Gods and Legions

'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."'