Chapter XII: Digenes and Fatima: Roman or Saracen

The energy and stern determination of the lord general, whose iron discipline was feared by the wildest Mongol horsemen in his motley host, gradually restored order and regular government through the vast encampment of the victorious Romans. The immense treasures which Chandax contained, the plunder of a century and a half of rich and beautiful cities on the Ægean coast and its islands, were placed under adequate guards, and were carefully distributed into proper departments for sale, reward, or display. A portion was reserved to adorn the triumph of the general on his return to Constantinople. Other portions were set apart for the prize of the various commanders, squadrons, and soldiers who had actually taken part in the late battles; but far the largest portion was sold by auction at authorized marts for the benefit of the state, the officers, and the forces engaged.

The general himself from time to time would ride round the lines of cantonment to inspect the conduct of his officials and the behavior of his men, and to satisfy himself that his orders were fulfilled to the letter. His staff and orderlies followed him in a brilliant cavalcade; and by his side was usually to be seen his beloved Digenes, the warden of the marches, now almost restored from the many wounds he had received from Saracen and from Roman, but still bearing a scar across his chiselled cheek, and with his left arm suspended in a silken scarf. Nicephorus glowed with pride as he passed from one orderly camp to another, and noticed how completely the rage of battle and the hurricane of license had given way to a scene of peaceful business as regular as could be seen in the bazaars of the capital itself. The military police patrolled every corner of the encampment, and strong bodies of civilian merchants, salesmen, experts, and traders, such as usually followed a great Roman army, were busy appraising the booty, or putting it up for sale and exchange. The immense stores of coin, nearly all of them golden bezants from the Roman mints, which had been discovered in the vaults of the Arab government, were now being registered and placed in safe keeping for the use of the royal exchequer by skilled fiscal officers of state. The gold and silver plate, the jewelled ornaments, and many of the rarest embroideries, carpets, and tapestries--for the most part plundered in piratical descents on seaboard cities of the empire--these were reserved to be borne in procession when the triumph in the Hippodrome was to be celebrated. And with these were set apart for the same show specimens of arms and armor, jewelled turbans with aigrettes and plumes set on steel helmets, chain coats-of-mail, fringed pennons, kettle-drums and brass trumpets, Bedouin chargers of rare beauty, snowy-white, with sweeping tails and heads as delicate as those of a gazelle. Camels, and white asses of rare Arabian breed, and Nubian slaves, gigantic in body and grotesque in countenance, their ebon limbs circled with massive rings and loosely clad in white tunics, formed many a fantastic and motley group.

Abd-el-Aziz, the aged commander, or kouropas, as the Romans called him, along with his son, the gallant Anemas, were set apart and placed in tents beside headquarters, under the immediate supervision of Nicephorus. They, too, were to be borne in the triumphal procession and offered to the autocrat to await his good pleasure. And with the venerable chief and his son were reserved for the same occasion the most distinguished men and most beautiful youths and maidens of his family and household, all of whom the general had strictly ordered were to be treated with the utmost respect and generosity, and provided with everything proper to their rank.

The ordinary survivors of the Saracen city, and the immense booty of all kinds, which, in spite of the destruction, the fires, and ruin of the three days of storm, had been collected by the officers charged with the duty, were now being sold by auction. Garments, ornaments, utensils, fabrics of every kind and of every factory, both of the East and the West, were strewn about and held up for inspection in picturesque confusion. A few of the wealthier officers gathered round the platforms of the auctioneers to pick up any article which took their fancy; some of the soldiers here and there thought they could recognize an ornament plundered from a home they had once known; but for the most part the buyers were professional traders who, like vultures after a bloody field, had swooped down on the spot from far and near: Jews from Syria and Egypt, Armenian brokers from the Golden Horn, renegade Moslems from Damascus and Acre, exiled Latins from Amalphi and Palermo, Hellenes from Corinth, Italians from Venice and Bari, and Slavs from Adrianople and Dyrrachium.

It was not at all a mere auction of stuff, ornaments, and household goods. The really useful beasts, whether camels, horses, or asses, had been already requisitioned for the army by the imperial officials. The refuse of the cattle, which was not worth the transport, was offered to the highest bidder, and now could command but trifling prices. But the bulk of the ordinary sales were those of living prisoners of war. By the laws of war, as accepted in that age between Christians and Moslems, the entire population of a city taken by storm was destined to slavery. Certainly, slavery had been the recognized lot of the Christian population that was not put to death on capture of a city by the Saracens. An immense proportion of the males able to bear arms in Chandax had been slaughtered in battle and in the murderous scenes of the three days' storm. It was too true, also, that no small part of the aged and infirm, the children and infants of both sexes, had shared the same fate. There still remained thousands upon thousands of women and girls who were worth buying, and a certain number of youths who could command a price. The Arab historians, with exaggeration characteristic of the age, calmly record that two hundred thousand males were slaughtered, and as many women and youths sold as slaves. But it cannot be denied that, law and religion to the contrary, day by day, and week after week, the sales of women, girls, and youths were continued, and that of these all who had beauty, strength, and aptitude of any kind for work, charm, or art, were eagerly contended for by the professional merchants in human flesh.

One of the strange incidents of the sales, and the source of constant disturbance, arose from the claim of many of the prisoners, both girls and youths, that they were Christians and Romans who had been abducted in childhood and sold as slaves. Many of these had, more or less, lost the use of their Greek tongue, and in dress, manners, and ideas, were practically naturalized Saracens. The plea was continually resisted by the merchants, and was, no doubt, very often used in fraud; but the vehemence of the protests, and the eagerness of the captives to prove their Christian faith and their Roman birth, gave rise to perpetual disputes. One of them was in full cry as the general and his staff, with Digenes by his side, rode round the principal slave mart in the camp. Seeing the general approach, a beautiful girl, already set on the stage to be inspected by the buyers, with loud shrieks invoked the protection of the chief. She herself, her younger sister, and a brother, all three included in the next lots, had been carried off from the island of Melos when it was raided by a Saracen fleet fourteen years ago, in the reign of Constantine. The girl had so far lost her Greek speech that it was difficult to follow her at all; and her brother and sister had lost it altogether. Nicephorus turned to Digenes to question the maiden in Arabic and to ascertain if she were really of Roman birth and Christian faith--a task which the lord warden, with his own mixed blood and training, was peculiarly fitted to fulfil.

"What is your name, my daughter, your home, and your age?" asked the lord warden, in a tone of paternal encouragement.

"I am Zoe, as my mother called me as a child--but they call me here Zainab. I was seven years old, I think, when these cruel men carried me off in a big ship, but I can remember my home by the sea-coast."

"Was it in the country or in a city, my daughter, that you dwelt?"

"In a city called Melos, that looked out towards the rising sun," she said.

"And what could you see from your home?"

"Oh, I well remember how we would climb a hill behind our town and see the sun rise over the pinnacles of many islands that seemed to cover the sea like stars in the sky at night."

"Was the island flat, or full of hills and rocks?"

"Oh, I remember how we used to climb the rocks where goats fed and where vines grew, and there was a large fountain of hot water, in which we used to bathe, and the marble steps in a circle, which they said the old Greeks built for shows, and caves in the rocks where we would play at hide-and-seek. Yes, on clear days in the setting sun we could see the far-off mountains. We were a day and a night in that dreadful ship, lying in the hold without air or water, before those savage men, who killed father and mother, brought us here."

"Enough!" said the lord warden, and he turned to the general: "This girl clearly remembers Melos as her home; it is the westernmost of the Cyclades, whence all these islands can be seen, and the main-land of Greece in the far west; it has volcanic rocks and hot springs, for I have touched on the island myself. No Saracen girl could know all this. She and her little sister and brother must be all Christian captives, for all her Saracen look and speech."

And so, amid the cries of joy of the rescued captives, the grumbling and disputes of the captors, merchants, and auctioneers, and the noisy gossip of the curious crowd, the general's cavalcade passed on. And at every mart similar questions as to living or inert property, angry altercations between soldiers and civilians, were brought before the summary tribunal of the staff.

As they rode slowly back from the hubbub of the camp, Nicephorus called Digenes to his side, out of hearing of his followers. "I have now matured the scheme," he said, "on which I intend to despatch you on a mission, my dear warden, as the man most fit to bring it to success. As I told you, his Imperial Majesty has given me full powers to send an embassy to the caliph of Spain to arrange a modus vivendi, as our civil lawyers call it, in our respective conquests as to our prisoners of war. Saracens have conquered and hold effective possession of the noble island of Sicily, as we have now conquered and hold possession of Crete. In both islands large masses of the peasants and working-people belong to the race and creed of the former masters, and in both islands there are tens of thousands of men and women in slavery who have been struck down from freedom and comfort by the fortune of war. The caliph of Cordova also holds tens of thousands of our brethren. I have had a scheme prepared by learned and adroit protocolists from Constantinople to arrange terms of reciprocal treatment on an equal footing. And we shall begin by an exchange of important prisoners. I have chosen you, my dear akritas, to head the embassy, for you are not yet strong enough to undertake any warlike service."

"My honored lord," cried Digenes in surprise, "if I am not fit to hold a sword, I am the last man in the army to be intrusted with protocols and imperial rescripts in vermilion text. Put the charge on one of the imperial eunuchs from the Purple Chamber."

"My dear warden, I have cared for all that. The treaty and its clauses and provisos will be the task of the civilian diplomats who will be in your train. Your name, your birth, your knowledge of the Saracen tongue and manners make you indispensable for this service. The flower of our Roman chivalry will be persona grata in the brilliant court of Abd-er-Rahman, the caliph at Cordova, and will make the task of the diplomats more easy."

"And has the lord general, 'the victorious,' at last begun to see some good things as possible in the blood of Hagar?" asked Digenes, with an arch smile.

"I have never denied, my son, the courage or the devotion of the true children of the False Prophet, even when I saw this courage and devotion to be inspired by the author of all evil himself. They and we must fight it out to the bitter end. But in this secular warfare there are truces, settlements, and agreements inevitable and serving the good purposes of God and the Mother of God, such as help to the saving of many a soul. Our royal master himself has sent embassies and made treaties with the great caliph, and I am obeying his orders and following his example."

"But what particular part am I to bear in the mission?" said Digenes.

"You are to show these proud emirs of the East that they have nothing to teach us Romans in all the courtesies of chivalry, or the romance of knightly life. And there is another duty for which my courtly son is specially fitted. Our mission will include, besides the customary presents and offerings of horses, jewels, and robes, a select band from the noblest of the Saracen families, both men and women, who are to be restored to their Saracen kinsfolk in token of our honor and good faith. Who so fit for a charge so delicate as the hero of the eastern marches? The chief of these will be Fatima, the orphan daughter of the giant emir, who fell by my hand in single combat. She is to return to her people with a sister and a child brother, with other kinsfolk of her own, and her women attendants and slaves."

"Choose some other as her guardian, my lord general," said Digenes, rather shortly.

"St. George! what is this?" said the general, with a grim smile. "Are you not old friends? Little as I know of young hearts myself, I know that she saved your life and you saved hers. It is thought you were lovers, you have been so much together, ever since the storming of the city. But, in any case, there is no man on my staff to whom I can so confidently intrust these noble women on an honorable mission as my gallant Digenes Akritas. I have summoned them to my headquarters to hear my purpose. It is a thing fixed," said Nicephorus, in a tone that no man in all that host had ever ventured to dispute.

"Lovers!" muttered the lord warden; "could I love any but a true Christian, or any but--" and his lips moved silently.

When they returned to headquarters, the noble ladies were at once introduced and presented to the general--Fatima, her sister and her cousins, the daughters of the Saracen emirs, with their slaves and attendants.

"Ladies," said Nicephorus through an interpreter, "it is the will of our sovereign lord, Romanus, to send an embassy to treat of terms with the illustrious Caliph Abd-er-Rahman at Cordova in Spain. With that embassy we send you, to be returned to your own people in honor, as a pledge of our good faith, and in proof that the servants of the Immaculate Virgin Mother make no war upon her sex, and respect the women of those whom they have conquered and slain."

At these words Fatima stood forward and spoke. She was dressed in robes of deep mourning, and lightly veiled. Her whole bearing was one of profound dejection and self-abandonment, and her voice thrilled the circle of fierce soldiers by its tones of poignant misery:

"The will of God be done," she sighed; "be it as my lord, the general, orders. We are his captives; we listen and submit."

"What would you wish other, my daughter?" said Nicephorus, in some surprise that Fatima should show so little joy at her return to a Saracen court. "Where could you be so well bestowed?--not here in Crete, nor in the empire of his Majesty?"

"I am content--and thank my lord," she said--and sighed.

"The mission," said the general, "will be under the command of the lord warden of the marches, for whose safety the Roman army owes you thanks, my daughter; and that noble officer, who can speak your own tongue and has kinsmen in your own race, has personal charge of the safe conduct of yourself and your ladies."

At this announcement the whole bearing of Fatima seemed to change. Her veil hardly concealed her blushes or the joy that lit up her eyes.

"The lord warden," she said, in a voice broken with emotion, "nursed my own brother on his deathbed with tenderness and generosity, and the sister could be in no better care than in his;" and she raised her veil, and with a look of rapture that was more than gratitude, Fatima beamed her thanks to the lord general, to whom she bowed in reverence, with lowered eyes and quickened breath.

"Withdraw with these ladies, my lord warden, and explain to them freely in their own language what is the imperial purpose, and how completely their comfort and their dignity will be considered in the mission of which you have command."

Digenes, who foresaw all the difficulties and risks of the situation, knew the general too well to dream of changing any set purpose he had formed. His chivalry was deeply touched at being appointed guardian of the woman to whom he owed his life, while his loyalty to the imperial princess at home made him shrink from the society of the beautiful Saracen with whom his lot seemed so strangely thrown. He resolved to execute the commission with which he was intrusted with all possible brevity and reserve.

"Surely," said he, in the tones of a judge rather than of a lover--"surely, fair Lady Fatima, it can give to you and your kinswomen and followers nothing but happiness to be restored to your own people of the Arab blood and the faith of the Prophet; and it is my charge to see that everything shall be done to bring you to them in safety and in honor."

"The purpose of the lord general is most kind, and I know that these ladies with me are full of gratitude and pleasure. But for me--I have lost father, mother, brother, and have none to care for, or to care for me. Cordova is not Chandax; nor is this caliph of Spain the real commander of the faithful or the true successor of the Prophet. Where to find that true successor I know not. Nor does any man know. Islam seems passing away in rival sects and hostile parties. I have heard the Christian women who have been in captivity with us solace their afflictions and sufferings by calling on Mary, whom you hold to sit beside your Allah in heaven. We Moslem women have no Mary to invoke. Our Allah is the God of men--of soldiers--he is no God to us poor maidens who sorrow and despair!"

"What!" said Digenes, in astonishment which he could not control, "do you mean that you might learn in time to call on the Blessed Mary yourself, and take comfort in the example of all the holy women who have devoted themselves to the Mother of God?"

"Did the emir of Edessa forfeit his honor when he bowed the knee to the crucified Redeemer?"

"God forbid! lady, my father was a noble chief and a true man; and if he forsook the Prophet for the Immaculate One, it was a conversion inspired with love of the best and purest maiden in the Roman Empire, as all men called my sainted mother!"

"So it is the privilege of men to forsake the faith of their fathers for the love of a woman. Such a one is not called a renegade, if his conversion is the result of--of love!"

"Lady Fatima," said the lord warden with pride and almost with a trace of warmth, "the followers of the Prophet did justice to my father's honor as fully as did the followers of Christ, into whose ranks he passed and among whom he lived and died. The dwellers of the Cilician marches, where Christian and Moslem meet in perpetual combat, have learned to value each other, and to know that the true believers in Koran or Gospel have each much to be proud of, and each have much to envy in the other. Your brother, whom I nursed on his death-bed, and I had but one heart and one mind in many things. We might have been sons of the same parents instead of being, as we were, sons of a brother and a sister. Soldiers who have lived their lives in doing battle for their own faith are of one creed and one race in Asia as in Europe, in Syria as in Thrace!"

"And we poor women have no such privilege? It is not permitted to women to change their faith out of gratitude, or sympathy--or love?" she said, with a melting tone, as her eyes grew dim and her voice died away in sighs.

"The women of Islam," he answered, with deference, "do not go forth into the great world, we are assured, but live a life of retirement in their homes and their harems. They accept the faith and the worship of their fathers, their brothers, or their husbands. They do not busy themselves with mysteries of religion or the sacred books of saints and martyrs. They may change their creed when they change their home, but they do not listen to controversies about sacred things and holy persons."

"And Christian women do this, you mean to tell me, and busy themselves with the things of heaven and the care of their souls?"

"It is natural that it should be so, my dear lady, when you come to think that next to God the Almighty, and His Son, the Redeemer of mankind, the first and holiest of beings is the Immaculate Virgin, Mother of God, who ever sits enthroned in glory with holy martyr-women and saints around her. In Christendom, in our churches, in our worship, in our sacred books, there is quite as great a part for women as for men--nay, a part greater and more beautiful!" And the akritas now spoke with something of the fervor of a priest pressing conversion on a willing penitent.

"Ah! how could a poor, captive girl of the Saracens come to hear something of this blessed company of holy women? How could she learn something of a truly religious life as open to an ignorant maiden who had heard of little but the Prophet and his warriors? How could she be brought to feel some touches of the trust and passion with which Christian maidens I have seen in sorrow fling themselves on the mercy of the Blessed Mary in heaven? Mary--Mother of God--it is a name of exquisite beauty and tenderness! Could even I be taught ever to utter it?"

"Nothing more easy, more natural, more truly blessed," said Digenes, eagerly, quite carried away with the sudden hope that the princess seriously contemplated her possible conversion, and at the time, in the warmth of his hopes for such a result, quite unable to read the girl's heart. "I could at once enable you to make the attempt. Follow us with your sister and ladies to the capital. There you can be placed in charge of my own sister, the Lady Theodosia Comnena, who is now living at her husband's castle in the Propontis. Nothing easier than that I should introduce you to her family, and place you in her charge. We are cousins, are we not, even if of different creeds?"

"Yes--we are cousins," she said, slowly, lingering on that word with a sense of rapture and hope that she struggled to master and conceal. "If we are cousins, your sister, the Lady Theodosia, is my cousin, too!"

"Certainly! how came I not to see all this at first? And you would be willing to renounce the caliph at Cordova, and forget the return to your Saracen kindred and your Moslem life?"

"Utterly, joyfully, forever! To be taken to your sister, to my own cousin, to be taken into her family! Oh yes! if heaven were offered me as an alternative I would accept with joy! Let those who will go to Cordova. I would see Rome, the Roman world, and Roman life!"

"Ah! if you could only see our city, our churches, our altars, and the sublime mosaics of Christ, His Mother, archangels and apostles, and our mothers and sisters before the ikons and holy figures of Mary, you would know what it is to be a Christian believer," said Digenes, quite carried away by the thought of a new and so illustrious a convert.

"And are you sure that the Lady Theodosia and her family would welcome me?" asked the Saracen princess somewhat archly, as if in real doubt.

"She would rejoice to have you in her care, and would treat you as her own sister, just as she has now in her safe charge the Princess Agatha, who has escaped from a convent prison and is securely placed with my sister."

"And who, then, is the Princess Agatha?" asked Fatima, abruptly.

"Who?" said Digenes, impetuously, "who but the sister of our sovereign lord, Romanus, whom cruel counsellors caused him to drive from his palace, and more cruel priests consigned to a living death in a nunnery of women."

"And what is she like?"

"She is like the Blessed Mary herself in beauty, in purity, in mercy, and every grace--the sweetest, best, and noblest woman in the empire of Rome, whom the jealousy of palace counsellors seeks to snatch from wedlock and motherhood and to consign to the solitary cell of a nun; whom these hypocrites and bigots dare to call a bride of Christ. Never shall these fanatics endow their convents with the noblest bride that Rome has ever borne!" and the lord warden's look of heroic passion flamed in his eyes and brought the blood into his olive cheek. "Never, never, if I live!" he cried, hardly thinking to whom he spoke, in his indignation and excitement.

"And whose bride is she destined to be, this peerless, this incomparable star of Rome? Is she the promised bride of any of your Roman heroes?" asked Fatima, looking keenly into the eyes of Digenes, and eagerly awaiting his answer, as of a message of life or death.

The lord warden answered not a word. He tried to speak. He began some broken words. His embarrassment could not be concealed. He now saw all the false attitude into which his own want of discernment, his impetuosity, his love, had betrayed him. He had nothing to answer. He was dumb with confusion and humiliation.

Fatima watched him closely and in silence, and seemed to read his heart. Her attitude of eagerness and of trust and hope passed away. She fell back into her previous condition of abasement and silent despair. The light passed from her eyes, and her voice resumed its tone of piteous sorrow and hopeless humility.

"Cousin," she said, at last, in broken and low tones, "I am deeply grateful. The sister of your sovereign lord is too great a person to look on the poor captive whose people he has conquered, whose father his commander has slain. She shall not look down on her in pity. Rome and its court is no place for the daughter of Ben-Senoussi; Fatima will abide with her own people. Leave her in Crete, or conduct her to Spain. She will ask no charity of Christian maidens. Farewell, kind helper of my brother, the preserver of Fatima's life and honor! Forget her forever! Let us never meet again! Remember only that she will never forget you!"

And so, drawing close round her the mourning robes, and the long veil over her face, with slow and weary steps, without another word, Fatima passed over to her own tent.