Fortune's wheel caught the fancy and finally
the enduring love of Justinian the heir to the throne. Then on the death
of his uncle Justin, the young man had become the greatest monarch upon
the earth, and had raised Theodora to be not only his wife and Empress,
but to be absolute ruler with powers equal to and independent of his
own. And she, the polluted one, had risen to the dignity, had cut
herself sternly away from all that related to her past life, and had
shown signs already of being a great Queen, stronger and wiser than her
husband, but fierce, vindictive, and unbending, a firm support to her
friends, but a terror to her foes. This was the woman to whom the Abbot
Luke of Antioch was bringing Leon, her forgotten son. If ever her mind
strayed back to the days when, abandoned by her lover Ecebolus, the
Governor of the African Pentapolis, she had made her way on foot through
Asia Minor, and left her infant with the monks, it was only to persuade
herself that the brethren cloistered far from the world would never
identify Theodora the Empress with Theodora the dissolute wanderer, and
that the fruits of her sin would be for ever concealed from her Imperial
husband.

The little brig had now rounded the point of the Acropolis, and the
long blue stretch of the Golden Horn lay before it. The high wall of
Theodosius lined the whole harbour, but a narrow verge of land had been
left between it and the water's edge to serve as a quay. The vessel
ran alongside near the Neorion Gate, and the passengers, after a short
scrutiny from the group of helmeted guards who lounged beside it, were
allowed to pass through into the great city.

The abbot, who had made several visits to Constantinople upon the
business of his monastery, walked with the assured step of one who
knows his ground; while the boy, alarmed and yet pleased by the rush
of people, the roar and glitter of passing chariots, and the vista of
magnificent buildings, held tightly to the loose gown of his guide,
while staring eagerly about him in every direction. Passing through the
steep and narrow streets which led up from the water, they emerged into
the open space which surrounds the magnificent pile of Saint Sophia, the
great church begun by Constantine, hallowed by Saint Chrysostom, and now
the seat of the Patriarch, and the very centre of the Eastern Church.
Only with many crossings and genuflections did the pious abbot succeed
in passing the revered shrine of his re