“I thought that I was on duty, Martina.”

“Then, as usual, you thought wrong.  Take off that armour; she says that the sight of it always makes her feel cold after supper.  I say take it off; or if you cannot, I will help you.”

So the mail was removed, leaving me clad in my plain blue tunic and hose.

“Would you have me come before the Empress thus?” I asked.

By way of answer she clapped her hands and bade the eunuch who answered the signal to bring a certain robe.  He went, and presently reappeared with a wondrous garment of silk broidered with gold, such as nobles of high rank wore at festivals.  This robe, which fitted as though it had been made for me, I put on, though I liked the look of it little.  Martina would have had me even remove my sword, but I refused, saying: 

“Except at the express order of the Empress, I and my sword are not parted.”

“Well, she said nothing about the sword, Olaf, so let it be.  All she said was that I must be careful that the robe matched the colour of the necklace you wear.  She cannot bear colours which jar upon each other, especially by lamp-light.”

“Am I a man,” I asked angrily, “or a beast being decked for sacrifice?”

“Fie, Olaf, have you not yet forgotten your heathen talk?  Remember, I pray you, that you are now a Christian in a Christian land.”

“I thank you for reminding me of it,” I replied; and that moment a chamberlain, entering hurriedly, commanded my presence.

“Good luck to you, Olaf,” said Martina as I followed him.  “Be sure to tell me the news later—­or to-morrow.”

Then the chamberlain led me, not into the audience hall, as I had expected, but to the private imperial dining chamber.  Here, reclining upon couches in the old Roman fashion, one on either side of a narrow table on which stood fruits and flagons of rich-hued Greek wine, were the two greatest people in the world, the Augusta Irene and the Augustus Constantine, her son.

She was wonderfully apparelled in a low-cut garment of white silk, over which fell a mantle of the imperial purple, and I noted that on her dazzling bosom hung that necklace of emerald beetles separated by golden shells which she had caused to be copied from my own.  On her fair hair that grew low upon her forehead and was parted in the middle, she wore a diadem of gold in which were set emeralds to match the beetles of the necklace.  The Augustus was arrayed in the festal garments of a Caesar, also covered with a purple cloak.  He was a heavy-faced and somewhat stupid-looking youth, dark-haired, like his father and uncles, but having large, blue, and not unkindly eyes.  From his flushed face I gathered that he had drunk well of the strong Greek wine, and from the sullen look about his mouth that, as was common, he had been quarrelling with his mother.

I stood at the end of the table and saluted first the Empress and then the Emperor.