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…'
