Gods and Legions (10 page)
'They feel like boats on my feet. Heavy boats.' Then he slowly smiled. 'Roman boats.'
'You asked me what you should do.'
'So I did. Now what?'
'Now march.'
III
Thus began peaceful, scholarly Julian's ascent as a soldier, and it is doubtful that there had ever been a more inauspicious beginning to a warrior's career since Telemachus, who was denied the firm guidance of his kingly father Odysseus until the day he was suddenly thrust into battle against Penelope's hundred thirty-six suitors.
His training under Sallustius commenced, and the difficulty of the master's regime was exceeded only by the student's stubbornness. The Caesar had never in his life experienced the slightest physical hardship. Until this time, all his training had been of the mind: courses of philosophy, rhetoric and composition, Greek literary works of good authorship. You may have heard it sometimes argued that children of lesser parentage should not be educated, on the grounds that their best hopes for advancement are in the military. As the old saying goes, 'A scholar made is a soldier betrayed.' Such people point to the most fearsome of the barbarian nations, the Franks and the Huns, whose leaders are all soldiers by training and custom, and who denigrate book learning as unworthy of their skills. To my knowledge, however, in almost all cases truly successful military leaders are educated to at least some degree, or if they are not, they are ashamed of their ignorance and seek to remedy it.
Certainly Julian's education had not neglected the military classics, such as Thucydides' recounting of the war of thrice nine years between Sparta and Athens, and Themistogenes' shameless embellishment of Xenophon's Persian campaign. Nor was he ignorant of the devastation that had been wreaked on the Roman people by the Germanic tribes over the centuries: the loss of five entire armies, all commanded by Consuls; the destruction even of the supreme general Varus and three legions; how though the Germanics had actually been defeated several times, by Caius Marius in Italy, Julius in Gaul, and Tiberius and Germanicus in their native territories, it had been accomplished only with great difficulty and enormous loss of Roman life. Julian was well versed in strategic theory, the uses and benefits of diplomatic policy and coercion to facilitate military aims, and other such grand issues as are discussed at length in the classics. But when one's entire marching force in hostile territory consists of three hundred sixty footsore ascetics, and one's very survival is at stake, such lessons in international political theory and strategic military alliances are of little import. What Sallustius would seek to impress upon him both now and in the years to come were what I might term the lesser military arts: drill and basic tactics, military protocol, use of the bow, lance, and sword, and effective riding; and what Sallustius began with first was marching.
Dear God, Sallustius drilled us ceaselessly, and it was not a matter of doing so at leisure in a well-tended Field of Mars, for it was still necessary to make sufficient progress each day on our way to Vienne. For a solid week we practiced the Pyrrhic march-step and its related maneuvers to the maddeningly monotonous beat of a drum pounded by Sallustius himself, and the skirling of a pipe played haltingly by one of the hermits who had once as a boy, while working as a shepherd, taught himself a single tune, which he now repeated incessantly. Sallustius' only concession to the exigencies of travel was to allow us to halt our progress through the Alps perhaps one hour earlier each day than we otherwise would have, at which point he drilled us for another three hours under sodden, iron skies until the weaker ones collapsed with trembling knees, whispering prayers or curses under their breath, and Julian's face was drawn and ashen. The physician Oribasius refused even to watch after the first day or two, his pudgy hands fluttering helplessly and his balding head bobbing in distress. I marched every step of every drill along with the troops, if only to better perform my duty of monitoring Julian's health. The whole scene was the source of much hilarity to Pentadius and Gaudentius, who strove to do as little as possible to assist with Sallustius' efforts. Paul the Chain, for the most part, confined himself to his own tent, depriving us of his company, which few seemed to miss.
Happily, within two weeks of late-afternoon drill sessions, the ragged mob had begun to imitate a reasonable semblance of a Roman military detachment, at least in their marching order and discipline, which had naturally been Sallustius' first order of business. The older man's initial fear had been that if the Alemanni scouts we frequently saw spying on us from ridge tops had noted a chaotic, bedraggled band of civilians wending through the foothills in a long train, we would be ripe for attack and slaughter. This danger was now allayed, and as is often the case when discipline is established, morale increased as well. Indeed, I would even venture to say that this period may have been the happiest in Julian's entire life – for what young man would not be happy, after having been set free from a virtual captivity in a city he detested, by a man he loathed, to travel to new lands with a new wife, bearing the ring of a Caesar no less?
When after a month we finally arrived at the Roman city of Vienne, the capital of Gallia Viennensis, a hundred miles up the Rhone from its spill into the Mediterranean, it was to shouts of joy by our troops that could not have been more heartfelt than those exclaimed by Xenophon's men upon their first glimpse of the sea. And to the surprise and delight of all, their elation was matched by that of the people of the elegant city, who greeted Julian's arrival as if he were the answer to their prayers. They thronged the streets, flocking from the countryside miles around, like the crowds in Jerusalem that fateful day three centuries before, swelling the population of the city to thrice its normal size. They paraded before him on his route, singing the praises of the young commander who would rid them of the barbarians and restore them to their former prosperity. They gazed the more eagerly on his royal pomp because he was a lawfully invested prince; and they were amazed and delighted when his soldiers spontaneously broke out in a perfectly modulated hymn of glory and praise sung in ecclesiastical Latin, rather than the obscene camp ditties and rough marching tunes they were accustomed to hearing from entering soldiers.
That afternoon, Julian's warrior monks celebrated a solemn service at the Church of Saint Stephen in thanksgiving for their safe arrival, and Sallustius gave us our first reprieve in a month from his nightly drills, with the stern warning that they would recommence the next day. We then participated in a citywide banquet sponsored by some local patricians, consisting of five hundred roasted winter lambs, the first fresh meat we had eaten since departing Milan. The occasion was indeed historic – for even Sallustius smiled.
Later on, long after the last soldier had said his prayers and retired, Helena sent a messenger to the barracks where I was sharing a room with Oribasius, to fetch me to the Bishop's palace, where she and her husband had been temporarily lodged upon their arrival. I rode breathlessly on the horse the messenger had brought, concerned that Julian had somehow injured himself or become indisposed from his unaccustomed feasting that evening. Rather, it was she who was feeling out of sorts, with symptoms that would not normally have occasioned any alarm in a person experiencing them, but which were a source of concern to her, for being an exceptionally robust and healthy girl, with a naturally hearty appetite, she had never in her life felt even a twinge of indigestion of any kind.
I performed a cursory examination of her, familiar as I was with her family history, and sooner than I expected, I left the Bishop's residence smiling in relief, and with Helena blushing deeply at the results of my palpations and questioning.
The Caesar's wife was with child.
IV
News travels quickly in the Empire, and personal gossip more quickly still; one would have thought that the tidings of Helena's pregnancy had been transmitted by fire signal from tower to tower all the way to Milan, for not two weeks after my examination of her, Julian received a note from the Empress Eusebia – the first personal contact he had had from her since their unfortunate interview at the palace. It was a mere three paragraphs, actually, stating that she was just leaving to attend a state function, and was dashing this off to meet the deadline for the military courier's departure, but that she had heard the wonderful news that Helena was expecting a child, and wished to be the first from the imperial court to congratulate the happy couple on their good fortune. The letter was signed with broad strokes in a delightful flourish. After recovering from his initial surprise, Julian hastened to show the paper to his wife.
Helena, naturally enough, was proud and delighted, and quickly snatched the parchment away to be carefully preserved in an illuminated missal bound in carved ivory, which she carried with her on all her travels. Julian's fears as to Eusebia's ill will toward him were now dispelled, and he replied to her letter in tones as effusive as her own, praising her matronly guidance of the court, and extolling her wisdom and influence on the Emperor's decisions. His concerns about political intrigue at the court of Milan were now over, he felt; and with a clear mind, he was able to shift his focus to the matter at hand – establishing his position in Gaul.
Despite the general havoc the barbarians had been wreaking in the surrounding countryside, Vienne was an extraordinarily appropriate center for him to continue with his military and political education at the hands of Sallustius. Here, though it was only a provincial capital, Julian found a court and administrative center of quite some sophistication. It was the major city of the province, and through it flowed all the trade moving up and down the Rhone. The city was served by a well-maintained military road that passed through Lyons in the north and split into branches serving Reims and Paris in the northwest, and Strasbourg, Mainz, and Cologne in the northeast. The Roman army of Gaul was now in winter headquarters at Reims under General Marcellus, a cavalry officer whom Sallustius secretly scorned; and old Ursicinus, Marcellus' predecessor as commander of the army, whose well-deserved retirement Constantius had delayed in order for him to act as an adviser to, or observer of, his successor. As of yet, Julian had under his direct command in Vienne only the warrior monks who had accompanied him from Milan, and the garrisons of Vienne and several other nearby cities, a force which, if consolidated and pulled from their current duties, might total two thousand heads. And he had no illusions as to what the veteran commanders in Reims thought of the new Caesar who had been appointed to serve over them. The word 'figurehead' passed many a lip in describing his position in those days.
If, as Socrates once said, it is a wise man who realizes how little he knows, then Julian was the wisest of all, for he soon came to the conclusion that he was as ignorant in matters of civil administration as he had been of marching in step to a cadence; in this regard, fortunately, silent Sallustius was as capable an adviser as he had been a drill instructor. Though of Gallic origin, Sallustius was nonetheless fully a Roman citizen in education and taste. He was cultured, honest to a fault, loyal to his duty, and through his previous positions as an officer and district governor under Constantius' predecessor, he was much experienced in matters of administration. Most important, he looked upon Julian as an eager student, one whose survival, indeed the survival of Rome's very presence in Gaul, depended upon the skills Sallustius would be able to impart as a wise mentor to the young Caesar.
At the top of Sallustius' list was the need for Julian to familiarize himself with the province's sources of revenue, which consisted chiefly of three types of taxes, each differing to a degree in their effectiveness, but relatively similar in their cruelty. The first was outright requisition, by which those who worked small farms, that is to say, the vast majority of the province's inhabitants, were compelled to feed the Roman army through contributions of provisions. Under this system, the size of one's contribution was not necessarily calculated with a view to meeting the pressure of the immediate crisis, but rather to suit the whims of the tax collectors, who scarcely bothered even to determine whether a farmer actually owned the provisions he was called upon to contribute. When a farmer came up short, which is to say, most of the time, the poor devil was forced to look elsewhere to find the required food and fodder, often purchasing them at ruinously inflated prices from far-off locations, and then carting them to wherever the army happened to be. The net effect of such requisitioning under Constantius had been to bankrupt many who owned farms, having the perverse result of driving them off their land, thereby yielding the army even fewer provisions that it would otherwise have had.
The second method of taxation was the 'impost,' and it applied to those unfortunate souls who had been driven to the brink of starvation from the previous requisitioning, or who may have already gone under. It was a tax that fell out of the blue on those same owners to penalize them for lands that had been abandoned or taken out of production, and it remained payable even by any subsequent buyers who might attempt to take possession of the land and restore it to working order.
The third application was the 'special levies,' which might be described very quickly. These levies applied to freeholders in the cities, and were imposed seemingly at random in both timing and amount. As if this tax were not vicious enough, a few years earlier, when a pestilence had swept through the cities of the region, leaving a trail of death and vacant properties in its wake, Constantius had showed no mercy toward those freeholders who were ruined. Even then he demanded annual payment of the tax, and not merely the amount that each individual was assessed, but the amount that his deceased neighbors owed as well. This was in addition to all the other demands falling upon those residing in the walled cities, such as having to vacate the best rooms of their houses in order to accommodate troops, and wait on them like slaves, while they themselves were relegated to sleeping in the most wretched toolsheds and outhouses on the property.
As Julian was soon to learn, the province was in a virtual state of bankruptcy, with tax revenue having fallen to near zero, and enforcement actions by Constantius' normally ruthless collectors at a standstill. This, in turn, was due to the security situation: the fall of Cologne had, in fact, been symptomatic of far deeper troubles. Over the past two years, forty-five flourishing cities – Cologne, Trèves, Worms, Spires, besides uncounted towns and villages – had been pillaged by the Germanics and largely reduced to ashes, a figure that did not even include citadels and minor fortifications. The barbarians had taken control of the land on the Roman side of the Rhine from its sources at Lake Constance all the way to the ocean, and had established settlements and farms as far as thirty-five miles on either side of that river. In doing so, they had driven out Roman settlers from an area three times again that distance, within which citizens could not even pasture their cattle.
Possibly the only saving grace, if one could truly call it that, was the barbarians' peculiar territorial strategy. For after invading a civilized area, they routinely failed to occupy the cities, preferring instead to simply destroy the walls and leave them abandoned or sparsely inhabited by terrorized squatters from the countryside. Strangely enough, the Alemanni preferred to camp on the outskirts or, even better, in the surrounding woods and fields. This was due to the fact that the majority of the barbarians were, in truth, savages accustomed to living only under the open skies or hidden in dense forests, and they viewed cities with a combination of fear and repulsion. As Julian was to find later, this custom, like many others, could be used to great advantage by a thinking general when reconquering a region, for it meant that although the enemy occupiers might be destructive and dangerous, they were not deep-rooted; they merely lodged in fallow cornfields rather than barricaded behind walls or entrenched in cellars.
But enough of history and geography, Brother. I find I am beginning to sound like an old schoolmaster, and part of the reason may be that I find it difficult to launch the next phase of my story. I would note, however, that if Constantius had expected his cousin to be the most pliable and unassuming of underlings, one he could appoint to an empty post and promptly forget about, Julian flatly rejected any such plans for himself, nor did he allow such a notion ever to be conveyed to the Gallic and Roman administrators over which he was the titular head. From his earliest arrival in Vienne, with Sallustius' overt encouragement, he requisitioned the quarters, supplies, and servants he needed to create a staff headquarters worthy of a newly appointed Caesar on campaign. Not lavish, mind you, for luxury and ostentation were traits that Julian despised in other men and fled in himself – but sufficient as to project the image of power and authority he felt his due.
His days were exhausting, but he did not let up on the demands he placed on himself even at night. After a brief, plain dinner with Helena, he would retire to his offices to spend the remainder of the evening, sometimes until dawn, dictating correspondence to a team of secretaries working in shifts. This he would intersperse with extensive readings of philosophy, particularly Plato and his beloved Marcus Aurelius. He was the only man I ever knew for whom the revolutions of the sun and moon meant nothing – he rarely slept more than two or three hours consecutively, and this whenever the need might hit him, several times during the course of a day. This strange habit he kept as long as I knew him, and I once even witnessed him drop off into a short nap only moments before he planned to send his generals with twenty thousand men into battle. The advantage was, of course, that there was never a time the enemy was able to take him by surprise, for he worked and thought at even the most abandoned hours of the night. The disadvantage was that when he needed to consult with an adviser or friend, that person was summoned forthwith, regardless of his state of wakefulness.
And so it happened that just in the darkest hour before sunrise, when the only souls awake and abroad were sentries or other men bound by duty, inclination, or suffering; in the hour when a man feels most abandoned to the loneliness of night and the forces of evil and temptation; when God Himself seems to disappear in that dreadful, seemingly unending hour before sunrise; just before saffron-robed Dawn hastened from Oceanus' streams to bring light to immortals and mortals alike, there came a knock at my door.
For a physician, a knock at the door in the dead of night is not something to be taken lightly, particularly if his only patients are the Caesar and his wife, though even these were merely half-patients, if you will: Julian was still undecided as to the relative effectiveness of Oribasius' ancient Asclepian healing techniques, as compared with my more scientific, Hippocratic approach. Though I was dismayed at being roused from my warm bed at such an hour, I was nevertheless gratified that he had seen the sense of relying on my own practices, rather than on the superstitious nonsense of my friendly rival. I hurriedly dressed and followed the messenger through the deserted streets, sweeping past the sleepy palace guards with a quick nod and a whispered password, down the silent, darkened corridors to the small room that Julian had taken for his office.
The space glowed almost with the brightness of day, by the light of thirty or forty candles and small oil lamps set on every available shelf and sill, forming long stalactites, as in a cave, from the drippings over the past several months. An unshaved, pasty-faced scribe sat slumped on a small stool in a corner, his quill dropped from his hand to the floor beneath him, his head fallen onto his breast, exposing a pink, round bald spot in the midst of a thick shock of unkempt black hair. Julian paced back and forth, muttering to himself as if composing a letter in his mind, ignoring the snorting and snoring scribe in the corner.
'Good morning, Julian,' I greeted him, unsure whether it was his health I was to inquire about, or Helena's.
He paused in his pacing and looked at me, his own face drawn and pale, his hair mussed, as if he had just awakened from one of his thrice-daily naps. Without a word of greeting in return, he stalked up to me.
'Caesarius, do you believe in spirits?'
The question was so strange I could not help but burst out laughing, which annoyed him. He resumed his restless pacing. I composed my face and sat heavily on a bench in the corner, opposite the scribe, hearkening back in my mind to the children's stories I had heard long ago.
'Spirits, Julian?' I asked, still chuckling. 'Ghosts and vampires of fable, werewolves that wander the roads at night? I'm going back to bed.'
'Yes, yes...' he muttered in some embarrassment. 'No, that's not exactly what I meant.' At this, Julian stopped and looked at me meaningfully for a long moment. I paused, not knowing precisely what to say. This was why he had awakened me?
'I had a vision,' he said, and paused again.
'Perhaps your irregular sleeping habits are distressing you?' I inquired, puzzled.
'No, no, no. I called you, Caesarius, because this evening I had a dream, from which I have just awakened. A beautiful woman approached me, a smile on her lips and love in her eyes, in a diaphanous gown that trailed behind her. Her hair was in a style that I have seen only in the sculptures of the wives of the ancient founders of Rome. I watched as she came close, bearing in her arms a burden, which I took to be a baby.'
I stifled a yawn, for dawn was just beginning to redden the sky.
'It was merely anticipation at your prospects of becoming a father, Julian,' I said reassuringly. 'There is nothing to be concerned about.'