Chapter XXV: Love and Troth

Far different were the scenes which, during this time, were being enacted in Constantinople itself. Leo, the curopalates, and his father, the venerable Bardas Cæsar, maintained strict order and good government in the capital, and carried out all the urgent orders of Nicephorus for the safety of Digenes the lord warden, and of Agatha the princess. The unfortunate warden, still in the height of his fever, was carefully removed in a litter to the palace of his sister's husband, the Lord Comnenus, of the family which ultimately was raised to the throne. There his sister, the Lady Theodosia Comnena, and the Princess Agatha, with their attendants, nursed him in his illness, and there he was treated by the famous physicians Theophanes Nonnos and Synesios. The one was the author of an important _Encyclopœdia of Medicine_, the other had studied under Arabian physicians, and translated their works into Greek. All that the science of the age, combined with all the love of two noble women, could do to save the life of the patient, was lavished for many an anxious week, while the warden lay in great danger and in continual delirium.

At times he would fancy himself at the siege of Chandax, shouting to his men to plunge the scaling-bridge from the great tower--"Down with her--clear the gangway--another ladder there--water on that burning roof--On, my men, for Rome--Christ!--Mother of God!"--and then he would sink back on his pillow exhausted, groaning--"All is lost--has our God delivered us into the hands of the Prophet?--Thy will be done--hallowed be Thy name."

At other times he would fancy himself in a dungeon, while he could hear the battle raging in the walls round him, and he would cry out--"Loose me from these chains, O my God!--I hear the Romans at the charge--am I chained forever like a dog?--give me my sword--leave me but one hand free--let me strike one blow for Christ--oh! this is worse than death--give me one hour of life and air again--then let me die and be heard no more."

The women sat beside him, silent, in tears, watching his ravings with pain and fear, and besought the learned physicians to try some calming drug. With this, on other days, he would be in a gentler mood, though still in delirium. He would stare at Agatha with eyes open, but not recognizing who she was, and would murmur, incoherently--"Sweet lady, you have saved me--let me save you, too--come with us to Rome--learn to pray to Mary--all good women love Mary--it is so beautiful to see them in the gallery there in Hagia Sophia--Theodosia will be so glad--if you only knew Theodosia--and I think Agatha will be glad, too! Agatha is so kind to girls she loves--My father was of Arab race, you know."

Agatha listened to all this with pity, wonder, and at last with a sense of pain. "Of whom is he talking?" she whispered. "I have heard of a Saracen girl who saved him in the prison in Crete. Oh! she is in his mind. He thinks I am she. He loved her then, and not me," and she burst into a flood of tears.

"No, no," Theodosia broke in, "he has always loved you, dear, but he has often told me how the emir's daughter, Fatima, saved his life, how he saved her honor, and how he hoped she would consent to become a Christian, and would come to visit me here in our castle in the Princes' Islands. My brother has always loved you, Agatha. Even in the emir's dungeon he prayed to Saint Agatha, and saw her in a vision smiling upon him."

"Was Fatima so very beautiful?" asked Agatha, suddenly.

"Very beautiful," said Theodosia; "she was thought to be like her brother, Hassan, who died in our father's castle in Cappadocia; and Digenes, you know, was his cousin, and singularly like him in countenance."

"He loved Fatima," cried Agatha, in agony; "he thinks now that I am Fatima, he is dreaming of her now; see his lips move with words of tenderness--he will die loving Fatima. I will go into a nunnery and end it all."

"Oh! speak not thus," cried Theodosia; "my brother never loved woman save only you. He is very kind and generous, and the soul of honor and chivalry. He did all he could to serve the woman to whom he owed his life. If she loved him, I know not; I am told she was overjoyed when the general charged Digenes to take her and her sister and followers to Spain. But this I know, that Digenes never loved woman but his own Agatha."

"Ah, yes! the lord warden was chief of the embassy to the caliph at Cordova, and Fatima was in that mission," and Agatha covered her face with her hands and softly wept silent and bitter tears as she watched the utter exhaustion of their patient.

The fever had many intervals of abatement and then of relapse. One night, when he had seemed all day to be stronger, and had taken more food than usual, his delirium broke out in a terrible form.

"Take her away!" he shrieked again and again. "It is a fury!--it is a fiend!--She seizes my hand!--it burns me to the bone--never, never, will I be false!--away! away! her eyes are like red-hot iron--her hair is full of hissing snakes--she is the daughter of Satan--away from her!--away from her!--she shall not touch you, Agatha, even if she roast me to a cinder! Mother of God, save me from her! Saint Agatha, save me!"

The two women looked at each other with wonder and horror in their faces. Neither spoke. They knew nothing of what had passed. They imagined things dreadful and unholy.

"He thinks only of you, Agatha, as his protector and saint," said Theodosia, at last.

Again and again their patient, who had a violent relapse, broke out with gasps and convulsive agony--"There is blood dripping from her hands!--she holds a cup of poison!--she calls in the assassins!--she is smiling with joy!--there, they are stabbing him in the back--Help! help! treachery! butchery!--it is the blood of the Basileus himself that chokes me!"--and he sank back groaning out the words in gulps of rage--"she-devil! murderess! harlot!"

The women cowered in terror and shame, and implored the physicians to try some means of reducing the delirium. Theophanes Nonnos watched these recurrent fits with minute observation, and at last he noticed how the patient, in these wilder moments of violence, kept his eyes fixed on the ceiling of the apartment. He frequently pointed with his hands, as if he saw actual figures aloft, and he continually waved his arms as at some terrible sights above his head. Now, Theophanes Nonnos was a diligent student of Hippocrates and Galen, and prone to watch the reaction of external surroundings on the nervous system of his patients. He then saw that, on the frieze of the noble apartment to which Digenes had been carried, and facing his bed, was a mosaic decoration which had been copied from the same original as the mosaic wall at Ravenna, which represents a ceremonial procession of Justinian the Great and the Empress Theodora. This picture Nonnos ordered to be covered with a curtain of neutral tone. This done, the spasms of the patient rapidly subsided.

In a few days the physicians were able to assure the watchers that the worst of their anxieties was past, and that a period of quiet convalescence had set in. Hour after hour, so far as his returning strength permitted, Digenes poured out to Agatha his protestations of unbroken devotion; he told her how in Asia, in Crete, in Spain, and in Thrace, in camp, in battle, in prison, in the palace, and in church, the image of the saintly Agatha had been his consolation and hope; he told her how the Basileus had given his formal consent to their marriage, and had given orders for its celebration with the highest honors, so soon as the warden was restored to health. His health now, he murmured, wanted but one thing to be as good as ever. Would she say what day, next month, he might call her his own? Would she bend down to his pillow, whisper it in his ear, and seal it with a kiss--one kiss--the first she had ever vouchsafed to him?

Agatha listened with rapture! She did bend down and whisper in his ear, and suffer her lips to rest on his. She did not tell him how often, during his long delirium, her lips had touched his burning forehead and his fevered hands, as she stooped down to bathe them with attar of roses and orange-water. But she was very slow, indeed, to believe that her Digenes had never loved the fascinating houri of the old emir's castle--not for a time--not for a day--not just a little bit in all chivalry and faith? Nor could anything persuade her that the Lady Fatima had not loved her Digenes, loved him passionately, truly, in all honor and in all sincerity. It was quite impossible that a woman of feeling and goodness could owe so much to her Digenes, could be on such terms of sentiment and confidence, and be half converted to his religion, and not love him. Any woman so near must love him, would love him, ought to love him.

At last, one day, Agatha was finally convinced that she had the whole heart of Digenes, and had never ceased to have it, from the hour when she first met him as a girl in her father's court, and had seen the young hero, whose feats and chivalry the poets commemorated in song. The lord warden was now very much restored to health, and wholly to his reason and consciousness. Agatha had read to him some of his favorite pieces, the parting of Hector and Andromache in the sixth _Iliad_, and the parting scene from the "Alcestis" of Euripides. He had even asked her to recite the famous lines of Sappho--from the poems which were then all extant--

Φαίνεταί μοι κηνος ίσος Θεοισιν--
("_that man seems to me the peer of gods_")

--but she archly refused, as he was not strong enough to listen to such fiery poetry, and she was not going to recite such pagan stuff.

To them entered the lady Theodosia Comnena, who gayly saluted her brother with the words, "News, news, something that will interest you both, something I trust that will give you, brother, as much pleasure as it will give Agatha."

"A conundrum," said they both; "we give it up."

"A rival of yours, Agatha, a flame of yours, brother," said Theodosia, with a peal of laughter.

"That dear girl, Sophia, the daughter of the old Emir Abd-el-Aziz, has just come to see me. Her brother, the captain, young Anemas, who was sent on the embassy to Fez, and afterwards to Cordova, has persuaded the Lady Fatima, your ladylove in Crete, brother, to accept the pressing invitation of Sophia and her father, to visit them in Prote. She is to come with her brother and sister, and within six months Fatima shall go with us to hear the Patriarch perform divine service. And before a month more is passed she shall marry Anemas, before he joins the Basileus in Syria. So think no more, brother, of your tawny angel. She is to stay with the whole blood of the Prophet, Christian though she will be, and Christian as Anemas already is."

"Thanks be to Mary of the Daphne," said Digenes, with hearty rejoicing. "Has she promised Anemas?"

"Not yet, to marry," said Theodosia, "but that is an incident. She has promised to come, brother, and she believes that you are married by this time yourself."

"Who told her that?" said Agatha, quickly.

"Well, I strongly suspect that Anemas told her, as an indispensable condition of proposing marriage with himself."

"Ah! then I was right, after all," said Agatha, with a deep sigh, and looked earnestly and almost reproachfully at Digenes.

"My beloved," said the young hero, with deep feeling, "your suspicions were true, perhaps, in part. But as to me, I have been ever true throughout."

"Another piece of news," said Theodosia, "if you two can keep a secret which is not to be blurted out to these palace gossips: Eric, the young Varangian, will one day marry Sophia when he comes back from the wars, where he is winning glory on the staff of the Basileus in Asia. There may be two weddings on the same day. Nay, brother, perhaps there might be three on the same day, and the Basileus preside in person at the ceremony!"

"Tut!" cried Digenes, with animation, "not for us. I do not wait till Eric and the Basileus return, nor till Anemas can wring a 'yes' from his bride."

"No, nor till Fatima can be persuaded to visit her cousin in Prote," said Agatha, archly. She was now at last convinced that Digenes had never failed her in thought or in word--no, not for an hour; but she still meant to be married before Fatima could reach Constantinople.

By slow degrees, and in very guarded and modified ways, Digenes allowed Agatha to know as much of what had passed in the palace as he could remember, and as much as he thought it kind or prudent as yet to tell to the pure and gentle spirit with whom he was to be united. The astrologer's potion had confused his brain to such a degree that he had but a broken memory of the interview with Theophano. His long illness, with its continued delirium, had left him with a mind troubled as with a series of terrible and incomprehensible dreams. He could not shock the girl in her happiness with all his horrible suspicions and recollections. Nor would Agatha, on her side, as yet trouble his mind with all that she suspected and feared.

At last, having exchanged confidences as far as they each thought it kind and wise to speak, it was agreed between them that in the tremendous crisis of the great war, in the weight of cares that beset the Basileus day and night, they would not harass him with the torture of fresh revelations, of which the formal proofs would not be easy to find.

"Agatha," said Digenes, solemnly, one day, on receipt of the inexplicable news of the sudden retreat of the Basileus to Cæsarea, in the very midst of the campaign, "the Basileus has called me to the front by special messenger. I start for the camp in an hour."

"Go," she said, with a deep sigh, "if it must be. I will wait till you come again with fresh renown. The cause of this Empire of Rome, of God, of the Mother of God, shall not be hindered one hour by the love of one feeble girl."

"Think me not unkind, my love, my hope, my saint," cried the young hero, with the light of battle for Christ and His people in his eyes--"think me not unkind if I have to hasten away from the holy shrine in which your love has suffered me to kneel, to worship, and to adore; think me not cold if I hurry off to my sovereign and my command. I could not love thee so well, if it were not that I loved my duty even more."

With one long kiss they parted--nor did they meet again on earth.