public over the successes of the army in the east.
Every triumph was regarded as the occasion of a new tax.  And the bad
season and the tempests with which they had been afflicted made the
collection of the revenue a constant source of trouble and disorder."

Nicephorus listened to his brother's report in silence, patient,
unmoved, and resolute.  He pondered it without a word, with no sign
of anger or of fear.  At last he said, slowly, forcing his lips to
utter the words to which he dreaded the answer, "Brother, tell me of
her."

Leo grasped his brother's hand, and he bent over it as he replied in
a whisper: "Sire, I obey, though I shrink from the task.  She is
conspiring against you.  We seized a secret messenger of hers to
John.  We found on him a document urging Tzimisces to come to the
palace to confer with herself and her privy council.  Our officers
wrung from the messenger at last that he was charged with verbal
assurances of a new marriage and promises of a lavish kind."

Nicephorus writhed silently, but said no word for a space.  Then he
asked, "What, then, of Tzimisces himself?"

"We have not been able to obtain any evidence that John has listened
to these overtures; nor can it be proved that they have yet reached
him.  But Tzimisces is a traitor, your enemy, your supplanter.  Seize
him, blind or execute him.  Seize and deport her.  They will be your
ruin, if not your death."

Nicephorus took no such action.  He who had swept Islam before him
from the Phœnician coast to the Euphrates, he who was the idol of
the most powerful army of that age, he who had found the civil and
military organization of all Asia work in his hand like a perfect
machine, cared little for the discontent of the luxurious nobles of
the capital, and still less for the idle mobs of the forum.  And,
conscious of his burning zeal in the cause of Christendom, and his
vast services to the people of God, he cared little for the intrigues
and anger of the churchmen.  Patriarch and abbot might be unjust.
But Christ and His Mother would intercede for him at the mercy-seat
of the Almighty.

Even now he could not bring himself to believe in the treason of
John, and he shrank from condemning him without convincing proof.  He
even suffered Theophano to justify herself, and to refute all the
accusations of her enemies.  She burst into the privy chamber of her
husband, as he strode up and down in thought, swayed with contending
emotions and racked with doubts.  She dragged in her little Basil,
and made him prostrate himself before the Basileus, and kiss his
father's hand, and, rising in an attitude of superb majesty, with a
voice that the greatest actress would envy, she broke forth:

"You will not believe, my lord, my lover, my glory, that I who raised
you to this throne, and saved your life when the masters of this
palace were thirsting for your blood--that I could be seeking to
injure you at the highest hour of your triumph.  Who could protect my
boys, and secure them the throne of their ancestors, if you were cast
out before they were old enough to act for themselves?  Their
inheritance, their liberty--nay, their lives, are in jeopardy if you
their father were gone.  What would become of me if they put you
away?  Could you bear, my Nicephorus, to see me in prison, in a cell,
in the veil and garb of a nun?  Could you bear to think of me growing
old in misery and want?  Have you ceased to love me, to feel for me?
Do you hate me?"

Nicephorus looked steadily at Theophano with profound sorrow and
reproach, gazing at her as if he was searching the depths of her
soul.  But he spoke not a word.  The woman shrank down before him and
clasped his hand.

"I swear before the Mother of God that what they say of me is false.
I have never sinned against you.  Your brother Leo is a bitter enemy
of me and of Tzimisces.  He envies his glory, he seeks to poison your
heart and to destroy us both.  The greatest soldier of Rome next to
you has been cruelly maligned and ill-used.  Yes!  I grieve to see
him caged like a wild beast when he would be your best and truest
comrade.  I admit that I have sought to restore him to his true
place.  I have not seen him--but--yes!--I have been in communication
with him.  But for what purpose?  My own beloved friend, the Lady
Hypatia Palæologos, may be persuaded to accept him as a husband, now
that he is a lonely widower.  John presses his suit, but her family
have other views.  My own messages to John were to urge him to come
and win the lady himself.  But your stern orders to keep him caged in
Cappadocia have prevented him from approaching the city.  Countermand
this, my lord.  Bring your best general back to your side.  Let us
marry him to this noble and beautiful woman whom I love as a sister
myself.  And then send John to command an army in Syria.  Yield me
this, my king, my lover, my husband.  John is true, as I am true.  Do
not listen to the falsehoods of our enemies--to those who seek to
displace us in your trust and in your love."

And she clasped him, and sank upon his neck in tears.

Slowly, quietly, but resolutely, Nicephorus unclasped the woman's
hands, and stood musing silently and sadly.  At last he said, "John
Tzimisces shall be summoned to me.  I will hear what he has to say
from his own lips."

Tzimisces was summoned, but no reconciliation was effected.  He
furiously denied all traitorous machinations against the throne, and
made blunt denial of any interviews with Theophano.  He then
inveighed with passion against the orders to keep him in retirement.
A violent scene ensued, and the old friends and comrades parted in
wrath.  Nicephorus found Tzimisces to be mutinous, if not in actual
revolt.  He placed him in arrest on the Asian frontier across the
Propontis.

The Basileus was preparing to return to the front when despatches
arrived with the startling news that General Bourtzes had stormed
Antioch and was master of the great city and all its contents and
resources.  Great rejoicings were ordered by the official world, and
Nicephorus attended the ceremony of thanksgiving in the cathedral
with great pomp.  And the news was hardly made public, when fresh
despatches announced that the emir of Aleppo, despairing of
overcoming Petros Phocas, was ready to make his submission and to
become the tributary and satrap of the Basileus of Roum.

Nicephorus Phocas was now at the culmination of his great crusade
against Islam.  His arms had triumphed everywhere, and for two
generations the Moslem advance was effectually repelled.  The
government made every effort to celebrate these triumphs, and
Bourtzes was about to be received with honors and rewards when Leo's
agents discovered that he also had been engaged in a new conspiracy
into which Tzimisces and others had been drawn by Theophano herself.
Thus Bourtzes was disgraced and dismissed from office.  Much as the
people of Byzantium loved pageants and public rejoicings, their
irritation at the pressure of taxation and the machinations of the
monks increased rather than allayed the general discontent.  And all
the efforts of Leo, the curopalate, and the rest of the ministers
failed to rekindle the national enthusiasm.

In the vain hope of touching the public mind, they caused the
venerable Bardas Phocas to be carried round in the constant services
and _Te Deums_ which were sung in the churches.  He was now more than
ninety years of age; and as his snow-white head on his shrivelled
body was borne along in the crowds, he seemed to be a corpse being
carried to a tomb, rather than the living remnant of a hero whose
name lived in every field of Asian warfare.

But the strain was too much for the last flicker of the veteran's
spirit.  He was borne back fainting to the palace and laid on the
couch from which he never rose again.  Nicephorus watched long hours
beside his father, in hopes of having some last words that he could
remember before they were parted forever.

On the third day some signs of life returned.  The old man opened his
eyes and saw his glorious son.  He faintly smiled and said, "I go
hence with joy and thankfulness of heart; Rome lives, and for
evermore shall live.  The people of Christ have risen from their long
night of defeat.  Farewell, my son; I go to tell the martyrs that
their deaths are avenged."  The smile settled on his lips.  The
veteran was dead.  The Basileus bent down and kissed the lifeless
forehead of his sire.  He felt alone--at peace--with his work on
earth completed.




XXXI

The Last Agony

The long funeral procession had now returned to the Sacred Palace
from the Church of the Holy Apostles in the same order and in all the
solemn magnificence with which the patriarch Bardas had been laid to
his rest.  The emperor, with his robes of state concealed in an ample
black cloak, strode on in proud and moody silence through the
gorgeous halls which now seemed to him to mock his despair.  As he
followed the coffin of his father to the sepulchre, he had heard the
muttered curses of the mob which thronged the streets; and even as he
had lifted with his own hands the shrunken corpse of his heroic sire
and laid it reverently in the royal sarcophagus wherein it was to
lie--even as he took his last gaze on his father's face and covered
it with the consecrated cloth forever--Nicephorus saw hatred and
vengeance around him in the eyes of the monks and priests within the
shrine.

He knew himself now to be a man hated, deserted, and betrayed--most
unjustly, most cruelly--in spite of all that he had done for the
state and for the people.  But he marched along through the lowering
yet cringing mob with an air of haughty defiance and resolute
purpose, till he had completed his part in the great ceremonial.  The
guard of honor filed aside at the court-yard and drew up at the
porch; the officers of state and great dignitaries prostrated
themselves in due turn and took their way apart.  Slowly the crowd of
chamberlains, nobles-in-waiting, priests, secretaries, and ministers
in their order of rank made their obeisance and quitted the sovereign
as he passed to the private chambers of the palace.

In silence and gloom the emperor stalked on, with but formal
acknowledgments of the endless obeisances he received from the train,
till he reached the inmost chambers of the vast palace, accompanied
now by none but his confessor, his brother Leo, the chief
chamberlain, and two body servants of his household.  Here at last
the strength of the chief seemed utterly exhausted.  They took from
him his cloak of mourning, his diadem and sword of state, blazing
with precious stones; they unlaced the imperial buskins and the
golden mail in which he was encased.  He seemed eager to fling from
off him his royal trappings.  And at last, in the rough shirt which
he ever chose to wear beneath his robes, bareheaded, unshod, the
mighty Basileus of Rome sank onto a couch with a groan and covered
his face with his massive, sunburned hands.

Long the attendants watched their master in perplexity and fear.  He
spoke not, nor gave any sign.  At length his brother Leo, presuming
on their kinship and his own high office, broke silence and ventured
to remonstrate with his terrible chief.  "By the Mother of God, most
august autocrator, we adjure you to shake off grief and take heed of
the manifold perils that surround your throne and life.  We have
reached the third month, foretold as fatal by the mysterious hermit
who flung the paper into your lap in the porch of Hagia Sophia.  All
our efforts to trace him have failed, and we now believe him to have
been a conspirator in disguise luring you on to your doom.  You are
surrounded with traitors, intrigues, and plots.  And the nearest to
you of all may be consenting to them."  But here a groan, smothered
by the clinched hands of the Basileus himself, checked Leo's words.
The emperor raised his head, glared on his brother like a lion at
bay, but spoke not, and again covered his face and sank upon his
couch.  After some minutes of awed silence, the curopalate resumed:
"My duty to your Majesty compels me to unravel all the plots that are
being hatched against you, all the omens and portents which threaten
your star.  The eclipse of last week, which your Imperial Majesty
treats with just contempt, has spread panic, suspicion, and treason
throughout the realm.  The storm of last night, wherein our
hero-father passed away, has desolated the towns of Propontis and has
covered its shores with wrecks.  I hear to-day of the earthquake in
Asia Minor whereby whole provinces have been covered with ruins and
dead bodies.  The tale of calamities and omens will be shown your
Majesty by the great chamberlain here, who has been furnished with
particulars.  And while the provinces are languishing and restless,
the city is a hotbed of treason, rebellion, and intrigue.  And of all
this the author and head is no other than your false lieutenant and
rival, the Armenian, John, the deadly foe of our house, who aspires
to your throne--nay, to your----"  But so fierce a spasm shook the
frame of the emperor, and his gaze upon his brother was at once so
terrible and yet so tragic, that Leo dared not finish his sentence.
Nicephorus spoke not, but he stretched forth his hand with a sign of
impatience and fatigue.  Leo, on bended knee, took his brother's
hand, pressed it to his lips, and withdrew.

A long silence followed till the great chamberlain, conceiving
himself appealed to by the emperor's brother, ventured to approach
his master.  "Will not your mightiness deign to listen to the report
I hold in my hands of the dangerous signs which man and the saints
are holding up to our eyes?  I have here the particulars of riots in
fourteen provinces, the holy places destroyed by the earthquake, and
the statements of priests, soldiers, and officers of the empire as to
the imminent rebellion.  Will your Majesty be pleased to hear the
story of their fears and their warnings?"  The Basileus groaned
again, but spoke not.  He slowly shook his head, waved back his hand,
and the high chamberlain retired with the usual prostrations and
forms of reverence.

The confessor still stood his ground beside his imperious penitent.
The venerable monk Zachariah was renowned throughout the empire for
his austere piety and martyr-like sufferings for Christ's sake, and
was one of the few monks for whom Nicephorus had real esteem and
trust.  He motioned to the attendants to withdraw, and in a voice of
deep emotion he said: "Mighty lord, hear the words of me who am but a
worm in thy sight, as thou art but a worm in the sight of God.  Thy
perils are many and great, but thy sins also are many and great.
Thou hast committed deadly sin in taking to wife the widow of a dead
man to whose child thou art father-in-God, a woman who would enter a
third adulterous marriage if she were rid of thee.  Thou hast robbed
the churches and the patrimonies of monks and priests to carry on thy
endless wars at the distant frontiers of this realm.  Make peace with
thy enemies, and cease in thy old age to be a man of blood.  Restore
to the churches and monasteries the wealth that thy tax-gatherers
have wrung from Holy Church.  Put away the adulterous, the infidel,
the harlot who lies beside thee and pollutes thy soul.  And the
Mother of God will yet intercede that you may be kept safe in His
holy keeping."  The emperor sat silent and motionless as a stone.
And, without a word more from penitent or confessor, Zachariah raised
his hands to heaven in attitude of prayer, and slowly, without a
gesture passing between them, he withdrew from the presence.

Then the emperor raised his head, with a look of fierce passion,
struggling to be calm.  With the old voice of command, as he had so
often ordered a last charge on a bloody field, he said, "Leave me!
begone all!  Set double guards at the doors of this chamber, and till
I call again let no man pass into this place--no man, on pain of
death--no! and no woman either.  I have spoken.  I choose to be alone
this night!"

When the doors were closed and all lights extinguished, save the lamp
that burned night and day before the ikon of the Theotokos,
Nicephorus rose and turned towards the image of the Virgin.  With
bare head, bare arms and feet, in his rude camp-shirt, he looked in
the dim light like some hermit in a rocky cave by the Thessalonican
coast.  His face was haggard and drawn with sorrow and care.  His
weary eyes drooped in their dark, cavernous rings.  His white hair
and grizzled beard contrasted strangely with his swarthy skin, tanned
with the suns and scarred with the storms of Asia over fifty years,
but his huge frame and shaggy limbs gave him still the majestic air
of a veteran chief.  He flung himself down before the miraculous
image, kissed the feet of the Divine Mother, and groaned forth this
prayer:

"Hear me, hear me, Mary, Mother of God, and turn the heart of thy Son
to listen to the outpouring of my soul.  I acknowledge my offences
towards men and Mother Church, and my sins of bloodshed and wrath
burn into my memory like red-hot irons.  But Thou knowest, O God of
Mercy and Judgment, for what end were wrought all my sins of
slaughter and of punishment.  If I have lived with the sword in my
right hand and have waded through torrents of human blood from my
childhood upward, Thou knowest that it was in defence of Christian
people against infidels, heretics, and barbarians.  If I slew, it was
those who would have slain Thy beloved and faithful people, the
priests of Thy altars, and the mothers of children baptized in Thy
faith.  Sinner as I am, Thou wilt not forget that my right arm has
saved Thy holy city, this realm of Rome, and Thy orthodox Church,
planted by Thy Son to save this heathen world.  And the offerings
that I pressed from the wealth of Mother Church were never taken for
me or for mine, O Lord! but to arm my soldiers in their war with the
False Prophet."

So groaned out his confession of sins this fierce, proud soldier and
ruler.  Even in the act of acknowledging his offences and seeking for
pity from the Throne of Mercy, the consciousness of all his
achievements and the sense of his supreme mastery of the empire made
his look fire up with the pride of commander, ruler, and despot.  And
as the feeling of his abandonment and wrongs burst full on his
thoughts, he sank down prostrate before the image of the Virgin
Mother.

"Thou only knowest, O most holy and loving of those above--thou only
knowest how lonely and forlorn is he whom men call the mighty
Autocrator of Rome.  All, all, have forsaken me.  My heroic father,
the last pillar of our house, is laid in the grave, whence at my
death he may be torn again and dishonored.  Him only could I trust.
My brother--whom I have loaded with honors and gifts, works now for
himself, and would spur me on to crush his rival, the Armenian John.
The hatred of the people has been drawn down on me by him.  Help,
pity, O Mother of God, the most lonely and abandoned of all those who
truly serve and call on thee.  Virgin most pure, most perfect, most
holy, thou wilt not forsake him who has ever held thy image in his
heart, who from his youth up has sinned not in the flesh--sinned not
unless thou countest it sin to love her whom Holy Church has blessed
and consecrated to be bone of my bone."

The last words seemed wrung from the clinched lips of the chief as if
they were blood strained from his veins.  And he groaned out the
phrase "blessed and consecrated to be bone of my bone" with prolonged
spasm of rage and pain, as if they were words wrung from him on the
rack.  The mighty frame of the hero was convulsed with tremors and
fierce clinching of the limbs.  He fell prone on the ground and
sobbed and groaned in silence.

"Holy Mother of God," he muttered at length, "is it indeed a sin to
love a woman, to desire her to wife?  Then truly have I sinned as
none ever sinned before.  I was a man in years and in high place and
power when I first saw her.  From that hour I was her slave--melting
like wax at her sight, trembling in her presence, thrilled to the
bone at the sound of her voice.  Never in my life, as thou knowest, O
most Holy Mother, has woman beguiled me; and but for her I am
spotless as this ancient hermit who condemns me.  My sin was to have
taken to wife her to whose child I was father-in-God.  The holy
fathers have pronounced on me this judgment; and, in my passion, I
have visited my wrath upon them.  Forgive, forgive this offence,
which comes from excess of love.  Forgive--even as He on earth
forgave one who had loved much.  Am I not stricken enough for this
sin?  She loves me not, has never loved me.  Holy Mother!  She
loathes me and no longer seeks to hide it from me.  She loves some
other--  Whom?  Has she betrayed me in deed as she has in thought?
Can it be?  Teach me, open my eyes--thou knowest, O Holy and
Immaculate Virgin, thou knowest if she be false in body as in heart.
I cannot watch her; I dare not pry and probe into my shame like a
cuckold huckster.  She may be false, but I will never stoop to
suspect.  The wife of Cæsar must be untouched by evil
fame--untouched--ay, or dead.  It is agony enough to know that she
loves me not--she loathes me, O God!--and I love her madly still.
Holy Mother, as thou knowest, I have forsworn her bed--never in life
will I touch woman where love is not, or is not from each to each.  I
tremble still in her sight.  Holy Mother, teach me if I must still
endure this pain--if I have thy command to put her away as the false
ones are left alone with Thee and the saints."

Hour after hour the stricken Cæsar poured forth these prayers and
lamentations in spasms of agony and broken groans, stretched on the
ground and grinding his teeth in his wrath and madness.  At length,
exhausted nature could endure no more.  The long vigils by his dying
father's side, the fatigue of the funeral ceremonies, the terrible
conflict of the last few hours, and the ecstasy of confession and of
prayer broke down the herculean strength of the veteran, and he sank
into a lethargic slumber before the image of the Virgin.

Slowly and silently a small and secret panel in the gilded recess of
the great chamber was cautiously opened, enough to admit the hand of
a woman.  And as the measured breathing of the Cæsar announced that
he was not waking, the door was gently opened, and the empress, in
all the fascination of her chamber adornment, stood motionless before
her lord.  She was disrobed for the night, arrayed in
half-transparent silken sheen; her exquisite limbs shining like
alabaster as the masses of her dark tresses were folded over her bare
neck and shoulders.  She looked more lovely thus than in all her
imperial robes and jewels.  Long she stood in silence, looking down
on her sleeping husband, with a bitter smile playing round her
chiselled lips and the hate of a tigress in the gleam of her lustrous
eyes.  Then she stooped low over him, till her loosened locks fell
from around her bosom upon his, and, with a kiss soft as rose-leaves
and warm as sunlight on his brow, she roused the Cæsar from his
slumber.  He rose from the floor with a look so dazed and yet so
terrible that the woman shrank back, still smiling, still enticing,
and yet afraid to speak.

"What!" he cried, with a fierce voice, "have my guards, too, betrayed
me, or how did you pass, when I had ordered no living soul to come
hither, while I watched and prayed, after all the toils I have borne?"

"Cæsar would not shut out Cæsar's wife from his side at such a time
as this," she answered, with a subtle glance in dulcet tones; "and
they did not guard the secret door of passage between our private
chambers.  Nor yet," she added, as he spoke not, "will her hero, her
master, her lover, leave his Theophano in such a night to be
sleepless, lonely, disconsolate--forsaken."

Cæsar turned his head away from the maddening sight of the woman he
loved so passionately, and yet believed so profoundly to be false; he
turned his head from her, closed his eyes again, and groaned a deep
sigh that seemed to shake his breast.

But the wily Delilah saw the trembling round the mouth of Cæsar and
the yearning of love in his eyes, even as he had turned from her with
a gesture of disdain, and she pressed the advantage which she knew
that she retained.

"Will the Majesty of Rome and the Terror of the Infidel be tutored
and frightened by these designing priests and their unmanly
superstitions?  I know that they have put a bar between thee and me,
and in their insolence have torn thee from the side of thy true and
loving wife.  What do these holy eunuchs know of marriage and of all
the peace which the loving wife gives to the soul of the lord who
loves her?  Is the Basileus of the World, too, a weakling, like the
slaves who haunt his palace and the priests who whine in his shrine?"

She saw how the sovereign writhed and glowered at such unseemly
words, and she shrieked forth: "What! do they insult me, too!--do
they seek to poison your mind!--do they tell you that I am no true
wife, that I have ceased to love you!  Would they see me not only
abandoned by my lord but suspected of crime!  Holy Mother, can they
have dared such infamy?  Cæsar, husband, lover, my hero, my saint, am
I not your only love?  Have I not forsaken all things for you?--have
I not made you Lord of the World?--have I not loved you madly?--do I
not love you now more passionately than when I was first your slave
and lover?  Come to me again, let me wind my arms round you and nurse
you to rest after all that you have suffered.  Nicephorus, hero,
lover, I have borne many things for thee!  I have risked my liberty,
my honor, my life--even the lives of my sons--certainly their
thrones!  Thy enemies wait for thee.  My enemies watch for me.  Thou
and I united can defy them, but divided we may both perish at their
hands!"  And she stooped down again over him, like a crouching
leopard over its prey, till the silken drapery almost slid from off
her faultless and dazzling form, and he could feel the warmth of her
skin and the perfume of her tresses.  So fawning and almost purring
over his motionless body, again she softly kissed his rugged brow,
and then gently, like a beautiful sylph in the dim light, she stole
away in silence, just whispering in tones of liquid tenderness and
passion, "Come to me, my lover, come!"

Cæsar spoke no word, but when he knew himself to be alone he rose,
and, with a groan, he passed to the secret door in the panel which
Theophano had left ajar.  He gently but firmly closed it--it had no
bolt or fastening on the side within--and he paced the chamber in
moody silence and grim contortion of face.  Then he summoned an
attendant.

"Place double guards at the portal of this chamber.  Let none enter
on pain of death.  Leave me.  I pass the night here, alone."

The attendant was preparing for the night the imperial bed, when the
emperor broke forth on him:

"No--not there.  I sleep in no bed, but as I have so long slept in my
camp, on the floor.  Place in this dark corner hard by beneath the
image of Theotokos the panther's skin which I have had from my
father, whereon the hero was wont to sleep.  Here, I say, give me my
arms--at least my sword and dagger.  Place them as of old, on the
beast's skin."

"Will your Majesty choose to have them brought?  Her Imperial Majesty
bade them take sword and dagger to her own chamber, and they lie
beside the great couch."

"Leave them!  Leave me!  Give me the consecrated cloak of the ancient
hermit.  So!  I will fold it round me, for it has powers to ward off
evil.  Go!"

Folded in the consecrated robe of the saint, Nicephorus flung himself
again on the floor before the crucifix and sobbed forth in broken
whisperings his last prayer:

"Son of God, who died for sinners, who now at the right hand of the
Father seest the most secret things of every heart, look down into my
tortured soul, and judge me in Thy justice and mercy!  If I have
loved an unworthy woman, it was in love and honor that I yielded
myself to her power.  Thou only knowest how false she is, and Thou
knowest all that I have borne at her hands, that I have done her no
wrong nor have sought to visit on her or hers my just indignation and
wrath.  If I still desire to live and to reign, Thou knowest that my
life is given to maintain this Christian realm, to beat off the
heathen who rage round it to destroy and pollute Thy people.  If my
life may yet help Thy Church and Thy realm, keep me alive still,
albeit in agony and despair.  If my death may advance Thy inscrutable
purpose, O God, let my blood be shed for men even as was Thine own,
though I be the vilest of Thy created beings.  Thy will be done, Thy
Kingdom come!"

Long in the dark hours of night the emperor wrestled in spirit with
his Maker.  And then, rolling round him the shaggy and tattered
mantle of the holy man, he lay down upon the panther's hide on the
floor, and at last sank exhausted in profound sleep.




XXXII

Clytemnestra

A storm more fierce than any in that winter of storms was raging over
the city and the Sacred Palace.  Furious gusts from the north swept
over the Euxine and coursed down the Bosphorus laden with sleet and
snow; the waters round the Golden Horn were lashed into foam and
dashed in showers of spray against the battlements of the city.  Amid
the roar of the wind against the casements and the creaking of doors
and shutters there were confused noises, hoarse whispers, and strange
cries along the corridors and antechambers of the palace.  The
empress herself was seen from time to time gliding from chamber to
chamber, her tigress eyes agleam with anxiety and eagerness, her
lovely face more marble-like in its pallor than was usual, and her
lips moving from time to time with uncontrolled emotion.  She bent
low and conferred in hurried whispers, first with one, then with
another of her women.

The private apartments of the empress consisted of an antechamber
opening into a gorgeous bedchamber, in the centre of which stood a
royal couch with purple hangings and surmounted by a golden eagle.
Around it were vast chests and wardrobes filled with the robes and
adornments of the empress.  Within the principal chamber, shut off by
small doors, were two inner recesses, one a tiny chapel with a
life-size painting of the Man-God upon the cross standing high above
the altar, which was covered with rare mountings and cloth; the other
a bath and attiring recess, hung with the instruments for the royal
ablutions.

A low but distinct knock was heard without, and at a nod from
Theophano her aged nurse stealthily advanced to the door and led in a
figure completely enveloped in one of the immense mourning cloaks
that had been used in the funeral of that day.  "Enter and approach,
master of the eunuchs," said the sovereign.  "I have a charge for
thee this night."  She motioned to the women to withdraw into the
antechamber, as the old nurse, who alone had remained, led the veiled
figure to the royal presence and unbuckled the mantle which concealed
both face and figure.  "It is no work to-night for a eunuch," she
hissed, "but for a man, a soldier, a hero!  Michael Bourtzes,
glorious victor of Antioch, art thou ready to do the deed which shall
avenge thee on thy persecutor and place thee at the head of Rome?
Art thou ready, as I am ready, and these true men here?"

Michael Bourtzes, for it was indeed that illustrious chief in full
armor who had been disguised and introduced as master of the eunuchs,
flung back the sable mantle, and, drawing from its sheath his dagger,
with a look of fierce passion and proud disdain kissed the white hand
of his mistress and murmured, "Royal lady, I am come to slay or to be
slain."  She glowed on him with cruel joy in her gleaming eyes, and
led him smiling into the chapel.  Then, raising the embroidered cloth
over the altar, with the pathetic image of the Divine Mother worked
on it in gold, "Here is your comrade," she said, and showed him,
concealed beneath the altar-cloth, Balantes, the taxiarch, who had
been hidden in his coat of mail within the very altar itself.  The
iron nerves of Bourtzes, who had faced death on a hundred bloody
fields, did not quail at so strange a device, and he silently obeyed
the empress when she bade him stand upon the altar and conceal
himself behind the picture of the Redeemer that hung above it.

In a lull of the storm the low knock was heard again at the door, and
again the aged nurse hastened to unloose the bolts.  "Bring in my
tiring-women for the night!" called the empress; and four maids in
loose robes and of somewhat unusual stature and masculine air
advanced into the centre of the bedchamber.  "Welcome, stout
friends," fawned the empress; "all goes well, and the hour of
deliverance is at hand!" as one by one the maids slipped off their
woman's attire and stood forth stalwart men-at-arms, in full array
for work and combat.  "We want now but John Tzimisces himself; but
the watchers expect him minute by minute."

The empress had hardly uttered these words when the unmistakable
tramp of armed heels was heard along the corridor without.  The four
disguised bravos looked around with rage and fear, under a sudden
impulse that they had been caught in a trap and were about to be
slain.  Each man fingered his weapon uneasily; and had Theophano at
that moment showed signs of conscious treachery, more than one dagger
would have been planted in her heart.  The crone rushed to the
chamber-door to secure the bolts.  "Hold them in parley while you
may!" hissed the empress; "I will secure our friends!"  "Stand close,
and fear not," she whispered to the two chiefs in the chapel.
"Follow me, my men," she said to the four bravos, as she dragged them
within the bath-room and closed the door from inside.

In the mean time, loud knocking and high words were heard in the
antechamber, and voices of command rang through the private
apartments.  "Open at once in the name of our sovereign lord
Nicephorus, Augustus ever-victorious!  Here is the order to search
every corner of this palace for concealed traitors, countersigned by
the master of the household!  Open, or we force these doors!"

"Not the private chambers of her August Majesty!" screamed the crone,
"and her sacred person now within her couch!"

"Yea!  Her Majesty's chamber, above all, and her bed if we choose,"
shouted the angry voice of the captain of the guard, striking the
door with the hilt of his sword.

The noise without grew so loud that the terrified women opened the
doors and crouched aside like vixens caught in a trap.  "A mysterious
warning has just reached the emperor that traitors lie this night
concealed within the palace, and our orders are peremptory to search
every corner of it even to the imperial bed and closet."  Nor was
this a vain threat.  The captain of the guard, a man devoted to his
master, whose life he had saved in the siege of Crete, ordered his
men to ransack the anteroom, and then the chamber of the empress.
They were no novices at the work; every corner was probed; their
daggers struck through every tapestry and curtain; each recess and
chest, closet and niche, was tried and pierced through and through by
sharp eyes and sharper knives.  The coverlets of the imperial couch
were flung aside; and it being evident that her Majesty was not
within it, the hangings, curtains, and ornaments were separately
examined by sight and by steel.

Nothing had been found.  "Now open these two inner recesses, unless
we are to break into them with our halberds," said the captain to the
crone.  "What! the shrine of Christ and his Mother?" shrieked the old
woman, partially opening the door of the chapel and standing across
it fiercely herself; "are you sacrilegious infidels about to profane
the holy retreat of the Mother of God?  Look, ye miscreant sons of
Ishmael and Hagar, do ye see aught but our blessed Redeemer and the
Holy Virgin who bore Him?"  The rude soldier and his men shrank from
the sacrilege of disturbing the Christ and the Mother of Christ in
their consecrated shrine.  And they hesitated to pull aside the
miraculous picture of the Crucified One behind which Bourtzes held
his breath, nor did they venture to raise the altar-cloth that
concealed the mailed form and blanched face of Balantes, the taxiarch.

"Then open this!" shouted the captain, planting himself firmly before
the closed door of the remaining recess.  "What!" shrieked the crone,
"you shameless brigand and foul dog, would you thrust your brutal
limbs into the very bath of her Sacred Majesty, and she at this
moment within it, in the very act of bathing her inviolate person?
Our august lord, the autocrator, will know how to punish such
brutality and insolence to his adored consort!"

"I know my duty," said the captain, "If we have any empress here," he
added, with a rude sneer, "she wears a beard and carries steel.
Open, I say, or, by St. Michael, this door comes down with a crash!"

But here, to the unbounded astonishment of the captain of the guard,
as he stood close against the entrance ready to force his way, the
door was flung open from within; and there, in front of the bath,
facing the soldier, stood the empress herself in all her majesty of
port and imperious pride.  She stood there like Aphrodite as she rose
out of the Paphian waves, as naked and as lovely as the queen of
Cyprus, the water of her bath still dripping from her rosy limbs, and
the masses of her hyacinthine tresses curling around that form of
Parian marble.  She stood there, smiling a deadly smile of scorn and
triumph, a vision as it were, of the Cnidian statue of Praxiteles, or
Phryne when she stepped forth from the billows on the shore of
Eleusis.

"Back!" she called aloud.  "Back! brutal hound, who would violate the
sanctity of thy sovereign's bed!  He shall rebuke the outrage which
you have offered to my person; the very eyes which have polluted my
purity shall be burned out with red-hot irons, and your manhood torn
off and thrown to the dogs.  Begone! till I can have thee made one
who can never see woman more."  And she closed the door of the
bath-room, which she had held half open, so as to conceal the four
bravos behind it, having hastily covered them with the cloths and
carpets with which the bath was provided.

Aghast at so terrible a threat, and struck dumb with so extraordinary
an apparition, the captain of the guard withdrew with a sense of
unpardonable crime, to which, in his innocence, he supposed that his
duty had exposed him.  He staggered down the corridor like a man who
had seen the dead rise from a grave, perplexed and bewildered,
pondering if his best chance lay in seeking the emperor in person or
in making his own flight secure.  If the Mother of God had spoken to
him directly from her image he could not have been more amazed.  And
soon the tramp of the guards was heard to resound in the distance,
and at last died away in the corridors, echoing only with the
moanings of the storm.

The imperial chamber was hardly free from its intruding visitors when
the empress burst into it from the bath in a loose wrapper which she
had flung over her limbs, radiant with the success of her stratagem
and on fire to begin the work of the night.  She ordered the four
bravos to keep close in the bath-room, and, rushing to the chapel,
she called to Balantes to come forth from the altar, and to Bourtzes
to descend from behind the miracle-working picture of the Redeemer.
The veteran thrust forth his huge form from behind the panel, but in
so doing he burst it from its fastenings, and in his struggle to save
himself from falling he tore the sacred image from the wall, and it
fell to the marble floor with a resounding crash.  At the sound all
started in dread--the women, the attendants, the soldiers in hiding,
and the two generals--and dismay made the blood of the stoutest run
chill.  The Christ was broken in fragments--the embossed ornaments
upon it and its heavy setting lay on the marble in confusion, and the
head of the Saviour, bleeding in its crown of thorns, rolled at the
feet of Theophano herself.

Even the stout Bourtzes was aghast at the sight of the sacrilege of
which he had been guilty, and the rest were cowering, as if the
avenging God were about to consume them with His thunderbolt.  Men
who had never quailed before the sons of Ishmael were struck dumb
with horror at the destruction of the miraculous ikon.  The women
screamed and sobbed, and the bravos quivered like whipped hounds.
Theophano sprang forward, and, seizing a dagger from the trembling
hand of a soldier, shouted to them: "What!  Must a woman teach men to
be firm?  Are you scared like children by the noise of fallen
furniture?  Shall I reveal the plot this very instant to his Majesty,
now sleeping behind this panel, and have you all blinded and
mutilated by to-morrow's sun?  Are you all priests or monks, to be
frightened by a few broken bits of painted wood and stone.  This is
nothing but old lumber!" she shrieked, as she crushed with her heel
the fragment at her feet, and stamped in derision on the face of the
Saviour.  "Go on," she cried, "if ye are men and warriors, and care
to live another day!  But where is the leader himself?--where is
Tzimisces?  Every instant may bring death to him--to us all--death
and torture of the sharpest that can be devised by his Sacred
Majesty, the vicegerent of Christ on earth!"

With these words, in an agony of eagerness and excitement, she rushed
to the anteroom, where the narrow window of a tower looked out upon
the sea below.  The storm was still howling along the Bosphorus, and
the watchers, livid with anxiety, were straining their eyes through
the darkness, if they could see any sign of a boat in the waters.
"Nothing can float this night in such a gale," said Bourtzes; "it is
idle to wait for John.  Let us work this instant, for delay will cost
us our lives!"

"Wait, I bid you!" cried Theophano, in fury; "wait for Tzimisces to
lead, or I pass to the emperor myself and denounce you as his
murderers here!"  Bourtzes looked doubtfully at Balantes, and
Balantes looked at Bourtzes, but neither dared brave the woman at
bay.  Each hesitated, and submitted to her will.

At this time a suppressed cry broke out from the watchers that a
small ship could be descried battling with the billows and nearing
the quay, where a tiny port admitted a boat to the very foot of the
turret.  The empress flung herself into the embrasure, and, with the
gesture of a mænad, shouted a hoarse note of triumph, "It is he, my
hero, my own John, my savior!"

With wonderful skill and good fortune, the stout ship was driven into
the small dock, and in the shelter of its quay was able to discharge
its three passengers.  The basket and tackle, with its windlass, that
was often used for such ends, was swiftly lowered from the window,
and soon was drawn up swaying in the gale but deftly guided from
below.  And at length, with hairbreadth escapes and astonishing feats
of strength and adroitness, John Tzimisces crept from the basket and
was dragged into the narrow embrasure.  He leaped into the room, and,
as he was, all dripping with salt foam, chilled with the snow and in
his coat of mail, he flung himself desperately into the open arms of
the empress.  "My hero, my avenger, my lord, my sovereign that is to
be!" fawned Theophano, pressing her lips to his in a torrent of wild
kisses.  "The hour is come, and the man!" she cried.  "Draw your
weapons and follow me!"

The private bedchamber of the emperor was silent and dark, dimly lit
in one corner by the ceremonial lamp which ever burned with a dull,
veiled flame before the altar and image of Christ.  The double doors
and heavy tapestries which covered the exits to the corridor on one
side and to the public hall of audience on the other side,
effectually shut out the sound of the guards who still kept watch
without.  The chamber seemed empty and completely closed.  Stealthily
and without a breath of sound the small and secret panel in the
recess through which the empress had entered and retreated some hours
before was gradually opened inch by inch, and an exquisite white
hand, covered with rubies and pearls, could be seen to be holding it
ajar.  Silence followed, broken only by the moaning of the surf
below, and then the lovely face of Theophano was stealthily thrust in
the opening.  She was pale as marble; but the transparence of her
skin and the absolute perfection of her features made her the very
image of Here as figured by the hand of Scopas, but a Here about to
strike some profane intruder.  The wonderful eyes of Theophano, with
their deep sapphire glow, had never been seen so full of fire and
life.  It was no marble head of woman that men saw that night, but
the head of some lovely Gorgon, with the flashing eyes of the tigress
calculating her spring.  Assured at last that the weary Nicephorus
was buried in sleep, she opened the narrow panel till it admitted the
traitors one by one into the sombre chamber.

Bourtzes and Balantes passed in first, closely followed by John
Tzimisces, and behind him stole into the darkness the four
men-at-arms.  All had their weapons drawn.  At a sign from Tzimisces
they surrounded the royal bed on all sides at once, and as the dim
light seemed to betray the person of the emperor beneath the
coverlets, Bourtzes.  Balantes, and John, at a sign from the latter,
struck their daggers heavily into the pile of clothes.  Thrice they
struck in the dim light, but not a thing moved, nor did they feel the
stir of living being.  The dagger of John had inflicted a flesh wound
in the arm of Bourtzes, whose passion was fired at the sight of his
own blood.  They tore the coverlets aside and flung them on the
floor.  The bed was empty, and no sign of the emperor's presence
could be perceived.

The three traitors stared at one another with wild eyes; and, brave
as they all were, they felt their hearts beat loud.  "We are betrayed
by this fiend!" cried Bourtzes, in a hoarse whisper.  "She has lured
us here for her own evil purpose.  Let us slay her in her sin, even
if it cost us our lives."  And Bourtzes and Balantes glared upon
Tzimisces, as if they would accuse him of being an accomplice of the
woman in the plot to entrap them.  Tzimisces himself was at a loss,
and the four bravos stood livid with confusion, as furtive as rats in
a trap.  It seemed to all that they were on the verge of a desperate
combat among themselves or headlong flight by flinging themselves out
into the sea and terrace below.

Then the panel door, behind which Theophano had been listening
breathless, opened again, and the empress passed in, moving swiftly
and noiselessly in her bare feet, wrapped in a loose, red mantle and
dishevelled tresses, her eyes gleaming like coals of fire beneath her
marble brow.  She looked like some mænad leading a mad rout of
furious satyrs.  She spoke no word, but she waved her bare arm and
pointed across the chamber to the corner where, on the panther's
skin, and concealed under the shaggy mantle of the hermit, Nicephorus
lay motionless in sleep.

Bourtzes and Balantes advanced with drawn swords and death in their
eyes, followed by the men-at-arms, while John Tzimisces stood by the
couch to give the word of command.  "Strike the tyrant!" he hissed,
in a hoarse whisper.  Balantes, with a savage kick of his cavalry
boot, struck the sleeping emperor in the side.  He started
convulsively from the floor, and struggled on to his elbow, gazing
fiercely at the assassins, as his cap fell from his head and
disclosed in the dim light his white locks and beard.  At that
moment, with a horrid curse, the sword of Bourtzes descended on the
brow of the veteran, gashing his nose and cheek and lips, and
horribly mangling his face.  He sank down, blinded with the blood and
agonized with the wound, gasping out, "Mother of God!--help!--help!"
The bravos seized him by the legs and sought to force the fainting
body to kneel before the Armenian, who sat on the couch in an
attitude of mock judgment.  But the mutilated hero sank prone on the
floor, which he bathed in his blood--faintly gasping out the words,
"Help!  Mother of God!--help!"

Tzimisces spurned him with his mailed foot, and all his pent-up rage
and hatred burst forth in one cry of triumph: "Tyrant! traitor!
miscreant!  Why didst thou play me false?  Thou owest to me thy
glory, thy victories, thy throne!  Without me thou wouldst be
nothing.  It is I who beat thy enemies, it is I who placed thee here,
and set thee on the throne which thou hast disgraced.  And all my
services have been repaid by injuries and my benefits answered by
insults.  Envy of a braver man, jealousy, and suspicion have turned
thee into a monster of ingratitude and a by-word of falseness and
cruelty."  With these words, John, in his rage, trampled on his
fallen chief, and, hoarse with passion, he tore handfuls from his
beard, screaming aloud: "All loathe thee--thy people, thy comrades,
thy servants--ay, and thy wife," he added, with a savage grin,
stamping on the mangled and bloody face.

"Mother!--Mother of God!" groaned the dying man with his last gasp.

Maddened with rage and pent-up vengeance, the conspirators beat the
unconscious body on the floor.  They smashed his jaw and broke in his
teeth with the pommel of their swords, and hacked him limb by limb.
Then John, sweeping once more aloft his dripping sword, smote him
through the skull so that the brains poured forth.

The noise of the murder and the hoarse cries of the murderers at last
penetrated to the guard in the corridors outside.  They, not daring
to break in without command, sent for help and orders to the main
corps on guard in the outer court.  These Varangians, wholly
consisting of northern soldiers, devoted to the person of the emperor
_de facto_, rushed forth to break into the palace by the bronze
portal, which they found barred by the conspirators.  The rumor of a
palace intrigue ran through the city.  Wild mobs, mixed with soldiers
and priests, gathered round the palace walls, and fierce cries were
raised by the surging multitudes below.  Leo, the brother of
Nicephorus, was hastening to the gates with a band of Varangians and
followed by his partisans.

All at once a powerful light, cast by many torches, is seen by the
mob below at the window of the palace.  John Tzimisces, already in
the imperial purple, and fully robed, appears before the crowd
beneath; and as he withdraws from the confused shouts they send
forth, Theodorus, his lieutenant, leaps into the window, and there
brandishes in sight of all the mangled, bloody head of him who, but
an hour before, was emperor of the Roman world.  The mob below
uttered hoarse yells of different import--joy mingled with horror;
but amazement and fear prevailed.  The Varangian guardsmen stood to
arms, impassive, waiting for orders from the emperor.  Neither
politics nor rights nor dynasties troubled them.  They were ready to
die in defence of a living autocrat; they would not avenge a dead
one.  Wulf, the son of Sigurd, their chief, cried out aloud: "When an
emperor is crowned and gives the word, we will march and fight.  We
take no orders from a corpse!"

Seeing the Varangians stubbornly impassive and the chief nobles
bewildered, the vast crowd of the city became paralyzed with fear and
gradually melted away.  Black clouds laden with sleet from the Euxine
swept across the turbid sky, and the storm howled round the gloomy
battlements of the Sacred Palace.  Snow now lay thick on the ground
and covered the terraces below.  The headless corpse of the mighty
lord of Rome, maimed, bloody, and crushed out of all resemblance to
man, was flung from the palace window in a heap, and lay all day a
ghastly sight on the ground, staining the snow with its gore.  And
above it at the window dangled on a chain in the wind the mutilated
head of Nicephorus Ever-victorious, that head of which the sight had
so often struck terror into the ranks of the Saracens, and had so
often, on many a wavering field, given new life to the warriors of
Rome and of Christ.




XXXIII

Retribution

The blood had hardly ceased to flow from the wounds of the murdered
emperor when the conspirators hurried from Boucoleon, the scene of
their crime, to the great halls of the Sacred Palace, in order to
enthrone a new autocrator in the person of John, the Armenian.  All
had been carefully prepared by the arts of Theophano and the skill of
Tzimisces.  His agents and ministers hurried about the throng of
grandees and officials, loading some with gifts, some with offices,
all with promises and seduction.  Tzimisces was hastily robed in the
imperial purple and adorned with the regal insignia--he was shod in
the vermilion buskins and crowned with the august diadem of high
state.  The venerable patriarch had been summoned to his office, and
serried ranks of chamberlains, officers, spathaires, priests, and
eunuchs were gathered together in the golden throne-room.

With a blare of trumpets and the chant of choristers in unison,
Tzimisces advanced amid his guards and officials, radiant with
triumph, but still keen and anxious.  The pompous ceremony was begun
and hurried through by the eagerness and fear of all present, and
amid breathless interest a second cortège advanced, more beautiful,
if less numerous, than the last; and Theophano appeared amid her
maidens and ladies of honor, smiling like Aphrodite when she entered
the circle of Olympus, more lovely than ever, radiant with pride and
love.  With pride, for she had achieved the most desperate of all her
adventures and crushed her most hated enemy; with love, for she
beamed on her new lover with all the self-abandonment of passion.
She stepped through the gorgeous hall like the goddess at once of
Empire and of Love, and was about to take her place beside the throne
of Tzimisces, on a couch which had been placed on the dais beside him.

"Holy and venerable patriarch," said John, in a voice of thunder,
"your office to-day is twofold.  First you will unite me and this
royal lady beside me in holy matrimony, and then you will pronounce
us to the Roman world as anointed Augustus and Augusta."

"That shall never be!" rang out the clear voice of the aged
patriarch.  "We acknowledge thee Lord John Tzimisces, our sovereign
autocrator, and I will anoint thee with the blessing of God and his
Begotten Son; but never shall that woman be thy consort on the
throne, nor will I join her in holy marriage to thee or any other
man.  She, the adulteress, the murderess, the profaner of the altar
and the Church--she shall not pollute the Sacred Palace again.  Drive
her forth, in the name of Christ and His Mother, drive her forth from
the Sacred Palace, or cease to pretend to it thyself.  Choose between
God and this woman, John, son of Theophilus.  I have spoken in the
name of the saints who watch over us."

Theophano shrieked with rage, and John foamed at the mouth in his
indignation and wrath.  But, as he looked around him in the vast hall
and closely scanned the looks of his officers and soldiers, he
perceived but too clearly that the patriarch had the whole audience
in his power.  Balantes thrust himself through the crowd of grandees
around the expectant emperor, and whispered in a voice of intense
excitement in the ear of Tzimisces.  "John, son of Theophilus, listen
to me--it is life or death to us both.  The patriarch has already
suborned the most powerful of the nobles and officials about you, and
he will anoint Bourtzes as autocrator if you refuse to put away the
woman.  Choose, then, between her, with a dungeon and mutilation to
her portion, or the throne of Rome and the world.  To hesitate is to
be lost!"

As he spoke, Theophano could no longer be held back by the eunuchs
around her, and she forced her way to the side of Tzimisces.  "John,
my own hero, my love, my king, I have loved you wildly since my eyes
first saw you.  I have sacrificed my life, my soul, my children for
you.  If I have sinned, it was for love of you, that I might have you
to myself, and be free from the monster who outraged us both at once,
whom you can only torture any more, now that he is in hell, by
letting him see me in your arms and proving to him at last what is
the real love of a woman.  Save me, John--take me and hold me.  You
owe all to me--your life that I saved from his vengeance, your
revenge which you have yet to complete, the throne of Rome, from
which this wretched monk would debar you, the noblest Roman of them
all.  We have won it together.  We will mount it and hold it
together.  Come to me; be the man, the hero that you are.  Love me,
and you shall see how I can love."

Again the patriarch spoke in a voice of awful solemnity amid the most
profound silence in the vast hall: "John Tzimisces, thou shalt not
pollute the consecrated throne of our imperial line by dragging into
it this unholy woman.  Order her this instant into captivity in a
convent to be dedicated to God for what remains to her of life on
earth.  Failing this, with the assent of the chief notables of Rome,
I consecrate another as autocrator and Augustus, vicegerent and tutor
of Basil and Constantine, grandsons both of our venerated Constantine
Porphyrogennetus.  Priests of God and His Mother, nobles and soldiers
of Rome, do I speak the words of justice, of Rome, and of Holy
Church?"

A deep murmur of assent rang through the hall, and the keen eye of
Tzimisces saw the inevitable sentence on the woman in the
countenances of all around.  The young princes, Basil and
Constantine, shrank from their mother's women, and took their place
by the side of the patriarch, as fully comprehending the nature of
his threat.  At that sight Theophano sprang forward like a tigress,
struck the child Basil twice across the mouth till his blood gushed
forth over her royal robes, screaming, "Are ye all curs and traitors
together?  Mongrel priest, bastard child, false lover, slaves,
eunuchs, I defy ye all, I curse ye all!"  And with these words she
fell forward fainting in the arms of the black guards, who seized her
and held her in their unsparing grasp.

John Tzimisces heaved a deep groan, and at last, raising his hand
high above his head, in a voice of subdued passion and fierce
command, he cried: "Holy patriarch, ye servants of the Most High,
chiefs, nobles, and soldiers of Rome, I acknowledge my sin in that I
was seduced by the woman.  Take her into strict imprisonment, and let
her be immured in a convent in a distant island of the Euxine, so
that she never again persuade man to evil, as she was about to
persuade myself.  Venerable patriarch, do thy office as of right.
Your words have triumphed.  The evil one is put away from Rome
forever."



THE END









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