Chapter XVI: The Imperial City

"The city, signori! Behold the city!"

The cry rang from the mastheads of the fleet. Men dropped their shipboard occupations and ran to the rails. Lord and knight, sailor and sergeant, squire and varlet, all heeded the magic words. After months of travel and toil and sorrow and heartache and disappointment, the goal of their efforts was at hand. Constantinople lay before them, a bright blur across the level surface of the Sea of Marmora, where the European and Asiatic coasts approach to form the gorge of the Bosphorus, through which the waters of the Black Sea escape to mingle with the Mediterranean. Majestic and serene on her unrivalled seat, she viewed these newcomers with the calm dignity that had been born of nine centuries of imperial rule.

Since Constantine first traced the boundaries of the destined capital of the Eastern half of the Roman world, in the year 328 A.D., a score of conquerors had dared to assail the mighty walls that had been strengthened and extended by Emperor after Emperor. The barbarian hordes which submerged Europe in the latter days of Roman dominion in the West, when the old Latin civilisation was tottering to its fall--Huns, Avars, Gepidi, Goths, Vandals, Varings, Tartars, Vlachs--and the later half-savage Slavic races, which absorbed the Asiatic flood and with it the lust for conquest--the Russians, the Bulgarians, the Serbs--had stormed against Constantinople time and time again. In the first dawn of Islam's might, when the hardy Arab tribes swept all before them in a mad rush of fanatic faith in victory, Constantinople hurled them back--twice. The rude Western warriors of the first three Crusades viewed with jealous awe the tremendous fortifications which girdled the Imperial City's matchless wealth.

Save only the capitals of the two Moslem Caliphates, Bagdad and Cordova, no cities of the Middle Ages approached it in grandeur, size or riches, and it exceeded these two even as they exceeded such huddled towns as London and Paris. A million people worked and lived within its municipal jurisdiction. All that was precious, all that was worth while in the literature and philosophy of Imperial Rome and Republican Greece, was collected in its libraries and monasteries. The art of Phidias, of Praxiteles and a long line of men not unworthy to call them masters, embellished its streets and palaces. Here only in the tumultuous mediæval world the lofty principles of Roman law were the accepted guide to justice. The cramping hand of the feudal system had not been permitted to thwart trade and commerce. Schools, police, posts, theatres, organised machinery for charitable and benevolent work, the requisites of an established society, were present and in being.

But there was a reverse to this picture of orderly magnificence. Like so many states which had preceded it, like the Elder Rome, whose name and prestige it had inherited, Constantinople was suffering from the decay of age, and this decay was working from the top downwards. With the tightening of the Imperial power and the relaxation of the supervision of the Senate, the way had been made easy for the despot. If an able Emperor assumed the purple buskins, the Empire prospered. If a sot, a degenerate, a fool or a selfish man won the Imperial dignity, the Empire crumbled. For several centuries now Byzantium had been crumbling. An Emperor occasionally arrested the slow deterioration, but the dry rot of over-centralised authority was spreading its contamination with inexorable virulence.

The Empire was dying, slowly but surely. The hammer-blows of the Saracen states on the East were driving in its boundaries in Asia Minor and blotting out the sturdy peasantry, who had been the mainstay of armies that had upheld the traditions of the Roman legions for centuries after the Roman Eagles had given way to the Cross. The line of the northern frontier, fixed by Trajan at the Danube, long since had receded to the Rhodopes, and year by year the vigorous Slav peoples pushed farther and farther into the domains of the Empire. On the shores of the Marmora and in the surrounding country in Europe and Asia Minor there still remained a belt of prosperous towns and farming communities. And no amount of misgovernment and incapacity could take away from Constantinople itself the commercial supremacy which came from its situation at the juncture of the trade routes between Asia and Africa and Europe.

But this Empire, against which was launched the comparatively feeble forces of the Fourth Crusade, was a husk, a sham, a thing of empty pomp, massive and imposing to outward seeming, inwardly a rotten core ready to fall to pieces at the first vigorous push which pierced the exterior covering. It seemed incredible that such could be the case. The knights and soldiers of the host experienced the same dumb awe which gripped the Crusaders of Godfrey de Bouillon and Frederick Barbarossa. As the vast skyline of the city loomed clearer and clearer over the water, their astonishment was changed to fear. For the first time they appreciated the full extent of their undertaking.

"St. Cuthbert be my guardian, Messer Hugh!" gasped Ralph. "But that is no city! It is a whole country by itself!"

"Ay, Ralph, never saw I the like!" assented Hugh. "Venice is but a village compared to this. There must be as many people in it as in all England."

"You say truth, Hugh," said Matteo, beside them. "I doubt if England--ay, or Northern France, holds more souls than you could count in Constantinople and its suburbs."

Their galley was close in-shore, and the panorama of the Marmoran coast unrolled itself before them. For miles back they had passed a succession of well-built towns and villages, the larger ones walled and gated against attack. Interspersed between were villas and palaces, farmsteads and monasteries. Hugh noted that none of the frequent churches had towers such as were common in France and England. Instead there were light, soaring domes, which gave an effect of ease and spaciousness to the smallest structure. People clustered on the shore to watch the fleet pass, but there were no evidences of panic fear. Farmers worked in the fields and fishermen cast their nets. Now and then the sweet chime of church-bells came to their ears, and sometimes they saw religious processions passing along the roads.

"It would seem that they set much store by religion," observed Hugh.

"Sure, Messer Hugh, I thought they were idolaters or somewhat of that like," said Ralph. "They are never Christians, are they?"

Matteo laughed.

"Your view would please the Pope and his Cardinals, I make no doubt, Ralph," he answered. "But I hold it is as needful to be fair in matters of religious controversy as in, let us say, a question of knightly deportment. The Greeks are schismatics, in sooth; yet the practise of their version of Christianity is as the breath of life to them. They like nothing better than a close dispute over some item of the Creed or mayhap the definition of a phrase that will help nobody nearer to Heaven by knowing."

"What is the chief difference between their belief and ours?" asked Hugh.

"Nay, there you would draw me beyond my depth," laughed the jongleur. "Seriously, comrade, as near as I could ever make out, 'tis largely in the question of their worship of pictures--ikons they call them--of the Blessed Virgin and Our Lord and His Saints. And of course, there is the matter of their claim to be independent of the Holy Apostle of Rome."

"Beyond question, they are in gross error," said Hugh seriously. "Let us hope we may succeed in winning them to perceive the light of grace. But when I look at those walls and towers I could doubt that even so puissant a host as ours may ever pass them."

Before Hugh, as he spoke, loomed the White Castle, the immense fortification which linked the land walls of Constantinople with the sea walls fronting the Bosphorus. Above the frowning barriers, crowded with people, showed a mass of towers and pinnacles, stretching away as far as the eye could see. In this end of the city were the poorer quarters, the slums and the haunts of the lowly. Their houses were jammed close together, and off the main thoroughfares the streets were narrow and dark. Yet there were frequent open spaces. Here a church, there a monastery, beyond a nunnery or a tree-bordered cistern fed by aqueducts which were laid under-ground from the distant hills of Thrace. Beyond all these again showed the eastern quarters of the city, perched on their six hills and the valleys between. The seventh hill--for like Imperial Rome, Imperial Constantinople boasted her seven hills--was in the southwestern quarter.

It was impossible for the eye to take in everything, but Hugh saw all that he could. What caught his attention first was the walls, ponderous, girt with hundreds of towers. To the landward they rose tier above tier, three lines of impenetrable bulwarks, fronted by a moat as broad and deep as a river. On the seaward face they were built at the water's edge with ledges of boulders to guard their foundations from the dash of the waves. At intervals, too, the serried array of the seaward towers was broken by the gap of a harbour, protected by a jetty and guarded by fortifications constructed in the sea with the same careful weight as those which owned a firm bed on land.

Hugh had never seen such walls. In France, England and Italy he had seen castles built in the new fashion of splendour combined with strength which men had brought home with them from the Holy Land after contact with the master-masons of the Saracens. But neither in Western Europe nor in Paynimry were there walls like those which encircled Constantinople. They were the outstanding achievement of engineering in mediæval times. For fourteen miles they marched, from forty to more than one hundred feet high, and on the land side presenting a series of defences two hundred feet wide. They were like cliffs, giving an effect of permanence and endurance, monuments of the skill and pertinacity of man. When Hugh saw them they had lasted for nine hundred years, and although he did not know it, they were to last seven hundred years longer.

His wonderment showed in his face.

"By St. James!" he said reverently. "They were men who built thus! How can our puny numbers avail against such barriers?"

"I know not, Hugh," returned Matteo. "An God wills us victory, it may be! But I have seen the walls of Antioch, and I tell you that though men say they could not be built again in our day, they are as nothing to what you see. Constantinople is a virgin city. No enemy hath ever forced her."

"What is that yon?"

Hugh pointed across the houseroofs to a towering structure which dwarfed the nearby buildings. In front of it a slender column of stone soared aloft like an upraised finger, crowned by a brazen statue which must have been more than lifesize to show at that distance.

"That is the Gate of the Forerunner, for so the Greeks call St. John the Baptist. It is an arch so wide and high that a galley such as ours could pass through it with sail spread and oars pulling. Before it is the Column of Constantine, erected to the memory of the great Emperor who founded the city anew. And beyond the Column is the Forum of Arcadius, whereon is the Church of the Forerunner. Look! You may see the dome sparkle in the sun. On the left hand, that enormous building is the Baths of Arcadius. You may not see it from here for the houses but close by the Forum of Arcadius there is a wondrous statue of the Lady Helen of Troy, a demoiselle of the old Greeks about whom they sing a romaunt that is right pleasant to hear. It is a statue older even than the city, they say."

The fleet drew in closer to the walls, keeping just out of range of the military engines that stood ready on every tower and curtain. Sometimes the Greeks who watched the hundreds of ships shook their swords and shouted hoarse challenges, to which the host gave answer in expressions of defiance. For the most part the passage was made in silence. Hugh looked and looked to his heart's content, and so did every man in the fleet who had energy to drag himself to the rail. Even those unfortunates who were sick with scurvy begged their comrades to help them to a view of the marvellous spectacle.

As they passed on, the buildings within the walls became less dense. Open spaces were more numerous. Groves of trees, tall, stately cypresses and cedars, grew about palaces as fair as the visions of a dream. Marble, onyx, jacinth, porphyry, sandstone, granite, picked out with copper, bronze, silver and gold, these buildings gleamed as though they were encrusted with jewels. Fountains played in their gardens, for aqueducts built by many Emperors since the days of Old Rome insured Constantinople a bountiful supply of water, and an elaborate system of stone-walled sewers laid underground furnished ample drainage and guarded the city from the terrible epidemics which at intervals decimated the insanitary cities of the West.

Hugh pointed to building after building, fascinated as a child, and Matteo described them to him. That was the Church of the Theotokos Hodegetria, founded by the Empress Pulcheria, where was treasured the ikon of the Virgin painted by the hand of St. Luke, the palladium of the city, which was brought out in times of crisis to lead the armies and revivify the failing spirits of the citizens. Involuntarily, Hugh bowed his head and crossed himself.

"God send Our Lady has turned against these people," he said devoutly. "Else we may fight in vain."

"An relics will win for them, the Greeks must be invincible," replied Matteo. "It has been said that the reason why their city hath always withstood siege is that the number and sacredness of the relics furnish a Divine aid which transcends the might of men."

The jongleur continued, and pointed out the Church of St. George, with its monastery, a rambling collection of buildings set in the midst of broad grounds; the Atrium of Justinian, a beautiful marble portico on the hill overlooking the Bosphorus and the Marmora, enshrining a porphyry statue of the Emperor's wife, Theodora, which he had erected as a memorial to her and a lounge whence the citizens might view the sunsets and in which they might seek relief from the heat of the sun. Church and palace and bath, one succeeded another.

"But that pile ahead! See, on the summit of the next hill!" cried Hugh. "It is greater than them all!"

"It is, indeed," responded Matteo. "That is the Palace of the Bucoleon, and it is the richest palace in all the world. In plain truth, it is not one palace, but a group of palaces, with pleasure gardens all about them. Moreover, it is in a way a fortress by itself, for it is surrounded by a wall, and if the Emperor wishes, he can shut himself off in it and at need defy the whole city. And besides its several palaces, it hath quarters for soldiers, stables built of marble, chapels and baths. It is a city in itself."

Hugh marvelled, but wonders crowded upon him afresh. In the distance he saw St. Sophia, the Great Church or Cathedral of the city, its high-flung dome poised in air as light as a bubble. Later he was to marvel afresh at this glorious building, the most perfect religious edifice which Christians ever built, already then more than six hundred years old and destined to last like the city's bulwarks through an additional seven hundred years of oppression, neglect and abomination.

"The open space on which it stands," Matteo told him, "is called the Augustaion. This side of it you behold the Palace of the Senate, the building with the tall pillars. Beyond that again is the Palace of the Patriarch, he who is, in a manner of speaking, the Pope of the Greeks. On the southern side that long, flat structure is the Baths of Zeuxippus. It contains pools of water as long as this ship, and in winter it can be heated so that the cold does not penetrate. The great roofless building at the opposite end of the Augustaion from St. Sophia is the Circus, where the Greeks hold their sports and games. All the people of the host might find seats in it, and there would be room for as many more."

"Is there much more of the city than we can see from here?" asked Hugh.

Matteo laughed.

"Hugh," he said, "we have not seen the half of it--nay, not the quarter of it. Look away, and you will not be able to see across the hills to the land walls, for they go inland from the White Castle, where we first viewed them. So far you have passed along but one face of the city. You will barely see the third as we round this point."

Whilst he was speaking the fleet bore out from the shore in order to pass the point of land which projects into the channel of the Bosphorus to protect the entrance of the Golden Horn. On the top of this point, a rugged hill covered with the palaces of patrician families, stood the Column of Claudius Gothicus, its brazen plates, chased in bas-relief, flaming back the rays of the sun, a mute testimonial to the more virile days of the Empire, when subject peoples bowed their necks to the Emperors and Triumphs passed through the Golden Gate and up the colonnaded length of the Mesé to the Augustaion. Round and round the column twisted the story of the battles Claudius had won, the nations he had conquered, the benefits he had showered upon Rome. Never a man who stared up at it from the decks of the fleet far below perceived the ironic message which was flashed from the brazen plates, the message of defiance of an Empire which had ceased to conquer, which had ceased even to be Roman.

Around the point a new view burst upon Hugh. He found himself looking down the close-built shores of the Golden Horn, that matchless natural harbour which had done so much to facilitate the commercial pre-eminence of the city. On either bank at the entrance was planted a squat tower, and between the two was stretched a weighty chain, which blocked the channel to hostile shipping. Beyond the chain Hugh had a brief glimpse of another succession of walls and towers, fronted by wharves packed with shipping. The perspective seemed endless. As far as he could see the city filled the distance, dense, populous, sullenly perturbed. Trails of smoke arose from countless fires and chimneys: a bodyless, indescribable hum echoed over the water; on the walls there was a gleam of arms and armour.

It was not until the fleet had come about and was making for the opposite shore of the Bosphorus that Hugh bethought him of Edith. In his wonder at the marvellous sights spread out before him, he had forgotten for a moment that she was now separated from him only by that narrow current of water and those grim walls that seemed to threaten by their immobility. What was she doing? Had she stood, perchance, in a window of her father's apartment in some wing of the huge Palace of the Bucoleon, watching the fleet pass by? Had her eyes, mayhap, been fixed on the tiny, crawling hull of the _Paradise_, all unknowing of his presence? Did she still think of him at all? Or had she become immersed in the brilliant life around her to a point which shut out memories of the past?

An ache he had not felt in many a day began to gnaw at Hugh's heart, but his mind was snatched back to the present by the splash of the anchor overside and the shouts of the shipmen. The fleet had come to rest in a cove on the Asiatic bank. Atop of a gentle slope which ascended from the beach stood the Imperial palace of Chalcedon, a resort of the Byzantine Emperors in summer or when they sought relaxation in hunting. In the distance were tilled fields with the corn unshocked.

Hugh turned for one last look across the strait at the outline of Constantinople, dimming in the twilight. The city appeared to grow as the light diminished, casting a monstrous shadow athwart the world.