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.
BOOK SEVEN
