lupin-coloured Sea of Marmora, slowly, without moving; and, behind
them, the spokes of the _quadriga_ wheels remain separate and single,
with the blue sky showing between each one.
What a city is this, builded of gold and alabaster, with myrtle and
roses strewn over its floors, and doors of embossed silver opening
upon golden trees where jewelled birds sing clock-work notes, and
fountains flow from the beaks of silver eagles. All this splendour
cooped within the fourteen miles of a single city, forsooth! In
Britain, they sit under oaken beams; in France, they eat with
hunting-knives; in Germany, men wear coats of their wives' weaving.
In Italy--but there is a Pope in Italy! The bronze horses pause on
the marble Hippodrome, and days blow over them, brushing their sides
like wind.
It is May eleventh in Constantinople, and the Spring-blue sea shivers
like a field of lupins run over by a breeze. Every tree and shrub
spouted over every garden-wall flouts a chromatic sequence of greens.
A long string of camels on the Bridge of Justinian moves, black and
ostrich-like, against the sheen of water. A swallow sheers past the
bronze horses and drops among the pillars on top of the curve of the
Hippodrome; the great cistern on the Spina reflects a speckless sky.
It is race-day in Constantinople, and the town is turned out upon the
benches of the Hippodrome, waiting for the procession to begin.
"Hola! You fellows on the top tier, do you see anything?" "Nothing
yet, but I hear music." "Music! Oh, Lord! I should think you did.
Clear the flagged course there, the procession is coming." "Down in
front. Sit down, you." "Listen. Oh, dear, I'm so fidgety. If the
Green doesn't win, I'm out a fortune." "Keep still, will you, we
can't hear the music, you talk so loud." "Here they come! Green!
Green! Green! Drown those Blues over there. Oh, Green, I say!"
Away beyond, through the gates, flageolets are squealing, and
trumpets are splitting their brass throats and choking over the
sound. Patter--patter--patter--horses' hoofs on flagstones. They
are coming under the paved arch. There is the President of the Games
in a tunic embroidered with golden palm-branches; there is the
Emperor in his pearl-lappeted cap, and his vermilion buskins; and
here are the racers--Green--Blue--driving their chariots, easily
standing in their high-wheeled chariots. The sun whitens the knives
in their girdles, the reins flash in the sun like ribbons of spun
glass. Three-year-olds in the Green chariot, so black they are blue.
Four blue-black horses, with the sheen of their flanks glistening
like the grain of polished wood. The little ears point forward,
their teeth tease the bits. They snort and jerk, and the chariot
wheels quirk over an outstanding stone and jolt down, flat and
rumbling. The Blue chariot-driver handles a team of greys, white as
the storks who nest in the cemetery beyond the Moslem quarter. He
gathers up his reins, and the horses fall back against the pole,
clattering, then fling forward, meet the bit, rear up, and swing
inward, settling gradually into a nervous jigging as they follow
round the course. "Blue! Blue! Go for him, Blue!" from the North
Corner. "Hurrah for the Blue! Blue to Eternity!" Slowly the
procession winds round the Spina, and the crowd stands up on the
seats and yells and cheers and waves handkerchiefs, sixty thousand
voices making such a noise that only the high screaming of the
flageolets can be heard above it. The horses toss and twitch, the
harness jingles, and the gilded eggs and dolphins on the Spina
coruscate in versicoloured stars.
Above the Emperor's balcony, the bronze horses move quietly forward,
and the sun outlines the great muscles of their lifted legs.
They have reached the Grand Stand again, and the chariots are shut
and barred in their stalls. The multitude, rustling as though they
were paper being folded, settles down into their seats. The
President drops a napkin, the bars are unlocked, and the chariots in
a double rush take the straight at top speed, Blue leading, Green
saving up for the turn at the curve. Round the three cones at the
end, Blue on one wheel, Green undercutting him. Blue turns wide to
right himself, takes the outside course and flashes up the long edge
so that you cannot count two till he curves again. Down to the Green
Corner, Blue's off horses slipping just before the cones, one hits
the pole, loses balance and falls, drags a moment, catches his feet
as the chariot slows for the circle, gathers, plunges, and lunges up
and on, while the Greens on the benches groan and curse. But the
black team is worse off, the inside near colt has got his leg over a
trace. Green checks his animals, the horse kicks free, but Blue
licks past him on the up way, and is ahead at the North turn by a
wheel length. Green goes round, flogging to make up time. Two eggs
and dolphins gone, three more to go. The pace has been slow so far,
now they must brace up. Bets run high, screamed out above the rumble
of the chariots. "Ten on the Green." "Odds fifty for the Blue."
"Double mine; those greys have him." "The blacks, the blacks, lay
you a hundred to one the blacks beat." Down, round, up, round, down,
so fast they are only dust puffs, one can scarcely see which is
which. The horses are badly blown now, and the drivers yell to them,
and thrash their churning flanks. The course is wet with sweat and
blood, the wheels slide over the wet course. Green negotiates the
South curve with his chariot sideways; Blue skids over to the flagged
way and lames a horse on the stones. The Emperor is on his feet,
staring through his emerald spy-glass. Once more round for the last
egg and dolphin. Down for the last time, Blue's lame horse delays
him, but he flays him with the whip and the Green Corner finds them
abreast. The Greens on the seats burst upstanding. "Too far out!
Well turned!" "The Green's got it!" "Well done, Hirpinus!" The
Green driver disappears up the long side to the goal, waving his
right hand, but Blue's lame horse staggers, stumbles, and goes down,
settling into the dust with a moan. Vortex of dust, struggling
horses, golden glitter of the broken chariot. "Overthrown, by the
Holy Moses! And hurt too! Well, well, he did his best, that beast
always looked skittish to me." "Is he dead, do you think? They've
got the litter." "Most likely. Green! Green! See, they're
crowning him. Green and the people! Oh-hé! Green!"
Cool and imperturbable, the four great gilt horses slowly pace above
the marble columns of the Grand Stand. They gaze out upon the
lupin-blue water beyond the Southern curve. Can they see the Island
of Corfu from up there, do you think? There are vessels at the
Island of Corfu waiting to continue a journey. The great horses trot
forward without moving, and the dust of the race-track sifts over
them and blows away.
Constantinople from the Abbey of San Stefano: bubbles of opal and
amber thrust up in a distant sky, pigeon-coloured nebulæ closing the
end of a long horizon. Tilting to the little waves of a harbour, the
good ships _Aquila_, _Paradiso_, _Pellegrina_, leaders of a fleet of
galleys: _dromi_, _hippogogi_, vessels carrying timber for turrets,
strong vessels holding mangonels. Proud vessels under an ancient
Doge, keeping Saint John's Day at the Abbey of San Stefano, within
sight of Constantinople.
Knights in blue and crimson inlaid armour clank up and down the
gang-planks of the vessels. Flags and banners flap loosely at the
mast-heads. There is the banner of Baldwin of Flanders, the standard
of Louis of Blois, the oriflamme of Boniface of Montferrat, the
pennon of Hugh, Count of Saint Paul, and last, greatest, the gonfalon
of Saint Mark, dripped so low it almost touches the deck, with the
lion of Venice crumpled in its windless folds.
Saint John's Day, and High Mass in the Abbey of San Stefano. They
need God's help who would pass over the double walls and the four
hundred towers of Constantinople. _Te Deum Laudamus!_ The armoured
knights make the sign of the cross, lightly touching the crimson and
azure devices on their breasts with mailed forefingers.
South wind to the rescue; that was a good mass. "Boatswain, what's
the direction of that cat's-paw, veering round a bit? Good."
Fifty vessels making silver paths in the Summer-blue Sea of Marmora.
Fifty vessels passing the Sweet Waters, blowing up the Bosphorus.
Strike your raucous gongs, City of Byzantium. Run about like ants
between your golden palaces. These vessels are the chalices of God's
wrath. The spirit of Christ walking upon the waters. Or is it
anti-Christ? This is the true Church. Have we not the stone on
which Jacob slept, the rod which Moses turned into a serpent, a
portion of the bread of the Last Supper? We are the Virgin's chosen
abiding place; why, the picture which Saint Luke painted of her is in
our keeping. We have pulled the sun's rays from the statue of
Constantine and put up the Cross instead. Will that bring us
nothing? Cluster round the pink and white striped churches, throng
the alabaster churches, fill the naves with a sound of chanting.
Strike the terror-gongs and call out the soldiers, for even now the
plumed knights are disembarking, and the snarling of their trumpets
mingles with the beating of the gongs.
The bronze horses on the Hippodrome, harnessed to the gilded
_quadriga_, step forward slowly. They proceed in a measured cadence.
They advance without moving. There are lights and agitation in the
city, but the air about the horses has the violet touch of night.
Now, now, you crossbowmen and archers, you go first. Stand along the
gunwales and be ready to jump. Keep those horses still there, don't
let them get out of order. Lucky we thought of the hides. Their
damnable Greek fire can't hurt us now. Up to the bridge, knights.
Three of you abreast, on a level with the towers. What's a shower of
arrows against armour! An honourable dint blotting out the head of a
heron, half a plume sheared off a helmet so that it leers cock-eyed
through the press. Tut! Tut! Little things, the way of war. Jar,
jolt, mud--the knights clash together like jumbled chess-men, then
leap over the bridges.
Confusion--contusion--raps--bangs--lurches--blows--battle-axes
thumping on tin shields; bolts bumping against leathern bucklers. "A
Boniface to the Rescue!" "Baldwin forever!" "Viva San Marco!" Such
a pounding, pummelling, pitching, pointing, piercing, pushing,
pelting, poking, panting, punching, parrying, pulling, prodding,
puking, piling, passing, you never did see. Stones pour out of the
mangonels; arrows fly thick as mist. Swords twist against swords,
bill-hooks batter bill-hooks, staves rattle upon staves. One, two,
five men up a scaling ladder. Chop down on the first, and he rolls
off the ladder with his skull in two halves; rip up the bowels of the
second, he drips off the ladder like an overturned pail. But the
third catches his adversary between the legs with a pike and pitches
him over as one would toss a truss of hay. Way for the three ladder
men! Their feet are on the tower, their plumes flower, argent and
gold, above the muck of slaughter. From the main truck of the ships
there is a constant seeping of Venetians over the walls of
Constantinople. They flow into the city, they throw themselves upon
the beleaguered city. They smash her defenders, and crash her
soldiers to mere bits of broken metal.
Byzantines, Copts, Russians, Persians, Armenians, Moslems, the great
army of the Franks is knocking at the gates of your towers. Open the
gates. Open, open, or we will tear down your doors, and breach the
triple thickness of your walls. Seventeen burning boats indeed, and
have the Venetians no boat-hooks? They make pretty fireworks to
pleasure our knights of an evening when they come to sup with Doge
Dandolo. At night we will sleep, but in the morning we will kill
again. Under your tents, helmeted knights; into your cabin, old
Doge. The stars glitter in the Sea of Marmora, and above the city,
black in the brilliance of the stars, the great horses of Constantine
advance, pausing, blotting their shadows against the sprinkled sky.
From June until September, the fracas goes on. The chanting of
masses, the shouting of battle songs, sweep antiphonally over
Constantinople. They blend and blur, but what is that light
tinkling? Tambourines? What is that snapping? Castanets? What is
that yellow light in the direction of the Saracen mosque? My God!
Fire! Gold of metals, you have met your king. Ringed and crowned,
he takes his place in the jewelled city. Gold of fire mounted upon
all the lesser golds. The twin tongues of flame flaunt above the
housetops. Banners of scarlet, spears of saffron, spikes of rose and
melted orange. What are the little flags of the Crusaders to these!
They clamoured for pay and won the elements. Over the Peninsula of
Marmora it comes. The whips of its fire-thongs lash the golden city.
A conflagration half a league wide. Magnificent churches, splendid
palaces, great commercial streets, are burning. Golden domes melt
and liquefy, and people flee from the dripping of them. Lakes of
gold lie upon the pavements; pillars crack and tumble, making dams
and bridges over the hot gold. Two days, two nights, the fire rages,
and through the roar of it the little cries of frightened birds come
thin and pitiful. Earth pleading with fire. Earth begging quarter
of the awful majesty of fire. The birds wheel over Constantinople;
they perch upon the cool bronze horses standing above the Hippodrome.
The quiet horses who wait and advance. This is not their fire, they
trample on the luminousness of flames, their strong hind legs plant
them firmly on the marble coping. They watch the falling of the
fire, they gaze upon the ruins spread about them, and the pungence of
charred wood brushes along their tarnished sides like wind.
The Franks have made an Emperor and now the Greeks have murdered him.
The Doge asks for fifty _centenaria_ in gold to pay his sailors. Who
will pay, now that the Emperor is dead? Declare a siege and pay
yourselves, Count, and Marquis, and Doge. Set your ships bow to
stern, a half a league of them. Sail up the Golden Horn, and attack
the walls in a hundred places. You fail to-day, but you will win
to-morrow. Bring up your battering-rams and ballistæ; hurl stones
from your mangonels; run up your scaling ladders and across your skin
bridges. Winter is over and Spring is in your veins. Your blood
mounts like sap, mount up the ladder after it. Two ships to a tower,
and four towers taken. Three gates battered in. The city falls.
Cruel saints, you have betrayed your votaries. Even the relic of the
Virgin's dress in the Panhagia of Blachernæ has been useless. The
knights enter Byzantium, and their flickering pennants are the
flamelets of a new conflagration. Fire of flesh burning in the blood
of the populace. They would make the sign of the cross, would they,
so that the Franks may spare them? But the sap is up in the Frankish
veins, the fire calls for fuel. Blood burns to who will ignite it.
The swords itch for the taste of entrails, the lances twitch at sight
of a Byzantine. Feed, Fire! Here are men, and women, and children,
full of blood for the relish of your weapons. Spring sap, how many
women! Good Frankish seed for the women of Byzantium. Blood and
lust, you shall empty yourselves upon the city. Your swords shall
exhaust themselves upon these Greeks. Your hands shall satisfy
themselves with gold. Spit at the priests. This is the Greek
church, not ours. Grab the sacred furniture of the churches,
fornicate upon the high altar of Saint Sophia, and load the jewels
upon the donkeys you have driven into the church to receive them.
Old pagan Crusaders, this is the Orgy of Spring! Lust and blood, the
birthright of the world.
The bright, shining horses tread upon the clean coping of the
Hippodrome, and the Sea of Marmora lies before them like a lupin
field run over by a breeze.
What are you now, Constantinople? A sacked city; and the tale of
your plundering shall outdo the tale of your splendours for wonder.
Three days they pillage you. Burmese rubies rattle in the pockets of
common soldiers. The golden tree is hacked to bits and carried off
by crossbowmen. An infantry sergeant hiccoughs over the wine he
drinks from an altar cup. The knights live in palaces and dip their
plumes under the arch of the Emperor's bed-chamber.
In the Sea of Marmora, the good ships _Aquila_, _Paradiso_,
_Pellegrina_ swing at anchor. The _dromi_ and _hippogogi_ ride free
and empty. They bob to the horses high above them on the Hippodrome.
They dance to the rhythmic beat of hammers floating out to them from
the city of Constantinople.
Throb--throb--a dying pulse counts its vibrations. Throb--throb--and
each stroke means a gobbet of gold. They tear it down from the walls
and doors, they rip it from ceilings and pry it up from floors. They
chip it off altars, they rip it out of panels, they hew it from
obelisks, they gouge it from enamels. This is a death dance, a
whirligig, a skeleton city footing a jig, a tarantella quirked to
hammer-stroke time; a corpse in motley ogling a crime.
Tap--tap--tap--goes the pantomime.
Grinning devils watch church cutting the throat of church. Chuckling
gargoyles in France, in Britain, rub their stomachs and squeeze
themselves together in an ecstasy of delight. Ho! Ho! Marquis
Boniface, Count Hugh, Sieur Louis. What plunder do you carry home?
What relics do you bring to your Gothic cathedrals? The head of
Saint Clement? The arm of John the Baptist? A bit of the wood of
the True Cross? Statues are only so much metal, but these are
treasures worth fighting for. Fighting, quotha! Murdering,
stealing. The Pope will absolve you, only bring him home a tear of
Christ, and you will see. A tear of Christ! _Eli, Eli, lama
sabachthani!_ Oh, pitiful world! Pitiful knights in your inlaid
armour! Pitiful Doge, preening himself in the Palace of Blachernæ!
Above the despoiled city, the Corinthian horses trot calmly forward,
without moving, and the _quadriga_ behind them glitters in the sun.
People have blood, but statues have gold, and silver, and bronze.
Melt them! Melt them! "Gee! Haw!" Guide the oxen carefully. Four
oxen to drag the head of Juno to the furnace. White oxen to
transport Minerva; fawn-coloured oxen for the colossal Hercules of
Lysippus. Pour them into the furnaces so that they run out mere soft
metal ripe for coining. Two foot-sergeants get as much as a
horse-sergeant, and two horse-sergeants as much as a knight. Flatten
out Constantinople. Raze her many standing statues, shave the
Augustaion to a stark stretch of paving-stones. Melt the bones of
beauty, indomitable Crusaders, and pay the Venetians fifty thousand
silver marks as befits an honest company of dedicated gentlemen.
"The Doge wants those horses, does he? Just as they are, unmelted?
Holy Saint Christopher, what for? Pity he didn't speak sooner, I
sent Walter the Smith to cut the gold off them this morning, but it
sticks like the very devil and he hasn't done much. Well, well, the
Doge can have them. A man with a whim must be given way to,
particularly when he owns all the ships. How about that gilded
chariot?" "Oh, he can't manage that. Just the horses. You were in
a mighty hurry with that cutting, it seems to me. You've made them
look like zebras, and he'll not like that. He's a bit of a
connoisseur in horse-flesh, even if he does live in the water. Wants
to mate them to the dolphins probably, and go a-campaigning astride
of fishes. Ha! Ha! Ha!"
"Steady there, lower the horses carefully, they are for the Doge."
One--one--one--one--down from the top of the Hippodrome.
One--one--one--one--on ox-carts rumbling toward the water's edge, in
boats rowing over the lupin-coloured sea. Great horses, trot calmly
on your sides, roll quietly to the heaving of the bright sea. Above
you, sails go up, anchors are weighed. The gonfalon of Saint Mark
flings its extended lion to the freshening wind. To Venice,
_Aquila_, _Paradiso_, _Pellegrina_, with your attendant _dromi_! To
Venice! Over the running waves of the Spring-blue sea.
_BENEATH A CROOKED RAINBOW_
_As the seasons of Earth are Fire, so are the seasons of men. The
departure of Fire is a change, and the coming of Fire is a greater
change. Demand not that which is over, but acclaim what is still to
come. So the Earth builds up her cities, and falls upon them with
weeds and nettles; and Water flows over the orchards of past
centuries. On the sand-hills shall apple trees flourish, and in the
water-courses shall be gathered a harvest of plums. Earth, Air, and
Water abide in fluctuation. But man, in the days between his birth
and dying, fashions metals to himself, and they are without heat or
cold. In the Winter solstice, they are not altered like the Air, nor
hardened like the Water, nor shrivelled like the Earth, and the heats
of Summer bring them no burgeoning. Therefore are metals outside the
elements. Between melting and melting they are beyond the Water, and
apart from the Earth, and severed from the Air. Fire alone is of
them, and master. Withdrawn from Fire, they dwell in isolation._
VENICE
Venice anadyomene! City of reflections! A cloud of rose and violet
poised upon a changing sea. City of soft waters washing marble
stairways, of feet moving over stones with the continuous sound of
slipping water. Floating, wavering city, shot through with the
silver threads of water, woven with the green-gold of flowing water,
your marble Rivas block the tides as they sweep in over the Lagoons,
your towers fling golden figures of Fortune into the carnation sky at
sunset, the polished marble of the walls of old palaces burns red to
the flaring torches set in cressets before your doors. Strange city,
belonging neither to earth nor water, where the slender spandrels of
vines melt into the carvings of arched windows, and crabs ferry
themselves through the moon-green water rippling over the steps of a
decaying church.
Beautiful, faded city. The sea wind has dimmed your Oriental
extravagance to an iris of rose, and amber, and lilac. You are dim
and reminiscent like the frayed hangings of your State Chambers, and
the stucco of your house-fronts crumbles into the canals with a
gentle dripping which no one notices.
A tabernacle set in glass, an ivory ornament resting upon a table of
polished steel. It is the surface of the sea, spangled, crinkled,
engine-turned to whorls of blue and silver, ridged in waves of
flower-green and gold. Sequins of gold skip upon the water,
crocus-yellow flames dart against white smoothness and disappear,
wafers of many colours float and intermingle. The Lagoons are a
white fire burning to the blue band of the Lido, restlessly shifting
under the cool, still, faint peaks of the Euganean Hills.
Where is there such another city? She has taken all the Orient to
herself. She has treated with Barbarossa, with Palæologus, with the
Pope, the Tzar, the Caliph, the Sultan, and the Grand Khan. Her
returning vessels have discharged upon the mole metals and jewels,
pearls from the Gulf of Oman, silks from Damascus, camel's-hair
fabrics from Erzeroum. The columns of Saint John of Acre have been
landed on her jetties, and the great lions from the Piræus. Now she
rests and glitters, holding her treasures lightly, taking them for
granted, chatting among the fringes, and tinkling sherbet spoons of
an evening in the dark shadow of the Campanile.