Gods and Legions (4 page)

The Egyptian peered down his long, aristocratic nose at Julian, blinking at him skeptically. 'I don't care if he's the sun god Ra. It's not right for him to view the procedure.'

I was annoyed at Pharon's blatant disrespect, but when I glanced over at Julian he did not seem dismayed in the slightest. After several moments of hurried negotiations and argument in the middle of the street, the Egyptian finally shrugged grudgingly. 'Very well,' he said, 'but, Caesarius – our safety is on your head.'

I assured him I took full responsibility, and then unlocked the door.

We entered and felt our way down the stairs in darkness, assisted only slightly by the diffused light of the half-moon shining weakly through a high, narrow window. A lantern would not be lit until the very last moment, to avoid detection from curious passersby, and then would be snuffed as soon as the hasty procedure had been completed.

By the unwritten rules of our group, at those times when we were blessed with more than one cadaver for study, students were required to first use the older one, by which I mean the one that had been stored the longest in the cellar, to prevent its going to waste. I was dismayed to be reminded by one of my students that this meant that, despite our recent fruitful harvest from the city streets, we were obliged to perform our examinations on a fellow who had died a good eight days earlier. Although the cellar was cool, and he had been carefully packed in sawdust, nevertheless I did not relish the anticipation of the cadaver's odor and physical condition, and I warned Julian of what was to come.

Drawing the sealed box out from its shelf and carefully laying it on the examining table in the dim light, a strong stench of decay seeped through some crack in the planks. I forged on, nevertheless, though when I encountered difficulty prying the nails out of the lid, I called for Julian to uncover the ember we had brought sealed inside a small ceramic jar, and to light up a tallow for light. There was a pause as he fumbled to open the container in the dark, and then Pharon shouted, 'Stop!' in a panic, nearly causing the rest of us to jump out of our skins. After fearful shushing all around as we listened carefully for footsteps outside our door, I turned to Pharon in annoyance.

'What the hell was that for?'

'Don't light the candle,' he said. 'Open the box and let the gas dissipate first.'

'Gas?' Julian asked nervously. 'Caesarius, I thought you said he was dead.'

'Gas from the wood shavings, you dolt,' rejoined Pharon with a hiss. 'Organic material creates gas as it decays. Even ignorant Alemanni peasants know that – that's why they store grain in vented barns. You'll smell the gas when you open the box. The body stored with it also produces humors from the same process. The combination of the two could be dangerous.'

I scoffed at this. 'That's absurd! Julian, light the candle.'

'Wait!' Pharon hissed again, this time with increasing urgency. His large eyes shone brightly, in eerie contrast with the darkness of his skin and the shadows of the room. 'I once thought as you did, Caesarius, until last year, when I opened a casket the same way, and held a candle close to view the body. There was a burst of flame and a noise like a loud puff of wind, and it blew the candle out completely. I was blinded for a moment, and when I was able to relight the candle and look in the box again, I found that the flash had singed all the hair off the man's body. At least it made it easier to dissect him. Unfortunately, it did the same to my face. For three weeks I was mistaken for a Syrian eunuch. Believe me, it's better to let the gas dissipate.'

I could hear stifled snickers breaking out from around the table and I stood stiffly, wondering whether to let this outrageous tale pass unremarked. By this time, unfortunately, Julian had had enough. His eyes wide and gleaming in the dim light, he begged my pardon and pleaded to be released back to the street. I consented, and he slipped out quietly the way he had come, stifling his nausea at the overpowering smell. Although that occasion gave rise to great merriment among my colleagues for many weeks afterward, it was also, I believe, the source of the great esteem, and possibly fear, that Julian held of the physician's skills and knowledge.

Would that you held me in the same respect as did he, Brother.

III

Julian stayed in Athens less than a year. When in midsummer he was unexpectedly summoned by the Emperor to attend him at his residence at Milan, the command was anything but welcome. The day Julian received it, he wandered out of his apartments in a daze. It was only with great difficulty that I was able to find him hours later, lying prostrate in the semidarkness in the Parthenon before the enormous statue of Athena, mumbling unintelligibly.

'Caesarius,' he said hoarsely, sitting up with a start and looking around when I touched his shoulder. 'What are you doing here?'

I looked into his face for signs of illness, but seeing none I relaxed.

'Gregory said you wandered out of the house looking like a poleaxed ox. I've been looking all over for you, friend – but this was the last place I'd have thought to find you.' I looked suspiciously up at Athena, then smiled and thumped his shoulder cheerfully. 'Julian, it's Milan! The imperial court! If Constantius truly had evil designs he wouldn't be recalling you. What can be so bad as all that?'

Julian's face reddened in anger. 'He's a madman! He killed my father and brother – and yet he asks me to
attend
him in Milan? I will not be...
toyed
with, Caesarius, like a mouse! Why doesn't he simply send his assassins here and do the job cleanly? Coward and madman!'

I rolled my eyes at the melodramatics, but in truth Julian had good reason to be livid, knowing that it was just such a summons that had led to the torture and execution of his brother Gallus several years before. No doubt he also suspected that his indiscreet investigations into the worship of the ancients had finally been brought to the Emperor's ears. I placed my hand under his arm and lifted him to his feet, concerned that he not compound his troubles by being seen lying prostrate before an image of a pagan god. He stood looking about himself fiercely, planting his feet stubbornly as if determined to stay and give the assassins no occasion to find him in the street, to deny them at least that satisfaction.

'Julian,' I whispered harshly, 'you'll call attention to yourself by lingering before Athena. You've suffered enough for one day, and no doubt the gods have had enough of your pestering, too. Come, I'll take you home; A cup of wine will cheer us both.'

He stood motionless on the great marble-tiled floor before the statue, gazing up at the polished golden visage, before finally dropping his eyes to me, and with a great sweep of his arm, he indicated the vast, semidark colonnaded sanctuary around him.

'I wanted only a beautiful spot,' he said hoarsely, 'a monumental spot, the most evocative spot in all Athens, one that I could take with me in my memory to Milan, in case... in case...'

He faltered, and I didn't press him further. I clapped my hand on his shoulder and gestured toward the door. He squared himself and with great dignity strolled out of the temple and down the steep streets to his lodgings, where he packed his bags swiftly and in silence.

Since by that time I had practically completed my own studies, and was due back at the Emperor's court to render account of my new training and skills, I offered to accompany him on his journey. For the sake of comfort, we elected to go by sea for the first leg of our trip, and passed many hours of the voyage recounting our experiences to each other, as we were almost precisely the same age, but had lived such contrasting lives to that point. On one occasion I was startled with his line of questioning.

'Tell me about Constantius,' he said.

'What about him?' I asked cautiously. 'His actions as Emperor are common knowledge. Besides, you saw him just last year, before he sent you to Athens.'

Julian shook his head somberly. 'Not true. I was at his court, but only briefly, and not once did he meet with me. I spent my entire time there defending myself against the jealous gossip of his eunuchs, who said I was disobedient and was planning to conspire against him. I suspect he simply tired of my requests for an audience and wished to be rid of me, so he allowed me to leave to study in Athens.'

I was amazed at this. 'So you've never seen your own cousin, the Emperor?'

'Not since I was a boy. When I was small, he seemed like a god to me. Later, I was told what he had done to my family...' He seemed suddenly wary of voicing his thoughts, and glanced over his shoulder cautiously. 'You're his physician, Caesarius. You examine him monthly, and his wife, Eusebia. Surely you know more of his strengths and ailments, both physical and psychological, than any man alive.'

'I would hardly presume to conjecture about his psychology,' I said cautiously, 'nor about the Empress. She does not actually permit a physical examination, but merely asks questions about her bodily functions as she examines herself behind a thick curtain.'

'Very well, limit yourself to appearances, then – what does he look like? His image is all blurred in my mind.'

At this I hesitated, Brother, for to give a diplomatic description of Constantius to one who is a near relative is not an easy task. You never met him yourself, for if you had, you would have understood my difficulty. Perhaps the best way to explain his appearance would be to digress briefly, by recalling the time when both you and I were boys, and accompanied Father and Mother on a pilgrimage to Rome to meet the Holy Pontiff Sylvester, who would confirm our father's investiture as bishop. Do you recall that enormous statue of the Emperor Domitian that had been erected two centuries before, on the street leading up to the Capitol, on the right-hand side as you approach from the Forum? Domitian's monstrous behavior had left the Romans with such a bad taste that after his murder, the Senate ordered his entire body carved up into tiny pieces; yet even this did not exhaust their indignation toward him. They decreed a
damnatio memoriae,
an order that not even the Emperor's name should remain on any monument, nor should any portrait or statue of him survive. On every inscription everywhere in Rome, and indeed throughout the entire Empire, his name was chiseled out, leaving the remainder of the text intact. Nowhere in the world is there a single likeness of him except that one bronze statue, which survived because of a macabre twist.

The Emperor's wife, Domitia, was a woman of good birth, and highly respected, or at least feared. Some say she had never herself done the least wrong to any man alive, nor consented to any of her husband's wickedness, while others suspect that she had a guiding hand in her husband's murder, in which case she committed the most mortal of sins, though for a higher cause, may the soil rest lightly on her grave. In any event, the Senate esteemed her highly, and after Domitian's death invited her to request anything she liked. She asked for but one thing: that she might take and bury her husband's body, and erect a bronze replica of him. The Senate agreed, and the widow devised a plan. She collected the bits and pieces of her husband's flesh, painstakingly reassembled them into a semblance of the original, and then stitched and strapped and braced the whole grotesque contraption together. This she showed to the sculptors, and asked them to make a bronze statue portraying him exactly as he was at that time.

Hence, Brother, the odd appearance of that statue, visible even beneath the years of grime and corrosion that had accumulated when we viewed it as boys: the misshapen, lopsided face, the eyes aimed in slightly different directions, one arm and one leg apparently longer than their respective peers, which I attributed to the devoted widow's not having had proper anatomical training and perhaps inadvertently fitting several crucial parts in error. Hence too my difficulty in describing to Julian his older cousin's appearance, for Constantius had always given me much the same impression, of body parts reassembled in haste from whatever might be available: the enormous corpulence of his girth; the tiny head delicately positioned atop the shoulders with no apparent neck, like a pea on a pumpkin; the equally fat thighs narrowing down unaccountably below the knee to white, chickenlike shanks and almost dainty feet; the small, piggish eyes that missed nothing, and in fact were constantly darting restlessly this way and that, the mark of an extraordinarily intelligent and inquiring mind; and the soft, sensitive hands that belied the tremendous strength of his upper arms and chest. As a physician, I had never failed to be astonished at this study of contrasts when I performed his monthly physical examinations.

Yet how to describe this to Julian? I resolved to be honest in my description, yet not as brutally so as I just was with you.

'Your cousin is far from being in the prime of his life anymore,' I answered. 'Remember, he's past forty, he's no longer young. He's obese and sweats and grunts like a boar even when merely walking or rising from his seat. He's desperate for an heir, which Eusebia has been unable to produce, though she herself is in the prime of her life, barely older than you and me, and a stunning beauty.'

'Perhaps the Empress is barren?' Julian asked sympathetically, though with curiosity.

'Perhaps – but I think the problem lies with Constantius himself. I tell you this because I trust your confidentiality, and because if you were to order me to, I would have to tell you anyway. The Emperor has one undescended testicle, and the other is swollen to the size of a Numidian orange, a goiter, perhaps, or a cancer, a state of affairs about which he is quite defensive. He openly blames Eusebia for her failure to conceive, and the Empress is increasingly distraught, yet to me it's quite clear that conception is simply not a possibility.'

After a week of uneventful sailing, we arrived at the old Augustan seaport of Fano, the point where the Via Aemilia from Milan meets the coast. We were met by a small though luxurious sedan with six Thracian bearers led by a sullen centurion. The prospect of traveling two hundred miles overland to Milan alone in this claustrophobic contraption, possibly to his death, was too much for Julian to stomach. He dismissed the centurion, to the latter's chagrin, and elected instead to ride, with me as his comrade. He purchased horses from a dealer the very day of our arrival off the boat, and we set out at once. The centurion insisted on following behind us with the sedan-bearers, true to his orders from Constantius to convey Julian safely to the city, so we at least took advantage of the situation by stowing all our own baggage in the passenger compartment, which allowed us to travel quite unencumbered and make numerous side trips through the Apennines and across the Po valley, finally arriving in Milan, in September, several weeks after he had actually been expected.

Apparently peeved at this delay, Constantius declined to meet him when he arrived at the palace, sending word only that his younger cousin was to take for his lodgings an ancient villa the Emperor owned in the countryside eight miles outside Milan. Julian was not even permitted the time to take a cool drink before the centurion was ordered to turn around and lead him back out of the city. We arrived just before nightfall, and in the waning light the old mansion was not without its charm. Though it had been uninhabited for years, the extensive gardens and orchards within its winding stone walls had been carefully maintained, and afforded numerous nooks and shady benches for quiet reading and study. The house itself, though silent and musty from years of abandonment, was in good repair. The only cloud on this small horizon was the uncertainty of knowing how long Julian would be required to remain here before being allowed to return to his studies, or otherwise disposed of by the Emperor.

Julian and I wandered through the vast, echoing halls and atriums, as he alternately gaped at the luxurious surroundings and scoffed at the wastefulness. Finally, he planted himself in a small office, an anteroom off the well-stocked library.

'I will take this room,' he said simply.

'Very well, sir,' said the steward. 'For your study, I presume?'

'For my lodgings,' Julian replied. The steward raised one eyebrow suspiciously. 'My cot against the wall, please, the table and chair in the middle, a chamber pot behind that screen in the corner. The library is just through that set of doors. Lease out the rest of the villa, or burn it for all I care. You will not see me in any other room. What better place to spend one's last days than in a library?'

The steward went out, shaking his head in wonder.

That first morning, as Dawn illumined the earth with Phoebus' torch and scattered the dampness and nightgloom – Ah, Gregory, even at this distance, at this late date, I can see you cringe as I write these words.

'"The sun rose on another day,"' you told me when I was but a boy, as you corrected my composition exercises. 'Just write: "The sun rose on another day." Why must you forever confound your words with false embellishments of a simple fact of nature? It's a sunrise! "Phoebus' torch," indeed.'

I painstakingly scratched out the offending phrase and with adolescent rebelliousness began again: 'When early Dawn, leaving Tithonus' saffron bed, sprinkled the earth with new light, the sun poured down, and all the world was made clear...'

You scolded me again after viewing my work. 'I told you to write. "The sun rose on another day." Why do you defy me with this overwrought trash?'

'Because it's beautiful,' I replied petulantly. 'It's descriptive. It recalls Homer, and Virgil.'

'Homer and Virgil. Any sensible Christian would simply write "The sun rose on another day" and be done with this pagan nonsense.'

'But why?' I persisted. 'Just because we are Christian, must we forgo beauty?'

You sighed patiently. 'Of course not, Caesarius. By simplifying, by getting to first principles, you do not forgo beauty, but enhance it. Beauty is truth, and by writing truth you bring beauty to the fore. You emphasize God's Creation in its purest form.'

I must have looked saddened, gazing at the bescribbled manuscript over which I had labored for so many hours, for you softened your voice and put your arm across my shoulder.

'In the end,' you continued, 'the simplest form of writing is the happiest form – for you acknowledge that nothing is greater than God's work, no mere words can improve on the ultimate beauty of the world. A man cannot possibly express more joy in creation, more optimism in the perfection of the Kingdom to come, than by simply writing "The sun rose on another day."'