Gods and Legions (6 page)

V

I had no time to dwell on such matters, however, for the fall of Cologne had thrown Constantius into a flurry of activity. Because he had ordered the soldier's news to be kept secret as long as possible, however, the court staff could only wonder at the unusual shifts in troop deployments the Emperor ordered, the sudden cancellation of social events at the palace, and the constant comings and goings of tight-lipped senior military and diplomatic officials. For several days it was all I could do to keep up with Constantius as he waddled swiftly through the corridors from conference to advisory session to negotiations with foreign emissaries. During that period I had no time to see Julian, nor even to apprise him of the general situation at the palace, though in the past I had visited him at the villa several times a week. No doubt these new distractions would even further delay the Emperor's decision as to my unfortunate friend's fate.

Strangely enough, I needn't have concerned myself on this account: at the very height of the palace uproar, Julian's presence was suddenly recollected, and a peremptory summons was issued to him for an audience with Constantius in little more than an hour. On horseback, I accompanied the litter-bearers out to the villa to retrieve him, and watched as he prepared himself with resignation, for he was still completely in the dark as to what was to become of him. I myself had overheard fragmented discussions of his fate over the past several days from among the courtiers and eunuchs, hints of argument and dissent, of urgings for him to be eliminated as a possible threat to the throne, countered by equally persuasive arguments that the Emperor was in need of delegating his duties, so as to focus more of his own attention on the Empire's crumbling eastern borders. None of this, however, did I recount to Julian – he had no doubt already heard it all before, through his previous dealings with the palace eunuchs.

The trip into the city was the first Julian had taken since his arrival many weeks before, and he peered out the curtains of the litter in astonishment at the numbers of people thronging the streets. The occasion might have equally been a market day, or a public execution at the gallows platform in the palace courtyard. In response to Julian's shouted questions directed at the bearers, he received only a stony silence.

Arriving at the back gates of the palace to avoid the crowds gathering ominously at the front, he was met by a silent, scowling group of eunuchs, who inspected him there on the street. Even from where I stood at the edges of the group, quietly observing the scene, I could sense his agitation and contempt as he looked about him, trying to peer through the crowd of smooth and haughty courtiers surrounding him. They led him into the palace, where he was hastily stripped and rebathed, his hair dressed and oiled in the dandified manner he had despised ever since his school days. He was given a fresh and exceedingly elegant tunic and toga to replace the clean though threadbare student's clothes that had served him well since his trip to Athens months earlier. All his questions, put both politely and rudely, in both Latin and Greek, were met with studied silence, as if the attendants had been expressly forbidden to speak with him or, more likely, disdained to do so even if permitted.

At length he was led into the reception hall, where by this time the entire inner court had gathered in anticipation of the great event Constantius was about to stage. As always, I remained close to the Emperor in the event he should feel the need for one of the many syrups and tinctures I kept for his constant stream of maladies, both real and imagined. Though I tried to catch Julian's eye, to reassure him with a wink or a smile, his gaze as he approached was fixed steadily on the Emperor.

Constantius stood near a small fountain burbling into an exquisite mosaic rendering of the sea god Triton astride the backs of two dolphins. The eunuchs led Julian through the scattered groups of advisers and courtiers, who parted for him in goggle-eyed silence, their eyes ranging back and forth between the slim, hunch-shouldered young man, and the pacing, restless sovereign, the supreme ruler of the Roman Empire, the Augustus. As Julian approached, the room fell silent, with the single exception of the Emperor himself, who continued the low monologue he was giving to a slow-witted general named Barbatio, a lackey who had been instrumental in the treacherous seizure and murder of Gallus several years before. Constantius was facing away, and seemed to be in no hurry to finish the conversation and attend to his young cousin, and Julian shifted on his feet, staring fixedly at the back of the Emperor's head, fidgeting and tugging at the unfamiliar clothing. Barbatio glanced at him condescendingly, eyes filled with frank appraisal and malice, while the eunuchs exchanged superior smirks with each other and stood up all the straighter and more elegantly to emphasize the contrast between their own courtly and confident demeanor and that of the wretched student they had dragged unwillingly into the Emperor's presence.

Constantius finally finished his conversation and turned around, feigning surprise. Despite the Emperor's weeks of cold treatment, he greeted his cousin warmly, fatherlike, in fact, quite as if he had just arrived in the city with his feet still dusty from the road, rather than cooling his heels in the abandoned, echoing villa in the suburbs. Julian was astonished; the sight of Barbatio could not but make him wonder whether the Emperor had welcomed his brother Gallus the same way when he had been invested with the purple, before being led to his death a short time afterward. Julian's own reaction to the Emperor's greeting was stiff and formal. It was a studied effort to disguise the utter repugnance he felt toward this man, this killer of his family, while simultaneously avoiding an overly warm approach, which all present would have recognized as dissimulation and hypocrisy of the worst kind. His feelings toward the Emperor, though they had never met as adults, nor had either of them ever spoken of the matter, could hardly have been less secret, nor could the fact that the younger man was utterly beholden to the older for his very survival at this point. Protocol and simple human decency, however, prevented this from being openly acknowledged by either.

'My boy,' Constantius said, 'you look splendid. I'm pleased to see that my people seem to be treating you well at your new lodgings.'

Julian muttered his thanks, made brief mention of the hospitality he had been shown since arriving in Milan, and then fell silent. The Emperor stared at him expectantly, and with some irritation perhaps, as if waiting for further utterings to drop from his mouth. With a sigh, he turned to his chamberlain, who was hovering at the Emperor's elbow, wringing his hands in impatience.

'My lord,' said the eunuch, 'the platform has been prepared and the crowds assembled. I am afraid they are becoming impatient.'

'Very well. Come, Julian. I would prefer to keep your obvious discomfort to a minimum, and to finish this distasteful duty as quickly as possible.'

The young man blanched, though without losing his composure, and glanced quickly over at me. I could be of no help on this score, and after a moment averted my gaze. Resignedly, he straightened his shoulders and followed the Emperor's quick, waddling pace out the wide double doors and onto the broad wooden platform that had been assembled for the occasion over the stairs and balustrade that coursed up to the entrance. I remained with a small knot of advisers immediately behind them, in the shadows inside, just out of sight of the crowd.

Julian stepped into the harsh sunlight blinking in bewilderment, and a deafening roar rose up as the throats of thousands of men and women opened at the sight. For a hundred ranks away from the platform stood the Emperor's Praetorian guards and home legions, in perfect formation and attention, their spears in unerring vertical alignment over the thousands of brightly polished battle helmets and crimson horsehair crests, multicolored silken pennants fluttering lightly in the cool breeze. Beyond the ranks of soldiers stood the more motley crowds Julian had passed on his way into the city – townsmen and merchants who had been given the day off from their labors and summoned to the palace grounds with their families. In the distance, children and wives sat on the men's shoulders for a better view, while clusters of young, single laborers stood here and there shouting their encouragement to their fellows on opposite sides of the courtyard, waving skin wine bags and gourds, and flirting with gaggles of cackling prostitutes nearby.

Julian stood transfixed at this view of perhaps the largest crowd he had seen in his life. His reverie was broken by the booming voice of the Emperor, who stood beside him. Even with Constantius' powerful vocal range, however, and the excellence of the plaza's acoustics, the size of the crowd required that heralds be posted along the edges to pick up the gist of the Emperor's words and relay them in their own bellowing shouts to the crowds in the back of the space and beyond to the nearby streets of the city, where the multitudes were continuing to arrive to witness the extraordinary event.

'Soldiers and citizens!' the Emperor shouted. 'I come before you to plead your impartial judgment for the step I am about to take.' The crowd fell silent as his words echoed along the sides of the stone buildings ringing the plaza, and were taken up and reechoed by the relays of heralds.

'As you are aware, the barbarians, as if to appease their unhallowed gods with an offering of Roman blood, have disturbed the peace of our western frontier, and are raging through Gaul. In so doing, they are relying on the fact that harsh necessity requires that my attention be devoted to events at the other end of the Empire. If this mischief is countered while there is still time, by measures that have your united support, the criminal insolence of these animals will subside, and the Empire's frontiers will remain sacrosanct. It is for you to strengthen my hope for the future, and to approve my decision.'

He paused a moment to allow the heralds time to relay his words. The soldiers in the front ranks stared up with wide eyes beneath their bronze visors, at the Emperor and his young cousin, who slouched beside him.

'You see before you: our Julian!' he resumed with a bellow. 'My cousin! As dear to me for his personal qualities as for his kinship, a man of exceeding intelligence! It is Julian whom I propose to elevate to the rank of Caesar, to serve directly under me in my capacity as Augustus, a proposal which must be ratified by you, should you deign to grant your approval.'

Constantius again paused for a moment, to allow the expected applause and shouts of acclamation to rise from the crowd. What we heard instead was puzzled muttering among the troops, broken only by the receding calls of the heralds in the distance. Julian seemed to shrink even further into himself with embarrassment. Constantius, determined to wring an acclamation out of the crowd if he had to stand there all night, had just taken a breath to begin his harangue again, when a single centurion rose and shouted enthusiastically that it was the will of God.
'Ave, Julianus Caesar!'
he cried. The man had obviously been planted in advance.

Nevertheless, the men in that centurion's company joined in their leader's example.
'Ave, Julianus Caesar!'
cried sixty or seventy other desultory voices, a shout that was immediately taken up by several other companies scattered around the plaza and by the heralds on the perimeter, themselves doing their level best to stir the crowd's excitement. Slowly, almost reluctantly the volume of cheers mounted, filling the plaza and spreading to the mob thronging the streets beyond.

Constantius' round, sweating face broke into a broad smile. As he turned to Julian, his mouth remained fixed in its grin, though his eyes narrowed. Glancing briefly to a point behind his cousin, he gave a slight nod. Immediately an enormous eunuch, a Sicilian giant who normally performed menial tasks around the palace, stepped forward, dressed in the elaborate furs and plaid cloth breaches of a Gallic chieftain, his face painted with horrifying blue stripes, a gaudy hairpiece with long russet braids draping down his back, silver serpent-shaped bangles clamped around his massive biceps. The crowd fell into awestruck silence as the man walked ponderously to Julian's side, carrying a large bundle, which he shook out with a deliberate, dramatic flourish. He draped the heavy purple embroidered cloak over the new Caesar's shoulders and fell prostrate at the young man's feet in a position of abject fear.

As Julian stood staring in a combination of wonder and mortification at the huge trembling man, another roar went up from the crowd, this time accompanied by the deafening rattle of shields as the troops clashed them against their knees with a fearsome din. It was only later, after my careful explanation to him, that he understood that this was an indication of the troops' complete approval, and was, in fact, much to be preferred to their striking their shields with their spears, a sign of rage and grief.

'Beloved cousin!' Constantius shouted above the roar. 'You have thus attained, while still young, the distinction for which you were destined by your ancestry. Be therefore my partner in toil, my colleague in danger! Assume for yourself the government of Gaul! Relieve its suffering people by generous treatment! Meet the enemy in battle, and raise high the standards of your legions! Command these men, whose valor matches your own! We will wage war simultaneously; we will aid one another with constant and mutual affection; and God willing, we will govern together, collaborators in righteousness and humility, over a world finally at peace.'

The men cheered wildly, and the Emperor raised Julian's hand in his own, high over their heads, acknowledging the vast and rather incompetently choreographed demonstration of approval. When the applause continued even after many moments, Constantius led him to a sedan chair that had been positioned at the side of the platform, and which was borne by eight slaves, all of them costumed identically as fierce Gallic warriors. After the Emperor and his new Caesar had clambered onto the broad, carved, and curtained bench, the slaves carefully lifted their poles and lumbered, rocking, around the circuit of the massive plaza to the general acclaim of the thronging crowd. They were led by a squad of fifty hard-muscled Praetorians who cleared a path through the mob, sometimes with the flats of their swords. Julian stared out into the middle distance, his expression impossible to read. The slaves finally conveyed the two men back to the foot of the platform, where they stepped out and with a concluding wave, walked arm in arm back through the double doors into the reception hall.