by Paul Waters
I was lying on my bed, my arms crossed behind my head, idly surveying the pleasing scenes on the frescoed wall as I listened. I nodded to myself. I too had sensed something private, some secret unwillingly hidden from view. ‘Well, he is the emperor’s cousin. He didn’t want it talked of that he had gone to the old temple.’ And remembering the letter he had shown me with the broken seal, I added, ‘Even he is watched, it seems.’
Marcellus shrugged. ‘Yes. So much for trust.’
‘Did you notice Florentius?’
He gave a laugh. ‘He wasn’t pleased to see me.’
‘He wasn’t pleased to see me either. He caught me looking at that ridiculous bird’s-nest on his head.’
‘What does he expect? His hairdresser must have been an hour at it. Why do it at all, if he doesn’t want people to look?’
I smiled; but then I said, ‘Even so, for all he is a fool, he is a powerful one.’
‘I know – and he is the first to make sure no one forgets it. Still, we are guests of the Caesar now. He cannot tell his lackey to throw us out again. Florentius didn’t even have the courage to do it himself.’
‘That’s the kind of man he is. Have you noticed how he looks down his nose at Julian? You’d think he was another one of his clerks.’ And then, after I had thought about it for a while, I added, ‘I wonder if Julian realizes what he thinks of him.’
Earlier we had gone to the old farmer to tell him we were leaving. He shook his head and wondered what he would do without us; but he was not greatly surprised. He knew we could not stay, and took it with good grace. He thanked Marcellus for the many improvements he had made; and Marcellus, in his turn, reminded him of what still needed attending to – the vine stocks on the far slopes; the ditch in the south barley field; and the old granary behind the house, which was damp and needed airing when the fine weather came.
I watched the old farmer’s resigned, careworn face as he listened and nodded and frowned. I felt sorry for him; he was honest and decent, and much put upon by fate. But I was not sorry to be leaving, not least, I admit, because of Clodia. While we were busy with our farewells, she sat apart on the step, absently stroking one of the farm cats and glaring with a face like a storm cloud.
Presently Marcellus went off alone to say goodbye to her. I waited in the dirt road outside the gate, making small-talk with the farmer. Whatever they had to say did not take long. I heard a door slam, and when he returned he was looking rather awkward. I made no comment, then or later. After all, she had only seen in him what I myself had seen.
And – I knew this too – it is easy to be generous in victory.
*
Oribasius was a native of Pergamon; he had studied as a physician, and was now engaged in the great task of writing, as he told us, an encyclopedia of medicine. He had known Julian from the time that Julian was a student at the university in Athens. If Julian was a talker by nature, Oribasius was a listener. They understood one another. He was the audience to Julian’s protagonist, and there was, it seemed to me, a genuine trust and friendship between them.
But right from the start Florentius, judging others by his own measure, suspected Oribasius’s motives were venal. If Oribasius attached himself to Julian, it must be that he wished to gain from it. He snubbed him in the colonnades and passageways of the citadel; he passed barbed, sarcastic comments, not caring who heard. He supposed sneeringly that it must be useful to have a friend so highly placed, and imagined the imperial residences throughout the empire were a welcome comfort. He wondered, with an ironic arching of his brows, how much of a fortune a doctor devoted to study and pursuits of the mind could possibly need.
Oribasius let pass these comments with nothing more than an amused look in his dark, intelligent eye. But Julian noticed, and knew the attacks were really directed at him.
Nor, as I soon came to learn, was Oribasius the only cause of friction with the prefect. Where Julian tended to good-natured familiarity, Florentius was stiff and formal and obsessed with place; and such opposites seldom mix. In another life I daresay they would have kept apart; but Florentius, being responsible for the civil administration of the province and the supplies to the army, could not be ignored. Julian needed him, and Florentius knew it.
Moreover, Julian was by nature impulsive. If he wanted to do something he did it, ignoring the cat’s cradle of petitions and approvals that turned a day’s activity into a month’s work. He had driven back the barbarians by moving fast. The bureaucrats could catch up at their own slow pace. All this Florentius took as an attack on himself. He thought Julian was trying to undermine him, to make him look a fool. As for Julian, he saw Florentius’s obsession with process as absurd, when all about him circumstances called for swift decisive action. Neither man understood the other.
That winter, Julian offered us places in the officer corps. I chose the infantry, which I knew from my time in London; Marcellus the cavalry.
The Master of Cavalry, whose name was Severus, had just returned from the Rhine, where he had been inspecting the defences and surveying the ruins of Cologne. On the way he had encountered Frankish skirmishers laying waste the farmlands south of the Meuse. At the sight of Roman troops they had fled north, but as soon as Julian heard of it, he called us together for a war-council. The barbarians must not be allowed to raid at will or consolidate their positions; how soon, he asked, could the army be ready to march?
In the pause that followed, Florentius, who was standing behind, gave a loud, artificial cough.
‘Yes, Prefect?’ asked Julian, turning to him.
Everyone knew, said Florentius, with the air of a school-master correcting a slow child, that it was the habit of these barbarians to strike when the army was scattered in winter quarters. ‘By May,’ he said, ‘they will have gone back across the river to their own lands.’
‘And next year,’ retorted Julian, ‘they will return. That too is their habit.’
‘It is the middle of winter, Caesar; you cannot fight now. Everyone knows that.’
‘It seems,’ said Julian, ‘that no one has thought to inform the barbarians of it. If they can fight in winter, then so can we.’ He turned to the map spread out over the table. ‘Victor, Arintheus, this route is the best, if it is passable. Send scouts to find out. Valentinian, you see to the mustering of the troops from winter quarters. You, too, Drusus.’
Everyone crowded round – all except Florentius. The colour had risen in his face, but he said no more. While the others talked and planned, he stood with his chin up, half-looking out of the window, as if something in the still courtyard outside had drawn his eye.
A few days later, shortly before we were ready to depart, Marcellus returned late to our rooms. He had been out training the new cavalry recruits, Severus having discerned straightaway his skill with horses. The recruits were young Romans from Gaul for the most part, eager youths fired with the taste of success; but they were rough and raw still. They had learned to ride well enough on their fathers’ farms, but knew little of mounted combat, or moving in formation.
Marcellus pulled off his heavy winter cloak and tossed it on the chair, then sat on his bed and began unstrapping his boots. His cheeks were flushed from the cold, and from a hard day of physical work.
‘You smell of horse,’ I said.
‘So would you, if you had been with me. But have you heard? Florentius has announced he is marching with us.’ ‘Whatever for? What use can he be?’
‘None at all. You should have heard Severus cursing when he heard about it… He would have made a centurion blush.’
I smiled at the thought. Severus was a burly African from Carthage with a weathered face and short-cropped grizzled hair. He had a blunt habit of speaking his mind, which endeared him to Julian – and made Florentius bristle. He made no allowances for the prefect’s precious airs, and it was no secret that the two men could not stand one another.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘he doesn’t have to come. He will hardly be among frie
nds, after all.’ And while Marcellus pulled off his clothes we joked at the thought of Florentius out on campaign with his hairdresser and manicurist and the rest of his entourage.
‘I suppose,’ said Marcellus, standing naked at the washstand, ‘he thinks he will miss out.’
‘More likely he wants to keep an eye on Julian… or someone else does.’
‘Yes, perhaps.’ He turned, serious now, and regarded me through the folds of the towel as he dried his face. ‘I had not thought of that. Eutherius said everyone is watched. What does that do to a man? It’s sickening.’
He ruffled up his damp hair and threw the towel aside. We were learning to understand the ways of the court.
Two days later, on a damp grey morning, we assembled for the march north.
I was sitting on my horse among the other officers, watching while the troops assembled in formation before the fort. In the distance, across the Seine, I could just make out the old farmhouse, and the hay-barn and water-cistern beside it, where I had gazed out on the day the army had first arrived. I shrugged and smiled, and reflected on my change of fortune.
Severus came riding up on his tall, chestnut horse. He spoke a few words to one of the tribunes, talking of some military matter; as he spoke he glanced towards the citadel. Then he paused and looked again; and the tribune beside him laughed.
I turned my head, following their gaze. In the distance, riding up the hill on a white dappled stallion, was Florentius, resplendent in shining dress-armour, with a thick, fur-lined riding cloak flowing from his shoulders and cascading over the horse’s flanks.
A buzz of amused comment passed along the line, and there were many bright smiles, until Severus barked out for silence. Julian, seated on a plain army-issue mount, glanced briefly round, then looked away again, affecting not to notice.
We advanced northwards, taking the roads as far as they led, then skirting water-meadows and frozen marshes. There was a bitter north wind, which blew against us all the way. As we drew closer to the Meuse we passed abandoned settlements, their roofs and windows gone, and fields untended and returning to the wild. Julian, pointing this out to Florentius, said it was a disgrace that so much land lay idle, when half of Gaul went hungry. The prefect, cold and bad-tempered under his furs, told him that the inhabitants had gone to the cities. ‘They have gone for safety, sir, as I am sure the Caesar realizes.’
Julian frowned at the wasted fields. Already sapling trees had taken seed – bramble and whitethorn and fast-growing rowans. Within a generation it would be forest once more, and no one would know it had ever been farmed. He told the prefect this, saying, ‘Yet men must still eat, and all this is good fertile land. We must encourage them to return, before it is grown over. We must make it safe for them.’
‘As you say, Caesar,’ answered Florentius, with a cold, pinched smile.
I saw Julian preparing to speak again, his mind working with his plans. Florentius saw it too; but rather than wait he twitched the polished reins of his horse and wheeled off.
Julian watched him go, and for a moment his eye caught mine. I had expected to see anger in his face. But instead what I saw was hurt and sadness. It was like the face of an intelligent child, who is treated cruelly when he does not expect it, and is unwilling to let it show.
We advanced into the borderlands. There was no sign of the Frankish raiders, except the destruction they had left behind them. Soon we found out why. Alerted to our approach, they had withdrawn to one of the many abandoned frontier posts along the Meuse, left empty when Magnentius and then Constantius had stripped the province of troops to fight their civil wars. While the men were setting camp, digging ditches in the hard ground, pitching their hide tents and erecting a palisade, we surveyed the perimeter to see how the fort could best be taken.
It had a high, stone gateway, facing south-west. The gate itself was gone; the Franks had barricaded the entry with piled-up masonry and old roof-beams from the ruined barrack-houses inside. They eyed us from the ramparts as we approached; and when they thought we were near enough they began hurling down missiles and shrieking abuse in their uncouth guttural tongue. They were outraged that we had dared to come and challenge them.
We kept back, out of their range. Soon, as this dawned on them, they saved their weapons and contented themselves with insults.
‘It will take time to shift them,’ commented Valentinian, observing the wild barbarians with distaste, ‘they are well dug-in.’
‘Yes,’ said Julian frowning, ‘and in our own fort too. But we are outside, and they are in, and I doubt they have laid by much food. They have grown used to our weakness. They think we shall just march away and leave them to their looting. But I will have them out, if it takes all winter to do it.’
Florentius was not with us. He had remained at the camp, to supervise the erection of his tent – a tall, striped pavilion with an entrance porch of red-painted ash-wood poles. I was passing with Marcellus and our comrade Arintheus just as the furniture was being carried in. It lay spread about on a patch of square canvas, waiting to be borne inside by the slaves – stools with cushions, an inlaid writing table, lampstands, an upholstered couch, and in the midst of them a bronze bath embossed with garlands. As we paused, taking all this in, one of his liveried upper-servants came striding up. The prefect, he said, wished for a word.
‘Ah, gentlemen!’ cried Florentius, from between the half-unpacked boxes. ‘Now we are here in this wasteland at last, perhaps you can talk some sense into our great general.’
‘Sir?’ I said.
‘Come now, he will not listen to the voice of experience, so perhaps he will listen to you. The Franks have come and gone through these lands for years; it is no surprise they see it as their own. Does Julian not understand he is giving offence? They will complain to their brothers across the Meuse and the Rhine. Mark my words: by stirring them up we shall have trouble all along the frontier, and then he will have something to answer for to the emperor.’
‘Do you wish us to tell the Caesar this?’ asked Arintheus.
The prefect shrugged. ‘Tell him what you wish; I doubt he will listen. Either way, he will learn soon enough. He cannot go marching about like this in the depths of winter. Who does he think he is? …You there!’ – suddenly crying out at a group of his slaves who were pulling on a guyrope – ‘stop tugging and heaving like that, you fools, or you will bring the whole thing down into this wretched mud!’ He turned back to us. ‘You are soldiers, are you not? So make him see sense, before his schemes bring chaos along the whole frontier.’
Later, when we saw Julian, Arintheus mentioned Florentius’s words – though he omitted the haughty tone.
‘He is right in this at least,’ said Julian, ‘that the Franks do not like it, and they will have sent to their heartlands for reinforcements. But otherwise our conclusions differ. He believes that therefore we should do nothing, lest we make them angry, and what sort of policy is that? No, we will show them we are ready to defend what is ours, and if they have sent for reinforcements, we had better make sure we take the fort before their friends arrive.’
While he spoke, his eyes had been gazing across the river at the dense forest beyond. But now he turned, alerted by a new volley of abuse coming from the fort.
Already the short winter day was ending, fading to twilight. The fort was shrouded in gloom. The heads of the Franks showed as moving shadows on the ramparts, their distant voices like the bark of angry dogs.
Julian turned to us and shook his head. ‘What fool abandons a fort without demolishing it? Little wonder the barbarians mock us, when we are besieging them in a fortress of our own making!’
Days passed. The weather stayed cold and grey. We saw the Franks staring out across the river, searching north over the forest line for the approach of their barbarian tribesfolk. Each day, Julian called on them to surrender. Each day, in answer, they roared insults at the herald, and pelted him with rocks.
But we did not sit idle. We
sent sappers shielded under a housing of wicker and ox-hide to undermine the wall by the gate, where it looked weakest and had been shored up from within. But the foundations ran deep – our military architects had known their work – and the work progressed only slowly. Florentius came to observe, saying nothing, looking pleased with himself, making sure his silent presence was noted.
We began work on a siege-tower, and there was a lull while the troops felled trees, and the carpenters set to work with their axes and planes. One day, during this time, Oribasius came calling at our tent. He asked if we would go out riding with him and Julian next morning.
‘Why, yes,’ I said. ‘Of course. Who else is coming?’
‘Only you and Marcellus. Let us meet at dawn at the horse-paddocks.’ And with that he bade us farewell and went off, with his heavy cloak pulled up against the damp.
‘What do you suppose he wants?’ asked Marcellus.
I shrugged. There was some purpose behind it, I said. It was not like Julian to go off on pleasure rides.
Overnight the wind shifted, and by dawn the low cloud and fine, ceaseless rain had gone, replaced by sunlight and a sky like blue crystal. We rode out eastwards, following the tracks through marsh-grass white with frost, along the line of an old watercourse.
In time the frozen marsh gave way to firmer ground; ahead, in the middle distance, I saw a wide, low plateau, with a circle of tall pines. They dominated the flatland all around, like massive standing-stones.
‘This is the place,’ said Julian, who had scarcely spoken. He urged his horse on.
We climbed the path to the top and dismounted. I turned and looked out over the land. To the east, the low sun shone white and cold. The frozen marshes glittered; and far off a solitary hawk balanced motionless in the air. We tethered our horses; and then Oribasius opened his saddlebag and took out a small folded tripod, and a handful of tinder bound with straw. He stepped away, and set the tripod down in the middle of the circle of trees, and began kindling a fire. Julian said, ‘This day is sacred to Apollo, Bringer of Light. Did you know?’
