Count Belisarius (58 page)

‘O wise Eugenius, go with my blessing. Yes, I will ask pardon of God – I would certainly not let that trifle stand in my way. Tell him all that you have just said; and then, if he forgets his pride and anger, you may assure him that I never did love anyone else but himself, and that I will not rest until he is restored to freedom and honour – then he and I will never again be parted.'

‘You will appeal to the Empress?'

‘I will. I will remind her of the services that I rendered her lately in the matter of Cappadocian John, and of our old friendship, and of the friendship existing between her father, the Bear Master, and mine, the charioteer.…'

But I said: ‘Dearest mistress, I have a further suggestion to make. I believe that I am in a position to accomplish the final ruin of Cappadocian John myself. If this is done and if you take the credit for it, surely the Empress will give you everything you ask?'

‘How?' she asked, eagerly. ‘How can you bring this about?'

I replied: ‘This afternoon, in a wine-shop, I fell in conversation with a poor young man of Cyzicus, who is dying of a wasting disease and has not long to live. He and his whole family, old grandparents and wife and three young children, have been driven from their home by order of the Bishop of Cyzicus. He came alone on foot to Constantinople, and today applied for justice and relief at the Palace; but the officials drove him away, because the Bishop is in good standing at Court. I sympathized with him, and gave him a piece of silver, telling him to meet me under the statue of the Elephant of Severus tomorrow at noon. I did not disclose my name or that of my employer, and I am not known in that wine-shop.'

‘Well?'

‘Give me five hundred pieces in gold, mistress, and that will be sufficient to destroy Cappadocian John.'

‘I do not understand.'

‘Give me the money and trust me to undertake the matter.'

‘If you succeed, Eugenius, I will give you fifty thousand and your freedom.'

‘What is money but bodily comforts, which I already possess? What is “freedom” but to be well considered, as I already am? No, Mistress, my sufficient reward will be that you and my Lord Belisarius and the Empress are relieved of an old enemy, and that the death of your father Damocles, my former master, is avenged, and that I shall have been the means of reconciling the Empress to my Lord Belisarius.'

That evening I sought out Belisarius at his mean lodgings. Though weak from a return of his malarial fever, he rose from his couch to welcome me. With a smile that concealed the depth of his feeling, he asked: ‘And are you not afraid to visit me, Eugenius, old friend?'

I answered: ‘No, Illustrious Lord. With the message that I bring I would have risked passing through fire or a camp of Bulgarian Huns.'

He grew a little impatient: ‘Do not address me by titles of which I have been deprived. What is the message?'

I related, as from myself, all that I had agreed with my mistress to
say. He listened most eagerly, crying ‘Ah!' when I told him that his wife had asked pardon of God. Then I showed him the State papers in which Photius's confession was recorded – having bribed the copying clerk to the Assistant-Registrar for a day's loan of them. Belisarius read them hastily, and then again with great care, and at last he beat his breast and said: ‘For my jealous rage and my credulity I deserve all that I have suffered. But alas, Eugenius, it is too late now. Your mistress will never forgive me for what I did to her at Daras, even if I make her a full apology.'

I urged him to be of good courage: all would yet be well. Then I repeated my mistress's message, which at first he would not believe to be authentic. He said: ‘If your mistress Antonina will indeed still listen to any words of mine, tell her that the fault was wholly on my side – but that it was only an excess of love for her that made me guilty of such madness.'

That night Belisarius and my mistress met secretly at his lodgings. Nobody but myself knew of it. Both embraced me, kissing me on the cheeks, and said that they owed their lives to me.

On the next day I met the young man from Cyzicus under the statue of the Elephant. I drew him aside to a private place and said to him: ‘Here in this bag are five hundred pieces of gold. They will keep your family in decent plenty for the rest of their lives. But in order to earn them you must do a desperate thing.'

He asked: ‘What can that be, benefactor?'

‘You must kill the Bishop of Cyzicus. He is an enemy of my master's, whose gold this is.'

‘Your words frighten me,' he cried.

‘How, when you have so few months to live in any case, and when by this deed you will, at a stroke, secure both revenge for your injuries and provision for your destitute family?'

He asked: ‘Who is your master?'

I answered: ‘I do not hesitate to tell you that. He is Cappadocian John, now a priest of the Cathedral at Cyzicus.'

I made him believe that I was in earnest about the gold; when I gave him ten gold pieces on account he undertook to commit the murder and went cheerfully away.

Soon the expected news came from Cyzicus. The young man had fulfilled his obligation. He had waited outside the Cathedral porch after Mass and, as the Bishop emerged, sunk a long dagger into him.
He was arrested and threatened with the rack unless he revealed the motives of this sacrilegious deed. As I had expected, he avoided mention of his own wrongs, telling the officers merely that he had been bribed to the deed by a gift of ten pieces of gold from Cappadocian John. Cappadocian John's enmity towards the Bishop was well known. He was arrested and tried before the judges of that place, found guilty as accessory to the murder, and sentenced to death. By my mistress's intercession with Theodora the young man's life was spared, and later I sent the remainder of the 500 gold pieces to him. How long he lived afterwards, I do not know.

Cappadocian John's life, too, was spared by Justinian, with the excuse that his guilt was insufficiently proved. Nevertheless, he was stripped of his robe and thrashed and made to confess to his past sins; though he would not own to murder, the rest of the tale was disgraceful enough to have hanged him a dozen times over. All his goods were forfeited to the Crown, and he was set naked on a trading-ship bound for Egypt (but for charity someone lent him a rough blanket); where ever the ship touched he was made to go ashore and beg for bread and coppers on the quay. Thus vengeance was at last fully accomplished; for it was to John's nakedness and beggary that Theodora and my mistress had pledged themselves, not to his death by violence. The soul of the charioteer Damocles, my former master, had peace by the banks of Styx.

My mistress could now go before Theodora and beg her to receive Belisarius back into favour; saying that she herself proposed to forgive and live with him again. Her devotion to Theodora's cause was once more proved, and Belisarius would do nothing further to earn the displeasure of his Empress – of that she could be assured.

Theodora did not reject the plea. She sent an Imperial messenger to Belisarius with a letter which ran as follows: ‘You are yourself well aware, best of men, how you have wronged your Sovereigns. But since I am greatly indebted to your wife for her services to me, I have, at her request, expunged from the records all charges against you, and given you my gracious pardon. For the future, then, you need not fear as to your safety or your prosperity; but we shall judge your behaviour not only by your actions in regard to ourselves, but by your attitude to her.'

Thus Belisarius was restored to favour again, for even Justinian considered that his pride had now been sufficiently humbled; and one-half
of his treasure was given back to him, and all the land and houses. Justinian held back the remainder of the treasure, which amounted to one-quarter of a million gold pieces, saying that the possession of so much money did not become a subject when there was such urgent need of funds in the Imperial Treasury.

As a tribute to the close friendship existing between my mistress Antonina's family and her own, Theodora now decided that Joannina, my mistress's child by Belisarius, should be betrothed to her own nearest relative, Anastasius ‘Longlegs', son of Sittas the general and her sister Anastasia. It was to this youth that she intended the Diadem to pass, after Justinian's death and her own: the marriage would greatly strengthen his position in the city. So this was done.

It may seem strange that I have made no reference to Joannina since her birth just before Belisarius's expedition to Carthage. The fact is that she had enjoyed no intimate life with either of her parents. My mistress Antonina had not taken the child with her to the wars, but placed her under the tutelage of Theodora, who came to regard her as her own daughter. Joannina remained with Theodora in the Sacred Apartments of the Palace even when her parents happened to be back in the city. My mistress was content that this should be so: her chief maternal feelings were for Martha, Hildiger's wife – who unfortunately fell a victim to the plague. But it saddened Belisarius that he should be estranged from his only child. He sent her frequent letters and presents from overseas, fondly reminding her that she had a father. But whenever they met, during his occasional respites from war, it was always in the shadow of the Throne; and Joannina treated his affectionate advances with embarrassment. With Antonina the child was more at ease, as with a good-natured, fashionable aunt.

The news of Joannina's engagement set a public seal on the reconciliation of Theodora and my mistress with Belisarius. Theodora even persuaded the Emperor to witness the ceremonial exchange of gifts at Belisarius's house; and his presence there seemed a good omen for the renewed prosperity of Belisarius's domestic affairs. Belisarius and my mistress were escorted by a remnant of his Household Regiment – 400 Thracians who had passed to my mistress at Theodosius's death, and were now restored to their former master. But their 6,500 comrades-in-arms were still withheld from him.

Belisarius's recall from the East had brought disaster there. Justinian ordered an invasion of Persian Armenia, and reinforced the frontier
armies until they amounted to nearly 30,000 men; but divided the command between no less than fifteen generals. Each general favoured and pursued a plan of campaign of his own; at Dubis, on the River Araxes, their disunited forces were routed by an army of only 4,000 Persians and fled wildly home, abandoning their plunder, their standards, and their arms. Several of these generals continued in their flight until their horses foundered, though there was now no enemy within thirty miles of them. Then Our Lady Plague proved an unexpected ally, spreading suddenly into Persian territory, which she had hitherto spared, and killing one man in every three throughout the Great King's dominions: else it would have gone ill with the Roman Empire. For, of 30,000 men, 10,000 men were killed at Dubis and 10,000 captured, together with all the transport of the army, heaped with baggage and plunder.

When Belisarius volunteered to go again to the East and rally the survivors, Justinian haughtily refused this plea. He withheld the true explanation, which was that he did not wish Belisarius to succeed once more where others had failed, and thus seem indispensable; but said, in his odious smiling way, that the Lady Antonina must henceforth accompany her husband on his campaigns as a surety for his loyal behaviour, and that the Lady Antonina would ‘no doubt dislike a visit to the Persian frontier in view of her unfortunate experiences on a previous visit.'

Then he went on to say that if Belisarius greatly hungered for the battlefield he might return to Italy, to complete the task which he had neglected to finish. ‘It was most unwise and not altogether loyal, my Lord Belisarius, to return to us at Constantinople before you had properly stamped out the last sparks of Gothic rebellion, which have smouldered ever since and at last burst into a menacing blaze.'

Belisarius answered him, as patiently as ever: ‘Give me back the remainder of my Household Regiment, Your Majesty, and I will do my best in the matter.'

Justinian sneered: ‘For some new treachery, I suppose? No, no, General, I am too old and experienced a hare to be lured by such a lettuce-leaf. Besides, your former troops, all but a very few, have lately been taken from my Palace officers and drafted, as you know, to the Persian frontier – from where we cannot spare them. But why do you argue with us, you who were so recently a beggar? We will give you permission to recruit new troops wherever you please in our
dominions; but since the recrudescence of war in Italy is clearly due to your former negligence, we shall require you to finance the expedition yourself. We have no money, but you are still possessed of an ample fortune. If you accept this charge we will bestow on you a great honour: we will create you Count of the Royal Stables. Let us know your mind tomorrow.'

Then he dismissed him.

Belisarius accepted the terms – for he disdained to bargain. Presently he sailed for Italy with my mistress Antonina, whom I accompanied, and his 400 Thracians. His new title gave my mistress much amusement. She would say such things as this: ‘My poor husband, you are created Count of the Augean Stables, but forbidden to cleanse them!' (The hero Hercules was commanded, as his fifth Labour, to cleanse the stables of Augeas in one day; accomplishing this by leading the Rivers Alpheus and Peneus through them.)

It was about this time that Solomon was killed in Africa, in battle with a raiding army of Moors. He had been a most capable Governor, though greatly hampered by an insufficiency of troops. The Roman Africans had long regretted those happy days of Vandal rule when the Moors were restrained in their hill-fortresses and the tax-gatherers from Constantinople had not yet begun to eat up the land. After Solomon's death the Moors massacred, burned, and destroyed without pity or fear of reprisal. The poorer the Diocese grew, the more heavily did the taxes fall on what wealth survived; for the assessment made in the year of Belisarius's Consulship had never been modified. Then came the plague. In those years of general disaster five millions of the population perished; then, so many fields being left untilled and unwatered, the desert broke in upon them. I think this fertile land will never recover from its misfortunes – or at least not so long as it remains within the Empire.