THE HOME-COMING
In the spring of the year 528, a small brig used to run as a passenger
boat between Chalcedon on the Asiatic shore and Constantinople. On the
morning in question, which was that of the feast of Saint George,
the vessel was crowded with excursionists who were bound for the great
city in order to take part in the religious and festive celebrations
which marked the festival of the Megalo-martyr, one of the most choice
occasions in the whole vast hagiology of the Eastern Church. The day
was fine and the breeze light, so that the passengers in their holiday
mood were able to enjoy without a qualm the many objects of interest
which marked the approach to the greatest and most beautiful capital in
the world.
On the right, as they sped up the narrow strait, there stretched the
Asiatic shore, sprinkled with white villages and with numerous villas
peeping out from the woods which adorned it. In front of them, the
Prince's Islands, rising as green as emeralds out of the deep sapphire
blue of the Sea of Marmora, obscured for the moment the view of the
capital. As the brig rounded these, the great city burst suddenly upon
their sight, and a murmur of admiration and wonder rose from the crowded
deck. Tier above tier it rose, white and glittering, a hundred brazen
roofs and gilded statues gleaming in the sun, with high over all the
magnificent shining cupola of Saint Sophia. Seen against a cloudless
sky, it was the city of a dream-too delicate, too airily lovely for
earth.
In the prow of the small vessel were two travellers of singular
appearance. The one was a very beautiful boy, ten or twelve years of
age, swarthy, clear-cut, with dark, curling hair and vivacious black
eyes, full of intelligence and of the joy of living. The other was an
elderly man, gaunt-faced and grey-bearded, whose stern features were lit
up by a smile as he observed the excitement and interest with which his
young companion viewed the beautiful distant city and the many vessels
which thronged the narrow strait.
"See! see!" cried the lad. "Look at the great red ships which sail out
from yonder harbour. Surely, your holiness, they are the greatest of
all ships in the world."
The old man, who was the abbot of the monastery of Saint Nicephorus in
Antioch, laid his hand upon the boy's shoulder.
"Be wary, Leon, and speak less loudly, for until we have seen your
mother we should keep ourselves secret. As to the red galleys they are
indeed as large as any, for they are the Imperial ships of war, which
come forth from the harbour of Theodosius. Round yonder green point is
the Golden Horn, where the merchant ships are moored. But now, Leon, if
you follow the line of buildings past the great church, you will see a
long row of pillars fronting the sea. It marks the Palace of the
Caesars."
The boy looked at it with fixed attention. "And my mother is there," he
whispered.
"Yes, Leon, your mother the Empress Theodora and her husband the great
Justinian dwell in yonder palace."
The boy looked wistfully up into the old man's face.
"Are you sure, Father Luke, that my mother will indeed be glad to see
me?"
The abbot turned away his face to avoid those questioning eyes.
"We cannot tell, Leon. We can only try. If it should prove that there
is no place for you, then there is always a welcome among the brethren
of Saint Nicephorus."
"Why did you not tell my mother that we were coming, Father Luke?
Why did you not wait until you had her command?"
"At a distance, Leon, it would be easy to refuse you. An Imperial
messenger would have stopped us. But when she sees you, Leon--your
eyes, so like her own, your face, which carries memories of one whom she
loved--then, if there be a woman's heart within her bosom, she will take
you into it. They say that the Emperor can refuse her nothing.
They have no child of their own. There is a great future before you,
Leon. When it comes, do not forget the poor brethren of Saint
Nicephorus, who took you in when you had no friend in the world."
The old abbot spoke cheerily, but it was easy to see from his anxious
countenance that the nearer he came to the capital the more doubtful did
his errand appear. What had seemed easy and natural from the quiet
cloisters of Antioch became dubious and dark now that the golden domes
of Constantinople glittered so close at hand. Ten years before, a
wretched woman, whose very name was an offence throughout the eastern
world where she was as infamous for her dishonour as famous for her
beauty, had come to the monastery gate, and had persuaded the monks to
take charge of her infant son, the child of her shame. There he had
been ever since. But she, Theodora, the harlot, returning to the
capital, had by the strangest turn of Fortune's wheel caught the fancy
and finally the enduring love of Justinian the heir to the throne.
Then on the death of his uncle Justin, the young man had become the
greatest monarch upon the earth, and had raised Theodora to be not only
his wife and Empress, but to be absolute ruler with powers equal to and
independent of his own. And she, the polluted one, had risen to the
dignity, had cut herself sternly away from all that related to her past
life, and had shown signs already of being a great Queen, stronger and
wiser than her husband, but fierce, vindictive, and unbending, a firm
support to her friends, but a terror to her foes. This was the woman to
whom the Abbot Luke of Antioch was bringing Leon, her forgotten son.
If ever her mind strayed back to the days when, abandoned by her lover
Ecebolus, the Governor of the African Pentapolis, she had made her way
on foot through Asia Minor, and left her infant with the monks, it was
only to persuade herself that the brethren cloistered far from the world
would never identify Theodora the Empress with Theodora the dissolute
wanderer, and that the fruits of her sin would be for ever concealed
from her Imperial husband.
The little brig had now rounded the point of the Acropolis, and the long
blue stretch of the Golden Horn lay before it. The high wall of
Theodosius lined the whole harbour, but a narrow verge of land had been
left between it and the water's edge to serve as a quay. The vessel ran
alongside near the Neorion Gate, and the passengers, after a short
scrutiny from the group of helmeted guards who lounged beside it, were
allowed to pass through into the great city.
The abbot, who had made several visits to Constantinople upon the
business of his monastery, walked with the assured step of one who knows
his ground; while the boy, alarmed and yet pleased by the rush of
people, the roar and glitter of passing chariots, and the vista of
magnificent buildings, held tightly to the loose gown of his guide,
while staring eagerly about him in every direction. Passing through the
steep and narrow streets which led up from the water, they emerged into
the open space which surrounds the magnificent pile of Saint Sophia, the
great church begun by Constantine, hallowed by Saint Chrysostom, and now
the seat of the Patriarch, and the very centre of the Eastern Church.
Only with many crossings and genuflections did the pious abbot succeed
in passing the revered shrine of his religion, and hurried on to his
difficult task.
Having passed Saint Sophia, the two travellers crossed the marble-paved
Augusteum, and saw upon their right the gilded gates of the hippodrome
through which a vast crowd of people was pressing, for though the
morning had been devoted to the religious ceremony, the afternoon was
given over to secular festivities. So great was the rush of the
populace that the two strangers had some difficulty in disengaging
themselves from the stream and reaching the huge arch of black marble
which formed the outer gate of the palace. Within they were fiercely
ordered to halt by a gold-crested and magnificent sentinel who laid his
shining spear across their breasts until his superior officer should
give them permission to pass. The abbot had been warned, however,
that all obstacles would give way if he mentioned the name of Basil the
eunuch, who acted as chamberlain of the palace and also as Parakimomen--
a high office which meant that he slept at the door of the Imperial
bed-chamber. The charm worked wonderfully, for at the mention of that
potent name the Protosphathaire, or Head of the Palace Guards, who
chanced to be upon the spot, immediately detached one of his soldiers
with instructions to convoy the two strangers into the presence of the
chamberlain.
Passing in succession a middle guard and an inner guard, the travellers
came at last into the palace proper, and followed their majestic guide
from chamber to chamber, each more wonderful than the last. Marbles and
gold, velvet and silver, glittering mosaics, wonderful carvings, ivory
screens, curtains of Armenian tissue and of Indian silk, damask from
Arabia, and amber from the Baltic--all these things merged themselves in
the minds of the two simple provincials, until their eyes ached and
their senses reeled before the blaze and the glory of this, the most
magnificent of the dwellings of man. Finally, a pair of curtains,
crusted with gold, were parted, and their guide handed them over to a
negro mute who stood within. A heavy, fat, brown-skinned man, with a
large, flabby, hairless face was pacing up and down the small apartment,
and he turned upon them as they entered with an abominable and
threatening smile. His loose lips and pendulous cheeks were those of a
gross old woman, but above them there shone a pair of dark malignant
eyes, full of fierce intensity of observation and judgment.
"You have entered the palace by using my name," he said. "It is one of
my boasts that any of the populace can approach me in this way. But it
is not fortunate for those who take advantage of it without due cause."
Again he smiled a smile which made the frightened boy cling tightly to
the loose serge skirts of the abbot.
But the ecclesiastic was a man of courage. Undaunted by the sinister
appearance of the great chamberlain, or by the threat which lay in his
words, he laid his hand upon his young companion's shoulder and faced
the eunuch with a confidential smile.
"I have no doubt, your excellency," said he, "that the importance of my
mission has given me the right to enter the palace. The only thing
which troubles me is whether it may not be so important as to forbid me
from broaching it to you, or indeed, to anybody save the Empress
Theodora, since it is she only whom it concerns."
The eunuch's thick eyebrows bunched together over his vicious eyes.
"You must make good those words," he said. "If my gracious master--the
ever-glorious Emperor Justinian--does not disdain to take me into his
most intimate confidence in all things, it would be strange if there
were any subject within your knowledge which I might not hear. You are,
as I gather from your garb and bearing, the abbot of some Asiatic
monastery?"
"You are right, your excellency, I am the abbot of the Monastery of St.
Nicephorus in Antioch. But I repeat that I am assured that what I have
to say is for the ear of the Empress Theodora only."
The eunuch was evidently puzzled, and his curiosity aroused by the old
man's persistence. He came nearer, his heavy face thrust forward, his
flabby brown hands, like two sponges, resting upon the table of yellow
jasper before him.
"Old man," said he, "there is no secret which concerns the Empress
which may not be told to me. But if you refuse to speak, it is certain
that you will never see her. Why should I admit you, unless I know your
errand? How should I know that you are not a Manichean heretic with a
poniard in your bosom, longing for the blood of the mother of the
Church?"
The abbot hesitated no longer. "If there be a mistake in the matter,
then on your head be it," said he. "Know then that this lad Leon is the
son of Theodora the Empress, left by her in our monastery within a month
of his birth ten years ago. This papyrus which I hand you will show you
that what I say is beyond all question or doubt."
The eunuch Basil took the paper, but his eyes were fixed upon the boy,
and his features showed a mixture of amazement at the news that he had
received, and of cunning speculation as to how he could turn it to
profit.
"Indeed, he is the very image of the Empress," he muttered; and then,
with sudden suspicion, "Is it not the chance of this likeness which has
put the scheme into your head, old man?"
"There is but one way to answer that," said the abbot. "It is to ask
the Empress herself whether what I say is not true, and to give her the
glad tidings that her boy is alive and well."
The tone of confidence, together with the testimony of the papyrus, and
the boy's beautiful face, removed the last shadow of doubt from the
eunuch's mind. Here was a great fact; but what use could he make of it?
Above all, what advantage could he draw from it? He stood with his fat
chin in his hand, turning it over in his cunning brain.
"Old man," said he at last, "to how many have you told this secret?"
"To no one in the whole world," the other answered. "There is Deacon
Bardas at the monastery and myself. No one else knows anything."
"You are sure of this?"
"Absolutely certain."
The eunuch had made up his mind. If he alone of all men in the palace
knew of this event, he would have a powerful hold over his masterful
mistress. He was certain that Justinian the Emperor knew nothing of
this. It would be a shock to him. It might even alienate his
affections from his wife. She might care to take precautions to prevent
him from knowing. And if he, Basil the eunuch, was her confederate in
those precautions, then how very close it must draw him to her.
All this flashed through his mind as he stood, the papyrus in his hand,
looking at the old man and the boy.
"Stay here," said he. "I will be with you again." With a swift rustle
of his silken robes he swept from the chamber.
A few minutes had elapsed when a curtain at the end of the room was
pushed aside, and the eunuch, reappearing, held it back, doubling his
unwieldy body into a profound obeisance as he did so. Through the gap
came a small alert woman, clad in golden tissue, with a loose outer
mantle and shoes of the Imperial purple. That colour alone showed that
she could be none other than the Empress; but the dignity of her
carriage, the fierce authority of her magnificent dark eyes, and the
perfect beauty of her haughty face, all proclaimed that it could only be
that Theodora who, in spite of her lowly origin, was the most majestic
as well as the most maturely lovely of all the women in her kingdom.
Gone now were the buffoon tricks which the daughter of Acacius the
bearward had learned in the amphitheatre; gone too was the light charm
of the wanton, and what was left was the worthy mate of a great king,
the measured dignity of one who was every inch an empress.
Disregarding the two men, Theodora walked up to the boy, placed her two
white hands upon his shoulders, and looked with a long questioning gaze,
a gaze which began with hard suspicion and ended with tender
recognition, into those large lustrous eyes which were the very
reflection of her own. At first the sensitive lad was chilled by the
cold intent question of the look; but as it softened, his own spirit
responded, until suddenly, with a cry of "Mother! mother!" he cast
himself into her arms, his hands locked round her neck, his face buried
in her bosom. Carried away by the sudden natural outburst of emotion,
her own arms tightened round the lad's figure, and she strained him for
an instant to her heart. Then, the strength of the Empress gaining
instant command over the temporary weakness of the mother, she pushed
him back from her, and waved that they should leave her to herself.
The slaves in attendance hurried the two visitors from the room. Basil
the eunuch lingered, looking down at his mistress, who had thrown
herself upon a damask couch, her lips white and her bosom heaving with
the tumult of her emotion. She glanced up and met the chancellor's
crafty gaze, her woman's instinct reading the threat that lurked within
it.
"I am in your power," she said. "The Emperor must never know of this."
"I am your slave," said the eunuch, with his ambiguous smile. "I am an
instrument in your hand. If it is your will that the Emperor should
know nothing, then who is to tell him?"
"But the monk, the boy? What are we to do?"
"There is only one way for safety," said the eunuch.
She looked at him with horrified eyes. His spongy hands were pointing
down to the floor. There was an underground world to this beautiful
palace, a shadow that was ever close to the light, a region of dimly-lit
passages, of shadowed corners, of noiseless, tongueless slaves, of
sudden, sharp screams in the darkness. To this the eunuch was pointing.
A terrible struggle rent her breast. The beautiful boy was hers, flesh
of her flesh, bone of her bone. She knew it beyond all question or
doubt. It was her one child, and her whole heart went out to him.
But Justinian! She knew the Emperor's strange limitations. Her career
in the past was forgotten. He had swept it all aside by special
Imperial decree published throughout the Empire, as if she were new-born
through the power of his will, and her association with his person.
But they were childless, and this sight of one which was not his own
would cut him to the quick. He could dismiss her infamous past from his
mind, but if it took the concrete shape of this beautiful child, then
how could he wave it aside as if it had never been? All her instincts
and her intimate knowledge of the man told her that even her charm, and
her influence might fail under such circumstances to save her from ruin.
Her divorce would be as easy to him as her elevation had been. She was
balanced upon a giddy pinnacle, the highest in the world, and yet the
higher the deeper the fall. Everything that earth could give was now at
her feet. Was she to risk the losing of it all--for what? For a
weakness which was unworthy of an Empress, for a foolish new-born spasm
of love, for that which had no existence within her in the morning?
How could she be so foolish as to risk losing such a substance for such
a shadow?
"Leave it to me," said the brown watchful face above her.
"Must it be--death?"
"There is no real safety outside. But if your heart is too merciful,
then by the loss of sight and speech--"
She saw in her mind the white-hot iron approaching those glorious eyes,
and she shuddered at the thought.
"No, no! Better death than that!"
"Let it be death then. You are wise, great Empress, for there only is
real safety and assurance of silence."
"And the monk?"
"Him also."
"But the Holy Synod? He is a tonsured priest. What would the Patriarch
do?"
"Silence his babbling tongue. Then let them do what they will. How are
we of the palace to know that this conspirator, taken with a dagger in
his sleeve, is really what he says?"
Again she shuddered and shrank down among the cushions.
"Speak not of it, think not of it," said the eunuch. "Say only that you
leave it in my hands. Nay, then, if you cannot say it, do but nod your
head, and I take it as your signal."
In that moment there flashed before Theodora's mind a vision of all her
enemies, of all those who envied her rise, of all whose hatred and
contempt would rise into a clamour of delight could they see the
daughter of the bearward hurled down again into that abyss from which
she had been dragged. Her face hardened, her lips tightened, her little
hands clenched in the agony of her thought. "Do it!" she said.
In an instant, with a terrible smile, the messenger of death hurried
from the room. She groaned aloud, and buried herself yet deeper amid
the silken cushions, clutching them frantically with convulsed and
twitching hands.
The eunuch wasted no time, for this deed, once done, he became--save for
some insignificant monk in Asia Minor, whose fate would soon be sealed--
the only sharer of Theodora's secret, and therefore the only person who
could curb and bend that most imperious nature. Hurrying into the
chamber where the visitors were waiting, he gave a sinister signal,
only too well known in those iron days. In an instant the black mutes
in attendance seized the old man and the boy, pushing them swiftly down
a passage and into a meaner portion of the palace, where the heavy smell
of luscious cooking proclaimed the neighbourhood of the kitchens.
A side corridor led to a heavily-barred iron door, and this in turn
opened upon a steep flight of stone steps, feebly illuminated by the
glimmer of wall lamps. At the head and foot stood a mute sentinel like
an ebony statue, and below, along the dusky and forbidding passages from
which the cells opened, a succession of niches in the wall were each
occupied by a similar guardian. The unfortunate visitors were dragged
brutally down a number of stone-flagged and dismal corridors until they
descended another long stair which led so deeply into the earth that the
damp feeling in the heavy air and the drip of water all round showed
that they had come down to the level of the sea. Groans and cries, like
those of sick animals, from the various grated doors which they passed
showed how many there were who spent their whole lives in this humid and
poisonous atmosphere.
At the end of this lowest passage was a door which opened into a single
large vaulted room. It was devoid of furniture, but in the centre was a
large and heavy wooden board clamped with iron. This lay upon a rude
stone parapet, engraved with inscriptions beyond the wit of the eastern
scholars, for this old well dated from a time before the Greeks founded
Byzantium, when men of Chaldea and Phoenicia built with huge unmortared
blocks, far below the level of the town of Constantine. The door was
closed, and the eunuch beckoned to the slaves that they should remove
the slab which covered the well of death. The frightened boy screamed
and clung to the abbot, who, ashy-pale and trembling, was pleading hard
to melt the heart of the ferocious eunuch.
"Surely, surely, you would not slay the innocent boy!" he cried. "What
has he done? Was it his fault that he came here? I alone--I and Deacon
Bardas--are to blame. Punish us, if some one must indeed be punished.
We are old. It is today or tomorrow with us. But he is so young and
so beautiful, with all his life before him. Oh, sir! oh, your
excellency, you would not have the heart to hurt him!"
He threw himself down and clutched at the eunuch's knees, while the boy
sobbed piteously and cast horror-stricken eyes at the black slaves who
were tearing the wooden slab from the ancient parapet beneath. The only
answer which the chamberlain gave to the frantic pleadings of the abbot
was to take a stone which lay on the coping of the well and toss it in.
It could be heard clattering against the old, damp, mildewed walls,
until it fell with a hollow boom into some far distant subterranean
pool. Then he again motioned with his hands, and the black slaves threw
themselves upon the boy and dragged him away from his guardian.
So shrill was his clamour that no one heard the approach of the Empress.
With a swift rush she had entered the room, and her arms were round her
son.
"It shall not be! It cannot be!" she cried. "No, no, my darling! my
darling! they shall do you no hurt. I was mad to think of it--mad and
wicked to dream of it. Oh, my sweet boy! To think that your mother
might have had your blood upon her head!"
The eunuch's brows were gathered together at this failure of his plans,
at this fresh example of feminine caprice.
"Why kill them, great lady, if it pains your gracious heart?" said he."
With a knife and a branding iron they can be disarmed for ever."
She paid no attention to his words. "Kiss me, Leon!" she cried. "Just
once let me feel my own child's soft lips rest upon mine. Now again!
No, no more, or I shall weaken for what I have still to say and still to
do. Old man, you are very near a natural grave, and I cannot think from
your venerable aspect that words of falsehood would come
readily to your lips. You have indeed kept my secret all these years,
have you not?"
"I have in very truth, great Empress. I swear to you by Saint
Nicephorus, patron of our house, that, save old Deacon Bardas, there is
none who knows."
"Then let your lips still be sealed. If you have kept faith in the
past, I see no reason why you should be a babbler in the future. And
you, Leon"--she bent her wonderful eyes with a strange mixture of
sternness and of love upon the boy, "can I trust you? Will you keep a
secret which could never help you, but would be the ruin and downfall of
your mother?"
"Oh, mother, I would not hurt you! I swear that I will be silent."
"Then I trust you both. Such provision will be made for your monastery
and for your own personal comforts as will make you bless the day you
came to my palace. Now you may go. I wish never to see you again.
If I did, you might find me in a softer mood, or in a harder, and the
one would lead to my undoing, the other to yours. But if by whisper or
rumour I have reason to think that you have failed me, then you and your
monks and your monastery will have such an end as will be a lesson for
ever to those who would break faith with their Empress."
"I will never speak," said the old abbot; "neither will Deacon Bardas;
neither will Leon. For all three I can answer. But there are others--
these slaves, the chancellor. We may be punished for another's fault."
"Not so," said the Empress, and her eyes were like flints. "These
slaves are voiceless; nor have they any means to tell those secrets
which they know. As to you, Basil--" She raised her white hand
with the same deadly gesture which he had himself used so short a time
before. The black slaves were on him like hounds on a stag.
"Oh, my gracious mistress, dear lady, what is this? What is this?
You cannot mean it!" he screamed, in his high, cracked voice. "Oh, what
have I done? Why should I die?"
"You have turned me against my own. You have goaded me to slay my own
son. You have intended to use my secret against me. I read it in your
eyes from the first. Cruel, murderous villain, taste the fate which you
have yourself given to so many others. This is your doom. I have
spoken."
The old man and the boy hurried in horror from the vault. As they
glanced back they saw the erect inflexible, shimmering, gold-clad figure
of the Empress. Beyond they had a glimpse of the green-scummed lining
of the well, and of the great red open mouth of the eunuch, as he
screamed and prayed while every tug of the straining slaves brought him
one step nearer to the brink. With their hands over their ears they
rushed away, but even so they heard that last woman-like shriek, and
then the heavy plunge far down in the dark abysses of the earth.
