Gods and Legions

IV

Julian's jaw dropped in astonishment as he stared at the ancient Eutherius, who, for the first time I had ever seen, had lost his normally unflappable composure.

'Half my troops? Half?' he roared, as the distraught old servant stood shifting from one foot to the other, wringing his hands.

'Those are the orders brought by the tribune Decentius, my lord,' Eutherius said. 'And, it is not merely half your troops, but the best half. The Emperor specifies that the Aeruli, the Batavi, the Celts, and the Petulantes are to be transferred in their entirety, with an additional three hundred men to be taken from each of the army's other units. Furthermore, the best of the scutarii and gentiles, your personal bodyguard, are also to be sent at once to the Emperor. Decentius is lodged at the city prefect's palace, and is awaiting a response to this demand by… by Sintula.'

Julian's head snapped up. 'Sintula? The head squire? The orders were sent to my squire?'

'Not precisely, my lord… they were sent to the cavalry commander Lupicinus, although I informed Decentius that he is currently in Britain with the auxiliaries, putting down an uprising by the Picts. Instead the orders were delivered to the letter's secondary recipient, Sintula, whom I regret to say is now hastening to obey them and is selecting the finest troops from your legions as we speak.'

Julian had been caught off guard, but almost immediately regained his composure. Naturally the Emperor, as the highest authority of the state, had every right to skip hierarchy and to pass orders to lower-ranking subordinates if he so chose, but this was unprecedented, unnatural, a case that the law books would refer to as summum ius, summa iniuria — a right pushed to its extreme may be an injustice.

He set his jaw. 'Summon this Decentius immediately,' he said simply and curtly. Eutherius' eyes widened, and he began hastily backing out of the room, but Julian suddenly called him back. 'And, Eutherius,' he said, thoughtfully and slowly, 'summon the physician Oribasius also, for a consultation.' At my questioning look he averted his eyes for a moment. 'I have not spoken with my old friend for some time,' he said quietly, before putting his head back down to his work.

Decentius apparently defined the word 'immediately' differently than did Julian, for he was idling in his rooms when Eutherius arrived, and insisted that after his long journey he be allowed to take a short nap and freshen up before attending to the Caesar's summons. Besides, he said, his business was with Sintula, and he saw no need to respond to Julian's request — if he did decide to meet with him, it would be at his pleasure, not the Caesar's.

Six hours later, past midnight, he strode insolently into Julian's office, no doubt thinking to surprise him in a weary and impatient state of mind by arriving at such an hour — though in this case it was he himself who was surprised, for Julian had just wakened from his own nap a few moments before, was chatting with me, and was as rested and relaxed as a baby. The tribune hid any reaction he might have had, however, and after a cursory bow to the Caesar, sat down silent and uninvited, and looked around with clear distaste at the bare walls and shabby furnishings of the Spartan workroom.

Julian stared at him a moment as if sizing him up. The man was a senior courtier to Constantius, accustomed to being sent on sensitive embassies, and evidently bored with his duties at remote outposts like Paris, though not with the finer lifestyle that accrued to him while at home in Rome. He was a large man, gone soft from recent years of inactivity but still bearing a muscular frame and the stately posture of the senator he had once been. The fine linen of his toga and the exquisite, understated quality of the expensive rings on his hands were in sharp contrast to the Caesar's plain, unadorned, and almost purposefully unkempt appearance, which some might have attributed to his lingering mourning for Helena, but which was simply due to his refusal to waste time or money on superficialities. Finally Julian allowed himself a small, sly smile as he looked straight into the man's eyes.

'Thank you for your visit, Tribune. You are welcome to any of my services or facilities for as long as you stay in Paris. Perhaps I might even arrange for you a tour of our nearby garrisons and camps?'

This time Decentius found it impossible to hide his surprise, for he had clearly been expecting a hostile reaction. Though at first taken aback, he recovered quickly.

'I see no need to prolong my visit. I have delivered my orders to Sintula and will be departing as soon as the troops have been readied.'

Julian nodded slowly. 'I have been informed of the Emperor's orders, and I hasten to do all that I can to comply with the will of my ruler. As you know, however, over the past five years I have spent considerable time in the field, training and campaigning with my troops, and I feel a good deal of affection toward them, as a father toward his newly grown sons. And just as a father would, I feel a concern for their welfare which the Augustus, in all his wisdom, might perhaps not have anticipated. Might I therefore ask what the Emperor's intentions are for my men?'

Decentius stared at him warily, as if attempting to discern whether any treachery might be involved in his question, but seeing none in Julian's face, he finally shrugged.

'I see no reason why you should not know. The Emperor intends to place your Gallic troops at the spearhead of his campaign against Persia. King Sapor has recently attacked our eastern frontiers, and our legions in the East have a pressing need for troops. The Emperor has concluded that there is no threat of war in Gaul, as the barbarians have abandoned all their aggressions, apparently in fear of his reprisals. The fame of his Gallic troops has spread far beyond their region, even to the court of Sapor, who trembles at the thought of facing Constantius' courageous Gauls. Hence his determination to transfer unneeded troops from your command to that of his generals in the East.'

Julian's eyes widened and he paused, absorbing this information. 'Again, I hasten to fulfill the Emperor's orders. There is, however, a small legal matter to be overcome. When I first conscripted the Gallic soldiers the Emperor is demanding, it was on the express condition that they would never be taken to regions beyond the Alps. To them it is unbearable to be sent far from their homes. Not only would their transfer to the East be a violation of this condition, but my future ability to recruit Gallic auxiliaries would be compromised if they feared being sent to hot lands far from their families.'

Decentius shrugged and stood up. 'Your private treaties with the barbarians are not my concern, nor do they have any bearing on the Emperor's orders. It is perhaps for that reason that the demand was directed not to you, in any case, but to Lupicinus and Sintula. You have been relieved of responsibility, and, I daresay, you would do well to do nothing to impede the transfer. Good evening.'

And without so much as a bow or a flourish, the man swept out of the room.

Julian sat smoldering in silence for a moment, then slammed his hand down on the tabletop, sending parchments fluttering to the floor. I stood up with a start.

'Damn his eyes, Caesarius! Invading Persia — with my troops! The man's mad, he's mad — what could the Emperor possibly gain from this venture?'

'He needs to make his mark, Julian,' I said calmly. 'Constantius has been in power for over a decade and he has yet to engage in war, to conquer significant territory-'

'So all this is just for the history books?' Julian interrupted, beginning to pace. 'He's seizing my troops illegally to bolster his own reputation?'

'It's not illegal. He's the Emperor.'

Julian whirled. 'Even the Emperor is beholden to the good of the Empire,' he hissed. 'He is not Nero, for God's sake — he's the son of Constantine!'

'And does that exempt him from ambition?'

'No — but it does not exempt him from wisdom either. The western provinces are secure and at peace, money and trade are flowing, and the Persians can easily be contained in their current position with some deft negotiations and a bolstered garrison or two. He risks all these lives, all this treasure, all we have gained over the past five years by this insane venture — merely to put his name in the history books? Caesarius, that's insanity!'

'Yet you risk destabilizing the Empire by disobeying him. Would you compound his error?'

Julian sat down heavily in his chair, deep in thought, considering the distasteful options facing him. If he had learned anything from Sallustius, from his Christian faith over the years, it was that authority was to be obeyed — yet to what extent? To the point, even, of compromising one's values, one's patriotism? To the extreme of endangering the security of Rome itself?

The night was long and sleepless for Julian and his various advisers and courtiers, and I finally retired to my room, almost colliding on my way out with Oribasius as he scuttled in for the requested consultation with Julian. I questioned him good-naturedly, for it was unusual for the normally lethargic physician to be up and about, indeed to be looking so downright energetic, at such an ungodly hour, but he simply smiled mysteriously and slipped into Julian's office. Preparations were already beginning to be made for the departure of the troops, at the instigation of eager-to-please Sintula. The selected men, or at least those who suspected that their companies were to be selected, had already begun to assemble somewhat nervously. The worst thing, however, was the wailing. As you know, Brother, auxiliary troops do not serve in their own home region without copious numbers of camp followers, their wives and children, sometimes even mothers and other relatives, as well as large numbers of females involved in less licit but equally noisy relationships when the time arrives for the departure of their menfolk. Hence the wailing.

With daybreak, the wailing rose to a higher pitch even than during the previous night, for a reason that soon became apparent as I strode out of my apartments and into the streets. Unidentified parties had taken the occasion to churn out numerous copies of a secret letter in an astonishingly short period of time. It was addressed to the Petulantes and Celts and others rumored to be transferred to the eastern front, and was full of vile accusations against the Emperor Constantius, complaining bitterly of his betrayal of the faithful Gauls, and of his disgrace of Julian. We are to be driven to the ends of the earth like common criminals, the letter said, in crude camp Latin and equally crude Gallic written in Greek characters, and our dear families, whom we have set free from their earlier bondage only through murderous fighting, will once again become the slaves of the Alemanni. The letter continued with wicked and obscene slander of the Emperor that I dare not repeat here, and which gave such concern to Julian's advisers, fearful that he would be blamed for its libelous language, that both they and Decentius' cohort sought jointly to suppress it before it spread.

At first, a few copies of this letter had merely been tossed into the legionaries' camps, crudely tied to rocks, but the effectiveness of its language soon became apparent. It was read and then copied repeatedly by the troops themselves, then spread to the very city of Paris. That night shadowy figures were seen pasting hastily scribbled copies of the text on street corners and walls, even scrawling it in chalk on the bases of monuments when scraps of parchment became scarce.

The city was in an uproar. Julian remained cloistered in his workroom, now seeing no one except Oribasius, who slipped in and out of the closed doors as gracefully as his overtaxed frame would allow him. Julian ignored even Decentius when he returned to the palace in a fury, demanding in the strongest terms that Constantius' troops be selected at once and sent marching before similar letters were posted among the outlying garrisons. The Caesar replied simply, through Oribasius, that the Emperor's orders had been directed to Lupicinus, who was still absent, and to Sintula, who was by now overwhelmed and panicked at the troops' reaction, and that it was for them to take action — he was washing his hands of the affair. Decentius returned to his lodgings sputtering in anger.

Crowds of angry women and camp followers were now beginning to gather in the principal squares, and though it was broad daylight, many bore lit torches. The municipal guards of the city prefect were overwhelmed by the mob, and resigned themselves merely to protecting their own quarters, adjacent to the palace, surrendering the rest of the city to the belligerent crowds. Chants were shouted, carried from street to street by milling women, and effigies of the Emperor and Decentius raised and burned, a capital offense if their instigators were ever caught. Still Julian remained in his room, though the cries and wailing of the crowds outside could not have failed to penetrate even the thick walls of the palace, and the shouts of the frightened servants and the scuffling of their scurrying feet as they sought to barricade the outer doors could not have failed to attract his notice. Through Eutherius, he ordered only that the departing troops be accompanied by the massive wagons of the imperial post, bearing the Gauls' legitimate wives and children as far as their homes might be on the route east, to make the separation less painful for all and attempt to assuage some of their fury. This order, however, was met with derision and cries of mockery from the crowds, outraged that even Julian, now, seemed to be giving in to Constantius' effrontery.

Finally, at about noon, Decentius made his way back to the palace, in disguise and under a heavy guard, and burst into the office without announcement. There he found the Caesar calmly waiting for him.

'What is the meaning of this rabble?' he shouted. 'Have you no control over this mob you govern?'

'Apparently I do not,' Julian calmly replied, 'for the Emperor has seen fit to take it away from me and hand it to my subordinates.'

Decentius sputtered. 'Paris is a mob scene, and will soon be a shambles. I demand that you restore order so we may assemble the departing troops and their supplies.'

Julian stared at him thoughtfully. 'You are blind if you think Paris can be so easily silenced while you break Rome's commitment to the troops. If you insist on fulfilling the Emperor's orders — and I repeat that I will do nothing to impede you in this task — I suggest you assemble in an outlying area. Go to Sens or Vienne, even Strasbourg, and avoid confrontation with the camp followers. If you do not, you will be courting disaster.'

Decentius fumed. 'Your words are traitorous, and will be duly noted to the Emperor. You are suggesting that Constantius run from a rabble of women and children, that he assemble a triumphant and conquering army from some collection of wooden huts in a remote village, that his legions fly Gaul in the dark of night. I will do no such thing. If, as you insist, you are bent on assisting us in this task, you will order all civil and military functionaries to gather before the palace three days from now, to officially launch the assembly of troops and collection of provisions. The presence of these officers will check the anger of the troops and they, in turn, will bring their unruly wives and offspring under control. If not, I will consider you as being in collusion with them.'

Julian nodded obsequiously, and smiled. 'As you wish, sir tribune.'

Decentius glared at him in fury and, for the third and last time, swept out of the office. Julian looked over at me with a glance of resignation, and I marveled at his calm while the city outside was in an uproar. 'I pray there is an afterlife,' he said, 'for this time tomorrow we, and half of Paris, may be there.'

I looked at him in surprise. 'Have you any doubt?' I asked.

'In the gods, no. In man, that is another question.'

'The gods?'

Julian smiled, and gestured to the stack of dirt-encrusted deities littering an entire side of his room. 'A figure of speech, Caesarius. Just a figure of speech.'

Paris' uproar quickly spread to the surrounding suburbs, and then to the neighboring garrisons and encampments, and the slanderous letter, having by now undergone various manifestations and revisions, had within two days been posted in every village within a hundred-mile radius of Paris. As the troops were ordered to the city and abandoned their barracks and quarters, their families became panic-stricken, and attempted to intervene to stop them, acting as if they expected the imminent return of Chonodomarius' invasions. Soldiers marched along the roads with sullen expressions as their wives trotted breathlessly alongside them, holding up their babies and imploring their men not to abandon them to the rapine of the Germans. The letter was having an effect far beyond even the wildest hopes of its anonymous authors.

The first squadrons began to arrive in the city, fighting their way through the crowds of milling people and the beasts of burden barring their way. Julian roused himself from his closed offices and private consultations to ride out to the suburbs to greet them. This he did effusively, embracing those men and officers with whom he had campaigned or trained in past years, and praising them for the brave service they had provided under his command. True to his promise to Decentius, he entreated them to be faithful to their new commanders, whoever they might be, and assured them they would be amply rewarded for their sacrifice. On the two evenings before the official assembly, he held banquets for the arriving officers, toasting them in their new adventure, and asking them for any requests they might care to make, which he would do all he could to fulfill. His guests, puzzled at first as to Julian's calm resignation in the face of this enormous disruption to the forces of Gaul, left encouraged but saddened at being forced to abandon not only their native lands, but also such a noble general.

All went well, with even Decentius seemingly satisfied at the progress being made, until night fell, and the hour arrived that has been the undoing of so many well-laid plans. With the darkness rose the fears and imaginations of the troops, fed by the tensions of the populace, who for three days had refused to disperse but had continued to gather angrily in the now filthy and foul-smelling streets and forums. The gutters ran with the effluent of thousands of sleepless women who had followed their men in from the countryside, the night silence was broken by the squalling of hundreds of infants terrified at the torchlight and the evil spirits seeming to hover everywhere over that benighted city.

At about the fourth watch, the people could abide no longer, and whether at the instigation of secret ringleaders, or merely at the urging of their own self-fed fears, pandemonium suddenly broke loose. The Spanish guards stationed almost elbow to elbow around the palace to protect the Caesar were overwhelmed and trampled, and furious crowds surged to the palace walls, crushing between the stones and their bodies those unfortunate enough to be in the front lines of the mass of heaving, sweating females, who were soon joined by the thousands of sleepless auxiliaries only loosely barracked in their city quarters for the night. More torches were lit and raised, and screams ensued as the hair and clothing of some in the massed, milling crowd caught fire and the flames were swiftly extinguished, along with the lives of their victims, under trampling feet. The palace was surrounded and under siege, and I raced from my own quarters in the north wing to Julian's office, bursting in just in time to see him staring up blearily from his reading, his eyes half hooded as if he were waking from a dream. Upon seeing me, he shook his head to clear his thoughts and made his way groggily to his feet.

'Thank God, Caesarius, you've come — such a dream I've had…'

I looked at him in exasperation, wondering how he could have been able to sleep in such pandemonium, and how, even now, his greatest desire was to recount to me one of his endless dreams. A chant, faint almost to imperceptibility behind the three-foot-thick outer stone walls of the palace and formidable oaken doors of his office, was beginning to seep through from the outside, like a noxious gas.

'Julian,' I began, 'the crowds outside-'

'Caesarius — the guardian spirit, the woman I told you about, appeared to me again. She appeared looking as she has before, carrying her burden, Caesarius, it was the same, the goddess…'

The chant began growing louder, more urgent, and I looked at him impatiently. 'Julian,' I said more insistently, 'they're calling for you. The city is in turmoil, something must be done.'

But he was as if in a trance, a half-smile on his face, staring straight past me as if it were I who was the shade, not the phantasm by which he was haunted. 'She spoke to me, Caesarius, for the first time she spoke, and her voice was like light, like enchantment, but I didn't so much hear it as felt it, penetrating into me, and though she was rebuking me, her words felt comforting, as sweet as honey…'

I saw by now that he was beyond me, that there was no dissuading him from this madness, and that the quickest way of addressing the urgent business of the mob outside was to encourage him to spill out his words as fast as he could.

'What did she tell you?'

'She scolded me, as a mother would a young and flighty son. "Julian," she said, "long have I watched you in secret, wishing to raise you higher, but always being rebuffed. If even now I am unwelcome, I shall go away sad and dejected."'

'I don't understand — ' I began.

'That's not all she said,' he continued, and I began to despair as the chant grew louder, more desperate, and the previously unintelligible syllables began to form words and meaning. 'She said, "Do not forget, Julian: if you reject me again this time, I shall dwell with you no longer."'

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

'No, my friend, it was not, it was a vision, not puzzling in the slightest, as clear as any I have had yet. Listen!'

And for the first time I realized that he too was aware of the rising chant, the fearful sound, which had begun to make its way through and around the palace, rolling and echoing through the corridors and anterooms, gaining strength like a wave rushing unimpeded over an open beach, as more and more voices picked up the refrain. Within moments the sound was bellowed deafeningly from a hundred thousand tongues, roared from every street and corner of the city within a mile of the palace, torches and clubs rising and falling in unison with the rolling vowels of his name and the terrifying, traitorous suffix they had appended to it, to which only the Supreme Emperor was entitled: 'Ju-li-an Augustus! Ju-li-an Augustus!' The thought of rebellion against Constantius was madness, it was suicide, for despite the might and loyalty of the Gallic army Julian had built over the past five years, it was but a small thing compared with the forces the Emperor could martial from his legions of the Danube and the East with a mere twitch of his finger. Julian, however, was unperturbed, and as he passed out of his state of halfsleep, half-wakefulness, I saw his expression take on a hard, alert cast and he listened more closely to the shouts from outside.

The crowds roared his name and the forbidden title, they would not be put off. Within moments two officers burst into the room, begging Julian to address the troops and the camp followers from the balcony before the city was destroyed. The women, they reported, had begun dismantling the palace from the outside stone by stone, and in their frustration at being unable to reach the wall, the latecomers and soldiers in the back of the crowd had begun tearing up flagstones in the streets, and tiles and gutters from the roofs of the surrounding buildings. Paris was being taken apart, piece by piece.

He listened in silence, and nodded his assent. With the two officers flanking him he strode out of the room and down the corridors, followed by a small detachment of Petulantes archers who had also forced their way into the building. I walked behind, to the grand balcony overlooking the forum, where he was accustomed to receiving and greeting dignitaries and addressing the crowds for great proclamations and religious occasions. Throwing open the wide double doors, he was practically pushed out to the stone railing of the balcony by his increasingly nervous guard, who then retreated and stood at attention behind him as if preventing the escape of a prisoner, though escape was far from his intention at the moment. We were met with an extraordinary sight.

The forum was filled from wall to wall, the front half with thousands of women, their crying, tearstained children hoisted onto their shoulders and heads, away from the pressure of the surging crowds but into the danger of the waving, thrusting torches. The women peered up in exhaustion, their faces pale and haggard in the torchlight, hair disheveled and greasy, lips dry from three days of standing in the square with only such food and water as they were able to beg from sympathetic residents and bystanders. Behind them, filling the far end of the forum and spilling into every street and alleyway beyond, were the auxiliary legions, their pennants flying almost as if the troops had marched in unison to join the riots. Men hung precariously on drain pipes and downspouts, clambering and crowding onto the roofs far over the crowds, clinging even to rough spots on the sides of the walls that could afford a finger- or toe-hold to the most intrepid, all of them roaring the fearful chant as if with one voice: 'Ju-li-an Augustus! Ju-li-an Augustus!'

When the balcony doors burst open and Julian emerged, the chant exploded and washed over us like a sudden downpour, and all faces turned toward us in the firelight. The crowd took a moment to realize who it was that had appeared on the balcony, and with cries of recognition and triumph, the people suddenly heaved forward, even though a moment before one would have thought them to have been already packed so tightly as to be unable to move. Scattered cries and gasps of pain rose to our ears from the stone walls below the balcony, out of our line of vision, but sufficiently close as to hear the agony of those being crushed below.

The chant rose to a deafening pitch, and the very walls seemed to shake with the reverberations. Julian stared out at the crowd, and though I was unable to see his face from my position behind him, I knew, as if I had been looking at him directly, that he had applied his inscrutable military leader's expression and was now surveying the crowd with an impassive face. As word of his arrival spread to the farthest corners of the forum and back into the side streets and alleys beyond our vision, the noise level initially increased. The mob's excitement rose to a fever pitch, and all shouted and pointed in the direction of the balcony. Within moments, however, as Julian stood frozen, staring at the crowd, a hush fell, broken only by the scattered and distant wailing of the frightened children held over their mothers' heads.

'The duty of a soldier is to obey his general,' he pronounced in measured Latin, without preliminaries, in a clipped voice that carried easily over the heads of the silent crowd and resounded off the smooth stone walls of the buildings surrounding the space. 'This my soldiers have always done, and they have been rewarded in their faithfulness to me by becoming the finest fighting force in the Western Empire, invincible, conquerors of the Germans and of all the barbarian peoples of the north.' Scattered cheers erupted from the farthest corners of the forum, where the soldiers had gathered. Most, however, stood as immobile as Julian, waiting to see what further words he might have. The women beneath the balcony, filling the entire front half of the forum, wore expressions at best slack and unimpressed, at worst hostile.

'The duty of the people is to obey its Caesar,' he continued, and now I saw where he was moving — testing the waters, as does a trained rhetorician, unsure of the level of attention or the sympathies of his crowd. 'In this, too, the people of the Western Empire have acquiesced, building here for themselves Paris, the grandest city of Gaul, renowned for its libraries and public buildings and its complete and utter fealty to Rome…'

A murmur rose from the crowd, not yet loud enough or urgent enough to give one a precise idea of where they stood or where they might be led, but rather as of a rising tension, an anticipation for what they knew would be the concluding statement to come, the final installment of the trilogy of duty he was describing for his subjects.

'And the duty of the Caesar' — the crowd held its breath — 'is to honor and obey the Emperor Constantius Augustus.'

A roar ripped through the mob, high-pitched at first as the women nearest responded most quickly to his words, but expanding in volume and depth of tone as it surged to the back of the forum and Julian's words reached the ears of the soldiers and merchants whose lives most depended upon his acts. It was a bellow of fury, of exasperation and impotence, and the crowd surged forward and then swayed back as people tried to move, to run, to take some action, somehow, but were prevented and hemmed in by the press of the unwashed, cursing, roaring masses around them. Objects began to be hurled through the air — at first fruit, bread, bits of clothing and offal from the streets, but soon, as more rioters clambered to the tops of the buildings around the square and began ripping apart the rooftops and walls, more dangerous matter — clay tiles, bricks, and broken pieces of stone — began flying like missiles. Screams of pain and fury filled the air, and the women below looked up at us with expressions of terror.

'Julian,' I shouted, pushing forward through the guards and onto the balcony. The majestic bronze statue of Julius Caesar in the middle of the forum begin to sway ominously on its pedestal. 'They are destroying the city, and the army will soon be helping them. Unless you seize what is offered, you will have lost everything. They will kill you!'

His eyes shone strangely, firelike, and he stared hard at me for a moment. The corners of his mouth twitched and the veins stood out on his forehead. The man was under tremendous pressure, I reflected, more than any mortal should have to bear. Then he looked back to the crowd, and raised his hands high for silence.

Nothing happened, and I despaired. Only those in the front ranks of the crowd were even looking at him, while those on the rooftops and farther back in the forum had become crazed, rioting openly and willfully, hurling building materials down on their fellows and screaming blind insults at the Emperor Constantius. Julian raised his hands higher, shouted for silence, but in vain, for his words were unheard, as if released silently from a dry throat. The feeling was nightmarish.

Without hesitation, he stepped back for a moment, beckoned to the archers behind us, and six of them stepped forward, all that could fit side by side on the wide balcony. At a shouted order that only they could hear, they unslung the compact, army-issue crossbows from their shoulders and in one, smooth motion strung the heavy gut cords and fitted the thick, ugly bolts that passed for arrows to their strings. These weapons I had never seen fired in anger or in battle, but I had heard tell of their capabilities — a practiced archer could pierce armor at a half-mile's range. The smooth, gray iron tips gleamed dully in the torchlight, round and barbless, the weapon relying on sheer force of impact, rather than the shredding effect of the warhead for its killing capacity.

Hesitating but a moment, waiting to see if the sight of the poised archers would attract the attention of the crowd, Julian shook his head in frustration, pointed out to the archers a tall, particularly active individual prancing on a rooftop with a large building stone held over his head, and made a short, chopping motion.

Simultaneously, as if from one hand, the six arrows leaped from the drawn strings with a speed that made them disappear from view by the naked eye. A second later, however, the results were clear.

Four of the iron bolts found their mark, while the fifth and sixth clattered noisily against the tile roof and caromed off into the streets beyond. The rooftop marauder, pierced twice in the chest, once in the throat, and once in the thigh, looking for all the world like the martyred Saint Sebastian, may God forgive me for saying so, froze suddenly on the roof, the building stone still balanced high above his head. A moment later the stone fell, glancing painfully off his shoulder and rolling down the roof and off the gutter, while the man himself sank to a sitting position, then lay back onto his shoulders like an exhausted stonemason settling down for a rest. He slid weakly down the steep pitch of the roof on which he had been standing, gathering speed and leaving a dark, glistening trail on the russet tiles above and behind him, before pitching feet first, stone dead, over the eaves and onto the heads of the horrified crowd below. I was unable to determine who the man might be, and I prayed that he was not one of Julian's soldiers. Screams erupted from the onlookers near the building from which he had fallen, pierced by the high, frantic wailing of a woman, likely the wife or concubine of the man who had been struck — but elsewhere around the forum, a sudden, barely controlled hush fell upon the crowd, and all eyes turned back to the balcony, the expressions on their faces a mixture of terror and relief.

Julian waved the archers back inside behind the balcony and again stepped forward, into the silence of the frozen crowd.

'The Emperor's duty, however,' he continued calmly, as if having never been interrupted in his previous harangue, 'is to guide and honor his subjects, and in my effort to remain obedient to the Emperor to the end, I have contributed to his dishonoring of his subjects, contributed to the breaking of Rome's solemn vow to its Gallic auxiliaries, and therefore made myself unworthy of your obedience.'

The crowd was stunned and silent.

'We are told in the ancient myths,' he continued calmly, his voice rising as he found his orator's rhythm, 'that the eagle, when testing which of its brood are genuine, carries them yet unfledged into the upper air and exposes them to the sun's rays, that the god Helios may determine whether the brood are true born and destroy any spurious offspring. In the same way I submit myself to you, as though to the sun god himself. It rests with you to decide whether I am fit to lead you or not. If I am not, then fling me away as though disowned by the gods, or plunge me into the river as a bastard. The Rhine does not mislead the Celts, for it sinks deep within its current their bastard infants, taking fit revenge on the offspring of an adulterous bed; but all those it recognizes as being of pure blood, it floats on the surface of the water and gives back to the mother's trembling arms, rewarding her for a marriage pure and beyond reproach. Thus so, I throw myself on your judgment, to determine whether I am legitimate in this task, and to accept my due punishment should I fall short in your eyes.'

At this Julian stopped short, his head bowed, as if waiting for the mob's judgment to be passed on him, prepared for whatever verdict might be handed down. The crowd stood silent a moment, puzzled and dismayed at his hesitancy to assume their command. Then a single cry rose from the back, from the area where stood the soldiers, the pennants drooping lazily in the still air.

'Ju-li-an Augustus! Ju-li-an Augustus!'

Instantly, the cry was taken up by all, and the forum again resounded with the tremendous cry — this time, however, unbesmirched by rioting or violence. The entire crowd stood motionless, all eyes on Julian, lips only moving, a hundred thousand of them opening and closing simultaneously with the mouthing of the syllables as the words poured over us, reverberated off the limestone behind and above us, pounding into our heads -

'Ju-li-an Augustus! Ju-li-an Augustus!'

He looked up, nodded, and a cheer rose from the mob. The archers behind pushed me roughly out of the way and lifted Julian high above their shoulders on a military shield in the traditional posture of triumph, swiveling him slowly this way and that above the heads of the people, as he held his arm before him in a solemn salute.

After long moments of cheering, the women crying in loud wails of relief, knowing merely that their men would not be sent to the sweaty, painted harlots of Syria, the archery captain stepped forward and announced crisply that to complete the ceremony, the newly acclaimed Emperor had to be crowned. Julian raised his eyebrows in surprise.

'I am a soldier,' he shouted to the man over the continued cheering. 'I do not own a diadem.'

The officer looked at me, recognizing me for the palace physician. I shrugged.

'I could run up to fetch a necklace or tiara of Helena's,' I offered. Julian visibly shuddered.

'The omens would not be good,' he said. I stared at him in exasperation and frustration that he could be so selective about his jewelry at a time such as this. 'A cavalry frontispiece, then,' I said unthinkingly, imagining the highly ornamented ironwork and jewels worn on the face of Julian's warhorse during ceremonial occasions. Julian scoffed.

'I take responsibility for my actions,' he shouted, visibly affronted. 'I shall not be portrayed as a horse led by the nose.'

The crowd's cheering was dying down and an ominous restlessness was beginning to set in as the people watched the animated discussion being held on the balcony, wondering whether they should fear for the validity of their acclamation. Finally, one of the soldiers resolved the issue.

Stepping forward, he removed the thick golden neck chain he was wearing as standard-bearer of the Petulantes' cohort, and, without ceremony or permission, simply placed it on the head of the newly acclaimed Augustus. Julian looked back out at the crowd, the long chain perched precariously in a gleaming heap on the top of his head, one loop dangling lopsidedly off his left ear, and as the roar swelled for the last time, I saw now that the faces were smiling, and I knew all would be well.

Later that day, when Julian learned of the hasty, terrified departure of Decentius and Florentius from the city after the acclamation, Eutherius advised him to kill the latter's family and relations who remained in trembling disguise in the suburbs, and to appropriate his considerable wealth for the treasury. Instead, Julian ordered their possessions to be carefully cataloged and packed, and all to be sent in covered wagons to Rome, with the family to be carried comfortably, if not luxuriously, and safeguarded on the journey by the same cohort of Petulantes archers. It was a magnanimous act, one that flabbergasted and confounded Constantius when he heard of it; it was an act entirely in keeping with Julian's forgiving but crafty nature; it was an act that was his last as a Christian and his first as the disputed Emperor Augustus of Rome.