Chapter 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.