The Philosopher Prince

by Paul Waters

  ‘Ready to fight, or so he says. You saved his life, Durano. Perhaps she did too. I shall never forget.’

  He smiled, and clapped his hand on my shoulder. He was being posted, he said, to one of the newly fortified towns overlooking the Rhine, so it was time to say farewell.

  And so we went off with the others, down the long thoroughfare of the camp, to find some wine to toast our parting.

  With the next courier from the East came the news that Julian’s friend the empress Eusebia had died.

  It struck Julian deeply. On the day he heard, not wishing to put his grief on public display, he kept to his private rooms, among the books she had so recently sent him. It was not, as Eutherius told me, only her gifts of books that he would miss. She alone had spoken up for him at court, and without her there was no one left to counter the insidious work of Constantius’s grand chamberlain.

  Eutherius told me about the time that Julian had first been summoned from his studies in Athens and ordered to the court. For weeks he had been held a virtual prisoner at the imperial palace, while the courtiers disputed whether he should be elevated to the rank of Caesar, or put to death as a dangerous threat. The emperor could not make up his mind. The chamberlain had argued for execution; it was the empress who had intervened on Julian’s behalf and, as Julian himself thought, saved his life.

  Now, with the moderate, educated influence of the empress gone, Constantius’s only advisers would be flatterers and sycophants – led by the chamberlain, who controlled all access to the imperial presence.

  ‘The word at court,’ Eutherius said, taking my arm as we walked in the garden, and giving me one of his dry, amused glances, ‘is that Constantius is fortunate to possess some influence with his chamberlain.’

  He rolled his eyes, and waited for me to see the joke.

  Meanwhile, the conflict with Florentius continued. Word came that the plaintiffs who had brought the charge against him had suddenly withdrawn it. Julian made no comment. But then Florentius announced he intended to raise an extraordinary tax levy on the citizens of Gaul, saying that the usual revenues for that year would not be sufficient.

  He did not trouble to tell Julian himself; he sent a subordinate. I doubt he would have done even this, were it not that the levy, being extraordinary, required the Caesar’s signature.

  Julian met the official in the citadel’s great audience chamber, with its echoing barrel-vaulted roof, squat stone columns and heavy faded tapestries. He preferred his study, but on this day he had chosen the cold ill-lit chamber on purpose, knowing that in the aisles behind the limp hangings there would be listening ears, informers waiting to relay everything they heard to their paymasters.

  ‘Ask the prefect to reconsider,’ Julian said carefully – and loudly. ‘The provincials can scarcely feed themselves. I have spent the past three years securing the borders and resettling the frontier. Advise the prefect that a prudent farmer does not harvest the crop until it is grown. Tell him to come to me himself, and we shall speak of it privately.’

  But Florentius did not come. Then, one morning a few days later, he submitted the order for signature, arriving this time in person, accompanied by a crowd of his bustling liveried clerks. It was a heavy formal document, prepared by scribes, intended for the archive records.

  ‘What is this?’ asked Julian.

  With his usual haughtiness, Florentius replied that it was the authority for the levy, as the Caesar had been told.

  Up to now, Julian had always treated the prefect with cool civility. But now his patience ended. With an angry cry he snatched the document from the hands of the clerk and cast it down on the ground.

  ‘Do you take me for a fool?’ he cried. ‘The provincials charge you with extortion, and you respond with this new assessment. They cannot pay, I tell you!’

  Florentius’s face tensed. Dangerous pools of red appeared on his pale cheeks. For all his scheming and goading, this outburst had caught him by surprise. To be addressed in such a way, in front of his own officials, was an outrage beyond the scope of his routine mind.

  ‘The levy,’ he said in a quiet, icy voice, ‘is a separate matter, and may I remind the Caesar that the case brought against me was vexatious, and was dropped for lack of evidence.’

  ‘Lack of evidence?’ cried Julian. ‘Lack of evidence indeed! Only when the plaintiffs, having prepared a detailed charge against you, discovered to their surprise that they were mistaken in the very evidence that they themselves had prepared. This after they had all become – suddenly and mysteriously – enriched. They have made themselves a laughing-stock, and you must take me for as big a fool as they!’

  The crowd of clerks who stood gathered behind the prefect stared at the floor, horror-struck. Florentius, his brittle voice rising, said, ‘You have no right to question my authority. The emperor has appointed me to conduct the financial affairs of Gaul at my discretion, yet you persist in interfering. I will not tolerate it.’

  ‘And did the emperor also instruct you to sell exemptions?’ demanded Julian. This was a long-standing abuse: the revenue collectors, who were landowners and rich decurions, collected taxes from the rural poor; then, having collected the taxes, they sought exemptions on the grounds that the taxes could not be raised, and kept the funds for themselves.

  Florentius glared, momentarily at a loss. I do not think he had realized Julian knew of this.

  ‘No, indeed,’ continued Julian, ‘I will not accept this levy of yours. I will not sign it. I have said so often enough. Have your spies not told you? By all the gods, you have enough of them!’

  With a chill rictus of a smile Florentius said, ‘In that case, Caesar, perhaps you would like to explain to the emperor how you propose to cover the deficit in the provincial finances.’

  There was a pause. Julian’s eyes dropped to the floor with its bands of red and yellow marble, and the scattered pages of the levy-document. A look of satisfaction formed on Florentius’s face; though I could have told him how Julian would have responded to such a challenge. The clerks looked up, their curiosity getting the better of their fear.

  Julian said, ‘I shall do more than that, Prefect. I shall conduct the assessment myself. I will bring in the funds without recourse to your levy; and if I cannot, I shall sign your order.’

  Florentius glanced at his secretary – the man who had once ejected me and Marcellus from the citadel – then looked back at Julian with an incredulous sneer.

  ‘You will bring in the funds?’ He almost smiled. ‘Very well… then let us see it. But if you fail, be in no doubt, sir, that you shall answer to the emperor.’

  ‘And if I succeed, what will you tell Constantius then?’

  To this, Florentius merely snorted down his nose in derision. ‘You will excuse me, Caesar,’ he said, with a rigid, unpleasant smile, ‘if I do not engage in idle talk; but clearly you have much work to do.’ And then he turned on his heels and left. And the clerks, after a gaping moment, hurried after, like a timid line of duck-chicks behind their mother.

  When they had gone, Julian turned to me. I daresay I had turned as pale as the others.

  ‘And now,’ he said, ‘I had better make sure I can do it.’

  Next day Florentius sent a band of financial clerks to Julian, bearing tomes of figures for him to review. Julian took one look at them, realized what the prefect was trying to do, and told the clerks to take the pile of books away. Overnight he had been doing some thinking. Now he announced that not only would no additional levy take place, but that the existing tax would be halved.

  Florentius’s chief actuary, when he heard, came rushing across the palace courtyard, ashen-faced, clucking disapproval. What could the Caesar be thinking? He would bring down disaster upon them. It was not too late to reverse the proclamation; they would find some way of explaining it as a mistake, a clerical error, the fault of some minor bookkeeper.

  ‘I do not wish to reverse it,’ Julian told him. ‘If the tax is less onerous, more people
will pay it.’

  The actuary went away appalled, making little tutting noises and shaking his head.

  But Julian had not finished. Next he announced an end to the tax exemptions. The rich estate-owners were outraged. They sent deputations to Paris, pleading poverty; but Julian cast his eyes over their well-wrought polished gigs, their thoroughbred, bedizened horses and their expensive Italian clothes, and sent them away. He said he preferred to listen to the rural smallholders who sold at market, and to the city artisans – the bakers and basket-weavers, potters and fullers and dyers – all men who lacked great fortunes, who were unable to buy influence, and always had to pay their tax on the nail – men that Florentius would never have lowered himself to consider, let alone speak to. But Julian knew them. It was the sons of these men who served in the army; it was their homes the invaders would burn first, if once they were let in.

  The people heard him, and they responded. They liked the bright young Caesar, who had saved them from the barbarians and now had spared them the abuses of the rich landowners. They paid their taxes, even before they were due. The revenues poured in.

  Florentius’s officials, for all their pettifogging, remembered enough goodness of spirit to mumble congratulations and concede they had been wrong. His conquests had meant little to them; but for this young stubble-faced Greekling to halve the tax and increase the revenue was a feat that truly commanded their respect.

  Florentius, however, said nothing. And, shortly after, he departed south for Vienne, saying he wished to supervise the distribution of corn.

  One late afternoon, during that winter in Paris, Marcellus returned to our room in the palace and said, ‘Rufus came to me today. He wants to join Nevitta’s squadron.’

  I glanced at him, surprised. He was looking down, sitting on the edge of his bed, unstringing his boots.

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘I asked him why Nevitta; but he did not want to talk about it. He said he wanted a change, that’s all, and would I let him go or not? So I let him go. There’s no point keeping him, if that’s what he wants.’ He shrugged, then added, ‘Perhaps it will do him some good.’

  I frowned. Since his captivity in the German forest, Rufus had become sullen and brooding. The light had gone from his eyes. It was as if something fine and delicate, which needed gentle nurturing, had been ripped from him and trampled.

  Marcellus, who saw more of Rufus than I, supposed it was the shock of what had happened to his comrades that had changed him; and I had agreed that this must be so. I had not confided, even to him, what more I knew. It seemed the least I could do for the boy.

  Once or twice, I had tried to speak to him myself, in private. He had been civil enough, but brisk and remote, and it was clear he did not wish to talk.

  So now all I said was, ‘Nevitta seems an odd choice, if you ask me.’

  ‘That’s what I thought too.’

  Neither of us much cared for Nevitta. He was a cavalryman of barbarian birth who had distinguished himself at Strasburg. Julian liked him for his bluntness, and had promoted him. Since then, he was always finding cause to be around Julian, and had something to say on everything, whether he knew about it or not. He was able enough; but beneath all his noise and boasting he had a veiled, suspicious air I did not trust. He put me in mind of an escaped convict.

  Yet the greater evil obscures the lesser, and soon there was no time to think of such matters. One clear morning in January, when Marcellus and I were in the stable yard at the fort, preparing to go out riding along the Seine, a courier came clattering through the gate, his relay-horse steaming in the cold winter air.

  ‘What news?’ someone shouted brightly.

  ‘Nothing to smile about,’ the courier called back. He jumped down from his horse and took out the dispatch from his saddle-bag. ‘There’s trouble in Britain, if you want to know. A disaster, they say, and Julian’s going to have his hands full with it.’

  He gave his bound-up packet to a runner, who would take it to the citadel. Marcellus turned to me. ‘We had better go and find Julian,’ he said.

  By the time we reached his study, the dispatch lay open on the table, and a map of Britain next to it.

  Lupicinus, the new Master of Cavalry, was there; and other officers of the corps – Victor, Arintheus and Valentinian. Eutherius was seated on a low stool beside the stove, warming his hands, dressed in a heavy winter robe of Gallic wool with a fox-fur collar. Oribasius, in his simple, dark cloak, was waiting apart, beside the window.

  ‘Ah, Drusus, Marcellus,’ said Julian, turning from the map. ‘Come and look. You know Britain better than anyone.’

  Then he told us what had happened.

  Two barbarian British tribes, one known as Picts and the other Scots, who live an existence beyond the Northern Wall untouched by civilization, had broken their treaty and overrun the frontier. They had sailed boats around the coast, avoiding the Wall, while others had assaulted the Wall itself. Border forts had been put to the torch, or abandoned by the panicked frontier guards. ‘The city of Chester is threatened; the governor in London – his name is Alypius, I know him, he is a good man – sup poses that by the time this letter reaches us, York itself may be under siege. He says the attack is no mere raid: it has been planned, by someone who knows how to plan such things.’

  ‘Planned?’ Lupicinus asked sharply. ‘Whatever does the man mean? Planned by whom?’

  Julian paused and gave him a careful, appraising look before he answered. They had never fought a campaign together. Neither man had the true measure of the other.

  ‘Alypius says he does not know.’

  ‘Yet he claims to know it was planned?’

  ‘These are tribes that normally squabble between one another like dogs in a yard; they are little more than cattle-raiders. Yet suddenly they have united. They have struck in the middle of winter, when defences are weakest; and our usual spies, who keep an eye out for trouble, somehow missed it all. There was mind behind it; that is Alypius’s opinion. You are not obliged to accept it.’

  Julian paused, in case Lupicinus had more to say. He did not. The Master of Cavalry was holding a polished military baton, cherry red, with gilding and victory wreaths carved in ivory. He tapped it impatiently in his palm. Julian returned his eyes to the map.

  ‘We cannot repel them with the British garrison alone,’ he continued. ‘How soon can we march?’

  ‘Why, Caesar,’ cried Valentinian, ‘surely you will not risk a crossing in winter!’

  ‘You are too timid,’ said Lupicinus dryly.

  Valentinian gave him an angry look and drew his breath. But before he could fire back an answer, Julian cut in, saying, ‘That, anyway, is what our enemies suppose. These Picts and Scots will not be expecting us until the spring. Well, we shall surprise them.’

  Eutherius coughed. Julian turned to him.

  ‘Eutherius?’

  ‘If indeed there is mind in these attacks,’ he said from his comfortable place by the bronze stove, ‘then we should ask ourselves whom it would benefit, and what reaction they would expect from us.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ cried Lupicinus, turning impatiently. ‘They benefit themselves, of course, or think they do. They must be taught a lesson, and swiftly. There is no more to it than that. They must be crushed. Julian must march at once.’

  Eutherius waited for him to finish, with a patient expression on his large face. As I stood listening, it came to me that Eutherius was leading somewhere, drawing Lupicinus on, as a hunter entices the rabbit from his hole.

  ‘Quite so, Master of Cavalry,’ he said. ‘Yet let us suppose Alypius is correct.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, we can believe it would benefit the German tribes, for one, if Julian were to leave Gaul. He has caused them enough trouble, after all, and no doubt his absence would be welcome. It would give them a free hand.’

  He paused. His eyes moved from Lupicinus and settled on Julian’s face. Then, with
a short pause, and the merest hint of a nod, he added, ‘It would give all of our enemies a free hand.’

  Perhaps it was no more than the poison of intrigue, which swirled about the citadel like a mist; but I was sure I felt an undercurrent of private meaning. I remembered how Constantius, during his civil war with Magnentius, had stirred up the barbarians and sent them raiding into Roman lands, not caring what damage he caused, so long as he secured his own ends. Was this what Eutherius was hinting at? Did someone want Julian out of the way? I could not be sure. Whatever it was, he did not wish to say it openly.

  I pushed the thought from my mind, telling myself I was seeing conspiracy everywhere.

  ‘There is no question,’ Eutherius continued, looking pointedly at Julian, ‘but you must remain in Gaul. Someone else must go to Britain.’

  ‘Yet surely it is the Caesar’s place to go,’ said Lupicinus. ‘It is his duty, and his wish too, as you have heard. So why all this talk? Besides, who else is there?’

  ‘You have fought in the East,’ said Eutherius with a smile, ‘to great renown, so it is said. A few Keltic ruffians will be nothing after the Persians.’

  And it was true that Lupicinus, whatever Marcellus and I thought of him as a man, was an experienced and successful soldier. Yet now, to my surprise, he seemed to demur, wrapping it up in questions of logistics. He began wondering whether sending a few reinforcements would after all suffice, whether it would not be better for a man of his ability to stay in Gaul in case of trouble, for the Germans were unpredictable. He questioned the wisdom of a winter crossing, when storms were so frequent, and troop transports could so easily be overwhelmed.

  He went on, and everyone – particularly Valentinian, who had not liked being called timid – looked at him with surprise, until eventually Julian broke in: ‘Well, one of us must go. Delay will be taken as weakness. Is that not your opinion too?’

  ‘It is,’ said Lupicinus, irritably.

  Julian paused and nodded. His eyes moved back to the bronze stove, with its turned finials and little embossed garlands; and to Eutherius beside it, who was warming his hands, and wearing a face that gave nothing away.