Chapter XXII: The Stars in Their Courses

It was midnight of a dark and still evening on the Bosphorus, and peace had, for the most part, descended upon the great city; the lamps in the houses were extinguished, and the tramp of the sentries and the challenges of the watch alone were heard. The harbor lights in the Golden Horn, at the point of Keras, burned steadily, and across the straits shone the imperial light-house of Chrysopolis. Within the walls of the Sacred Palace the central pharos stood forth in its lofty tower and cast its glare far out into the Propontis. Out of the gloom there passed, within the circle of its rays, a light skiff rowed by stout boatmen, wherein were seated two men, closely wrapped in long, dark cloaks, which served as a disguise. One was blindfolded, and was patiently listening to the instructions of his companion and guide.

Psellus, a cubicular attendant attached to the person of the Basilissa, was explaining in a low voice the business on which his charge, Aaron Ben Ammon, had been summoned to exercise his art. Aaron was a Jew, originally of Alexandria, in Egypt, who had studied astrology, necromancy, alchemy, and many of the black arts, first from heretical anchorites of the Thebais, and afterwards in Bagdad and Damascus, as well as in Armenian and Byzantine cloisters. His profound learning in the casting of horoscopes, in extracting prophecies by occult sorceries, in the procuring love philters, and occasionally, it was whispered, even more insidious drugs, had gained him a sinister fame, which made him in great demand in the Byzantine world of fashion, while it made his profession one of personal risk. The growing taste for these unholy experiences among the great ladies of the empire had caused the government of late to be strict in putting the law in motion, while the patriarch was even more keen to punish the adepts of these arts by the resources within the power of the Church. Aaron, therefore, had willingly submitted to be carried disguised and blindfolded to an interview with a person unknown, in a spot that he would not be able to reveal.

"Most learned doctor," said Psellus, as he slipped into the hand of Aaron a heavy purse of bezants, "a lady of wealth, whose name, abode, and position you will forbear to seek if you value your life, and who will double and treble this largess if you act with absolute discretion, will herself explain to you in person her purpose, and she desires to receive from your own hand the horoscopes of those persons of whose nativities I have already given you the exact day and hour. Of these you are now to bring the result of your astral investigations."

"Lead me to her ladyship; her will is my law. Silence, discretion, disguise are as needful to me as to my client--ay, much more so, were it not that Ashmodai watches over the lives of those whose eyes he has opened."

Psellus listened intently to these last words of the astrologer, for part of his instructions had been that on the return journey, if the sign had been given, he was to have the Jew drowned in the Bosphorus, to secure his absolute discretion. They now passed into the imperial harbor of Boucoleon, and, mooring the boat to the quay, after giving the countersign to the guard, proceeded to ascend the path up from the sea towards the pharos, which now shone over the chrysotriclinium of the imperial palace. Guiding the Jew with his left hand, Psellus drew him past the chapel of Elias and the oratory of St. Clement, to the corner of the terrace of the new basilica. There a small robing-room stood in the great garden surrounding the new church, and communicated by a winding staircase with the upper rooms of the Sacred Palace. Psellus now removed the bandage from Aaron's eyes, placed him on a couch, and desired him to wait the approach of his client. Nor was there anything visible in this garden dressing-room to distinguish it from an ordinary apartment in any of the mansions of the city or suburbs.

Presently a majestic and graceful woman glided into the room--she was wrapped in a great black cloak, and closely veiled. She motioned to the attendants to withdraw, and to the astrologer to approach.

"Most learned doctor of astral science," she said, in her clear, soft voice of command, "you have brought me the calculations your learning has enabled you to make as to the future of the persons whose nativities were supplied to you?"

"Your Eminence shall be satisfied. The horoscopes of both are the most wonderful that our science has ever revealed to me. They indicate most amazing changes of life, incredible splendor of ascent, and signs of imminent peril."

"Call me simply lady--I am no more," said Theophano, "and give me the details of each horoscope."

The astrologer was a swarthy, spare old Hebrew, with hooked nose and fine features, distinguished by eyes of intense keenness, though they had a sinister aspect, like those of a trapped beast. Theophano watched him behind her yashmak as closely as he did her, for ever and anon he stole furtive glances at her, hoping to penetrate her secret.

"The first whose nativity I have calculated is that of one born fifty-six years, one hundred and thirteen days, and seven hours, from this moment. It was a birth under the sign of the Lion, at an hour charged with vast possibilities in the future. At that instant the zodiac was moved by portentous lights, and the earth shook with tremors, as I have ascertained in the records of our art that are stored in the great observatory at Antakia in Syria. There lived and studied the mighty seer, Mohammed Ben Djafar, of Batan, my ever revered lord and master."

"But what has been the horoscope of this child of miracle and wonder?" she said, hurriedly, caring little for the pompous claims of the Jew.

"'The right ascension into the mansion of life and glory' tells of a career of battle, victory, and fame, which, at the hour wherein we are, forms one unbroken career of success and triumph."

"Most learned doctor," said the empress, peremptorily, "what are the signs of the future? What is passed and gone we all know without the science of Mohammed of Batan, whom here we call Albatenius, and without the aid of your most profound self, Doctor Ben Ammon. What of the future of this person, I ask?"

"Madam, I hesitate to impart to you what I have found," said the Jew, with a cunning look as he sought her eyes; "it is terrible. The declination to the 'house of death' stands close to the right ascension to the 'house of life.'"

Theophano gave a sudden start in spite of her self-control. Her piercing eyes, which she unveiled to watch the Jew, gleamed with a light of joy. She stretched out her hand from her wrappings to take the scroll, whereon the astrologer had marked the rise and fall of the star record. As she put out her arm, the keen astrologer noticed the flash of a superb armlet of rubies, such as he well knew could only be found in the imperial treasury. And now, having his first suspicions confirmed, he felt sure that he recognized the wonderful eyes of Anastasia, the daughter of Craterus the Laconian. Years ago, Ben Ammon had frequent dealings with Craterus, whom he had supplied with amulets, charms, trinkets, and gems from Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia, and had often noticed the beauty of the girl, and, indeed, had cast her horoscope with a brilliant future. Aaron now felt sure that he was confronted by the empress herself. Astrologers, in ancient as in modern ages, have been far more physiognomists than astronomers; and, in his further conversation, Aaron thought only to indulge the humors or the passions of his sovereign, and repeated the jargon of his "science" only to mislead and excite her.

"Lady," he said, with profound solemnity, watching her expression intently, "it is my duty to tell you that a second year cannot pass from this hour before this person shall find death--death, sudden, alas! and shameful." She gleamed again, and her frame thrilled. Aaron continued in the same voice of a prophet. "He (or is it she?) will die hated, unlamented, and despised. The stars so reveal to us the book of fate." Silence ensued.

"And now, what of the second nativity you have calculated?" she asked, at length.

"It is even more wonderful than that of the first. For twenty-nine years, less three months and thirteen days, the stars have shown in the ascendant. Born under the culmination of Venus, coincident with her superior conjunctions at every stage of life, this horoscope is plainly that of a woman, of the most beautiful woman on God's earth, a woman whose beauty has been one long triumph, with but one darker sign in all its course."

"And that is what?" she asked, with an audible gasp.

"Lady, I hesitate to tell it; there is at this very time an ominous sign. The gorgeous planet Venus, who rules the sky by her brilliance, is passing now from east elongation towards inferior conjunction. She is now being obscured by too close attendance on a lower and less honorable star."

Theophano held her breath. "What comes after?" she whispered.

"Lady, the synodic period of Venus is almost complete, and it portends a new epoch of effulgence. This woman, for these conjunctions can belong only to a woman, is about to free herself from an unworthy planetary connection, and will soon ascend again into a house of glory and joy still greater than before."

"When shall that be?" she gasped.

"Lady, it may be retarded by events or it may be hastened by art."

"And what is destined to be this superior conjunction of which you spoke?"

"Lady, the lore of astral combinations does not reveal such things. But palmistry may give signs which the constellations disdain to show. Deign to let me trace the lines in the palm of your hand."

Flinging aside all disguises, Theophano, in her eagerness, put her palm in his. He bent over it with an air of profound mystery, muttering, "the line of life, the line of love, the line of strength. Lady, these lines make it manifest that you are mated to one unworthy of you, and that your happiness will not be assured till you are the bride of one who is more youthful, more glorious, more loving."

"But when--with whom--how will it be brought about?" she gasped.

"It is not revealed to man or to woman, when, with whom, or how happiness can be won. But art may assist; it may hasten; it may cut the knot which binds us to misery. Here, lady, are two rare drugs, each worth a king's ransom, which I had from the great Abu Djafar Achmed ben Ibrahim. One is in silver, one is wrapped in lead. The silver charm is a love philter, the leaden packet will relieve one of an enemy. No man on this side of the Orontes has these medicines, or ever has had. Nothing less than the jewel on your arm to-night would buy them," said Aaron, with a gleam of avarice in his eye.

"Give them to me," she said, in a cold, firm voice, and slipped the ruby armlet from her wrist into his trembling fingers.

"Farewell, learned doctor," she added, with cruel abruptness, "guard yourself with care, for the city is full of cutthroats." And she summoned Psellus and her guards. "Conduct the learned doctor to his rest, and be careful that _he sleeps soundly to-night_."

"Ashmodai, my lord and master, guards his servant, lady," said Aaron, fawning, and yet with a certain subdued vein of menace.

Psellus looked steadily at his mistress, with inquiry for the concerted sign. She did not blench, but repeated again, "_See that he sleeps soundly to-night_. I am sure that Ashmodai longs to see his own." She passed swiftly behind a curtain up the winding stair, and Aaron allowed himself to be blindfolded with a heavy shawl, over which Psellus and his assistants slipped a stout, silken noose. This rapid manœuvre Aaron, busy with the fingering of his priceless rubies, neither saw nor felt. Then they two passed into the night, and the skiff shot away noiselessly into the blackness of the waters of Propontis.

As the morning dawned, some fishermen, dragging their net for tunny off the rock we call the "Tower of Leander," pulled up the body of an old man clad in a loose Oriental gabardine. The city police found in his wallet a purse of one hundred bezants, and also a bracelet of rubies of the rarest water. At noon, the bazaars rang with the gossip of the hour, that a thief, who had broken into one of the imperial chambers, and stolen some jewels, had been caught, and flung over the southern battlements, but some insisted that he had been drowned in trying to escape with his plunder. The next day a new crime and a fresh scandal occupied the forum and the wine-shops, while Aaron Ben Ammon "slept soundly" forevermore, in the bosom of father Ashmodai.

Theophano, who cared little for the mystical jargon of astrologers, necromancers, or palmists, could not free her mind from dwelling on prophecies which so curiously agreed with her inmost desires. The ascetic nature of Nicephorus, his devoutness, his zeal in the great work of the crusade to defend Christendom from Islam--all were profoundly odious to his wife, and had turned her, by rapid stages, from indifference to coldness, from coldness to contempt, and from contempt to loathing. She longed for a life of youth, adventure, gayety, and pomp. Romanus, with all his graces, had nothing heroic about him but his passion for the chase. Nicephorus had nothing of the lover, for night and day his thoughts turned to councils of state and preparations for war. The dreams of Theophano were visions of an Ares, who flung aside his weapons when he flew to the bower of his own Aphrodite.

While the emperor was absent on his short Bulgarian expedition, he had intrusted to his empress, the regent, full powers of authority. And these she had used under various pretences to throw obstacles in the way of the marriage of Princess Agatha and Basil Digenes, the lord warden; as, being a princess of the royal house, and, indeed, after her infant nephews, an heiress presumptive to the throne, Agatha could not marry without the imperial consent, nor, in truth, could the lord warden, as a great official, thwart their majesties by acting in defiance of them. Consent had been withheld on various pretexts from time to time, and no sooner was Nicephorus across the Balkan frontier than the empress discovered a reason of state which caused her to issue a peremptory rejection of the warden's demand. Theophano insisted on marrying Agatha to the Magistros Sisinnios, one of the imperial marshals, a man of birth and wealth, and now entirely a creature of her own.

A stormy scene had just taken place between the princess and the empress. Agatha refused pointblank to marry any one except the lord warden. She insisted on knowing the ground on which their majesties had withdrawn the consent, which had been virtually given long ago, and on what charges the lord warden's suit had been rejected.

"His Imperial Majesty," said Theophano, "had now discovered the dangerous ambition which his own indulgent favor had aroused in the mind of his former favorite lieutenant. It was now seen that, in aspiring to the hand of a Basilian princess, he was preparing a claim to the throne itself."

"It is false," retorted Agatha, with passion; "let those who make so infamous an accusation against the most loyal spirit in this empire produce their evidence of any such thought or attempt."

"The emperor has had his eyes opened, and his ministers will in good time produce the proofs which their vigilance has collected. He cannot suffer an officer convicted of such dangerous ambition to acquire the manifest advantage of alliance with the house of Basil."

"The lord warden can prove his innocence the instant he has audience of his emperor. It will be easy to show him that his mind has been abused with monstrous calumnies."

"Agatha, child, fool, listen to me," said Theophano, with a cruel smile. "I am empress here. No man knows when Nicephorus will return from the war. I and my council have resolved that Basil Digenes shall never wed a daughter of our dynasty. The throne, the lives of my young sons, would not be safe for an hour--"

"It is monstrous--it is inhuman--it is Satanic," broke out Agatha, with passion; "the sons of my own brother, am I to be their murderess?" and she sobbed with indignation and rage.

"Well, your husband might easily be their murderer. Uncles, and even aunts, have been known to plot against the thrones of their nephews. But listen, Agatha, there is another thing which has decided my council. They hold that at the opening of a new crusade against the Moslem it would be a scandal and a danger to show the court of Byzantium mingling the race of the Constantines and the Basils with that of a Saracen emir."

"Mother of God," cried Agatha, in her agony, "do you hear the blasphemy and the calumnies they utter?"

"Agatha, listen to me, and cease these idle wailings and revilings," said Theophano, with cold and deliberate words. "On the third day from this you marry the Marshal Sisinnios."

"Never!" burst in Agatha.

"Then our will is that you be made a nun and confined in a convent on the coast of the Black Sea. Again I say--marry Sisinnios--or be for life a solitary bride of Christ."

"Never!" she gasped. "I will choose death rather than such a marriage. I will marry none but Basil Digenes."

"Basil Digenes," said Theophano, with her cold, cruel voice, as if she enjoyed the torture she was causing--"Basil Digenes, let me inform you, is now under arrest as a traitor to his sovereigns, and will be dealt with as I and my council direct. You know what happens to prisoners who are suspected of aspiring to the throne. You will never see the Digenes again in this world--and be very certain that he can never see you," and she laughed a cruel, mocking laugh, such as comes from the devils when they seize their victim.

"Mother of God," shrieked Agatha, "dost thou hear this?"

"Marry Sisinnios," said Theophano, hoarsely.

"None but my Basil!" screamed Agatha, wild with horror and wrath.

The empress struck the door twice with her jewelled baton, and three black cubiculars rushed in, seized Agatha, now speechless, and almost fainting.

"Take her away, and carry out my orders," said Theophano.

"Fiend, I defy you!" shrieked Agatha, as the huge eunuchs carried her off, and closed her mouth with their unholy hands.

After this stormy interview, which took place in the privy boudoir of the empress, Theophano sent for her tiring women, and, having had herself divested of the stately robes she had worn, she was bathed with rose-water, and had her long tresses combed and plaited. Then she was dressed in the diaphanous folds of silk gauze, which displayed to the best her magnificent form, and left free the dazzling whiteness of her neck and arms. It was little, indeed, that art could do to enhance the radiance of that countenance which the symmetry of a Greek bust and the glow of health and life had made a model of perfect beauty. But all that the cosmetic art of Byzantine luxury could achieve was now brought into play. And, as she watched the effect in her steel mirror, with its enamelled frame, Theophano felt conscious that she had never in her life looked so like a goddess of the old Olympus.

"Bring in the prisoner," she said to her cubiculars, "if he has tasted the cup I sent him to drink."

Two great palace guards accordingly led in a man heavily manacled with a chain attached to the arm of each of his guards.

"Loose all these bonds," said the empress, imperiously.

"All, madam?" the attendants asked, as if in doubt of her meaning.

"All," she said, again. "Leave him quite free." It was done. The attendants and guards stood alert and on the watch, for a state prisoner quite unbound was an experience unknown in the Sacred Palace.

"All will leave us," she said, peremptorily. They looked at her with inquiry and in surprise. "Leave us quite alone. Withdraw, and close all doors," she added.

To leave the empress alone with a young and very powerful prisoner was something strange and perilous, they thought. But she looked at them steadily till every step was gone and all doors shut.

Theophano stood alone with Basil Digenes, "Gallant lord warden," she began, in silvery tones, "our council here, in the absence of my lord, the Basileus, have insisted on having you arrested on a charge of aiming at the throne by pressing your claim to a marriage with the Princess Agatha."

"Madam," said the warden, with a proud smile, "my beloved lord and chief knows me too well to listen to suspicions so empty and absurd."

"You will never think, Basil," she said, in her most insinuating tones, "that I who know you, I trust, quite as well as does my lord, can personally believe such treason to be possible to the noblest hero in the armies of Rome. I know you to be the most loyal servant of your Basileus--ay, and of your Basilissa--" And she stepped forward and offered him her hand to kiss.

The guileless warden bent on his knee, took those radiant and yet deadly fingers in his own, put them to his lips, with the words, "From all my heart, I thank thee, gracious queen."

"You may trust to my intercession with the stern Basileus to save you from the charge of treason. Rely on my friendship, my Lord Basil, for you little know how suspicious, how capricious, how resentful, is Nicephorus Phocas. But I will save you, will protect you from his vengeance, if any mortal can."

"My chief, my friend, my sovereign, will need little persuasion the very moment he sees me before him," said the warden, with a sudden air of disdain.

"You little know him," she said, bitterly. "But the danger is too immediate to yourself. The council have already sealed an order that endangers your life--at least, your eyes," she said, watching him as a tigress might watch a kid.

"What!" cried the warden, with a start--"my life, my limbs, and senses! Are they mad? Do they know who I am, and who is my liege master, my comrade in a hundred fights?"

"Basil, I am your friend, and only I of those who rule here to-day. Your liberty and life are in the hands of those who rule in the absence of the Basileus himself. I can save you from their envy and their malice, but on one condition alone. There is one thing that they cannot yield, one thing wherein I could not save you."

"What is that?" he said, with a fierce air of resolution.

"You must renounce all thought of the princess. The council will never suffer you, with your name and fame and birth--your glory, your invincible charm, Basil, to be allied with the sister of the late Basileus."

"Never will I renounce her--never! I will face death, imprisonment, mutilation, torture, but never will I give up my Agatha in life."

"Basil, it is too late. She has renounced you; she consents to marry the Marshal Sisinnios, and the ceremony takes place to-morrow."

"Impossible. I will not believe it. She is as true as steel, as good as a saint, as brave as a virgin martyr. I must see her, must hear this from her own lips. It is false."

"Would that I could think so, Basil, for her sake and for yours. Listen to reason; hear the truth from one who admires your glory and yearns to serve and to save you. You cannot save her, and you may destroy the noblest Roman of this empire, which we all know you to be. Agatha, poor child, is powerless here, and can do nothing to save you, to help you, or to raise you. I have placed one soldier on the Golden Throne. He has proved unworthy of it--"

Here Basil burst out into furious words, for the Jew's drug had begun to excite and confuse his brain. Theophano drew back and fingered the poisoned stiletto she had concealed in her bosom.

"Basil," she said, in a voice of deep feeling, "he may die--he may become the hermit he desires to be--within a month. Where should Rome find a Basileus then, save in the most noble, the most splendid soldier of this realm? Where could I and my babes find a protector, a friend, a counsellor--if it be not in the hero whom a thousand bards have praised as the 'bravest of the brave,' whom all Byzantium and the Golden Palace admire--and love--as the most brilliant cavalier in this royal court? Basil, hear me, Rome and Rome's mistress, all that is greatest and most beautiful on earth is yours! Say but one word, and seal it with one kiss!"

He listened like a man in an evil dream, who cannot move or speak. The drug had begun to make him delirious.

She advanced towards him, opening her white arms, that glistened with jewels, and sought to wrap him round and draw him towards her.

He gasped with shame, awe, and rage, speechless with indignation and amazement and stupefied with the potion. He staggered backward, shrinking from her with loathing, as from something poisonous and unclean. He stumbled back towards the door, which was violently opened behind him. And as Digenes staggered back he fell against the Basileus himself, who rushed into the arms of his wife, shouting, "My queen, my wife, my love, I have hurried back without notice in advance of my guard and men."

The unfortunate Digenes sank down exhausted and senseless. He was now in high fever, delirious from the effects of the potion and the spasms of fury and amazement through which he had passed. The silentiaries called the guard, who bore away the unconscious chief to a bed, whereon he long lay overcome with a dangerous illness, and unable to remember what had happened. Nicephorus gave strict orders to his own physicians and attendants to nurse him. He listened in silence full of doubt and bewilderment to the artful story poured into his ears from the ready brain of Theophano.