watched as she came close, bearing in her arms a burden, which I took to be a baby.'
I stifled a yawn, for dawn was just beginning to redden the sky.
'It was merely anticipation at your prospects of becoming a father, Julian,' I said reassuringly. 'There is nothing to be concerned about.'
He shook his head at me in exasperation.
'No, Caesarius, you didn't let me finish. She came close and as I stood there she held the burden out to me, smiling. When I took it, I noticed it was uncommonly heavy, and I found it was a cornucopia — a horn of plenty, bursting with ripe fruit, figs and melons, wheat and corn, the empty gaps filled with gold coins, dried fish, fragrant herbs, spices from all corners of the earth — everything needed to sustain life.'
I stared at him, still puzzled but increasingly disquieted. 'Julian,' I said calmly, 'such dreams are unholy, unworthy of your concern. All men have them, but only naive pagans, seers and oracles and the like, would place any stock in them at all. If you read the Scriptures before you sleep, you dream of Christ's works. If you read fables — you dream of ghosts.'
He glanced at me quizzically and, I thought, somewhat disdainfully, and his eyes lingered on me for just a moment before he continued with his story, ignoring me as if I had not interrupted him.
'I looked at her more closely,' he said, 'and she smiled sweetly, and I knew inside that she was the genius publicus, the guardian deity of Rome itself, in the form of a goddess; Caesarius, I saw her so clearly, so vividly I could describe her to you in every detail, every hair, every eyelash — you would think she was in this very room with us! This was no dream, I assure you. It was truly a vision. And then after leaving in my arms all the riches of the Empire, she slowly turned away and vanished.'
At this my drowsiness, too, had vanished, and I looked at him with sharp rebuke.
'Nonsense. You're asking me to interpret a dream which I believe is simply the product of an overheated imagination and a dyspeptic stomach. I'm not a soothsayer, Julian, I'm a physician. We are Christians, not worshipers of the old gods. Eat some meat, get some strength into your muscles, and stay away from silly tales before bedtime.' I saw that my lecture was having little success, for still he stared at me, his face as white as when I had first arrived this evening. 'What could you possibly be frightened of?' I continued. 'At worst, it was only a dream.'
Ruefully he turned and renewed his silent pacing, as the white plastered walls of the room gradually turned a rosy pink with the light now slanting through the small ogive window. A tiny cross, seemingly placed on the wall for the specific purpose of catching the sun's earliest morning rays, gleamed from a polished stone set in the middle. The gathering brightness and airiness of the room was in stark contrast to the dark circles forming under Julian's eyes, and the pained expression on his face.
'I'm not frightened,' he said in a calm voice, as he waved his hand at me in dismissal. 'I simply wished to tell you of my vision. I see that was a waste of time.'
V
'Oh, sweet Jesus,' he moaned.
'Don't take the Lord's name in vain.'
'I'm not, Caesarius — I'm praying.'
I rolled my eyes and continued massaging the mint oil into the growing goose egg on the back of his head, which I had already shaved and stitched up with cat gut.
'Praying. That's a bit of a novelty for you, isn't it?'
He turned his head slightly to eye me balefully, one eyebrow raised. 'And that's a rather impertinent manner you have of speaking, especially to your Caesar.' He chuckled and tried to turn his head farther, but winced.
I remained silent for a moment, concentrating on cleaning up the dressing, then began straightening my instruments. 'Where else are you injured?'
He sighed ruefully. 'Every muscle in my body. Caesarius, I've spent more time in these past few weeks looking up from the ground at a horse's pizzle than I have riding.'
This, at least, was true, for Sallustius had embarked Julian on an intensive training stage in horsemanship, at an isolated farm outside the city that afforded us privacy from spectators curious to watch the Caesar's progress. Frankly, however, little progress was being made. Even worse, in my own training alongside Julian, I was turning into a rather talented student, magnifying his own ineptitude. Our boyhood bareback riding on horses in the neighbor's paddock, Brother, was bearing fruit! The problem was that Julian had never actually ridden a warhouse. Oh, naturally, he had traveled sedately on mild transport animals, usually supervised carefully by a watching colleague or groom, and even then rarely accelerating beyond a calm trot. But a true warhorse, under battle conditions? Never, and at his age, the ripe, old, out-of-shape age of twenty-four, it was like trying to learn a new language after reaching puberty — seemingly impossible.
Merely mounting the beast was a skill he was having difficulty mastering, and any confidence he had had before embarking on this venture was now severely shaken. He stood only head-high to the shoulders of the Frankish chargers that Roman officers in Gaul ride, and Persian-style mounting, using a slave known as a strator to hoist the rider up onto the horse's back, did not meet Sallustius' standards. You've probably watched soldiers in the field, Brother — the trick is to approach the animal on its left side, and seize the reins loosely along with a good handful of mane from near the horse's ears. Then with your right hand on the middle of its back, you pull yourself up high enough to flop across on your belly and swing your leg over into a sitting position. It can be a daunting task even for a skilled rider, though my own height made it relatively easy for me. While Julian was at first given the gentlest old nags on which to practice, he consistently overshot his flop; or inadvertently kneed the animal in the ribs, causing it to start; or slipped his grip and ended up jerking the mane out by its roots, with predictable results. Sallustius grimaced and shook his head in disgust, forcing Julian to mount again and again, disdaining even to help him up and dust him off after he fell beneath the animal's feet — 'You'll have no one in battle to do that for you,' he stated matter-of-factly.
It took Julian days to master the technique, practicing from both sides of the horse, mind you — and then Sallustius threw him another one.
'On the run!' he shouted. 'Go!'
Julian just stood and looked at him blankly. 'Mount the horse while it's running?' he asked, astonished.
Sallustius paused, as if unable to comprehend the difficulty. Finally he spoke, slowly, as if to a dense child. 'Not the horse,' he said. 'You. Chonodomarius is within your sight, there, in front of you. You've been caught off your animal, but so has he, and you can catch him if you can mount quickly. Now run and vault onto that horse!'
Julian tried gamely, every way he could — leapfrogging from behind over the horse's haunches, side-vaulting as if scaling a rail fence — and I can't help but say that for many days the results were pitiful, Brother, for Julian simply did not have the quickness or strength to make up for his lack of height, and would invariably slam painfully into the horse's side or rear, and end by clawing and scrambling his way up a by now thoroughly flustered animal. Sallustius shrunk from even watching him, as did I–I merely concentrated all the more fiercely on my own animal. Only Paul the Chain, who often slunk out of his quarters to observe the training sessions, continued to observe attentively and cluck his tongue after each fall, until Sallustius, in exasperation, ordered him to leave the premises. After several days of wincing at Julian's failure to mount, Sallustius admitted defeat, at least for the time being.
'We'll go back to mounting later,' he grumbled, to Julian's infinite relief. 'In the meantime, we'll work on actual riding. As far as mounting goes, for now you're a Persian,' and he called over a hulking Gallic slave from the stables who bent his back for Julian to step on and more gracefully mount his horse.
When riding in battle, Brother, good form is of the utmost importance, from the carriage of one's head to the hang of one's foot. I have seen inexperienced riders in battle who grip their horses' sides not merely with the thighs, as they should, but with their calves and ankles as well, keeping their feet rigid against the animals' ribs rather than letting them dangle loosely from the knee. If their stiff leg strikes against anything hard, like a stump or a rock, or even the armored knee of an onrushing enemy rider brushing close by, it will snap like a twig just at the joint. This is an injury which, despite all the miracles that modern medical science is capable of offering, rarely heals properly and usually leaves the victim a cripple. If the leg hangs easily from the knee down, however, it will
