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!"