Chapter XVI: Cæsar at the Rubicon

All through the night of that eventful day of his triumph the general tossed in a tumult of conflicting emotions, while the noisy crowds surrounded his abode with shouts of, "Our ever-victorious commander!" and again, "Nicephorus to the Sacred Palace!" and even "Nicephorus, our Basileus!" He refused to show himself to the people, denied access to all, sent for the monk Athanasius in order to confess, and had himself clothed in the rough garb of a postulant. He now fully understood the imminent peril to his liberty and his life which the hatred of the ruling faction involved. He felt, with a burning sense of shame, that with all her fascinations the empress sought him rather as a tool than as a husband. And he saw before him the whirlpool of revolution, civil war, calumny, and crime that he must face if he suffered himself to be looked on as an aspirant to the throne. He fell back, with groans and prayers, on his old purpose of seeking rest in a cell as a simple monk or hermit, as his own uncle had been before him.

At last the faithful Digenes succeeded in forcing his way to the chief. The whole city, he said, was now in wild excitement, calling for the general to assume the government and displace the hated eunuch. Bringas, he said, was well aware of the danger to himself, and was conspiring to arrest and destroy his rival. There was but one course left. To save his own life, to protect his friends, to restore the empire, the general must grasp the power that all Rome and the army thrust into his hands.

"It cannot be," said Nicephorus, calmly; "I am about to retire from this world of blood, struggle, and evil passions. I have sent for the holy man of Mount Athos, who is preparing for my admission to their order. When my enemies find that I withdraw from the contest and have no more part in things of earth, they will leave me in peace and soon forget me. I shall be forgotten--ay, by those," he added, bitterly, "who now profess to care for me. It shall never be said that a Phocas turned rebel to the dynasty of Basil and plotted to drive an infant Basil from the throne of his fathers, or made himself the tool of a woman's ambition. Go, my son; go and tell them in the city and in the palace that Nicephorus has now become the hermit, Father Zachariah."

"It is too late," said Digenes, with a groan--"too late to save you from arrest, mutilation--it may be death!"

Here the colloquy was interrupted by a messenger, who brought the general a formal missive from the Sacred Palace that the council of state craved the immediate presence of the grand domestic of the east to confer on urgent affairs of the empire.

"Tell them," said Nicephorus, with proud contempt, "that I have done with council, palace, empire, politics, and arms. I go to my cell. I leave it to them to save Rome. I will not come."

Digenes withdrew in despair; and now the hermit Athanasius was again announced as craving an interview.

"Let him come," said the great soldier, as he flung himself down in abasement beneath the ikon; "all will withdraw, and see that no man enter here."

"Holy father, strengthen me in my purpose," groaned the chief, as the hermit stood behind him, still completely enveloped from head to foot and concealed in an immense black cloak.

Slowly the hood of the mantle was thrown back and disclosed the pale countenance of Theophano herself. Her eyes flashed with excitement; her features shone with looks of eagerness, entreaty, and love; her voice shook with anxiety, passion, and fear.

"My hero," she broke out, spasmodically, "your life is at stake, and I cannot save you from these fiends. They have already set the vermilion seal to an order to have you arrested and deprived of sight. They will seize you if you set foot in the palace, and our friends there are not strong enough to save you. They will seize you even if you stay here. Rush for sanctuary to the great church and claim the protection of the patriarch. I came here myself at every risk, for I dared not trust a messenger, and I know well, my hero, my master, my saint," she added, in her sweetest voice and with a look of love, "that Nicephorus is a man of iron, who will not be turned from his purpose even by his best friend." And Theophano put her hand upon his shoulder as he still remained on his knees before the ikon, and, passing her soft fingers over his burning brow, she looked down into his eyes.

"Madam," he said, slowly, "I am dead to this world. I am dedicated now to God and to heaven."

"It shall not be!" she replied, passionately. "If you choose to sacrifice yourself, will you leave the Rome you have saved to the mercy of these wretches, to the savagery of the infidel? Will you doom to a prison and mutilation my poor children, your true and lawful sovereigns? Will you abandon me to degradation, to a life of torment, to the worst shame that the eunuch or the Hagarenes can devise--me who offer you everything that the love of woman and the authority of an empress of Rome can offer a soldier of the Cross? Nicephorus, son of the hero Bardas, of the noble race of Phocas, can you abandon to shame and ruin the widow of your sovereign and the children of the house of Basil?"

He sank on the ground before her, and taking the skirt of her robe in his hands he pressed it to his lips with veneration, as if it were the girdle of the Mother of God.

"I go," she murmured; "I dare not stay; they will send their guards here in a few moments. Rush to the church. Claim sanctuary. I bid you in the name of Christ--do this for me--and for mine."

Theophano disappeared as silently and mysteriously as she had come. And now Digenes broke in again with news that the palace guard were already on their way to seize the general. He concealed Nicephorus in a military cloak and forced him into the church of the Holy Wisdom. Then he rushed to the patriarch to implore his protection for the fugitive who had taken sanctuary in the most venerated temple of the city. Polyeuctus summoned his whole chapter, and, bearing aloft the miraculous crucifix, took Nicephorus under his guardianship. In the mean time Digenes called together the partisans of Nicephorus, and appealed to the people to protect their hero from the vengeance of his rivals. Furious mobs gathered round the cathedral, shouting, "Long live the victorious chief!" "Death to the eunuch!" "Nicephorus, our king!" and they offered, by their mass and violence, effective resistance to the guards who attempted to enter the church and arrest the chief.

Polyeuctus, with his austere virtue and genuine patriotism, had long desired to put an end to the corrupt and savage reign of the powerful eunuch, and he flung himself into the defence of Nicephorus with all the energy of his fiery and generous nature. He vehemently denounced his purpose of retiring to a cell, refused him absolution, and menaced him with excommunication and every spiritual penalty unless he continued to do his duty to the state. Dragging the general with him, girdled by a crowd of priests bearing sacred images and relics, in the midst of an immense mob of citizens cheering the hero of the day, the patriarch forced Nicephorus into the senate, which had been already convoked by the regent's will.

There Polyeuctus, with the general standing beside him, poured out an impassioned appeal, of which this is the substance: He gave a moving picture of the decay of the empire and the ravages of the infidel by sea and land until the invincible arm of Nicephorus had driven them back to the far east. He spoke of the orgies of the late reign and of the corruptions that had eaten into the heart of the government. The prime-minister, who had suffered--nay, encouraged--all this corruption, he said, now claimed to be undisputed master of the empire, and was affecting to be the real Augustus in the name of an inexperienced woman and her two babes. "Let us close this era of corruption and fraud," he continued, "by giving absolute power to the hero who has twice saved our name and faith from its deadly foes--this stern and pious soldier who is feared as much for his honesty by the evil crew of the palace minions as he is feared for his invincible prowess by the Hagarenes of Abd-el-Aziz or of the accursed Chamdas, the enemy of Christ. Senators, magnates, and officials of Rome, there is but one man who can restore this empire and confront its secret enemies at home as well as its open foes abroad. Let us confer, as our forefathers of Rome would do of old, dictatorial power on the one man who is worthy to wield it."

This fervid and bold appeal was received with cheers by a majority of the Senate, but the party of Bringas met it with furious opposition. Amid the storm of conflicting voices, Nicephorus himself came forward to protest that he would accept no office or task which in any way trenched on the rights and prerogatives of the regent or menaced the succession to the throne of their lawful sovereigns, the infant Basileis. With his hand on the holy relics, which the deacons had carried before the patriarch into the senate house, Nicephorus swore in presence of the entire senate, the priests, and ministers assembled, that he prayed God to strike him down with the foulest form of death, and to consign his soul to eternal damnation, if he ever should break his faith as a loyal subject of the regent and the two Augusti. On their side, the senate, by its chief officials, swore to maintain in his office the grand domestic of the east, to suffer no act of state, no appointment to office, and no dismissal from office to be made without his sanction and advice.

Nicephorus was saved. So far as words and oaths could go--and they did not go far in the city "that God protects"--he was practically invested with despotic powers. But in face of the savage enmity of Bringas and his party, and without any adequate body of troops devoted to him, the general knew how precarious was his life in the capital. He hurriedly withdrew and hastened to his headquarters in Cappadocia, where his friends gave out that he was busy organizing his army for a fresh expedition into the east. The struggle between Theophano and the eunuch was carried on by both sides with desperate energy and unscrupulous arts. The regent now took into her favor Digenes, the akritas, as a trusty partisan to Nicephorus, and had even sanctioned his marriage with the Princess Agatha. Theophano now saw the advantage of gathering to her faction the relations of her late husband, whose legal successor she claimed to be. She restored to their rank and liberty the sisters of Romanus, now aunts of the Basileis de jure, and ranged round her all the friends of the chivalrous akritas and all the partisans of the princesses of the Basilian dynasty. On his side, the astute lord chamberlain was straining every nerve to find rivals to Nicephorus, who might act as a counterpoise. He was even suspected by the regent of looking to the deposed family of Lecapenus, the late emperor, for a possible pretender to the throne.

After the revolution, which had driven out the sons of Romanus Lecapenus and restored to his legal rights Constantine Born-in-the-Purple, Stephanus Lecapenus had been a state prisoner for nearly twenty years in strict seclusion. He was now kept under rigid surveillance in the island of Lesbos. In the church of Methymna he was suffered to attend the solemn mass on the eve of Easter Sunday. He was led to the altar, and there was offered the consecrated elements by the archpriest officiating. As he drank the cup he was seen to stagger and fall, and before the rite was concluded he lay a corpse in the church. The report of his death was a three days' wonder at Byzantium, and a fruitful occasion for suspicion, recrimination, and gossip. But the sudden death of royal prisoners, deposed sovereigns, and possible pretenders was too common an incident in such times to cause any serious commotion. The faction of the regent accused the eunuch of the murder. The faction of Bringas laid it at the door of the regent. Its only effect was to make each more suspicious of the other side, as well as more desperate in their own schemes.

Nicephorus was now working night and day at the reorganization and equipment of his veteran army. His ulterior plans were undecided. But he saw that, both for his own life and freedom, as well as for the defence of the empire, his command of an army perfect in discipline and ready for instant action was an indispensable condition. Whether he was to crush the Saracen forever, whether he was to save his own life, he must be at the head of troops devoted to himself and perfectly ready to fight. Michael, a secret emissary of the regent, had just left his tent with an urgent appeal from Theophano to hasten back to the capital with a powerful army, in order to save her and her children from the machinations of Bringas. Thrusting aside his maps, plans, and the reports of his officers, Nicephorus brooded over the tremendous issues at stake--equally full of peril whether he advanced or drew back.

Hour after hour the general meditated, torn in opposite ways by love and doubt, by eagerness to obey his enchantress and by horror at the sin of plunging the empire in civil war. In despair he flung himself down with groans on his couch. Suddenly there burst into his tent John Tzimisces, in a state of wild excitement which made him defy all the courtesies of life. "What! are you sleeping, general?" the impetuous soldier broke forth--"asleep, when that wretched eunuch is plotting your death! Up, or it will be too late; there is not an hour to lose! March, or enter the prison in which Bringas has ordered us to fling you!"

"Prison! what prison?" said Nicephorus, stupefied by the violence of the furious Joannes.

"Read this," said John; "and a similar offer is made to General Courcouas!"

The letter was a long and formal document, signed by Joseph Bringas in the name of the council of state, over which he presided, detailing the facts of the vast conspiracy that they had discovered in Byzantium to do away with the infant Basileis and to place the popular general on the throne of Basil. This plot, it was added, was directed by Nicephorus in person, while pretending to march against the Saracen, and his agents and partisans had already been arrested and put to torture. His father Bardas was in prison, and his brother Leo was about to be arrested. The arrest and punishment of so notorious a rebel was the duty of every loyal officer of the empire. And the council charged the Lord General Joannes, strategus of the Anatolian theme, and the Lord General Courcouas, strategus of the Cappadocian theme, to put away this public enemy by all and every means in their power. When they had fulfilled this service, John should be duly appointed marshal of the armies of the east, in place of the traitor, and Courcouas should have supreme command of the armies of the west. "Seize him, and force on him the tonsure he pretends he desires, and immure him in a frontier monastery for life; or send him in chains to us at Byzantium; we shall know how to deal with him." And the letter to Tzimisces was inscribed within, "To the lord marshal of the east, hereafter to be named Basileus of the Romans."

And here General Courcouas burst in with the second letter to the same effect. He was as much excited as Tzimisces himself, and equally enraged at the treachery of Bringas.

"What can we do?" said Nicephorus, gloomily; "they hold the official authority of the palace; to wrest it from them means rebellion, anarchy, and civil war."

"What can we do?" roared Tzimisces, aflame with passion. "What! shall chiefs such as we are, at the head of the finest army in the world, suffer ourselves to be the slaves of a vile eunuch, a miserable Paphlagonian? Are we going to be crushed by the infamous tricks of the palace harem? There is not an hour to lose, I say. Advance, or perish! Put the imperial diadem on your brow and march for Constantinople this very day!"

So, too, said Courcouas, with furious gestures. And, beside themselves with rage, the two generals drew their swords and pointed them at the bare breast of Nicephorus.

"March!" they shouted, "or take this sword and die as a Roman general should die rather than be made a captive and a slave!"

In the midst of this madness the officers of the staff burst in, with a wild, insubordinate crowd of troopers, for John had already communicated to his own following the infamous proposals sent by the eunuch. The news flew round the camp and excited an uproar. John, Courcouas, and their comrades seized Nicephorus as he was, and dragged him to the exercising plain, where already the troops had been hastily called to arms. They mounted their commander on a shield and carried him round the squadrons and battalions with a roar of cries: "Ever-victorious Nicephorus!" "Autocrat of the Romans!" "All-powerful Basileus!" "Long life to Augustus, our sovereign lord!" "Long may he reign!" "God protect our invincible emperor!" And this was followed by a roar as loud and as spontaneous from ten thousand throats at once, as spears and swords glistened in the sunlight and the eagles were shaken in the air: "To Rome! to Rome! to the city of the Cæsars!"

Nicephorus, indeed had crossed his Rubicon.