African slaves and Persian guards after him.
That night at the feast one of his madnesses came upon the Emperor; the
dæmons got hold of him and he fought them off, howling; then he and
Basil and Basiliskian gave commands that the bodies of the Ikonoclast
Emperors be taken from their tombs, for they were the dæmons who
haunted us. And this was wonderful, for by the light of torches of
pine the body of Constantine, fifth of that name, was dragged from
his sarcophagus and thrown out on to the sand of the circus; and
there was he, ninety years dead, white as shredded ivory, clad in
cerecloths of tarnished gold and heavy violet that gave out a thick,
sweet scent of spices; and there was John the Grammarian beside him,
with a little crown on his head and hair falling into dust across his
eye-sockets–aha! we beat them with rods in the vile quarter of the
Amaskianon where the dæmons gather and the people were glad because
they were image worshippers: these two Emperors could not see, for they
were blind, as I am now. Then we burnt them where the common thiefs
were executed, and the tomb of Constantine Copronymus was split into
fragments to decorate a church the Emperor built at Pharos.
It was all of green Thessalian marble, here clear as water, there thick
as sap, carved with grapes, genii, cupids and goats, and in the middle
Christ raised on the Cross with a gilt halo; it was so rich and finely
carved I think God forgave Michael much to get it back in His church.
Look for it when you go to Pharos–green marble, a hand’s length thick.
Behold now I ramble on and come not to what I would say about that
evening in the palace of Anthimos on the coast–the Empress Theodora’s
house where she had bid us all … Eudocia Ingerina, Basil, Basiliskian,
Thekla and all the court.
Listen to me, I was faithful to Michael, therefore am I blinded.… I can
tell you everything.
The three Emperors had been hunting that day, and afterwards there was
a mighty feast; Eudocia sat by Basil at the table and often whispered
to him.
I was one of those who carried Michael senseless with wine to his
chamber and laid him on his bed with the vermilion cushions. As I came
out I saw the bolts of the door were broken, but I thought nothing of
it, as it was Theodora’s house. On a low couch with silver and amber
legs lay Basiliskian, with his red hair and his yellow robes tumbled
about him; I lay in the outer chamber.
Beautiful were those two rooms, tiled with blue, patterned with
carnations and curtained with silks stiff with fruits and flowers of
gold; above the couch were saints with long eyes and raised hands, the
elders praying all in white on the daisied floor of Heaven, this in
mosaic, glittering, and a lamp with square-cut green stones round the
base, hanging before.
Flat on his back lay Michael, with his head slipping from the pillows
and the roses slipping from his black hair; his white silk robe flowed
open on his coat of silver and the clusters of topaz shone in the
crossings of his gilt sandals.
The window was wide on the night; there was a moon above the tamarisk
trees and a nightingale singing fitfully.
It was very silent after all the noise and riot, and I was half asleep
when the door was pushed open and some men entered. There was the third
Emperor Basil, a head above them all, the Persian Apelates, Bardas the
father of Basil, his brother Marinos, a cousin of his, all peasants
these, Peter of Bulgaria and John of Chaldia.
Now I rose up softly and got before them and stood in front of the
bedchamber door; for I saw they were all sober.
Basil put out his great hand and gripped my shoulder.
“Basil or Michael?” he asked, and drew his scimitar.
“Michael,” I answered him, for I hated him–the Greek groom!
With that he lifted me out of the way, but I gave a great shout and
beat my hand upon the bronze images and cast them against the tiles so
that they cracked.
Then they pulled me back, and I heard the nightingale grow louder, and
I laughed with rage, for one struck me with a dagger.
I turned round and saw the Emperor Michael staggering in the carved
wood doorway, the roses still clinging to his disordered hair. Seeing
them, his wits cleared.
“Basil!” he shrieked. “I made you Emperor!”
They left me and turned on him, driving him back into the bedroom, and
I lay along the floor with a dagger through my wrist, listening to his
shrieks that hushed the nightingale.
Dragging myself to the door, I beheld Basiliskian struggling with the
Persian, and saw him fall back across the couch with his scarlet-shod
feet up and his mouth open, while the blood gurgled out and hid the
wine-stains on his yellow robes.
I did not care for this, but looked for Michael and called loudly, so
that they rushed out, drawing the curtains behind them and fled into
the corridor.
Now none came, for tumults were such common things, and after a little
Basil came back and looked about him; and after him followed Eudocia
Ingerina in a green mantle with a lamp of bright enamel in her hand.
“Have you done it?” she asked, and I knew she had set Basil on, though
the Emperor Michael had loved her. “Quick! Have you done it?”
“Yes,” he said, and the others came back.
“What if he is not dead?” said John of Chaldia, and shifted his ivory
and silver sabre in his grasp.
Then she, flashing emerald colours in her robe, turned on them, and I
saw there is more in a woman than her beauty.
“You are not sure?” she cried, and held up the thousand coloured lamp.
“Basiliskian is dead,” answered Apelates.
“Is Michael dead?” she gave back.
As she stepped towards the door I heard the soft sound her cambric
garments made on the floor, and saw her eyes fixed before her with an
expression of expectancy and pleasure–eyes like the black jade they
prize in China. But Basil held her back with his swarthy hand on the
edge of her mantle.
On the smooth walls of opal-tinted tiles moonlight flushed into
lamplight that fell tinted with trembling colour; I saw the dark trees
through the window and the great space of clear sky. I pulled at the
dagger in my wrist, and I heard the Emperor Michael lamenting within.
At the sound of it all save the woman drew back.
“I struck his hands off,” said John of Chaldia, “and he fell on the
ground.”
Eudocia Ingerina looked at Basil.
“Will you be Emperor or no?” she asked. “If that man in there is not
dead–what are _you_?”
His flushed blue eyes rolled towards her; she twitched her robe from
his grasp and lifted the thin silk curtains from the carved door.
I, forgotten, caught hold of the ribbings of scented sandal wood and
looked in … you may believe what I saw, what I was blinded for seeing.
The Emperor Michael, Lord of the East, Vice-regent of God, the last of
the Amorian Cæsars, sat on the floor by the gilt and glorious brocades
of his bed.
His hands were smitten off and his garments trailed with sticky blood;
his head was bowed on his chest and he uttered bitter complaints. In
his black hair some crimson roses still hung; the great rubies and
topaz glittered on his breast. Behind him in the rich murk light I
could see the other Emperor, a huddled heap of red and yellow, and in
the middle of the marble floor (green as the tomb of Copronymus) the
two hands of Michael, twisted into a clutching shape, with huge and
wonderful rings on the fingers.
With a soft movement like the dappled Persian deer Eudocia Ingerina
stole into the chamber; Basil and John of Chaldia were behind her; she
stopped before Michael; her lamp showed his creeping blood.
“Well,” she said. “Well, shall I not be an Empress after all?”
And she touched him with her foot that was covered with a shoe of
green and violet leather, so that he looked up from his incoherent
lamentations.
He tried to rise at that, could not, but gave a shudder and raised his
arms.
“Eudocia,” he said, very loudly, and she stepped back a little, for he
was a hideous sight.
“Come kill this man,” she cried; and then to Michael: “Who will say
masses for you?” and “I would Theodora was here.”
Basil drew a little sword with a snake for a handle and Michael
shrieked, whereon the woman caught him by his long hair and held him so
while the Macedonian plunged the weapon past the topaz Gorgon into his
heart; then they both cast him down and struck at him with their feet,
even while his breast heaved and his eyes moved, and fled together into
the outer chamber.
“To Constantinople,” said Basil, and he embraced Eudocia and kissed
her, after which she veiled her face with violet and left them. The
blood on her feet was almost the last thing I saw.
For Basil found me crawling by the wall; and they took me out and
blinded me and sent me here.…
Michael is buried in Chrysopolis, and his soul is in Hell; and Eudocia
was an Empress and mother of the Leo who rules now, and no one but I
knows that she was there that night … therefore set these things down,
for I, who am an old blind monk, shall soon be in Paradise clad warmly
in starred brocade and cambric fine enough to go through a reed-joint,
lying on a couch covered with soft-coloured woollens, and under my feet
a carpet like was woven in the Peloponnesus to cover the mosaic in the
church Basil built to assuage God’s wrath at the murder of Michael. Did
you ever hear of it?
It was one great peacock with a spread tail.… I spoke to a man who had
seen it.…
So I in Paradise, near, as I said to the gate (stately as the
Adrianople Gate with the church of St. Diomed near by), shall peep down
and see the Emperors, Leos, Constantines, Michaels, howling in Hell,
and in the midst Basil and the woman Eudocia, while fiends swing before
them censers of dull earth filled with sulphurs.…
* * * * *
So on Christmas Eve I take this down from an ancient monk who was
chamberlain once at the court of Michael III. and sometimes wanders in
his mind.
Now he is fallen asleep, and the chants are over, and I will write no
more.
God guard us all from evil. Amen.
Signed by Theophilus, a little scribe in the Monastery of St. John,
Armenia, Christmas Eve, 899.
THE PRISONER
SOPHIA DOROTHEA OF ZELL
“George I. was married to his cousin, Sophia Dorothea, daughter
of the Duke of Zell; accused of an intrigue with a Swedish
adventurer, she was repudiated by her husband and imprisoned in
a castle in Hanover for thirty-two years previous to her death
in 1729.”–_History of England._
December darkened over the dark flats outside Schloss Ahlden; the
sluggish gray river, the barren gray road stretched into the bitter
mist; above the stunted alders and broken reeds the plovers circled
mournfully.
It was the saddest season of the year; but all seasons were sad at
Schloss Ahlden. Spring and summer brought little change, save that the
monotony of damp cold was changed for the monotony of dusty heat. The
Schloss had gloomy towers and careless unadorned rooms; the scanty
furniture was old and worn; the servants were old, too, and had a
repressed silent air. There were not many of these servants; there were
a great number of guards, changed frequently; they were always glad to
go–six months seemed a long time at Schloss Ahlden.
The nearest town was Osnabrück, and that was many miles away. There
was nothing beautiful nor interesting in all the melancholy country.
It seemed strange that any one should have built a castle in a spot
so barren and dreary; it seemed as if he who built must have done so
knowing that one day it would be used as a prison.
A woman had been confined here for thirty-two years; her husband was a
King, her son would be a King, she was by her own birth a Princess and
by right Queen of England, a country she had never seen.
For thirty-two years she had seen nothing but the cold, dull rooms, the
barren Hayden road, the flats, the river, the alders and the plovers.
For thirty-two years she had driven three miles forth, three miles back
along that empty road, stopping always at the turnpike, setting forth
and returning at the same hour.
When she had been brought to Schloss Ahlden she was gorgeous–a
brilliant woman, very young, vivacious, sparkling, beautiful, full of
wit and spirit, of courage and daring.
She had defied them all, defied even the perpetual imprisonment to
which she was condemned. Something would happen, she said.
Nothing had happened.
She sat now, a woman older than age, a woman who had never bloomed
and faded, who had been frozen in her immature loveliness, chilled by
creeping monotony in face and heart, and looked out at the light fading
from the road and from the river Aller. The road was dead; never had it
responded to her passionate watching; no help had ever come along its
dusty length; no messenger spurring to say, “Your husband repents; he
bids you come back,” or “Your husband is a King now; his people insist
that you share his throne,” or “Your husband is dead, and your son sets
you free!”
Nothing ever happened.
With unbroken regularity her guard was changed. Such servants as could
not endure the life left; others came.
These were all the sole incidents in the life at Schloss Ahlden.
There were no letters, no messages, no visitors.
Once her son, after a fierce quarrel with his father, made a desperate
attempt to get to her, but she never knew of it, and soon the Prince
was reconciled with the King and made no effort to come again.
It was astonishing how strong hope was, how it lived and flourished
with nothing to feed on; but it died at last, as the black locks faded
to gray, as the robust young body became feeble and thin, as the
glowing cheek sunk and the brilliant eyes grew dim, hope sickened and
died at last.
She watched the white road from habit; she ceased to think of it as a
highway to deliverance. As the world had forgotten her, so she began
to forget the world. Great wars tore Europe, and the man who was her
husband and Elector of Hanover played a big part in them, though
through the chance of birth and from no great merit; she never heard of
these events.
When he became King of England she did hear of it, but it made no
difference to her situation.
Her name was never spoken outside the walls of Schloss Ahlden; she was
as remote from the minds of men, even from the minds of her children,
as if she had been long dead.
A mere memory–Sophia Dorothea of Zell, repudiated by her husband and a
prisoner at Ahlden–as one might say–Sophia Dorothea of Zell who died
thirty-two years ago and is forgotten.
Her case had caused no sensation; no party espoused her cause; she had
no followers, no adherents, no one planned her escape or pitied her, or
prayed for her; she was merely forgotten.
Yet she was a living, breathing woman, with power to feel, to endure,
to remember–worst of all, that remembering.
The dark crept closer round her as she sat looking out of the window.
The road, the river, the alders, the flats had come to be like the
paintings on prison walls; they meant nothing, they did not represent
the world, they circled her as surely as walls and moat, they changed
as little, they were as cruel in their hard barrenness.
She had been very worldly, very gay, not in the least of a cloistered
temperament, not given to caring for things spiritual; she had enjoyed
life, she had had a great capacity for living fully and splendidly, a
great aptitude for happiness. She remembered now how she had enjoyed
life once; it made her feel very, very old.
The world had closed on her early; she was not fifteen when her
vivacious, mischievous immature beauty had been wedded to her awkward,
slow, selfish young cousin, Georg Ludwig, son of the Electress of
Hanover, who was remotely connected with the royal Stewarts of England.
He had never loved her.
And she had laughed at him, even pitied him, not realising the power
he possessed over her. Even at twenty-two he had been prosaic, sullen,
ungracious, self-important, a Prince without culture, or chivalry, or
sensibility, a hard, obstinate man, narrow in heart and brain.
Even her raw ignorance had seen what he lacked. His unlovely person,
short and stout, his dull blonde face with the pale prominent eyes,
his rude manners and gross self-indulgencies roused aversion in her;
his good qualities were not those that made life any easier for her;
he was brave in every way, he had much good sense, he was honourable
after his fashion. Some women might have been happy with him, not the
woman he had married, her bright, impetuous, fastidious nature, avid of
enjoyment, was hideously ill-matched with the plodding, dull, coarse
character of her husband.
Even their children did not bring them together. When she had been
married six years the Revolution hurled the last Stewart from the
throne of England and put a Prince of the German Empire in his place.
Soon after a law was passed to secure the Protestant succession, and
this made the Electress of Hanover heiress to the Throne of England.
For a while Sophia Dorothea had exulted in the prospect of one day
being Queen of the second nation in the world.
She bloomed gloriously; her husband was openly unfaithful to her. The
little court was coarse and sordid and scandalous, but she had the
power of extracting pleasure from her life, of throwing the glamour
of youth and health over everything. She was frivolous, bold–never
sufficiently moved to be indiscreet, though she sailed near to danger
many times.
Then, when she had been married thirteen years, she met Philip, Count
von Königsmarck.
After that her life had ended as regarded all those things that made it
pleasant, even endurable.
Schloss Ahlden had closed on her youth, her beauty, her high spirits,
her courage. Her hot passions had flared and wasted and waned without a
vent for thirty-two years, and now she was an old woman, almost passive.
Almost, not quite. At times her servants were afraid of her; at times
she was like a tigress enraged.
Even after a lifetime of imprisonment, the passionate spirit at times
still ranged and surged against its bonds.
Once she had had a desperate desire to pass, if only once, the turnpike
on the Hayden road that marked the limit of her drive.
She would drive the cabriolet herself, drive furiously as if
endeavouring to outstrip the guards who always galloped alongside. But
no matter how she drove, always at the turnpike she must turn back. Of
late she had not been out at all; she spent her days glooming at the
window. Her women had been recently changed; only one remained, who had
been with her all the time, and she was very old now and sour with long
exile from her kind.
She, Madame von Arlestein, had been the confidant of the Princess in
the old, old days.
The other attendants who came and went, and the changing officers of
the gloomy little garrison, said that this austere, bitter old woman
really knew if the Princess was innocent or guilty. Guilty the world
had called her before it had forgotten her. Those few who still knew
her as a living woman were not so sure.
“Innocent” or “guilty” were two arbitrary words with which to divide
her conduct. She had herself always maintained her innocency of putting
another man in her husband’s place, as firmly as that husband had
believed in, and acted upon, the contrary.
But that she had been guilty of loving Philip von Königsmarck was
beyond denial. Whether he had ever had more of her than the kiss she
had given him when they were discovered together only Sophia Dorothea
and the Countess von Arlestein knew. For Count Philip had died,
horribly, before the dawn following that fatal night. No one cared much
now, even those who waited on her, whether she had kept her marriage
vows before God.
Unconsciously they thought of her as pure; they could not think one
a wanton who had lived in this awful chastity and renunciation for
thirty-two years.
The Captain of the Guard was a young man, born while she was in prison.
Thinking of what he had already crowded into his life, he shuddered
when he saw the proud, grievous woman entering the austere little
chapel on Sunday, and reflected that during his infancy, his childhood,
his youth, his young manhood, she had been doing the same without rest
or change, while the beauty withered on her face and hope withered in
her heart.
As he rode through the courtyard to-night he looked up at her window,
reluctantly but irresistibly.
There was the peaked white blur of her face, the dark, restless eyes
fixed on the twilight landscape, the long white hand supporting the
sharp chin.
“Herr Jesus!” he muttered. “Why does she not die?”
Sophia Dorothea was thinking the same; she wondered what had kept her
alive, what had actually sustained her to grow _old_–yes, to come to
that horror, to lead this existence to _old age_.
Why had she not flung away a life so miserable and died at least in the
triumph of youth?
She envied Philip von Königsmarck in that he had not lived to grow old.
Hope had upheld her a certain time, but hope was dead. She could recall
almost the actual moment when it had finally died, when she had stood
at the window watching the road, and known at last that no help would
come ever along it to her–known that her husband would not die and
release her; but still she had lived and grown old.
The dark gathered, descended and settled.
She leant back in the threadbare velvet chair, and her tired eyes
remained fixed on the dusk.
She thought of her husband; he was an old man now, but she pictured
him as she had last seen him in the full lustiness of his youth.
Her children were grown to middle life, but she saw them still in
petticoats. Though both were married and had children of their own, the
news had come to her through her women.
She had once had great hopes in her son; she believed that he would
have some desire to see his mother.
She divined rightly. Though his attempt to swim the Aller and storm the
moat had never been told her, for a long while she had clung to the
hope that he had some of the chivalry his father lacked; but he was
a man of forty-five now, and she was still a prisoner; that hope had
died with the others. Her daughter was a Queen, and that was all Sophia
Dorothea knew of her.
She soon ceased to think of them. She rose and went in to her dinner,
which was served in the same room, at the same hour, always, always.
Madame von Arlestein was not there; she had the whimsies of old age;
they said she was failing fast.
The other ladies were cowed and quiet; they had not been long with
their mistress, and two of them had already petitioned to go home.
Sophia Dorothea (Princess of Ahlden she was called, in ghastly
compromise between the titles that were hers by right and the nonentity
which she really was) was an object of terror to these ladies, by
reason of her history, her punishment, her usual silence and her
occasional passionate lashes of speech.
Her appearance added to this horror she inspired; she still wore the
fashions that were the mode when Mary Stewart set them in England and
Madame de Maintenon in France, and this, added to her arrested beauty,
more terrible than old age, made her like a creature resurrected from a
dusty grave.
When her clothes were renewed, which was seldom, they had been cut on
the same pattern, but many of the garments she now wore were those that
she had brought with her when she had first come to Schloss Ahlden.
She wore now a gown of faded, crackling red silk, with a short
petticoat of frilled blue sarcenet; her hair was piled up with the
fan-shaped decoration of stiff lace that had been out of fashion a
quarter of a century; her face had a curious bleached look: she was not
wrinkled, but her fine features were as faded as her gown; she seemed
bloodless, waxen, only in her eyes was that awful look of restlessness
in terrible contrast with the lifelessness of her appearance.
The ladies, each with her own warm life of human interest as a
background for her thoughts, pitied her and shuddered at her, and in
their hearts they counted the days until they should be relieved of
their posts at Schloss Ahlden.
For an hour, as always, they read and sewed after dinner, and, as
always, the Princess sat rigid, looking into the fire. In summer she
would look into the empty hearth in the same way; she had a great
attraction for the fire or the fireplace.
She was never long in a room before she would turn to it and sit in
front of it, staring into the flames or the grate ready for them.
The ladies, when alone, would sometimes dare to breathe the rumour that
accounted for this; it was almost too horrid for utterance. It had to
do with the manner in which Philip von Königsmarck had died.