By the summer of 969 life in the sacred palace had become very sombre and unpleasant, and Theophano began to seek a new companion. The ardour of her husband’s passion had been chilled by the terrors which now surrounded him, and, in preparation for the death which was foretold to him, he returned zealously to his monastic habits. Even the soldiers were now hostile to him, except his immediate corps of foreign mercenaries. Nicephorus relied on their formidable axes, converted the old and decaying Bucoleon palace into a massive fortress, girt the whole enclosure with a lofty castellated wall, and retired within this heavily guarded circle to spend his days and nights in prayer and penitence.
It is one of the most curious features of the story that, while he moodily punished his bravest officers for their very victories, the lithe and insidious Theophano retained his confidence. She had no longer the comparative solace of his sensual fire, and she must have looked on with deep disdain when he refused to share the imperial bed at night and, after long hours of prayer and psalm-reading, flung himself for a brief and feverish sleep on a panther-skin spread upon the ground in the corner of his chamber. But Theophano was not excluded from the Bucoleon palace, and she laid her plans to defeat his desperate entrenchments. The new partner whom she chose to encourage was the general Zimiskes, the Emperor’s nephew, whom we have seen on an earlier page revealing the perfidy of Bringas to his uncle. He had been dismissed from office by Nicephorus “on account of certain suspicions”; and we have little trouble in inferring that he was suspected of liaison with Theophano and eagerness for the throne. He was, like his uncle, a very little and robust man, but much more handsome than Nicephorus; his broad chest and great brawny arms were redeemed by a fair countenance, a pair of keen and friendly blue eyes and a crown of almost golden hair. I must be pardoned for inserting such portraits of the Emperors as we have, while seeming to omit the more desirable portraits of their consorts. The Byzantine chroniclers rarely give us more than the very vaguest assurances that Empresses were “very beautiful,” and so on, and the few surviving representations of them in ivory or bronze or mosaic are not portraits on which one would dare to found a physiognomical study.
In the autumn of 969 Zimiskes was living impatiently on his private estate in Armenia, when he received an assurance that Theophano had persuaded his uncle to allow him to return to Court. Whether or no it is true that he had previously enjoyed the favours of Theophano, he now certainly became her ally and accomplice. She seems to have deluded Nicephorus with diabolical duplicity. A rumour, which most historians plausibly ascribe to her, was circulated in Constantinople, to the effect that Nicephorus intended to castrate her sons and leave the crown to his brother Leo, who, on account of his extortions, was no less hated than he. On the other hand, Theophano persuaded Nicephorus that the interest of herself and her children would be best consulted if Zimiskes were recalled to the capital and compelled to marry some noble lady of the city. Nicephorus assented, and his nephew came to Constantinople. Then it seems to have been betrayed to the Emperor, probably by his brother, that Zimiskes was being secretly admitted to the Empress’s apartments, and he placed restrictions on him. Zimiskes retired to his mansion at Chalcedon, on the Asiatic side, and continued to communicate with Theophano.
The culmination of the plot is a thrilling, if sordid, page of romance. On the night of 10th December Theophano visited her husband and persuaded him to leave his chamber door unfastened, as she would see him later. He still failed to suspect her, although some watchful priest had warned him of the plot. Some time before a group of tall, veiled women had presented themselves at the palace door and been admitted; and, when they had reached the secret chambers assigned to them by Theophano, it was a group of bronzed soldiers who emerged from the mantles and veils. Someone betrayed them, and Nicephorus sent an officer to explore the palace, but he, probably being in the pay of Theophano, reported that all was well, and Nicephorus turned to his long psalms. Theophano and her servants were in the upper part of the palace looking out anxiously over the Sea of Marmora. It was a dark wintry night, and the snow was falling heavily. At length a faint whistle from below told them that a boat had arrived from Chalcedon and lay under the walls. A basket (some say a ladder) was tied to a rope and lowered into the depths, and presently Zimiskes and several companions were within the palace. An Arab historian would have us believe that Theophano herself led them, with drawn swords, to her husband’s room; it is more probable that, as the Greek writers say, she left this to one of her eunuchs.
For a moment the conspirators started back in alarm; the imperial bed was empty, and they fancied that the plot was known, and Nicephorus would fall on them. But the eunuch showed them the sleeping form of the Emperor on his panther-rug, and, with a cry for help to the Virgin, the strange soldier-monk passed out of the imperial world he had invaded. Basil, the astute head chamberlain, had an opportune illness at the moment, and only recovered in time to do reverence to his new sovereign. The guards alone rushed from their quarters and attacked the conspirators, but the sight of the grisly head of the late Emperor, which was exhibited at the window, induced them to sheathe their swords and accept a new paymaster. So Zimiskes proceeded gaily to the golden palace (Chrysotriclinon) to put on the purple slippers, and Theophano retired to her room to reflect on the next phase of her career: perhaps to glance now and again at the ghastly trunk of her late husband, which lay, all night and all the following day, in the snow without. This, surely, was the last crime she need commit. She was still young, and might look forward to many years of power with the robust soldier she had invited to share her throne.
Six days later Zimiskes went in state to St Sophia to receive his diadem, and found the stern patriarch Polyeuctes again boldly barring the way. He refused to crown Zimiskes except on three conditions: he must undo the anti-clerical work of his predecessor, he must deliver to justice the actual murderer of Nicephorus, and he must drive the guilty Theophano from the palace. Theophano now discovered the full brutality of her accomplice. He bowed at once to the commands of the patriarch, and the beautiful young Empress—she must still have been in her twenties, unless she was much older than her husband at the time of her first marriage—was dragged from her apartments to the Bucoleon quay and shipped to one of the dreary island prisons in the Sea of Marmora. She was furious with rage and disappointment. After a time she escaped and contrived to reach the altar in St Sophia; but even the mob of Constantinople shrank from the murderess, and her former confederate, Basil, was allowed to tear her from the altar. In her frenzy she beat the grand chamberlain with her own white hands and, reverting to the language of the tavern, poured her invectives on the “Scythian bastard.”[23] Her career had been so darkened with suspicion, and had so plainly ended in murder, that her appeals fell on a cold, if not jeering, audience, and she was conveyed to distant Armenia and confined in a monastery.
The rest of the story of Theophano, as far as it is known to us, is told in the curt statement that she was recalled to Court in the reign of her eldest son, Basil, and again enjoyed the imperial position for half-a-century. John Zimiskes retained only for a few years the power for which he had paid so base a price. The marriage which he presently contracted was not much less sordid than the marriage he had intended to contract; if, indeed, he ever had a serious desire to make so dangerous a woman as Theophano the partner of his throne. He took a nun from her monastery, bade the patriarch—whose scruples had their limits—relieve her of her vows, and married her. The Empress Theodora is not clearly outlined in the chronicles, but she is not without interest. She was one of those daughters of Constantine whom her brother Romanus had forced to take the veil. Zimiskes had felt that an alliance with the late dynasty would strengthen his position, and it may be remembered that the daughters of Constantine were not at all scrupulous. They had refused to wear the black robe or eat the bread and beans of the monastery. Constantinople is said to have indulged in the most boisterous rejoicing over the marriage, and even the heavens seemed to express their satisfaction, when one of the Senators discovered in his orchard an ancient stone on which was miraculously inscribed: “Long Life to John and Theodora.” There were, however, sceptics in the city, as it was recalled that a similar “discovery” had been made in the interest of Irene and her son, yet the blessing had proved illusory. The Senator was richly rewarded, but he may have lived to see the futility of his miracle. After a few years (976) the handsome chamberlain Basil bribed John’s cook to put less innocent things than condiments in his dishes, and he went the beaten way of Byzantine Emperors. Theodora disappears after his death, though we can hardly suppose that she returned to her monastery.
Theophano’s sons, Basil and Constantine, now became joint Emperors, and they recalled their mother from Armenia to the palace. One would be inclined to suspect that the poisoning did not come to her as a surprise, but the chroniclers do not impeach her, and we need not strive to lengthen the list of her misdeeds. She makes no further mark, for good or evil, in the chronicles. Possibly the terrible experiences of her early womanhood and seven years of sober reflection in her monastic prison had destroyed her passion for intrigue. In any case, the very vigorous administration of her elder son left her little room to interfere, and she seems to have been content with the quiet enjoyment of the position of a dowager Empress. According to George the Monk (or his continuer) she lived for fifty years after the death of her first husband—that is to say, after 963—and so she must have passed her seventieth year at the time of her death. There seems to have been no rival Empress during that time. We may trust that the character of Theophano sobered and matured, and that the forty years’ silence means that she led a regular and unambitious life. However that may be, the personality she shows when she is under the full limelight on the imperial stage is one of unrestrained passion and greed. She was a tavern-keeper’s daughter in the purple, an appalling instance of the lowest type of Greek beauty.