the city and the Sacred Palace. Furious gusts from the north swept
over the Euxine and coursed down the Bosphorus laden with sleet and
snow; the waters round the Golden Horn were lashed into foam and
dashed in showers of spray against the battlements of the city. Amid
the roar of the wind against the casements and the creaking of doors
and shutters there were confused noises, hoarse whispers, and strange
cries along the corridors and antechambers of the palace. The
empress herself was seen from time to time gliding from chamber to
chamber, her tigress eyes agleam with anxiety and eagerness, her
lovely face more marble-like in its pallor than was usual, and her
lips moving from time to time with uncontrolled emotion. She bent
low and conferred in hurried whispers, first with one, then with
another of her women.
The private apartments of the empress consisted of an antechamber
opening into a gorgeous bedchamber, in the centre of which stood a
royal couch with purple hangings and surmounted by a golden eagle.
Around it were vast chests and wardrobes filled with the robes and
adornments of the empress. Within the principal chamber, shut off by
small doors, were two inner recesses, one a tiny chapel with a
life-size painting of the Man-God upon the cross standing high above
the altar, which was covered with rare mountings and cloth; the other
a bath and attiring recess, hung with the instruments for the royal
ablutions.
A low but distinct knock was heard without, and at a nod from
Theophano her aged nurse stealthily advanced to the door and led in a
figure completely enveloped in one of the immense mourning cloaks
that had been used in the funeral of that day. "Enter and approach,
master of the eunuchs," said the sovereign. "I have a charge for
thee this night." She motioned to the women to withdraw into the
antechamber, as the old nurse, who alone had remained, led the veiled
figure to the royal presence and unbuckled the mantle which concealed
both face and figure. "It is no work to-night for a eunuch," she
hissed, "but for a man, a soldier, a hero! Michael Bourtzes,
glorious victor of Antioch, art thou ready to do the deed which shall
avenge thee on thy persecutor and place thee at the head of Rome?
Art thou ready, as I am ready, and these true men here?"
Michael Bourtzes, for it was indeed that illustrious chief in full
armor who had been disguised and introduced as master of the eunuchs,
flung back the sable mantle, and, drawing from its sheath his dagger,
with a look of fierce passion and proud disdain kissed the white hand
of his mistress and murmured, "Royal lady, I am come to slay or to be
slain." She glowed on him with cruel joy in her gleaming eyes, and
led him smiling into the chapel. Then, raising the embroidered cloth
over the altar, with the pathetic image of the Divine Mother worked
on it in gold, "Here is your comrade," she said, and showed him,
concealed beneath the altar-cloth, Balantes, the taxiarch, who had
been hidden in his coat of mail within the very altar itself. The
iron nerves of Bourtzes, who had faced death on a hundred bloody
fields, did not quail at so strange a device, and he silently obeyed
the empress when she bade him stand upon the altar and conceal
himself behind the picture of the Redeemer that hung above it.
In a lull of the storm the low knock was heard again at the door, and
again the aged nurse hastened to unloose the bolts. "Bring in my
tiring-women for the night!" called the empress; and four maids in
loose robes and of somewhat unusual stature and masculine air
advanced into the centre of the bedchamber. "Welcome, stout
friends," fawned the empress; "all goes well, and the hour of
deliverance is at hand!" as one by one the maids slipped off their
woman's attire and stood forth stalwart men-at-arms, in full array
for work and combat. "We want now but John Tzimisces himself; but
the watchers expect him minute by minute."
The empress had hardly uttered these words when the unmistakable
tramp of armed heels was heard along the corridor without. The four
disguised bravos looked around with rage and fear, under a sudden
impulse that they had been caught in a trap and were about to be
slain. Each man fingered his weapon uneasily; and had Theophano at
that moment showed signs of conscious treachery, more than one dagger
would have been planted in her heart. The crone rushed to the
chamber-door to secure the bolts. "Hold them in parley while you
may!" hissed the empress; "I will secure our friends!" "Stand close,
and fear not," she whispered to the two chiefs in the chapel.
"Follow me, my men," she said to the four bravos, as she dragged them
within the bath-room and closed the door from inside.
In the mean time, loud knocking and high words were heard in the
antechamber, and voices of command rang through the private
apartments. "Open at once in the name of our sovereign lord
Nicephorus, Augustus ever-victorious! Here is the order to search
every corner of this palace for concealed traitors, countersigned by
the master of the household! Open, or we force these doors!"
"Not the private chambers of her August Majesty!" screamed the crone,
"and her sacred person now within her couch!"
"Yea! Her Majesty's chamber, above all, and her bed if we choose,"
shouted the angry voice of the captain of the guard, striking the
door with the hilt of his sword.
The noise without grew so loud that the terrified women opened the
doors and crouched aside like vixens caught in a trap. "A mysterious
warning has just reached the emperor that traitors lie this night
concealed within the palace, and our orders are peremptory to search
every corner of it even to the imperial bed and closet." Nor was
this a vain threat. The captain of the guard, a man devoted to his
master, whose life he had saved in the siege of Crete, ordered his
men to ransack the anteroom, and then the chamber of the empress.
They were no novices at the work; every corner was probed; their
daggers struck through every tapestry and curtain; each recess and
chest, closet and niche, was tried and pierced through and through by
sharp eyes and sharper knives. The coverlets of the imperial couch
were flung aside; and it being evident that her Majesty was not
within it, the hangings, curtains, and ornaments were separately
examined by sight and by steel.
Nothing had been found. "Now open these two inner recesses, unless
we are to break into them with our halberds," said the captain to the
crone. "What! the shrine of Christ and his Mother?" shrieked the old
woman, partially opening the door of the chapel and standing across
it fiercely herself; "are you sacrilegious infidels about to profane
the holy retreat of the Mother of God? Look, ye miscreant sons of
Ishmael and Hagar, do ye see aught but our blessed Redeemer and the
Holy Virgin who bore Him?" The rude soldier and his men shrank from
the sacrilege of disturbing the Christ and the Mother of Christ in
their consecrated shrine. And they hesitated to pull aside the
miraculous picture of the Crucified One behind which Bourtzes held
his breath, nor did they venture to raise the altar-cloth that
concealed the mailed form and blanched face of Balantes, the taxiarch.
"Then open this!" shouted the captain, planting himself firmly before
the closed door of the remaining recess. "What!" shrieked the crone,
"you shameless brigand and foul dog, would you thrust your brutal
limbs into the very bath of her Sacred Majesty, and she at this
moment within it, in the very act of bathing her inviolate person?
Our august lord, the autocrator, will know how to punish such
brutality and insolence to his adored consort!"
"I know my duty," said the captain, "If we have any empress here," he
added, with a rude sneer, "she wears a beard and carries steel.
Open, I say, or, by St. Michael, this door comes down with a crash!"
But here, to the unbounded astonishment of the captain of the guard,
as he stood close against the entrance ready to force his way, the
door was flung open from within; and there, in front of the bath,
facing the soldier, stood the empress herself in all her majesty of
port and imperious pride. She stood there like Aphrodite as she rose
out of the Paphian waves, as naked and as lovely as the queen of
Cyprus, the water of her bath still dripping from her rosy limbs, and
the masses of her hyacinthine tresses curling around that form of
Parian marble. She stood there, smiling a deadly smile of scorn and
triumph, a vision as it were, of the Cnidian statue of Praxiteles, or
Phryne when she stepped forth from the billows on the shore of
Eleusis.
"Back!" she called aloud. "Back! brutal hound, who would violate the
sanctity of thy sovereign's bed! He shall rebuke the outrage which
you have offered to my person; the very eyes which have polluted my
purity shall be burned out with red-hot irons, and your manhood torn
off and thrown to the dogs. Begone! till I can have thee made one
who can never see woman more." And she closed the door of the
bath-room, which she had held half open, so as to conceal the four
bravos behind it, having hastily covered them with the cloths and
carpets with which the bath was provided.
Aghast at so terrible a threat, and struck dumb with so extraordinary
an apparition, the captain of the guard withdrew with a sense of
unpardonable crime, to which, in his innocence, he supposed that his
duty had exposed him. He staggered down the corridor like a man who
had seen the dead rise from a grave, perplexed and bewildered,
pondering if his best chance lay in seeking the emperor in person or
in making his own flight secure. If the Mother of God had spoken to
him directly from her image he could not have been more amazed. And
soon the tramp of the guards was heard to resound in the distance,
and at last died away in the corridors, echoing only with the
moanings of the storm.
The imperial chamber was hardly free from its intruding visitors when
the empress burst into it from the bath in a loose wrapper which she
had flung over her limbs, radiant with the success of her stratagem
and on fire to begin the work of the night. She ordered the four
bravos to keep close in the bath-room, and, rushing to the chapel,
she called to Balantes to come forth from the altar, and to Bourtzes
to descend from behind the miracle-working picture of the Redeemer.
The veteran thrust forth his huge form from behind the panel, but in
so doing he burst it from its fastenings, and in his struggle to save
himself from falling he tore the sacred image from the wall, and it
fell to the marble floor with a resounding crash. At the sound all
started in dread--the women, the attendants, the soldiers in hiding,
and the two generals--and dismay made the blood of the stoutest run
chill. The Christ was broken in fragments--the embossed ornaments
upon it and its heavy setting lay on the marble in confusion, and the
head of the Saviour, bleeding in its crown of thorns, rolled at the
feet of Theophano herself.
Even the stout Bourtzes was aghast at the sight of the sacrilege of
which he had been guilty, and the rest were cowering, as if the
avenging God were about to consume them with His thunderbolt. Men
who had never quailed before the sons of Ishmael were struck dumb
with horror at the destruction of the miraculous ikon. The women
screamed and sobbed, and the bravos quivered like whipped hounds.
Theophano sprang forward, and, seizing a dagger from the trembling
hand of a soldier, shouted to them: "What! Must a woman teach men to
be firm? Are you scared like children by the noise of fallen
furniture? Shall I reveal the plot this very instant to his Majesty,
now sleeping behind this panel, and have you all blinded and
mutilated by to-morrow's sun? Are you all priests or monks, to be
frightened by a few broken bits of painted wood and stone. This is
nothing but old lumber!" she shrieked, as she crushed with her heel
the fragment at her feet, and stamped in derision on the face of the
Saviour. "Go on," she cried, "if ye are men and warriors, and care
to live another day! But where is the leader himself?--where is
Tzimisces? Every instant may bring death to him--to us all--death
and torture of the sharpest that can be devised by his Sacred
Majesty, the vicegerent of Christ on earth!"
With these words, in an agony of eagerness and excitement, she rushed
to the anteroom, where the narrow window of a tower looked out upon
the sea below. The storm was still howling along the Bosphorus, and
the watchers, livid with anxiety, were straining their eyes through
the darkness, if they could see any sign of a boat in the waters.
"Nothing can float this night in such a gale," said Bourtzes; "it is
idle to wait for John. Let us work this instant, for delay will cost
us our lives!"
"Wait, I bid you!" cried Theophano, in fury; "wait for Tzimisces to
lead, or I pass to the emperor myself and denounce you as his
murderers here!" Bourtzes looked doubtfully at Balantes, and
Balantes looked at Bourtzes, but neither dared brave the woman at
bay. Each hesitated, and submitted to her will.
At this time a suppressed cry broke out from the watchers that a
small ship could be descried battling with the billows and nearing
the quay, where a tiny port admitted a boat to the very foot of the
turret. The empress flung herself into the embrasure, and, with the
gesture of a mænad, shouted a hoarse note of triumph, "It is he, my
hero, my own John, my savior!"
With wonderful skill and good fortune, the stout ship was driven into
the small dock, and in the shelter of its quay was able to discharge
its three passengers. The basket and tackle, with its windlass, that
was often used for such ends, was swiftly lowered from the window,
and soon was drawn up swaying in the gale but deftly guided from
below. And at length, with hairbreadth escapes and astonishing feats
of strength and adroitness, John Tzimisces crept from the basket and
was dragged into the narrow embrasure. He leaped into the room, and,
as he was, all dripping with salt foam, chilled with the snow and in
his coat of mail, he flung himself desperately into the open arms of
the empress. "My hero, my avenger, my lord, my sovereign that is to
be!" fawned Theophano, pressing her lips to his in a torrent of wild
kisses. "The hour is come, and the man!" she cried. "Draw your
weapons and follow me!"
The private bedchamber of the emperor was silent and dark, dimly lit
in one corner by the ceremonial lamp which ever burned with a dull,
veiled flame before the altar and image of Christ. The double doors
and heavy tapestries which covered the exits to the corridor on one
side and to the public hall of audience on the other side,
effectually shut out the sound of the guards who still kept watch
without. The chamber seemed empty and completely closed. Stealthily
and without a breath of sound the small and secret panel in the
recess through which the empress had entered and retreated some hours
before was gradually opened inch by inch, and an exquisite white
hand, covered with rubies and pearls, could be seen to be holding it
ajar. Silence followed, broken only by the moaning of the surf
below, and then the lovely face of Theophano was stealthily thrust in
the opening. She was pale as marble; but the transparence of her
skin and the absolute perfection of her features made her the very
image of Here as figured by the hand of Scopas, but a Here about to
strike some profane intruder. The wonderful eyes of Theophano, with
their deep sapphire glow, had never been seen so full of fire and
life. It was no marble head of woman that men saw that night, but
the head of some lovely Gorgon, with the flashing eyes of the tigress
calculating her spring. Assured at last that the weary Nicephorus
was buried in sleep, she opened the narrow panel till it admitted the
traitors one by one into the sombre chamber.
Bourtzes and Balantes passed in first, closely followed by John
Tzimisces, and behind him stole into the darkness the four
men-at-arms. All had their weapons drawn. At a sign from Tzimisces
they surrounded the royal bed on all sides at once, and as the dim
light seemed to betray the person of the emperor beneath the
coverlets, Bourtzes. Balantes, and John, at a sign from the latter,
struck their daggers heavily into the pile of clothes. Thrice they
struck in the dim light, but not a thing moved, nor did they feel the
stir of living being. The dagger of John had inflicted a flesh wound
in the arm of Bourtzes, whose passion was fired at the sight of his
own blood. They tore the coverlets aside and flung them on the
floor. The bed was empty, and no sign of the emperor's presence
could be perceived.
The three traitors stared at one another with wild eyes; and, brave
as they all were, they felt their hearts beat loud. "We are betrayed
by this fiend!" cried Bourtzes, in a hoarse whisper. "She has lured
us here for her own evil purpose. Let us slay her in her sin, even
if it cost us our lives." And Bourtzes and Balantes glared upon
Tzimisces, as if they would accuse him of being an accomplice of the
woman in the plot to entrap them. Tzimisces himself was at a loss,
and the four bravos stood livid with confusion, as furtive as rats in
a trap. It seemed to all that they were on the verge of a desperate
combat among themselves or headlong flight by flinging themselves out
into the sea and terrace below.
Then the panel door, behind which Theophano had been listening
breathless, opened again, and the empress passed in, moving swiftly
and noiselessly in her bare feet, wrapped in a loose, red mantle and
dishevelled tresses, her eyes gleaming like coals of fire beneath her
marble brow. She looked like some mænad leading a mad rout of
furious satyrs. She spoke no word, but she waved her bare arm and
pointed across the chamber to the corner where, on the panther's
skin, and concealed under the shaggy mantle of the hermit, Nicephorus
lay motionless in sleep.
Bourtzes and Balantes advanced with drawn swords and death in their
eyes, followed by the men-at-arms, while John Tzimisces stood by the
couch to give the word of command. "Strike the tyrant!" he hissed,
in a hoarse whisper. Balantes, with a savage kick of his cavalry
boot, struck the sleeping emperor in the side. He started
convulsively from the floor, and struggled on to his elbow, gazing
fiercely at the assassins, as his cap fell from his head and
disclosed in the dim light his white locks and beard. At that
moment, with a horrid curse, the sword of Bourtzes descended on the
brow of the veteran, gashing his nose and cheek and lips, and
horribly mangling his face. He sank down, blinded with the blood and
agonized with the wound, gasping out, "Mother of God!--help!--help!"
The bravos seized him by the legs and sought to force the fainting
body to kneel before the Armenian, who sat on the couch in an
attitude of mock judgment. But the mutilated hero sank prone on the
floor, which he bathed in his blood--faintly gasping out the words,
"Help! Mother of God!--help!"
Tzimisces spurned him with his mailed foot, and all his pent-up rage
and hatred burst forth in one cry of triumph: "Tyrant! traitor!
miscreant! Why didst thou play me false? Thou owest to me thy
glory, thy victories, thy throne! Without me thou wouldst be
nothing. It is I who beat thy enemies, it is I who placed thee here,
and set thee on the throne which thou hast disgraced. And all my
services have been repaid by injuries and my benefits answered by
insults. Envy of a braver man, jealousy, and suspicion have turned
thee into a monster of ingratitude and a by-word of falseness and
cruelty." With these words, John, in his rage, trampled on his
fallen chief, and, hoarse with passion, he tore handfuls from his
beard, screaming aloud: "All loathe thee--thy people, thy comrades,
thy servants--ay, and thy wife," he added, with a savage grin,
stamping on the mangled and bloody face.
"Mother!--Mother of God!" groaned the dying man with his last gasp.
Maddened with rage and pent-up vengeance, the conspirators beat the
unconscious body on the floor. They smashed his jaw and broke in his
teeth with the pommel of their swords, and hacked him limb by limb.
Then John, sweeping once more aloft his dripping sword, smote him
through the skull so that the brains poured forth.
The noise of the murder and the hoarse cries of the murderers at last
penetrated to the guard in the corridors outside. They, not daring
to break in without command, sent for help and orders to the main
corps on guard in the outer court. These Varangians, wholly
consisting of northern soldiers, devoted to the person of the emperor
_de facto_, rushed forth to break into the palace by the bronze
portal, which they found barred by the conspirators. The rumor of a
palace intrigue ran through the city. Wild mobs, mixed with soldiers
and priests, gathered round the palace walls, and fierce cries were
raised by the surging multitudes below. Leo, the brother of
Nicephorus, was hastening to the gates with a band of Varangians and
followed by his partisans.
All at once a powerful light, cast by many torches, is seen by the
mob below at the window of the palace. John Tzimisces, already in
the imperial purple, and fully robed, appears before the crowd
beneath; and as he withdraws from the confused shouts they send
forth, Theodorus, his lieutenant, leaps into the window, and there
brandishes in sight of all the mangled, bloody head of him who, but
an hour before, was emperor of the Roman world. The mob below
uttered hoarse yells of different import--joy mingled with horror;
but amazement and fear prevailed. The Varangian guardsmen stood to
arms, impassive, waiting for orders from the emperor. Neither
politics nor rights nor dynasties troubled them. They were ready to
die in defence of a living autocrat; they would not avenge a dead
one. Wulf, the son of Sigurd, their chief, cried out aloud: "When an
emperor is crowned and gives the word, we will march and fight. We
take no orders from a corpse!"
Seeing the Varangians stubbornly impassive and the chief nobles
bewildered, the vast crowd of the city became paralyzed with fear and
gradually melted away. Black clouds laden with sleet from the Euxine
swept across the turbid sky, and the storm howled round the gloomy
battlements of the Sacred Palace. Snow now lay thick on the ground
and covered the terraces below. The headless corpse of the mighty
lord of Rome, maimed, bloody, and crushed out of all resemblance to
man, was flung from the palace window in a heap, and lay all day a
ghastly sight on the ground, staining the snow with its gore. And
above it at the window dangled on a chain in the wind the mutilated
head of Nicephorus Ever-victorious, that head of which the sight had
so often struck terror into the ranks of the Saracens, and had so
often, on many a wavering field, given new life to the warriors of
Rome and of Christ.
XXXIII
Retribution
The blood had hardly ceased to flow from the wounds of the murdered
emperor when the conspirators hurried from Boucoleon, the scene of
their crime, to the great halls of the Sacred Palace, in order to
enthrone a new autocrator in the person of John, the Armenian. All
had been carefully prepared by the arts of Theophano and the skill of
Tzimisces. His agents and ministers hurried about the throng of
grandees and officials, loading some with gifts, some with offices,
all with promises and seduction. Tzimisces was hastily robed in the
imperial purple and adorned with the regal insignia--he was shod in
the vermilion buskins and crowned with the august diadem of high
state. The venerable patriarch had been summoned to his office, and
serried ranks of chamberlains, officers, spathaires, priests, and
eunuchs were gathered together in the golden throne-room.
With a blare of trumpets and the chant of choristers in unison,
Tzimisces advanced amid his guards and officials, radiant with
triumph, but still keen and anxious. The pompous ceremony was begun
and hurried through by the eagerness and fear of all present, and
amid breathless interest a second cortège advanced, more beautiful,
if less numerous, than the last; and Theophano appeared amid her
maidens and ladies of honor, smiling like Aphrodite when she entered
the circle of Olympus, more lovely than ever, radiant with pride and
love. With pride, for she had achieved the most desperate of all her
adventures and crushed her most hated enemy; with love, for she
beamed on her new lover with all the self-abandonment of passion.
She stepped through the gorgeous hall like the goddess at once of
Empire and of Love, and was about to take her place beside the throne
of Tzimisces, on a couch which had been placed on the dais beside him.