Gods and Legions (43 page)

At a dry, desolate valley known in the local dialect as Maranga, the king finally showed himself, commanding a cavalry charge against our troops in an action almost worthy of being termed a battle, though still nothing on the scale we were desperate to provoke. Nevertheless, the clash was marked by a considerable loss of Persian satraps and cavalry, and not a few infantrymen on our side as well. The conditions were most favorable to the training and skills of the Persian cavalry, able as they were to dart their javelins and shoot arrows at full speed from any direction on their swift horses, and then flee in a cloud of dust before any Roman defenses could be brought to bear.

On the evening of this action, the twenty-fifth of June, with Julian still unsure as to which side had taken the greater losses, a truce of three days was arranged for the two sides to clean the field and tend to the wounded. Our men worked in the darkness by torchlight to collect the Roman dead, for it was Julian's intent to take advantage of the truce to depart the next morning and put space between us and the King, or to at least find favorable ground on which to draw up lines and provoke a full-scale battle. Our strategizing session that night extended so late, and Julian's advisers were so weary, that most of us simply dozed off fitfully where we were, on benches and the floor in Julian's crowded and paper-strewn field tent.

And thus we come full circle in my narrative, Brother, for this was the night of which I have already written, the darkest night of my life, when I dreamed that the strange woman of unearthly beauty had entered the tent and silently approached Julian, bearing the mysterious burden in her arms.

After I awoke in alarm from the vision, Julian ordered us all to return to our own quarters. I trailed out the tent behind Sallustius and Maximus, while Julian attempted to laugh off my bewilderment, which was apparently still evident by the paleness of my face.

'A dream!' he pronounced. 'Our physician has had a dream! Perhaps it is the gods finally coming to communicate with him after all!'

I winced. When we emerged from the tent, however, an enormous meteor streaked across the sky from the house of Ares, just as it had in the mountains of Thrace, trailing flame in its wake until it vanished into the dark horizon as suddenly as it had appeared, startling Julian into silence. Without his saying so, I knew he was thinking it a response from the gods to his oath at Ctesiphon, when he swore he would not sacrifice again to the god of war. I could see from the perspiration suddenly standing out on his brow that he regretted those hasty words.

'Maximus and the haruspices will say that we must abstain from action until a more favorable sign is revealed to us,' he said, as if unaware as to where my own sympathies lay in this wizards' game.

'If you believe in omens, Julian, there is no reason to think that a comet is not a favorable sign for you,' I said.

He paused long, still staring into the dark sky.

'Caesarius, I have lost my confidence. My dream appeared to me again tonight, the Genius of Rome.'

'I know, Julian.'

He looked at me, surprised. 'But it was different from before. She held out the cornucopia to me, but this time it was – empty.'

'It was only a dream,' I said cautiously.

He considered this for a moment. 'The ancients say there are two gates of Sleep: the first is of common horn, through which all spirits easily pass. The second is of flawless, gleaming ivory, pure white – yet through this gate false dreams are sent by wicked shades, to torment us in the upper world. Through which gate did my dream come to me?'

I waited for him to say more, but he fell silent, and when I turned to look at him he appeared exhausted and small, his shoulders slumped, his face discouraged.

'Tomorrow,' I said firmly, 'you will do what you must to protect the safety of the army.' He sighed wearily, and looked at me in resignation.

'Caesarius, pardon me for mocking you in the tent a few minutes ago,' he said after a moment. 'You know I consider no man braver than you, either on or off the battlefield. Stay close beside me tomorrow.'

May the Lord forgive me for obeying his order. To Julian's great loss, I stayed with him to the end.

VII

The next day witnessed Sapor's treacherous elephant attack, which I have already recounted for you, Brother. As the furious Gauls clambered over the dead and dying animals and raced after the Persians in retaliation, I bent to my task, feverishly extracting the long iron spear tip from where it had embedded itself in Julian's rib, breaking the bone in the process. Hesitating, I held the point of the weapon up before my face, viewing its symmetrical, deadly outline against the pale sky. For a long moment I stared at the tip, at its beautifully cast smoothness and blackness, the carefully balanced barbs, the razor sharpness of its point and edge undulled by its recent impact with hard bone, its effectiveness unimpeded, its deadly potential yet unfulfilled.

Christ on the desert mountaintop was offered the opportunity to change the entire course of history by committing one small, degrading act. The motive for such an act was unworthy and carnal, and He Himself was divine, and He refused. By contrast, my own motive was divine, but it was I who was carnal. I accepted the trade, though at the time no such complicated considerations, such weighing and balancing, passed through my head. Looking down at the unconscious Julian, I saw that he bore the same drawn, anguished expression as he had when I had first found him dreaming of devils and Christians in his tent, and I simply obeyed the Spirit that impelled me to do what had first come to my mind that night. I bent back down, and I fulfilled the bloody potential that had been hammered and filed into that carefully cast spear tip by an anonymous blacksmith who would never know the feat his work had accomplished.

As I stood up, I summoned the squad of horse guards to rush Julian to the cluster of hospital tents that had been set up by the quartermaster. No one had suspected that the fallen would include the Emperor himself. After they left, I groped around in the weeds and ashes of the battlefield, picking up the medical bags and instruments I had dropped when treating him, and then climbed stiffly onto my own horse and galloped behind.

When I arrived a few moments later, filthy and caked with dirt-streaked sweat from the day's riding and fighting, I found that he had already been lifted from the horse and carried inside the tent. Outside, the guards exclaimed loudly in rapid, Gallic-inflected camp Latin that I could barely understand. I shooed away the clamoring knot of men that was beginning to form around the tent door, stooped, and entered. Julian had been laid in a clean camp cot and was being gingerly undressed and washed.

Oribasius looked up briefly as I approached. 'Thank the gods you were with him when he fell, Caesarius,' he said. 'Wash quickly, and come assist me. The spear point has penetrated his liver.'

'I was afraid of that,' I muttered, and stepped away to find a skin of water.

'Were you indeed?' asked a cold voice.

I stopped and turned back. I had not noticed him when I entered, but now he moved forward out of the shadows and advanced to Julian's side, though his eyes did not leave mine.

'Good day, Maximus,' I said evenly. 'I hadn't seen you here.'

He ignored my greeting, and spoke to me in his high-pitched, condescending voice.

'The guards who brought him in said the javelin had been stopped by his ribs. Yet here we find it in his liver.'

I scoffed. 'The guards know nothing of medicine.'

'Ah, but you do. And yet you did not attempt to pull it out?'

I paused. Maximus had still not looked down at Julian, though he was standing next to him. Oribasius was bent over the wound, holding a poultice of dittany, but had stopped his probing, listening to the conversation.

'When I saw that the point had penetrated past the barbs, I felt it would be better to bring him into camp to remove it,' I said cautiously.

'I see,' Maximus replied, and looked down thoughtfully, glancing at Julian's wound for the first time. Only the thin iron shank emerged from his side; the spearhead was completely buried in the flesh, which prevented one from even seeing whether or not it had barbs. I realized my mistake in stating that it did. 'I'm not familiar with this type of spear,' Maximus continued slowly, 'but apparently you are. It's remarkable that you already knew that this spearhead, so deeply embedded in his liver, was barbed rather than smooth-cast.'

I held his gaze steadily and forced myself to remain calm, to speak simply. 'It's a standard-issue infantry javelin, used by both sides. I've seen many such injuries among the men during the march.'

A flicker of disappointment passed across Maximus' face. Still, he was undeterred from his sly questioning. 'And these cuts on his hands – the guard said he had grasped the point so tightly that it sliced his fingers. Yet despite his Herculean efforts, he was unable to extract it, even though it is merely embedded in the soft tissue.'

No matter what Maximus says, even when he is silent, my jaw clenches in anger and the sweat begins trickling down my sides.

'The Emperor must have cut his hands on his own blade when he fell off his horse,' I answered, 'and was too weak from the fall to pull out this shaft himself. As you can see, he is still unconscious.'

Maximus glared, his eyes smoldering, and I stalked out of the tent.

That night Julian distributed his worldly possessions among his friends, pointedly refused to assign a successor to command, and in his last moments sought to engage Maximus and grief-stricken Oribasius in a discussion on the nature of the soul, to pass the time and distract his mind. He talked a great deal, and much rumor has been spread about the wisdom and depth of his dying speech, his alleged acknowledgment of the victory of Christ, his reflections on the curious nature of death and the calmness with which Socrates and Seneca and other heroes of philosophy accepted their own fates. All of those speculations are false, for in truth the man was raving and incoherent, as would be anyone pierced in the liver and surrounded by a hostile army.

Just before dawn, with a tremor and a groan of pain, Julian died. Oribasius was in attendance, Sallustius and Maximus watching silently at the foot of the bed, the deaf-mute boy sitting wide-eyed and silent in the corner. I sat vigil at his side, staring at his drawn face, tormented at both his suffering and the sheer enormity of the act I had committed, until the very moment he was finally taken. It was only a little over three months since the army had departed Antioch on its conquering march.

The five of us gazed at the body in silence. It was a moment of calm before word of his death spread throughout the camp, generating fear and lamentation among the men. Maximus bent his scaly face down to Julian's, his long, wiry beard brushing the motionless chest, his eyes peering deep into the unblinking, stony depths of the dead man's orbs, glassy as beads. We all held our breath, watching, and then with a sigh, Maximus slowly leaned back again.

'His soul has gone to the Underworld,' he pronounced, turning away and beginning to leave the tent. 'It is gone.'

There was silence, and Oribasius looked curiously at me. I hesitated, then said a prayer over the body, commended him to God, and made the sign of the cross. Maximus stood in the door of the tent watching, his lip curling contemptuously. I finished my prayer and shouldered wearily past him to return to my own quarters, but he departed the tent behind me, quickened his step, and sidled up to me.

'I said, his soul is
gone,'
he muttered to me.

I stopped and looked at him, surprised that he would even bother to address me. 'I believe,' I said, that if he repented before he died, he will rise again. His soul will be in Paradise. For this I prayed.'

Maximus shook his head scornfully as we walked together in the pale gray light of early morning. 'Everything has its opposite, physician, as day has night, as heat has cold. The opposite of life is death, the opposite of existence is nothingness. If he is no longer living, he is dead. His soul will be born again, in another time, in another entity – but Julian himself is dead.'

I stared past him and picked up my pace. Maximus, however, would not be ignored. His short legs churned as he matched my speed, two steps for each one of mine, as if unaccountably hungry for my company. Again he spoke, an insistent and compelling tone to his voice.

'So too has every man his opposite,' he continued. 'As Caesar had Brutus, as Jesus Christ has Lucifer.' I shuddered to hear Our Lord's name spoken by these blasphemous lips, but nevertheless I hesitated, intrigued by the little man's words, at his vision of the world as so black and white, every object with its opposite, every man his Manichean double.

'As Julian had, perhaps, Constantius?' I ventured cautiously, though still attempting to draw away.

'Perhaps.'

I paused, and he still continued to peer at me, an inscrutable expression on his face.

'And who would my opposite be?' I asked.

Maximus grinned, exposing the rotten stumps of his teeth. 'You are a healer, physician,' he said simply. He glanced over at the camp altar, to which even now one of the Etruscans was leading an ox in preparation for Maximus' imminent morning sacrifice. 'That would make your opposite – me.'

He chuckled as he drew his long blade, turned, and walked over to the sleepy-eyed animal. All was uncommonly silent in the exhausted camp, except for the moaning of the wounded and the faint sound of high-pitched singing nearby, which I did not at first acknowledge as being as peculiar as it truly was. I stood for a long while, lost in thought, staring at the strange little man, the antihealer, my self-proclaimed converse, my negation, my antidote.

And I knew, in this, that Maximus was wrong.

I turned and began walking slowly toward my own quarters, yet the odd singing slowly broke in on my thoughts, and I realized that it seemed to be following me. At this revelation I stopped and stood motionless, listening carefully to the tuneless crooning, and then with dawning astonishment I turned around. Standing in the middle of the dirt track between the rows of tents, staring at me yet not daring to approach, was the deaf Persian boy, who had also followed me out of Julian's tent when I left. The nearly unintelligible lyrics of the ancient Christian hymn he intoned were, I believe, the first words that had ever passed his lips, but the repetitive chanting of the simple phrase will forever be burned into my brain.

Tears glistened as they coursed in tracks down his dirt-caked cheeks. His little song was so humble – a croak, a slur, a mere four words chanted in a tune that could barely be discerned, an earthy paean that was simplicity itself – yet to my ears it was as triumphant and as heartfelt as the grandest chorus in the Great Church of Constantinople. He stood barefoot and ragged in the dust and looked at me, and his face shone radiant in a broad smile.

Simple words. A wise man once told me that one cannot possibly express more joy in Creation, more optimism in the perfection of the Kingdom to come, than through simple words.

And the sun rose on another day.