Chapter 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.

"Holy and venerable patriarch," said John, in a voice of thunder, "your office to-day is twofold. First you will unite me and this royal lady beside me in holy matrimony, and then you will pronounce us to the Roman world as anointed Augustus and Augusta."

"That shall never be!" rang out the clear voice of the aged patriarch. "We acknowledge thee Lord John Tzimisces, our sovereign autocrator, and I will anoint thee with the blessing of God and his Begotten Son; but never shall that woman be thy consort on the throne, nor will I join her in holy marriage to thee or any other man. She, the adulteress, the murderess, the profaner of the altar and the Church--she shall not pollute the Sacred Palace again. Drive her forth, in the name of Christ and His Mother, drive her forth from the Sacred Palace, or cease to pretend to it thyself. Choose between God and this woman, John, son of Theophilus. I have spoken in the name of the saints who watch over us."

Theophano shrieked with rage, and John foamed at the mouth in his indignation and wrath. But, as he looked around him in the vast hall and closely scanned the looks of his officers and soldiers, he perceived but too clearly that the patriarch had the whole audience in his power. Balantes thrust himself through the crowd of grandees around the expectant emperor, and whispered in a voice of intense excitement in the ear of Tzimisces. "John, son of Theophilus, listen to me--it is life or death to us both. The patriarch has already suborned the most powerful of the nobles and officials about you, and he will anoint Bourtzes as autocrator if you refuse to put away the woman. Choose, then, between her, with a dungeon and mutilation to her portion, or the throne of Rome and the world. To hesitate is to be lost!"

As he spoke, Theophano could no longer be held back by the eunuchs around her, and she forced her way to the side of Tzimisces. "John, my own hero, my love, my king, I have loved you wildly since my eyes first saw you. I have sacrificed my life, my soul, my children for you. If I have sinned, it was for love of you, that I might have you to myself, and be free from the monster who outraged us both at once, whom you can only torture any more, now that he is in hell, by letting him see me in your arms and proving to him at last what is the real love of a woman. Save me, John--take me and hold me. You owe all to me--your life that I saved from his vengeance, your revenge which you have yet to complete, the throne of Rome, from which this wretched monk would debar you, the noblest Roman of them all. We have won it together. We will mount it and hold it together. Come to me; be the man, the hero that you are. Love me, and you shall see how I can love."

Again the patriarch spoke in a voice of awful solemnity amid the most profound silence in the vast hall: "John Tzimisces, thou shalt not pollute the consecrated throne of our imperial line by dragging into it this unholy woman. Order her this instant into captivity in a convent to be dedicated to God for what remains to her of life on earth. Failing this, with the assent of the chief notables of Rome, I consecrate another as autocrator and Augustus, vicegerent and tutor of Basil and Constantine, grandsons both of our venerated Constantine Porphyrogennetus. Priests of God and His Mother, nobles and soldiers of Rome, do I speak the words of justice, of Rome, and of Holy Church?"

A deep murmur of assent rang through the hall, and the keen eye of Tzimisces saw the inevitable sentence on the woman in the countenances of all around. The young princes, Basil and Constantine, shrank from their mother's women, and took their place by the side of the patriarch, as fully comprehending the nature of his threat. At that sight Theophano sprang forward like a tigress, struck the child Basil twice across the mouth till his blood gushed forth over her royal robes, screaming, "Are ye all curs and traitors together? Mongrel priest, bastard child, false lover, slaves, eunuchs, I defy ye all, I curse ye all!" And with these words she fell forward fainting in the arms of the black guards, who seized her and held her in their unsparing grasp.

John Tzimisces heaved a deep groan, and at last, raising his hand high above his head, in a voice of subdued passion and fierce command, he cried: "Holy patriarch, ye servants of the Most High, chiefs, nobles, and soldiers of Rome, I acknowledge my sin in that I was seduced by the woman. Take her into strict imprisonment, and let her be immured in a convent in a distant island of the Euxine, so that she never again persuade man to evil, as she was about to persuade myself. Venerable patriarch, do thy office as of right. Your words have triumphed. The evil one is put away from Rome forever."

THE END