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A HUMAN CHATTEL APPROACHING NEW ROME

It was very early on a warm September morning in the year 712. Justinian II had been slain in his sins more than two years earlier and Philippicus reigned in the Sacred Palace. From the quay of the little island of Proti near the eastern mouth of the Bosphorus a heavy coasting boat was setting out across the Marmora, her prow pointing towards Constantinople.

The Holy Elias crawled over the grey water under a lumbering triangular sail. A dense fog rested on the sea, not merely hiding the land but even making navigation dangerous. The captain, a swarthy, hawk-eyed fellow from the Archipelago, who wore a bright red sash (his name was Plato, but he was no philosopher), was fain to shift his big steering oars often, while yelling fierce orders to the half-naked boys in charge of the ponderous lateen yard. However, after he finished cursing at a tall government dromond that had shot out of the mist and almost grazed his stern, ere flying away under her double oar-bank, the fog lifted by a little, and the skipper ventured to chat with his chief passenger.

“St. Theodore smite me,” he bluntly informed the latter, “if I put out from Proti again before sun-up, without at least a better bargain than you were shrewd enough to drive last night, my good Hormisdas!”

The man addressed, who liked to pass for a Persian Christian, but who had a decidedly Semitic cast of countenance, thrust out a beak-like nose from under a dingy cloak and answered mollifyingly:

“Ah! my dear friend Plato, don’t you realize that you will get my cargo down at the wharf by the Navy Yard before the day is even started, and then pick up a most profitable fare? This trip is pure gain——”

“The Apostles grant it,” assented the skipper, turning to gesticulate his greetings to a familiar fishing boat that loomed up suddenly, “but perhaps I’ll wait all day and only get two old women merely bound for Chalcedon with a few boxes. However,” with a pious sigh, “it’s all as the Panagia sends!” Then he added, casting a calculating glance at Hormisdas’ cargo, “Why do you land your cargo first at Proti, anyway? Why not take it straight up to the city? You’ve good shackles.”

Hormisdas’ dark eye was cunning as a rat’s.

“Why not? Alas! because there is no such thing in this sinful world as Christian gratitude for kindness. Where can one lose a rogue who can pry off his fetters quicker than in the blind lanes of Constantinople? I weep still to think of what happened three years ago. As fine a pair of young Lombards as I ever handled, strong as oxen. I thought I had them snug and tight in a nice cell in Galata. They were worth fifty solidi[4] apiece, but lo! the night before I could sell them, the devil let the twain escape. All because I treated them too well and spared the fetters! Now I’ve leased a good bagnio on Proti. They’ll first have to break prison, then swim off the island. I take them to market just a few at a time as chance offers.”

The slave-trader drew from his bosom a gold-set relic, a martyr’s finger-bone apparently, and kissed it devoutly to enlist heavenly aid for his approaching traffic. Plato shrugged his shoulders:

“My boat takes you, and I take your money, but blessed be the Four Evangelists for giving me a different calling! Last year I was voyaging off Rhodes and we were nigh snapped up by a Saracen raider. I could almost feel the shackles on my legs, and see myself on sale in the Beyrut market.”

“You’d have found those Syrian dealers wonderfully decent to their wares,” consoled Hormisdas; “for Infidels,” he added hastily.

“I’d rather not test out their good nature,” returned Plato vigorously; “however, no offense, Master Persian, it won’t be your sins I’ll have to account for. And do you mind telling how you came by those poor fellows here that you’ve got in those gentle fetters of yours?”

Thickness of hide being among Hormisdas’ prime virtues, he answered with oily accents, “Got ’em at Naxos down in the Islands. An Amalfi trader passed on three of ’em to me. How he got ’em is none of my business, seeing they aren’t the Emperor’s subjects, and I paid him good money.”

“You’ve no women to-day?” persisted Plato.

“Not to-day. To-morrow I’ll bring over three Gothic girls—strapping wenches, the Moors’ booty snapped up in Spain.”

“There’s a fearsome amount of kidnapping,” continued the skipper; “I pity the poor folk on the open coasts to westward, with the Infidels harrying everywhere.”

“It surely forces down the market,” assented the dealer dolefully; “I used to get forty solidi apiece for these fellows; now blessed be the Saints if I get twenty. Constantinople is glutted with slaves.”

Plato ran his eye over the four prisoners who reclined sullenly on the roof of the little cabin. “Well, that negro’ll make a good house porter for some High Excellency. That little chap chained to his ankle is a Sardinian—stupid and probably lazy. The older of the other pair looks like a regular Greek, but the fourth—the Apostles help me if he isn’t a bird with queer feathers—lank and bony enough for a hermit, tall as a pillar, with a nose like a falcon’s, and, oh, wonder! hair as red as carrots! Whence came he?”

“The Amalfian called him a Frank,” replied the trader; “but I gather he sucked his first milk in a very remote region of even those Barbarians. He can jabber the mongrel Greek of you sailors very well, and I learn that he’s called an Armorican,[5] from a region extending far out into the Sea of Darkness. He said his name was Fergal, and that his father was a kind of chief or petty king among his half-savages.”

“All captives are ‘princes’—by their own story,” remarked Plato astutely.

“Of course; still I think his tale hangs together. His family was wiped out in a feud with another chief. As a captive lad he passed to an honest man in my own trade, and then on to another who sold him through Rialto (or Venice, as they’re beginning now to call it) to a Syrian emir. Our fellow was then several years among the Infidels at Damascus and might have come to big things had he only accepted the Prophet; but, like a pious rascal, he kept to our Holy Religion, and presently along with some fellow Christian captives he escaped by sea. However, it’s plain the Panagia didn’t want him to face the temptations of being his own master. Their crazy bark was smashed off Crete and the strand-wreckers seized him as he swam ashore half-drowned. So the Amalfian got him and then your humble servant, and to-day he’s to see Constantinople.”

“For which no doubt he’ll thank you,” leered the skipper.

“He should wax proud when I sell him for fifty solidi,” replied Hormisdas, ending the conversation by sitting down upon a coil of rope, producing a wax tablet and beginning a calculation.

Plato resumed his attention to the helm. Meantime the four human chattels, dumb and silent at first, were beginning to take interest in their surroundings. The negro indeed, ignorant of every Christian tongue, could only grin and gesticulate to his involuntary comrade, the Sardinian, but the elderly Greek found the Armorican, shackled by a short chain to his own ankle, more communicative. The two perforce sat close together, the younger man cupping his hands around his eyes while peering into the mist.

“Heigh-ho!” declared the Celt at length with a bitter grin. “What can’t be cured must be endured—an old saying, I take it, in every country. To-day I’m sold again like a pig or a sheep, but at least it’ll be in a city which the old monks by my father’s smoky hall chattered about, and which the emirs in the Kalif’s palace at Damascus envied. Hardly can I believe that Constantinople can rise to a tenth of its fame.”

His companion, a grey, unkempt fellow, and very melancholy, looked up listlessly from his tattered cloak: “You’ll see the city all right; too much of it, I fancy, if Hormisdas sells us, as he probably will. Curse my eyes! Wasn’t I second cook to a turmarch, free in everything but name, and happy and fat at Corinth? Then that wretched affair of the missing silver cups—what if I did know who snitched them! Ten years ago I quitted Constantinople expecting to come home a Senator perhaps, and now——”

He spat disgustedly into the gliding water.

“Don’t take on, friend Neokles,” soothed the Armorican with a friendly glint in his shrewd young eye. “The Saints send us all foul weather. At least I’m comforted that this time I’m like to get a Christian master and not an Infidel. Forget the cups and if we can’t make a merry morning, why, make the best of a sad one. Did you live long in Constantinople ere your master went to Corinth?”

“Most of my days,” grunted Neokles, a bit less surly.

“Well then, let us pretend we do not enjoy this jewelry”—Fergal cast a spiteful glance at his leg shackle—“and that I am some brisk merchant nearing the city to sell and not to be sold. You are my guide and travel companion and shall tell me everything.”

“An idle game,” growled the ex-cook.

“Yet play it for lack of a better. Lift up your head, man, and look about you.”

Neokles shook himself. He was indeed the victim of black thoughts, but the Celt’s elasticity and cheerfulness even in such an hour were not quite to be resisted. He peered out into the mist.

“Still fog everywhere. The Marmora’s often full of it in the autumn.”

“See where the sun is just creeping up to eastward. I get the thin tracery of a sky-line. Hills, masses of cypress trees and buildings. What are they?”

Neokles’ face lightened. “Chrysopolis,”[6] he exclaimed, standing up. “We are nearer in than I reckoned. We will be in the Golden Horn in half an hour.”

“The fog is lifting!” rang the voice of Plato. “Shift the sail, you brats! We’ll get the breeze and make the Point of St. Demetrios and the harbour on this tack.”

Fergal leaped also to his feet, almost tripping his companion. The fog was rolling away in a smoky gauze, which still hung closely over the choppy waves, but through it now were lifting dimly masts by sea, and ghostly domes and pinnacles by land. Straight across the Holy Elias’ clumsy bows shot an elegant barge, her sixteen oars pumiced white and leaping with mechanical rhythm. They caught the gilding and brave colours on her curving prow, the rippling scarlet canopy on the stern, the brilliant dresses of two or three women beneath the canopy.

“A patricianess going to visit some convent down the coast. The liveries, I think, of the great house of Bringas.” Neokles forgot his sorrows in his kindling excitement.

Instantly Fergal became aware that all about Plato’s sordid bark there moved shipping. A tall merchantman laden perhaps for Sicily was working out into the Marmora, her sails still flapping on the yards, and her sailors chanting lustily as they plied the long sweeps. A deeply laden barge glided past. On her decks was a sheen of white marble. “Pillars from Proconnesus for a new wing to the palace, I take it,” confided Neokles, his spirits momentarily rising. This was passed by a more speedy fishing boat, her brown sails set like picturesque pinions, her decks swarming with the orange-capped crew, plying keen knives as they cleaned their catch for market. Ever and anon out of the fast-dispersing mist would shoot caiques—slim, elegant skiffs of beechwood, with upturned prows and cushioned sterns, a pair of boatmen making each skim the waves like a swallow, while again like swallows they were darting hither and thither.

Close behind Plato’s bulwarks sped one of these craft. Fergal could almost touch the passengers in the stern, a young man and a young woman. He could even sniff the redolent musk of their festival garments, and catch a few words of the song they were merrily raising together. Then a little knot of mist covered them. Slavery and rejoicing license had met and parted each for its separate destiny. Nevertheless, the reaction upon Fergal was not unpleasant; in a city thus sending forth its messengers of wealth, mirth and ease, how could it prove all sorrow for him?

“This pair seem very gay together,” spoke he. “Does Constantinople begin its merry-making so early?”

“They are off on an all-day lark to Kartalimen, where there are delightful pleasances for little money, but we’ll find troubles enough after we’ve landed,” responded the other captive, shaking his head again.

“But look, Neokles! Oh! marvel, the light!”

The sun had shot above the dark contours of Chrysopolis. A sudden puff from the Marmora sent the last mists flying. As by magic the great veil to westward over the imperial city melted, and before the wondering eyes of the Armorican was spread out the majestic panorama of “New Rome”—of Constantinople—under the young light every detail from headland to headland standing forth with intense clearness of line and rigour of colour.

Fergal had seen many lands amid involuntary wanderings; he had heard of the present spectacle many times. Yet the reality surpassed all fame.

The Holy Elias was gliding steadily up the entrance of that mile-wide river, the blue Bosphorus. On the left, washed by the Marmora waves, for over five miles extended a vast circuit of imposing seawalls crowned by a magnificent confusion of greenery, terraced roofs, domes, enormous piles and stately pinnacles. The reach of the fortifications ran off dimly into the distance, almost beyond the scope of human eye. To the right were now revealed the white mansions and cypress groves of Chrysopolis with white and yellow villages crowding down to the Asiatic shore. Not far from these, lifting ruddy masses from the sparkling deep, rose the rough contour of unhappy Proti and behind her the larger bulks of Chaleitis, Pityusa and their sister “Isles of the Princes.” Straight ahead was opening the Bosphorus, one retreating vista of villa-crowned hills, terraced vineyards, nestling towns and frowning towers.

But Fergal’s gaze was all ahead and to the left, while, overcome by the once familiar spectacle, Neokles had dropped on his knees and was praying wildly:

“Oh! ye Saints who make blessed this immortal city, whose images never lack your multitudinous candles, whose relics are worshipped by a million, have pity on my plight!” Then the elder captive pointed in a kind of ecstasy to a majestic gilded dome supported by vast masses of grey masonry.

“Hagia Sophia,” he cried, “the temple beyond compare!” Fergal himself was fain to stand awestruck, trying to make his eyes bring some order out of the amazing spectacle, until Neokles recovered from his emotions enough to answer and explain. At last he began to point and wax eloquent:

“Right before us is now the imperial residence: not a palace of course, but a marvellous enclosed park, a mile and a half long and jutting out into the Bosphorus. You see how it rises terrace above terrace out of the sea. That two-storied building with long tiers of round-topped windows is the Bukoleon, a special residence beside which is the private haven for the Emperor’s yachts. A state dromond is at the quay even now. Those waving tropical trees are in the incomparable imperial gardens. All that confusion of lofty buildings contains the halls of state and the government ministries. Behind these of course extends the city itself. You can count most of the Seven Hills. Hagia Sophia is on the nearest, but all are crowned by some mighty edifice or tower. The Hippodrome is hidden behind the palace compound, but try to number the domes of the churches silvered or gilded:—that lesser one near Hagia Sophia is Hagia Irene,[7] further south you see Hagia Anastasia,[8] far away on another hill is the second noblest of them all, “Holy Apostles,” where they bury the Emperors. Yonder column is that of Constantine overlooking his own great Forum——” But here Neokles overran his eloquence, gloomy thoughts enforcing silence, and Fergal was left to drink in the spectacle unaided.

Plato shifted the helm, hugging close to the walls of the palace, so that on the battlements above could be seen pacing the silver-armoured guardsmen of majesty. Then as the wind bore them around a fortified headland, suddenly there flashed forth a new vista. A long, deep inlet of the sea was revealed, its length again fading into the distance. On the left hand, as the coaster turned westward, the buildings of Constantinople (no longer restrained by walls) seemed crowding tier above tier down to the harbour’s edge. Brightly coloured wooden houses appeared, mingled with marble palaces. Everywhere waved foliage. There were even gleams of flowering gardens. Churches, columns, residences, public buildings, colossal statues, many-storied dwellings, all were thrown together in an astonishing disorder.

These were on the southern bank of the harbour, while on the northern apparently rose another city of innumerable black buildings and of labyrinthine lanes, backed in turn by a lofty ridge. This was crowned with yet more cypresses and gardens, and by masses of white houses with nobly wooded hills spreading out beyond the range of vision.

“The Golden Horn?” queried Fergal, and Neokles recovered enough from his black mood to nod, and add: “Here to the north is Galata; on the height above is Pera. Ai! Our voyage is soon over; we’ll know our fates!”

But now the progress of Plato’s craft slackened. The entrance to the Golden Horn was one jumble of vessels. Deeply laden corn ships from the Black Sea and Crimea were contending for the fairway with lighter traders from Salonica and Smyrna. Fearful were the curses exchanged betwixt the mariners as their craft barely avoided collisions; reckless were the taunts hurled at the larger ships by the rowers of the numberless caiques which shot daringly across every path of danger. Over them all hung the sapphire sky of morning, flinging its light into the yet bluer water. The Armorican stood for the instant transfixed, forgetful of present chains and impending barter.

“I thank ye saints,” he spoke aloud in his own Celtic tongue, “that I am suffered to behold this miracle. Now I understand what often I have heard of Constantinople, ‘If men there could be immortal, this city would be very heaven!’ ”

“Here comes Hormisdas after us,” croaked Neokles at his elbow. “The devil wither him! Now our troubles begin.”

As the ex-cook spoke, Plato dexterously seized with a boat hook one of the large bronze rings set along the quays. The long yard fell with a clatter. Hormisdas flourished an ugly, loaded cudgel.

“Here, you four, ashore with you! Don’t trip over your chains, and get a pair of you drowned together. The sun is high and a customer may have come and gone already.”

... And thus it was that Fergal the Armorican, second son of a kinglet of Vannes, set foot in New Rome.