Still no news came from King Harith, and Belisarius feared that the whole expeditionary force had been ambushed and destroyed. He now called a council of war and pressed for an advance across the Tigris — perhaps Harith was still holding out in some captured city or other, waiting for relief. But not one of the generals would support him in this project. Those from the Lebanon insisted on returning with their troops, now that the Saracens’ Ramadan was over; while the others pointed out that their troops were suffering so severely from the heat that fully one-third of them were incapacitated for fighting. They began a disorderly clamour, the refrain of which was: ‘Take us back again. We will not cross the Tigris. We refuse to go farther. Take us back again.’
Thus by the bravado of Peter, the treachery of King Harith, the credulousness of John the Epicure, the cowardice of these other generals, Belisarius was robbed of what might have been the greatest of his victories. For when King Khosrou in Colchis heard of the Arab raid in Assyria and of Belisarius’s capture of Sisauranum, he came hurrying back by the road which passes to the westward of Lake Van and along the eastern bank of the Tigris. He had already lost nearly one-half of his army by a cholera epidemic. He now lost one-half of what remained to him by a breakdown of his food supply — the frightening news of the cholera turned his commissariat-trains back to Iberia. He was delayed further by a landslide which carried away his new road at the most difficult point of the journey, so that he had to cut it afresh in order to pass. If Belisarius had now been able to cross the Tigris he would have intercepted Khosrou and, the Persians being in a pitiful state of starvation and disorder, would doubtless have added a third captured king to the gifts he had made to Justinian.
But it was not to be: Belisarius could not persuade his generals to march. He laid his sick in carts and retired past Nisibis to Daras.
In Constantinople strange things had been happening. To begin with, there appeared in the city an illegitimate son of Theodora’s, born to her in Egypt during that one unlucky year when she went off to Pentapolis from the club-house. The father was a person of no importance — an Arabian merchant, recently dead; he had taken the boy (whom he christened John) off her hands. Theodora had told Justinian that she had never had a child; and when he conferred patrician rank on her she signed a document solemnly affirming this. Cappadocian John’s hold on Theodora was his knowledge that this child existed: his agents in Egypt had brought the story to him, but without any details to confirm it. Theodora could not be sure whether or not he was in possession of any evidence that would carry weight with Justinian; she herself had never been able to discover where her son was. At last the young man, John the Bastard, was told the secret of his birth by his dying father and came to Constantinople from Aden on the Red Sea, where they lived. He approached Theodora through my mistress Antonina, whose first husband, he knew, had been a business associate of his father’s. If he expected to be greeted with maternal tears and kisses and given a prominent position at Court he was much mistaken. Theodora wasted no time, but declared him a lunatic and shut him up in a Bedlam, where he soon died. She had not loved the father, why should she love the son? Besides, he was a greedy, vain, illiterate fellow.
Theodora, with sighs of relief, told my mistress: ‘Now at last, my dearest, we can settle our account with Cappadocian John: I no longer have anything to fear from him.’
But Theodora knew that until Theodosius was brought back from Ephesus my mistress would be in no state of mind to assist in any plot of revenge. So, though my mistress was convinced that Theodosius would never be tempted to leave his retreat, Theodora let the Bishop of Ephesus, one of her Monophysite nominees, know that he must contrive to send the monk Theodosius back to Constantinople at once. The Bishop ordered the Abbot of the monastery, which had a very easy rule, to impose such heavy penances and restrictions on Theodosius that he would voluntarily demand absolution from his vows.
My mistress’s hopes began to revive a little at this news, and she began thinking of ways to entrap and ruin Cappadocian John. Her first step was to cultivate the acquaintance of John’s only daughter, Euphemia, a clever girl to whom he was devoted. Theodora had chosen a husband for her whom she did not in the least wish to marry. My mistress, playing upon Euphemia’s bitterness against Theodora, gradually won her sympathies. Euphemia asked her one evening: ‘Illustrious Lady Antonina, dearest friend, why is it that you look so sad these days and scarcely smile at all? Is it anxiety for your brave husband at the wars?’
My mistress, who certainly had no intention of confiding to Euphemia how much she missed Theodosius, answered shortly: ‘I have little anxiety for my husband’s safety in the field.’ Then, by a sudden inspiration she continued: ‘What distresses me is that the Emperor is so unreasonably suspicious of my husband’s loyalty. I fear far more for his safety when he is here at Constantinople.’
Euphemia exclaimed: ‘Suspicious of Belisarius’s loyalty! Why, nobody in the Empire is so devoted to the Emperor as he, surely?’
My mistress rose, carefully shut all the doors, and then whispered: ‘I have long been wishing to confide in someone, dearest child, for my heart is full to bursting with indignation at the ungrateful treatment that my noble Belisarius has received. He has enlarged the Emperor’s dominions by tens of thousands of square miles and his treasure by tens of millions in gold, and brought him home captive two powerful kings — not to mention his quelling of the Victory riots, when the Emperor nearly lost his throne. But this miserable Justinian is jealous and treats him like a dog or criminal. Belisarius told me before he left: “Better any other Emperor than this! I feel absolved from my vows of loyalty to him, because of my prolonged ill-treatment at his hands.”’
Euphemia replied: ‘You and Belisarius have only yourselves to blame, dearest friend; for though you have the power, you hesitate to use it.’
My mistress replied without hesitation: ‘But child, we cannot undertake a military revolution unless we have the assistance of powerful ministers at Court. Your illustrious father, for instance, does not see eye to eye with us at all. If we had him on our side… By the way, he is the very man for Emperor in Justinian’s place. My husband himself has no ambitions in that way, as you know: he is interested only in soldiering.’
Euphemia’s anxiety to escape from her unwelcome marriage made her particularly eloquent in presenting the case to her father. But her task was an easy one, because Cappadocian John cherished a secret belief that he would eventually wear the Diadem. An old astrologer at the Hippodrome, perhaps the same who had prophesied so truly for Theodora and my mistress, had many years before told him: ‘My son, the robe of Augustus will one day be put upon you by the Palace soldiers, and that will be a day of great rejoicing at Court.’ John was therefore pleased beyond measure at Euphemia’s account of the conversation. He told Euphemia to assure my mistress Antonina that she could count on him absolutely in all things that would contribute to Justinian’s downfall. My mistress embraced Euphemia and swore by the Holy Ghost that her father could depend on Belisarius and herself for the same vigour of purpose that he himself displayed.
Before the plot developed any further, Theodosius, to my mistress Antonina’s inexpressible joy, returned to us from Ephesus, weary of the penitential rigours that the Abbot had imposed upon him. He was a monk no longer and soon resumed his old ways – rich robes, perfumes, singing and guitar-playing, fashionable sneers, lively frolics about nothing. How to explain this change of mood – as unaccountable as his sudden plunge into the religious life? Well, there are characters of his sort, especially among the Thracians, whose contradictoriness we could waste a long time in discussing – their love of being discussed being perhaps the clue to the mystery. So let us say no more about Theodosius’s motives, contenting ourselves with an account of his words and deeds.
My mistress’s son Photius happened to be out of the city at the time, though he had been staying with us ever since Belisarius’s departure. He had incurred enormous debts by commer
cial speculation at Antioch before the city was destroyed, and from betting at the races and the bear-fighting. If he could not soon meet his obligations he would be degraded, as a bankrupt, from the Patrician Order; but he felt sure that his mother would come to the rescue to avoid a family scandal. Perhaps she would have done so, had Theodosius not told her a story that angered her exceedingly. He said that he had run away to Ephesus because Photius had threatened to kill both her and him unless he left the city at once: this was why he had been so reluctant to return.
A great to-do followed. My mistress, of course, refused to pay Photius’s debts; and because, on hearing the story, she had asked for police protection for Theodosius and herself and the whole matter had therefore become public, she sent Belisarius a full report. She also threatened Photius with severe punishment at Theodora’s hands.
Photius hurriedly crossed the Bosphorus and took a post-chaise to the Persian frontier, to throw himself on Belisarius’s protection. Exactly what he told Belisarius I do not know, but the gist of it was that when Theodosius went to Ephesus the second time it was with the intention of returning to my mistress at Constantinople as soon as Belisarius was out of the way; that he had so returned, and that the two of them were now living in open sin together. He further complained that my mistress had stolen a large sum of his money from him and conferred it on her paramour; and that in addition to having brought him to the verge of bankruptcy, she was persecuting him in every possible way because he knew too much about her.
Belisarius heard this horrible tale from Photius on the very day that he was holding his council of war at Sisauranum. To think that it influenced him in his decision to retire from Persian territory might be natural, were it not so manifest that he put his duty as a soldier before all personal considerations. At least his military associates should have been aware of this trait in him. Nevertheless, the suggestion went the rounds, given circulation by the very generals who had been most timorous about crossing the Tigris.
After the council of war, Belisarius had further talk with Photius, who swore by the Holy Ghost — the most terrible oath that a Christian can swear, and one which if broken consigns the soul, they say, to everlasting torment in Hell — that he spoke the truth. To support his testimony he had brought two of my fellow-domestics as witnesses, and a Senator who happened to be one of his principal creditors and was nearly bankrupt himself. These, with Photius, succeeded in convincing Belisarius. Perhaps his disappointment with the campaign and the shaky state of his health after a month of dysentery played a part in confusing his usually clear powers of judgement. Furthermore, it should be said in his defence that my mistress’s relations with Theodosius certainly did give a very mysterious impression. Even I, as I have already confessed earlier in this work, could never make up my mind as to their true character. At all events, Belisarius succumbed to an attack of jealous rage; all his officers were aghast at the change in him. For once in his life he forgot to be patient or gentle with his men, acting just like any other general, except that in his furies he refrained from blasphemy. Nor was his condition improved by a letter from my mistress, in which she wrote that Photius had escaped from Constantinople with his mouth full of slander and that she was following in haste to fill it with mud. She informed him that Theodosius, for fear of assassination by Photius’s friends, was temporarily returning to Ephesus in her absence.
However, the affair of Cappadocian John had to be settled before she set out; otherwise the plot might turn against her. So she sent me to Cappadocian John to say that she was setting out for Daras at once, for the purpose of persuading Belisarius that a move for Justinian’s overthrow and supersession could now be safely made. I arranged that Cappadocian John should meet my mistress secretly on the following midnight in an orchard of Belisarius’s estate at Rufinianae, a suburb of Constantinople across the Bosphorus: this would be her first stopping place after leaving the city. She had no doubt but that he would fall into her trap – for had she not used the name of the Holy Ghost to Euphemia in asseverating the earnestness of Belisarius’s intentions and her own?
My mistress reported my success to Theodora, who took into her confidence Narses (now on bad terms with Cappadocian John) and Marcellus, the Commander of the Imperial Guards. Narses and Marcellus went to Rufinianae in disguise, with a party of soldiers; and by the agreed hour were at their posts in the orchard – some of them concealed behind a cistern and others among the boughs of the apple trees. They say that Justinian had got wind that something was astir, but that it was reported to him as a genuine plot against the Throne; and that he sent this message to Cappadocian John: ‘We know all. Desist, or you die. Your confederate Antonina is under our displeasure.’ But if it is true that Cappadocian John received this message, he must have considered it more dangerous to reply to it than to continue with the plot, and taken the reference to my mistress as a clear proof of her sincerity. However it was, when Cappadocian John slipped out of the city with a party of armed attendants to keep his appointment that night, he had made up his mind to accompany her to Daras.
It was pitch dark in the orchard, and my teeth were chattering with apprehension as I stood waiting beside my mistress Antonina, thinking how much was at stake. Like her, I was wearing a mail shirt under my cloak. At midnight a glove came flying over the garden-gate; I threw it back — the agreed signal. John was admitted with his twelve Cappadocian guards.
He and my mistress clasped hands like true conspirators, and at once he began cursing Justinian for a monster and a tyrant and a coward; it was not necessary for her to commit herself at all. And it is a curious thing that, as he raved on, it suddenly came to my mistress that the mysterious superintendent of police who had spoken to her in the church that day long ago, as she was on her way to Blachernae from the Palace, had been John himself in disguise; for he now happened to mispronounce an uncommon Greek word in just the same way that the other man had.
She could not help laughing at this. Cappadocian John paused, suspicious at once, and began to look about him. Then Narses and Marcellus sprang from their ambuscade with a shout, and a fierce fight began. My mistress, to keep up the farce, cried out: ‘Oh, Oh, we are betrayed,’ and pretended to struggle with Narses. I ran off. Marcellus was struck down and seriously wounded in the neck before the twelve Cappadocians were over powered. In the confusion their master climbed over a wall and escaped.
If the foolish man had ridden straight back to the Palace and reported to Justinian that he had gone to Rufinianae on Justinian’s own behalf, intending to trick Antonina into a public confession of her treachery, he might have been able to turn the tables on her. Instead, he grew panic-stricken and took sanctuary in St Irene’s Church, so that when at dawn Theodora and Narses denounced him to Justinian there was no possible conclusion but that he was guilty.
This church of St Irene’s, burned down during the Victory Riots, had been magnificently rebuilt by Justinian, and it was a sanctuary that he would never have ventured to violate. So Cappadocian John suffered no more severe punishment than the confiscation of all his estates and — strange proceeding — a condemnation to take holy orders!
Cappadocian John became a priest much against his will, for he was thus debarred by law from ever again holding secular office. But the old prophecy was fulfilled. The Palace Guards put on him the robe of Augustus — that is to say the priestly robe of an archdeacon who had just died, whose name happened to be Augustus; and there was great rejoicing in the Palace, where he was much hated. He was sent from St Irene’s to a church at Cyzicus, a trading city on the Asiatic shore of the Sea of Marmora. Justinian was vexed, not so much that Cappadocian John had attempted to betray him as that Theodora was thus so triumphantly justified: he had always refused to believe her when she denounced John as a traitor. To spite her, he subsequently restored most of John’s fortune to him, in the name of Christian charity; John lived in peace and security at Cyzicus for two or three years more. But Justinian could not thwart Theodo
ra’s resolve to harry her enemy. The Bishop of Cyzicus, under whose authority Cappadocian John had come, was informed by her that the new priest must not be allowed to live an easy life. John was therefore kept to a scrupulously exact routine; which irked him greatly.
We continued our journey to Daras by land. When we reached the fortress my mistress was met by Trajan, who had returned safely with his force and his plunder from Assyria. He led her to the room where Belisarius awaited her. There Belisarius, ignoring her affectionate greeting, confronted her at once with Photius’s sworn testimony as to her adultery, and the depositions of the Senator and the two domestics. He shouted angrily at her: ‘This is the end, Antonina. Your conduct as my wife should have been such as to make it impossible for me ever to reproach you with your past. That reproach you now hear from me: I am reminded of what your condition was when I first became acquainted with you.’
She met his severity with a severity of her own. Taking the parchment from his hand, she read it coldly, ripped it across, and let the pieces fall to the ground. She said that she would not demean herself by denying these charges, but in answer to his gross reproach of her she would say this: she could not feel any of the pain and misery that he clearly intended her to feel, but must think of him henceforward as a buffoon unworthy to be the husband of a woman like herself.