The Emperor, too, had to deal with opposition that was often violent. Better organized, more patient, more subtle than the nomads’ rash uprisings against Balamir, these attacks were also more dangerous. And they never ceased, whereas Balamir’s only problem was to hold out during the three or four years that came before the great conquests: once the New Alliance had launched the nomads against the great plains of wheat and the gold-covered monuments, the barbarians were again behind Balamir as one man. But within the Empire itself, military success and economic prosperity were never enough to reconcile everyone to the alliance with the barbarians. The hostility to the New Alliance—fostered, according to Robert Weill-Pichon, by Pomposan gold—came mainly from groups most deeply rooted in tradition: big ship and cattle owners, families where a naval or military career was handed down from father to son, merchants whose fortunes depended on good relations with Cyprus or Sicily, the ever-resurgent priesthood, resentful at seeing their recently revived power threatened by the New Alliance just as it had arisen out of its own ashes. All these different groups, once opposed to one another, now found themselves united in common hostility toward the barbarians and their influence on imperial policy. By a striking but easily explained paradox, many of those who thus opposed Alexis had been among his stoutest supporters at the time of the conspiracy against the barbarian tyrants. The reason was that they thought themselves more faithful than the Emperor to the lessons they owed to him. Had he not taught them to unite against the barbarians, to drive them from lands wrested from them by Arsaphes and Basil, to protect the customs, beliefs, and traditions of the Empire against the invader? And now here was the Emperor putting himself into the hands of the barbarians, receiving them at Aquileus, covering their leaders with honors, wealth, and marks of friendship, and entrusting Balamir, enemy of the gods and terror of the steppes, who had burned so many villages and murdered so many innocent people, with the command of the imperial armies! Many genuinely thought that the Emperor was deranged, that mysterious and sinister influences were affecting his mind and will, and that he was no longer responsible for his mad decisions and the perilous paths into which he was leading the Empire. They were filled with anger, and with real hatred against Alexis. One of the cleverest of his opponents found an explanation that worked very well—so well that all these centuries later it is found almost word for word in the accounts of some modern historians. According to this view, Alexis’s policy after having beaten Balamir was exactly the same as Simeon would have imposed if he had beaten Alexis. The more subtle exponents of this theory added that Simeon would probably have had to be harsher toward his allies, and that it was unthinkable that he could have shown Balamir the same consideration and respect that Alexis now did. And so there spread through the Empire a kind of skepticism and even hostility that eventually came to threaten Alexis’s authority. A year or two after the six-day battle, the Pomposan ambassador wrote to his merchant princes that the Emperor’s position had never been more precarious, and that even many of his own supporters seemed to expect his fall.
The crisis was to be resolved by an event of considerable political importance, but above all indicative of the Emperor’s moral and psychological evolution. Whether through conviction or self-interest, Jester, hero with Isidore of the double single combat, had secretly gone over to Alexis’s enemies. Chosen by the Emperor to continue one illustrious line, the conqueror of Simeon and Dingizik had, like Bruince but unlike Thaumas, Philocrates, and most of the Jesters preceding him, come from another—from one of the greatest families in the Empire. He had been brought up to respect already ancient traditions, together with the military virtues to which the companions of Arsaphes and Basil had owed their fame. These traditions, these virtues, were cherished among all the old families whose origins were buried in the mists of time and had usually been employed in the service of one or another of the two dynasties that had fought for mastery of the Empire—the Porphyries and the Venostae. Jester’s family had supported the Porphyries, and had only with reluctance acquiesced in Basil’s domination and the triumph of Onessa. But in these ancient families the love of arms and glory was so strong that Jester’s grandfathers and great-grandfathers had eventually performed wonders in the service of the hated Venostae. So excessive was the pride of these great nobles, so imbued were they with the idea of their own superior lineage, that they always considered the Porphyries themselves traitors to tradition and the purity of the race. Long before Basil’s reign, Jester’s ancestors had considered Arsaphes nothing more than a captain of mercenaries who had been raised to the top rank by his marriage to the Porphyries’ heiress and by the fortune of war. They referred to him almost openly as a foreigner and an upstart. Through his mother, Alexis himself undoubtedly belonged to the great line of the Porphyries. But his birth, his escapades, his policy were all of just the kind to displease the great past-oriented families who had managed to survive the convulsions of the Empire, and in whom Robert Weill-Pichon with reason discerned the very type of the extreme conservative. The fight against the barbarians had temporarily reconciled them with the Emperor, but they meant to oblige him, and if necessary force him, to adopt their own policy. Jester’s success had restored all their pride in their origins. They had begun to hope that the new order would restore tradition, privilege, ancestral ways, and the greatness of their houses. The New Alliance had been a great blow to these hopes, which soon turned into conspiracies. Jester, whom we have seen so devoted to the Emperor that he was ready to die for him and follow him to the ends of the earth, viewed the alliance with Balamir as a kind of betrayal. That he was influenced by the merchant princes, an explanation angrily advanced by Robert Weill-Pichon, seems to Sir Allan Carter-Bennett unlikely; and this is the view taken by most modern historians. On the other hand, the princes of Cyprus, who had various connections with Jester’s family, do seem to have gotten to him, not so much by promises of advantage as by heaping on him flattery and honors. Passing through Famagusta, Jester had been received with delirious enthusiasm, and the lad, who accepted the affection and gratitude of his own people very naturally, had his head turned by the sight of a whole city, a foreign country, and strangely clad chiefs and princes acclaiming him and venerating him like a god. He was entering the difficult age between childhood and adolescence. By dint of always hearing that it was he who had saved the Empire and that Isidore had been merely the physical instrument wielded by his intelligence, he came to think he was charged with some special vocation with regard to the Empire, and began to see signs and hear voices. But two or three years after the double duel, Jester was still scarcely more than a very young man unconsciously conditioned by all sorts of influences. Those of the most traditionalist circles in the Empire joined with that of his family and friends, that of the priests, and that of the princes of Cyprus, to make him believe the barbarians he had overthrown all alone were still the enemy of the race, of tradition, and of all those to whom the Empire really belonged.
Alexis’s victories had enabled the priests of Aquileus to recover the prosperity, influence, and power lost to them since the triumph of Basil. Through Fabrician, and also through Philocrates, who without being a priest himself had been very close to them, Alexis had too many links with the hierarchy not to follow Basil’s later example and restore it to its former dignities and privileges. The priests had done much for the greatness of the Empire, in education, culture, the development of the arts, in bringing about a certain softening of manners, and in introducing a certain idea of the duties of life as well as of its beauty. They had had their faults. They had shown both boundless ambition and cowardice in the face of force. But such figures as Thaumas and Isidore—and Bruince, too—were enough, with the memory of their courage and magnanimity, to redeem and excuse the rest. And after all, in this Empire still filled with violence and uncouthness, Alexis felt quite close to the priests, despite their many differences. He liked to go and talk to them, not only about the affairs of the Empire, but, like his mo
ther Helen, about man’s place in the universe and his immortal destiny. But under these outward signs of friendship, a whole section of the priests of Aquileus were, in fact, fiercely opposed to him. They reproached him for his sun worship, his former life of debauchery, his mysterious links with the religions of Asia, which many regarded as mere magic and sorcery, and, above all, for being at once too harsh and too indulgent: they blamed him both for Simeon’s death and for the alliance with Balamir. “What!” they would murmur, moving busily from group to group, “a man who murdered his brother and his mistress, who worships no god but the sun, who digs the grave of tradition, a debauchee, the friend of the barbarians—he the master of the Empire! Let us spring to the Empire’s defense before the nomads rule in Aquileus, before the worship of the sun supplants that of the eagle and the oak, before all our old customs are destroyed.”
Alexis’s connection with sun worship might well have aroused the resentment of any who were profoundly attached to the religion of their ancestors. But in many cases this was only a pretext. The real motives were thirst for power, jealousy of newly recovered privileges, and the fear inspired by the New Alliance and a policy in which the influence of the barbarians was bound to counterbalance, if not threaten, that of the priests. Several times the priests of Aquileus offered Alexis plans for the elimination of the barbarians. All these schemes relied on trickery and on Balamir’s trust in Alexis’s friendship. It was suggested that on the pretext of some feast or entertainment the nomads should be lured into a narrow valley or pass, surrounded, and massacred. “Are you not ashamed,” the Emperor answered the priests, “to use against the barbarians the same treachery that Basil once used against you? Are you, the victims of the banquet at Onessa, so anxious to become the executioners of the New Alliance? Treason and injustice are even more frail than violence and hatred, and they can never be sure of success. And even if they were, what you suggest would not be justified. It would be unworthy of you and of me to repay with baseness the loyalty of the barbarians, who probably think us more honorable than we are. If they should betray us, we shall retaliate. But if they are faithful, why should we betray?” The Emperor also knew in his own mind that the power of the nomads could never be destroyed at a single blow. However many perished in a massacre, enough would still remain to overwhelm the Empire. And so, knowing himself responsible for all those who had set him at their head, Alexis resisted the priests and their mad schemes. It was then that they turned to Jester, who became in their hands an obedient instrument against the Emperor’s prestige and the policy of the New Alliance.
The priests, backed by silver from Cyprus, paraded Jester from place to place as the living symbol of resistance to the barbarians. Each of his public appearances was accompanied by speeches paying equivocal tribute to the prestige of the Porphyries, uttering fiery incitements to the struggle against the barbarians, and lauding the example of the ancestral way of life. In a famous address to the college of priests at Aquileus, Isidore tried to point out to the younger among them, who were apt to talk airily about it, what life really had been like not only under the barbarian tyrants but, even before them, under Basil and Arsaphes. He recalled the daily threats, the fear of what the morrow might bring, the constant fear of invasion, the continual insecurity parried only by heroism and the efforts of genius. We all know, having translated them twenty times at school, the most famous passages of this inspired and eloquent address: “How long will courage be confused with temerity, and wisdom with cowardice? To save the Empire, men have to be bold, be bold, and everywhere be bold. The slightest stupidity or folly and all might be lost. . . . It is the magnanimity of the victor that gives its meaning to victory. It is the hope and image of peace that justify war. So let us learn to be strong without being unjust, and to bring out of conflict that friendship between men that is the secret of empires, that love of wisdom that is another name for virtue.” Those priests who were hostile to the Emperor regarded this speech as a capitulation to the barbarians. Two days later, twenty-seven barbarian captains and over three hundred of their men were murdered near Amphibolus.
Balamir was at this time engaged in putting down a rebellion, far from the frontiers of the Empire. When he heard the news from two of the nomad messengers who used to bring information on their tiny, almost unbroken horses over unimaginable distances, the Kha-Khan was seized with fury. He was not familiar with the subtle intrigues of the priests inside the Empire, and from the messengers’ account he was led to believe that Alexis was implicated. Of course, this was just what the priests had intended. They had calculated that Balamir’s anger must bring about the rupture of the New Alliance and force the Emperor into the war he wanted to avoid. To make assurance double sure, the priests had left the nomads to die with refinements of cruelty more reminiscent of the worst excesses of the barbarians than of the fine ancestral customs they were always talking about. Instead of being crucified, the victims were riddled with barbed arrows ending in hooks that tore out lumps of flesh when the arrows were removed. The gaping, half-flayed bodies, still alive, were then buried in pits, with a covering of branches and stones that allowed some air to enter, so that death should be prolonged. These horrors, breathlessly recounted to Balamir by the messengers, fired the whole camp with a desire for revenge. Those among the barbarians who had been hoping for the destruction of the New Alliance also saw their opportunity, and urged Balamir not to leave such bloody insults unanswered. Balamir hesitated, spending almost a whole day shut up in his tent, pacing up and down and fingering the beads of amber, tortoise shell, and ivory that the emperor of the Middle Kingdom had given to him to appease the anger and anxiety that could make all Asia tremble. He reflected that the union of the barbarians with the Empire could lead to unparalleled successes; he shrank from attacking Alexis again; and he had a vague feeling that the matter was not as simple as was claimed by the more excitable and violent of his counselors, who wished for an immediate decision so that there could be no going back. But confronted with the determined, almost threatening attitude of those about him, who, bored with a long peace interrupted by only a few routine or police operations, howled for war and blood with perhaps an admixture of understandable indignation, the Kha-Khan decided to march against the Empire. Had he made any other decision he would have run the risk of being overridden by Alexis’s enemies, and put both his own authority and his life in danger. Once again the earth shook beneath the hoofs of the wild horsemen, drunk with the thought of the fire and carnage they had been deprived of for so long. In them a strange new feeling that they were executing justice mingled with a familiar excitement at the approach to rape and plunder.
Alexis, in Aquileus, did not need the reports of spies and informers to tell him the grave, possibly irreparable, consequences of the mad act perpetrated by the party made up of the princes of Cyprus, the priests, and the great families of the Empire. All the work of reconciliation, the whole New Alliance, was threatened by this second massacre at Amphibolus—the very name of the place was full of sinister portents. Without hesitation, Alexis sent three messengers to the Kha-Khan of the Oïghurs, bearing messages of regret, promises of peace, and gifts. But, as he suspected how the nomads must be feeling, he had the messengers followed by secret agents with instructions to cover them and, if necessary, come to their aid. Before a fortnight was out, one of these men, disguised as a merchant, reappeared in Aquileus. He was gaunt, exhausted, scarcely recognizable. When he was brought before the Emperor, he barely had the strength to recount the horrors he had witnessed. The messengers, shadowed by the others who followed their movements secretly and from a distance, had ridden for nine days. On the evening of the ninth day, as they were crossing an almost dry river, a host of nomads had risen up from among the rocks and sparse vegetation overlooking the river, thrown themselves on the horsemen, and taken them prisoner. They had at once begun to torture them, first cutting off their hands and feet with refinements not so much of cruelty as of a real desire to avoid too
rapid a death. The unhappy victims were revived after every stage and almost lovingly tended by a Chinaman with a long straggly beard who was both torturer and physician. By means of swords whose whetted edges had been tried first on grass and leaves, the Chinese had cut off, one after the other, their sexual organs, noses, and ears, and was about to disembowel them, when the secret envoys, no longer able to bear the awful sight, tried, under cover of dusk and of the spell cast on the barbarians by blood and torture, to make a surprise attack. Despite the unequal numbers they had already killed ten or a dozen when they in turn were overwhelmed and rendered helpless. Only the man now speaking to the Emperor had managed, during the struggle, to hide in a rocky hollow where the nomads could not find him, and where, after a long and unsuccessful search, they left him, to bury the thought of him in rye brandy and indifference.
Night had fallen. The man ventured to peer out over the rocks, and saw the barbarians lighting a fire. The prisoners were lying in front of it, tied together by their legs and arms. To the dreadful scene, the cries of pain, the drunkenness and the calm, precise, almost abstract gestures of the Chinaman who seemed to be officiating in some nightmare ceremonial, the dancing flames lent the appearance of a fantastic carnival in which flowers, music, and dancing were replaced by blood, the moans of the dying, and the grotesque gesticulations of executioners and victims. The three messengers finally died, and the nomads seemed to have forgotten the prisoners thrown in front of the fire. The barbarians shared out the gifts intended for the Kha-Khan, perfumes, jewels, precious spirits in sealed jars; they tossed the gold about in their hands, and unwound silks and velvets so that they could be heard rustling through the darkness. From time to time one of them would stagger to his feet and go over, with insults and oaths, to thrust against a face or a body a burning brand or a spear made red-hot in the fire. Then again, through the drunken hiccupping, would come more groans of pain, and the light breeze would carry the awful smell of charred flesh. Thus a part of the night passed away. Then, just before dawn, the Chinaman, who had fallen asleep, woke up. He stretched, rubbed his eyes, swallowed five or six cups of rye brandy, threw more wood on the fire, and went over to the prisoners. He tore off their nails, gouged out their eyes, and slit open their stomachs, and stuffed into their mouths their eyes and genitals and bowels. Some of the nomads were making love to one another in the flickering firelight.
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