Chapter II: The Warden of the Eastern March

While this was passing, the party which was bearing the wounded young Basileus moved on with haste and care to the shore of the Bosphorus, where the barge was moored. The two leading horsemen pressed on a little in advance to secure the embarkation with speed. The foremost was a man not yet of middle life, the very model of chivalrous strength, audacity, and animation. He was dark of hue, even for an Eastern Roman, with fiery black eyes, and raven hair, chiselled features, and an aquiline nose, and a complexion of clear and delicate olive, just tinted with color. He wore a hunting-suit, and bore a short weapon of exquisite form and mounting chased in gold, of Persian design. His whole bearing was that of a leader of men, the ideal of a cavalry commander, or of some knight-errant bent on romantic adventures, such as those heroes we now read of in the _Arabian Nights_. His companion, an older and graver man, who treated him as of higher rank than himself, now rode up to the leader, and in low tones seemed pressing on him some urgent counsels. "My Lord Basil Digenes, the accident of to-day may be of deep moment to the whole Roman Empire. If the bandages of the old Greek and his daughter should fail to hold, our young charge may yet slip through our fingers before we can reach the palace. What would be our fate if we brought home to our king of kings his only son a corpse?"

"Nay, Theodore, my good man, we shall save the boy; the Augustus himself is too just and reasonable a king to suppose that you and I would neglect his heir. He knows that we would risk our lives rather than a hair of his head should be harmed."

"His Majesty Born-in-the-Purple is, indeed, a most upright judge, and as kind a master as Rome ever saw. But are you sure that the feeble empress might not be worked on by women and eunuchs, and our rivals seek to strike us down in a palace plot?"

"What care I for rivals!" cried Basil, with a smile of triumph. "I fear no man, and no man of all Rome fears me. From Cæsar to handmaiden they love me and know me to be their friend and protector."

"True, indeed! most noble akritas, and therein lies a matter that is worth thy thought. Hast thou not noticed how our most illustrious sovereign lord, after forty-four years of the burden of state, has begun to weary on his throne? He may--well!--he may abdicate," he whispered in the ear of Basil, "in favor of his heir. Our young Basileus has entered on his eighteenth year, but he may not survive his father. My Lord Basil, you know his way of life as well as I do. He will never live to see his father's years. He may die of this very wound--may the saints save him, and us, too!--he may die this very day--he may meet such another chance ere the year is out. What then? Where will the throne of Rome be then, most illustrious commander and victorious warden of the marches? What will happen then?"

"Most sapient chamberlain," said Basil, "his Sacred Majesty will name a worthy successor, and honor him with the hand of one of the five princesses, his daughters. And if the Basileus were to die without such nomination, the Senate and army chiefs would find such an emperor themselves as they have so often done of old."

"And where would they find such a chief?" murmured the chamberlain, in the insinuating voice of the courtier; "where but in the person of the most valiant hero, lord warden of the eastern frontier, victorious in a hundred fights, the Achilles of our warlike odes--Basil, of royal name and royal race, offspring of a Roman princess and a Syrian emir, who had come to Christ. Basil Digenes, I tell thee, potent akritas and chief, should the throne of Rome become vacant we should all look to thee to mount and hold it!"

"Retro! Satanas!" cried out the akritas (_i.e._, the warden of the marches), with a gay gesture of scorn; "tempt not the most loyal servant of our most High Sovereign Lord! If his son were not to reign, I tell thee again, it would have to be some ennobled husband of one of his Majesty's daughters."

"And who would that be," said the wily chamberlain, "save that chief on whom the loveliest of them all, the gentle Agatha, her father's favorite, casts such looks of tenderness? Why, the Sacred Palace rings with gossip of her sighs and blushes when the harpers sing the deeds of 'The Flower of Our Roman Chivalry,' as the poets name the warden of the eastern march!"

"A truce to thy jests, my lord of the chamber, and profane not with thy court scandal the name of the sweetest, purest, most modest virgin in your city of sin and folly. Things are too serious for idle jesting, and the fate of Rome and our Holy Church is even now hanging in the scales of the angel of judgment. A man who has lived as I have since boyhood, in the saddle and on the borders, knows what are the perils and the trials which are gathering round the empire from the east and from the north."

"Oh, forbear such ominous words, most noble lord warden!" cried the chamberlain, crossing himself more from habit than from superstition; "was Rome ever so great and glorious as she is to-day? Behold in the morning light the splendor of our Eternal City--we can see afar across the straits the gilded dome of the Holy Wisdom and of a hundred fanes. Was any autocrator more truly worshipped and more worthy of our worship than our Most Majestic Sovereign Born-in-the-Purple? What invincible armies does he send forth? What fleets and merchandise crowd the Golden Horn? What multitudes from all parts of this earth swarm in the streets of our matchless capital? What a galaxy of treasure, pomp, and beauty amazes all who are admitted to the Sacred Palace of our king?"

"Vanity of vanities!" groaned the great soldier, more to himself than to the chamberlain; "it is thus that courtiers beguile our Sacred Majesty by idle vaunts. We who in the distant marches have to bear the brunt of the enemy, who have to rule those provinces which he drains to the bone by his ravages--we know all the peril that encompasses our empire and threatens its ruin. Egypt, Syria, Sicily have been torn from it by victorious Saracens and worshippers of the Prophet. Antioch, Jerusalem, Alexandria have forsworn Christ and Rome, and for centuries have submitted to Allah and the Caliph. On the Cilician frontier we hold the passes by daily combats, wherein to-day we find our match--it may be to-morrow our masters. The savage corsairs, who have seized Crete and Cyprus, tear to pieces the seaboard of Asia and of Greece at their own sweet will. Italy is lost to the empire forever, and these Teutons and Latins are boasting already that the empire of Rome is one, and is theirs, not ours. Within a few days' march of Constantinople itself there is a Bulgarian kingdom which may pour on us again in an avalanche at any hour. And beyond them are Slavs, Russ, Petzinacs, Chazars, and Turks, and many a barbarous horde beyond. I tell thee, chamberlain, as I have come hither to tell our sovereign Augustus and his council, that the empire can be saved no longer but by great and thoroughly equipped armies of stalwart Romans, not of hired barbarians--but above all can be saved only by a mighty soldier, by a great general, by a hero whom his men will follow to the death."

"And where shall his Majesty and his valiant soldiers find such a man but in the victor of a hundred fights, the hero of a thousand war-songs, the glorious lord warden of the eastern marches--our commander-in-chief that must be--our sovereign Augustus that might be--if God in His inscrutable purposes took to Himself our Sublime Majesty and his adorable son and heir"--fawned the chamberlain as he stole nearer to the ear of the akritas, and crossed himself again and again in contemplation of the twofold imperial obsequies.

"That can never be," replied Basil Digenes, with an air of deep conviction and thought; "my birth has made it impossible, inconceivable, almost a sacrilege to contemplate. My very name reminds the Romans that I am but half a Roman, and bear in my blood and skin the color of the Prophet. My noble father, Mousur, emir of Edessa as he was, born a Syed of the sacred stock of Islam, and from early youth a hostage at the court of the governor of Cappadocia, the illustrious Ducas, forsook his people and his faith for the love of my mother. Yes, Eudocia Ducas was as noble as he, fair and good enough to make a saint forswear heaven to win her. My father made me a soldier of Christ and of Rome, and such I will live and die. But the blood of the emirs of Edessa stirs in my veins to-day, even when I am leading the charge upon their ranks. And I have seen in the armies of the Prophet courage as high and hearts as pure as any who worship the cross. Never will I stoop to join in the insults that your craven mobs in the city delight to cast at the children of Hagar. I trust in Christ, but I will not revile the Prophet or his servants. And now tell me, most illustrious and most politic lord of the purple chamber, do you think the patriarch and his priests and acolytes will ever consecrate under the dome of the Holy Wisdom me, Digenes--'the half-breed,' the son of the Saracen, with the blood of the Prophet of Mecca darkening my very cheek?"--he ground out these words between his teeth--and then he added with the ringing voice that was natural to him: "No! my Lord Theodore, tempt me not with these palace intrigues. I am proud to serve our Basileus as the warden of the marches. I will fight--I will sweat and die for Rome and for Christ. But I am not of the mould in which your cubicular conspirators are cast."

"Oh, dream not that I am capable of hinting at such treason, my Lord Basil! I sought counsel only in the lamentable yet conceivable chance that might befall this empire and our sacred and imperial stock. On whom, then, would your Eminence propose that we should turn our hopes, if God in heaven were indeed to afflict us so sorely?"

"How can you ask?" shouted the lord warden, almost bounding from his saddle; "there is but one, and he fills every mouth with his glory. There is but one man who can save Rome, but one man whom every Roman warrior will follow, as if he were St. Michael, with the sword of heaven in his hand. Whom could I mean but Nicephorus, the commander-in-chief of the forces of Asia, the greatest hero of the heroic race of Phocas, son, grandson, brother, and kinsman of the most valiant commanders whom Rome has ever known. Ah! had you ever seen our glorious Nicephorus at the head of his army; had you ever heard the roar of his men as his eagle eye swept along their ranks; had you ever watched him as I have, chamberlain, in the storm of a bloody fight, firm as a rock, alert as a young lion, keen as a hawk, and sublime master of the whole battle array--had you ever seen him in the hour of victory, directing all men to his will, like Homer's Zeus presiding over the shock of earthly men below--you would not ask, most eminent lord of the sacred chamber, who was the destined savior of Rome--under God and His mother, be it said--who is our born chief! Why, man alive--Nicephorus Phocas--whom to follow is to be blessed--whom to know is to honor and to serve."

The supple chamberlain was well aware of the enthusiasm for the Armenian chief, in which all the fighting men of the empire were agreed; and he knew how deeply the autocrator himself valued--if he also feared--the genius of his great captain. But he also knew how sorely the palace held Nicephorus in dread. They knew him to be stern, just, of unimpeachable honor, of almost fanatical piety, and of a loyalty that neither flattery nor prize could seduce. This terrible soldier, with his inexorable justice and his inevitable insight, would be a grievous burden to the palace, and to the silken minions who thronged its halls. The ingenious Theodore accordingly made haste to drop the subject and efface from the mind of the gallant warden the impression he had sought to instil into it. And as they had now reached the shore, the whole attention of the party was occupied in placing the young Cæsar in safety and in comfort on his luxurious barge.

The task was rapidly and skilfully accomplished under the masterly care of the lord warden, and soon the imperial barge was being swiftly oared across the two or three miles of sea which divided the palace from the Asian shore. The young Basileus lay peacefully on purple cushions beneath a rich awning of silk, tended by his body-servant, who from time to time moistened his lips with sorbets and cordials, while the keen glances of Basil watched over his charge as he directed the course of the boat. Both he and the chamberlain seemed lost in thought, though the nature of their meditations was somewhat unlike.

The sun had now risen in a dazzling May morning, and was bathing in its light that most glorious of all earth's landscapes. As they rounded the headland of Keras, that we now call Seraglio Point, the barge was in the centre of that scene which the ancient and the modern world has agreed to be the most imposing and most beautiful that Europe and Asia can show. The profusion of form and color is, indeed, quite dazzling to those to whom it is unfamiliar. Bays, gulfs, creeks, and seas were stretched in endless vistas On every side, the gentle rippling of those azure waters glancing with joy in the morning sun. Out of the waters, from point to point there rose terraces, gardens, towers, palaces, and churches, radiant in marble and gold, thickly strewn with groves of beech, acacia, arbutus, and cypress, dotted about with fruit trees, now in their snowy blossom. Northward the grand "river" of the Bosphorus swept slowly down in the majestic tide of its blue stream, stately cliffs and wooded crags rising on either side of the strait, and these were clothed with countless towers, villas, monasteries, and temples.

On their right the Golden Horn ran up far into the land. This branch of the sea was crowded with every kind of floating ship--dromons, or warships of the state, with their brazen beaks, banks of long oars, and high masts fitted to hurl the shells of Greek fire--the bright-sailed merchant vessels from west and east: from Amalphi, Venice, Durrachium, Bari, Naupactus, Cherson, the Ægean, the Propontis, Smyrna, and Rhodes. Thousands of busy craft were moored in the great harbor, while light caiques and skiffs scudded across the narrow seas. In front of the returning barge rose the tremendous ramparts, towers, and gates of new Rome, encircling the vast city with that massive range of fortifications which for eight centuries flung back the most valiant assailants, whether from the north or from the east--those fortifications of which the pathetic ruins and remnants to-day are the most majestic memorial of its forces which the ancient world has left to us.

And behind those miles and miles of wall, battlement, tower, and gate the Seven Hills of New Rome rose into the morning sky, one after the other, in picturesque confusion of terrace, dome, tower, cloister, and palace, all bowered in groves of flowering shrubs and avenues of acacia and tall, dark cypress. And all around this vast and variegated pile--this, the central city of the world, as all who saw it felt it to be, whether they were Latin or Greek, Russ or African, Christian or Moslem, philosopher or barbarian--there mounted up into the blue welkin countless ranges of wooded hills, crags, headlands, and far-off mountain outlines, softly folded in pencilled lines and mists of white haze. Southward the eye ranged across the Propontis, that immense inland lake girt with smiling bays, inlets, and cliffs, with the nine islands we now call the "Princes' Isles," each clothed with villas, convents, gardens, and forests. And far beyond, across the sea and hill, rose dazzling white in the morning sun, in long, broken ranges of snow, that glorious Bithynian Olympus which ever looks down over the imperial city like the heavenly throne of its guardian God.