Count Belisarius (68 page)

Item, in the same year you also uttered treasonable words against our beloved Empress, Theodora, now with God.

Item, in the seventeenth year of our reign, when we sent you once more against the Goths in Italy, you accomplished nothing of note, wasted our treasure and forces and returned home after five years, leaving the Goths to be defeated at last by our faithful Chamberlain Narses. From Italy you wrote contumacious and threatening letters to us, and on your return were a party to a conspiracy against our life made by Artaban the Armenian.

Item, in the thirty-second year of our reign, after you had neglected
our fortifications and the troops under your command, thus encouraging a barbarian inroad, you arrogated for yourself the glory of the repulse of these Huns, which belonged first to God Almighty and next to ourselves; just as in former times you had attempted to usurp the glory which we won against the Persians, Vandals, Moors, Goths, Franks, and other nations, making a show of yourself to the City mob and courting their favour with largesse.

What patience and long-suffering we have displayed, how many times we have pardoned you for your impudent acts and words!

Now, in this thirty-seventh year of our reign, it has come to our notice that you are implicated in another plot against our life. Our generals Herodian and John (vulgarly surnamed ‘The Epicure') confess that you attempted to seduce them from their loyalty to us, and the Distinguished Patrician, Lord Procopius, who was formerly your military secretary, has denounced you to us for the same heinous crime. These confess that you agreed with them for a set day when a murderous attack should be made upon us with swords in our very Council Chamber, while we sat upon our Throne, and wore the Sacred vestments of Royalty. They feigned to consent, but were full of fear and repeated your words to our officers.

Know then, Traitor, that our royal pardon, so often freely granted, must be withheld at last; for a criminal who sinned constantly when his locks were black, and sins still while his locks are white, is not redeemable to virtue. It would be weakness in us to forgive beyond the scriptural limit of seventy times seven.

Obey!

Belisarius asked Apion when he had finished: ‘Who prepared this warrant for His Clemency's signature?'

Apion answered: ‘I myself.'

‘You seem by your speech to be a Thracian from the district of Adrianople. Do I recognize you after the lapse of so many years? Were we not schoolmates together under the learned Malthus?'

Apion's face grew red, for he could not forget what a mean figure he had cut in the eyes of his schoolfellows. He answered: ‘That is neither here nor there.'

We domestics were led away to the prison and put to the torture, one by one – both slaves and freedmen, from the youngest foot-page to Andreas and myself, who were both close upon seventy years of age. We were racked and scourged; and twisted cords were bound tightly around our foreheads, and our feet were burned in a charcoal brazier. For some the torture was made more severe than for others. I
was chained in a cell with Andreas before we were taken out to the torture. He had witnessed the arrest of Belisarius, and was hot with fury against Apion. ‘The Public Prosecutor has followed a most glorious career while his schoolfellow was commanding the armies of the Emperor – quills, ink, parchment, humility, bribery! After twenty years as spare clerk, he attains the dignity of shorthand writer to the Crown; twenty years more and he is Assistant Registrar-General. Five more and he is Public Prosecutor, waited upon subserviently by the whole tribe – copy-clerks, messengers, process-servers, gaolers, policemen. A little copy-clerk boasts to his comrades: “The Distinguished Apion honoured me with a smile today, and remembered my name.” Now bribes are taken, not offered; humility is laid aside. He is the fearful Torture-Master – lord of chains, scourges, racks, branding-irons, the taste of which now awaits us.' Andreas also said: ‘That snivelling little Apion! I can still see him crouched in a corner of the schoolroom, glowering at us because he was given no spiced bun – having shirked the snow-battle with the oblates. O bun of discord! I think we must persuade the President of the Streets to remove the Elephant from his pedestal and set up a statue of the distinguished Apion in his place.'

Andreas died under the torture, but in order to vex Apion he did not utter a single cry. I yelled and screamed without ceasing. I knew that to do so would either satisfy the officer of the torture chamber or else disconcert him, so that he would say to the slave: ‘Enough for the moment, fellow: relax the cords, unscrew!' All my cries were: ‘Long life to his Gracious Majesty!' and ‘I know nothing, nothing.' So I escaped. Of the bodily injuries that I received that day I shall not trouble you. I am a person of no importance.

The inquisitors asked me again and again: ‘Did you not hear the traitor Belisarius in conversation with Marcellus the Patrician – did he not utter treasonable phrases? See, here are written the words which your fellow-domestics heard him speak one evening at dinner with your mistress. Are you sure that you did not hear the same words yourself? They all swear that you were present.'

I denied everything and maintained that Belisarius was the best and kindest and most loyal of men. However, others confessed to all that was necessary, because of the torture.

I was not present at the trial, which took place in the month of January behind closed doors. They say that Belisarius made no reply
to any of the charges except to deny them. There were wilder ones than those of treason. For he was accused of committing sodomy upon his adopted son Theodosius and filthiness upon his stepdaughter Martha. He asked leave to cross-examine the witnesses for the prosecution – Herodian, John the Epicure, and Procopius; but this was refused by Justinian, who judged the case in person. They say also that when Justinian taunted him with the mockery of a fair trial, by asking: ‘Are there any reputable witnesses whom you would wish to call, my lord, to testify that you are no traitor?' he replied: ‘There are four.'

‘And who are they? Are they present in the city?'

‘No, Clemency.'

‘Name them, nevertheless.'

‘Geilimer, formerly King of the Vandals; Wittich, formerly King of the Goths; Khosrou, the Great King of Persia; Zabergan, Grand Cham of the Bulgarian Huns. These know to their cost that I am no traitor.'

*

My mistress Antonina was charged as an accomplice. They say that when she was brought into Court she spoke in a rambling way, as if already in her dotage, bringing up foul memories of Justinian's life before he became Emperor. Her talk, they say, was very fanciful and sarcastic. She said: ‘My friend Theodora of the Blue club-house had a little lap-dog, most gluttonous and lecherous. She used to talk theological nonsense to him all night and feed him with lumps of raw meat; and he was a fawning, inquisitive little dog and would lick every foot in the city and sniff at every street corner. We called him Caesar, but he had a barbarous Gothic name before that.'

She also said: ‘Your worship, I knew a little, smiling, rosy-cheeked man once who committed fornication with three generations of women.' (She meant the Lady Chrysomallo, her daughter, and granddaughter.) ‘He offered prayers to Beelzebub and never learned to speak good Greek. But in pity I was courteous to such a little, smiling, rosy-cheeked man.'

Justinian was agitated. He closed her case in haste: ‘This noble lady has lost her wits. She must be put in charge of doctors. She is not fit to plead.'

Yet my mistress continued: ‘The pretty girls of the Blue club-house all made the same complaints about Phagon the Glutton. They
said that his demands on them were unnatural; that he was stingy with love-gifts; that he confused spiritual ecstasy with that of flesh – worshipping the corruptible; and that he smelt of goat.'

‘Remove her, remove her!' Justinian cried in a shrill voice.

‘Of goat and incense mixed. He was a bed-wetter, also, and had warts upon his thighs.'

The sentences were promulgated. The penalties were various. To some death by the axe, to some death by the rope, to others lifelong imprisonment. To Herodian and John the Epicure, pardon.

My mistress was confined in the Castle of Repentance which Theodora had built at Hieron, and her property given into the keeping of the Church. Belisarius's life was spared. But he was deprived of all his honours and all his possessions in land and treasure, and disqualified even from drawing the common dole. But still another fearful vengeance was taken upon him. Alas, now! Let me write it quickly: the light of both his eyes was quenched in the Brazen House that same evening with red-hot needles.

*

My mistress, prostrate on her pallet in the sick ward of the Castle, called for me at midnight and said: ‘Eugenius, do you fear the Emperor more than you love me and my dear husband?'

‘What do you ask of me, mistress? I am yours to command.'

‘Eugenius, take a boat across the Bosphorus and stand near the Brazen House, but out of sight; and be ready to act as a guide to my Belisarius when he is set free tomorrow. They will release him very early before the streets are full of people.'

I waited in the Square of Augustus, near the Brazen House, for many hours. At dawn I saw him rudely thrust out of the gate by two drunken soldiers. One cried: ‘Go and seek your fortune now, old man. You are free as air.'

‘Ay,' cried the other. ‘No money, no home, no eyes, no fame!'

But a young corporal came out and reproved them: ‘You are two ill-conditioned beasts, who have never raised your heads above your trough of swill. Go now at once, I order you, and lie upon your backs on the pavement of the Brazen House. Gaze up at the mosaics on the ceiling and observe the pictured battles there. You will see the great victories of the Tenth Milestone and Tricameron, and the capture of Naples, and the defence of Rome, and the victory at the Mulvian Bridge. From whom does the Emperor in those pictures receive the
spoils of victory – kings and kingdoms and all that is most valued by monarchs? Why, from this Belisarius, whom you now insult in his blindness, denying that any fame remains to him!'

Belisarius, turning his sightless face towards the Corporal, said: ‘Softly, best of men! Whom the Emperor hates, shall his soldiers praise?'

The Corporal replied: ‘My father fought in Persia and in Africa with your Household Squadron, and fell at Rome defending Hadrian's mausoleum. If these ruffians take fame from you, they dishonour my father's memory. Accept this broken spear-staff, brave one, to steady your faltering steps. I do not care who hears me say: “Fame cannot be quenched with a needle.”'

The streets were empty of all but scavengers and homeless beggars. Belisarius, staff in hand, walked with many pauses down the High Street, across the coloured marble flags of the pavement; I followed him at a little distance. When he reached the statue of the Elephant he stopped to finger the rugged legs of the beast. I heard him mutter idly to himself: ‘Behold now Behemoth whom I made with thee; he eateth grass like an ox. His bones are as strong pieces of brass, his bones are like bars of iron. He is the chief of the ways of God.'

Presently he spoke again more to the purpose, quoting from the same book: ‘Behold I cry out of wrong but I am not heard, I cry aloud but there is not judgement. He hath fenced up my way that I cannot pass, and he hath set darkness in my paths. He hath stripped me of my glory.'

Then I spoke softly from behind him and said: ‘My lord, this is I, Eugenius the eunuch. My dear mistress Antonina sent me here to be your guide.'

He turned and reached out his hand for mine, drew me to him, and embraced me. Then he asked anxiously after my mistress, and I gave him her sorrowful messages of love. As we walked on, he ate the white bread and fruit that I had brought from her for his breakfast.

Belisarius asked me to guide him to the suburb of Blachernae; he went with such great strides through the empty squares and streets that it seemed rather that he was guiding me than I him. Nobody heeded us. An easterly wind brought the smell of new bread from the municipal bakeries, which he remarked upon; and as we passed through the docks in the district of Zeugma he snuffed with his nose
and said: ‘I smell cinnamon and sandalwood and sailors. This blindness will make a very dog of me.'

At last we came to the monastery of St Bartimaeus at Blachernae. There Belisarius rapped with his staff on the postern gate, and a lay-brother opened.

Belisarius demanded to see the Abbot, but the lay-brother replied: ‘He is at his accounts; I cannot disturb him for such as you.'

Belisarius said: ‘Tell him, I beg, that my name is Belisarius.'

The lay-brother laughed at what he judged to be a pleasantry. For Belisarius was dressed in a commoner's tunic, soiled by prison wear, and had a dirty clout fastened over his eyes.

The lay-brother joked: ‘And my name is the Apostle Peter.'

Through the door I perceived the monk Uliaris passing along a passage on some errand. I cried out to him: ‘Brother Uliaris, to the rescue!'

Uliaris hurried to the door. When he perceived Belisarius's fate, he wept bitterly and cried out: ‘O dear friend, O dear friend!' – not finding other words.

Belisarius said: ‘Uliaris, beloved comrade, go, I beg you, to your reverend Abbot and obtain from him a certain possession of mine, which I once lent to his predecessor until I should have need of it. It is the wooden begging bowl of St Bartimaeus, your patron: the hour of my need is now.'

Uliaris went to the Abbot, who at first would not yield up the bowl. He protested that it was a sacred relic, not to be handled by profane hands, and, moreover, a great source of revenue to the monastery; and that the Emperor would be angry if charity were shown to Belisarius.

Uliaris told the Abbot: ‘God will assuredly curse our house if we withhold this bowl from the rightful owner, by whose generosity we have benefited these thirty years.'