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