II
A profound obscurity reigned in the great sleeping-chamber ofMacellum, an ancient palace of Cappadocian princes.
The bed of the young Julian was very hard,--a wooden pallet, laid witha panther-skin. So the young Julian himself willed it, being bred inthe austere principles of the Stoics by Mardonius, his tutor, apassionate disciple of ancient philosophy.
Julian was not asleep. The wind, blowing in fierce gusts, howled likean imprisoned beast between the chinks of the walls. Then all fellback again into silence, and in the intent pause large drops of raincould be heard splashing from the height of the roof upon the ringingflagstones. The keen ear of Julian detected at moments the rustling ofthe rapid flight of a bat. He distinguished, too, the regularbreathing of his brother, a delicate and girlish lad, who slept upon asoft bed under mouldy hangings, the last trace of luxury in thisdeserted castle. In the next room could be heard the heavy snore ofMardonius.
Suddenly, the door of the secret staircase in the wall turned softlyupon its hinges. A bright light dazzled Julian.
Labda, an old slave, entered, carrying in her hand a metallic lamp.
"Nurse, I'm afraid! Don't take the lamp away...."
The old woman placed the lamp in a stone niche above the head ofJulian.
"Can you not sleep? You are not in pain? Are you hungry? That oldsinner Mardonius always keeps you fasting. I've brought you cakes ofhoney. They're good.... Taste!"
Making Julian eat was the favourite occupation of Labda; but she darednot indulge in it by day--dreading the severe Mardonius--and sobrought her delicacies mysteriously under cover of night. Labda, whowas purblind and could scarcely drag her limbs along, always wore theblack religious habit. Although a devout Christian, she was regardedas being in reality a Thessalian sorceress. The grimmestsuperstitions, old and new, fused in her brain into a strange religionnot far removed from madness. She mingled prayers with spells,Olympian gods with demons, Christian rites with the black arts. Herbody was behung with crosses, and amulets carved out of the bones ofthe dead; and scapularies, containing the ashes of martyrs, swung fromher shoulders. The old woman felt for Julian a pious affection,regarding him as the sole and legitimate successor of Constantine theGreat, and holding Constantius, the reigning Emperor, a murderer and ausurper.
Labda knew better than anybody the family tree and traditions of therace of the Flavii. She remembered the grandfather of Julian,Constantius Chlorus. The murderous mysteries of the Court lingered on,ineffaceable, in her memory; and many a time at night would she tellthem to Julian, keeping nothing back, so that he, at the narrative ofevents which his childish brain could not yet comprehend, felt hisheart gripped by fear and indignation. With dull eyes, in a lowmonotonous listless sing-song, Labda, looking like one of the Fates,would recite these gruesome epic tales of a few years ago, as if theyhad been so many legends of remotest antiquity.
Placing the lamp in a stone niche, Labda blessed Julian, with a signof the cross; ascertained that the amulet of amber was safe on hisbreast, and, pronouncing some charms to exorcise ill spirits,vanished.
A heavy half-slumber fell upon Julian. It was warm; great drops ofrain, descending in silence as into the bottom of a sonorous vessel,lulled him into languor. He knew not whether he was awake or asleep;whether it was the breathing of the wind or Labda which was murmuringat his ear the terrible secrets of his family. All that he had learntfrom her, and all that he had seen in infancy, fused into a singlefearful dream.
...He sees the dead body of the great Emperor upon a splendid bier.The corpse is painted; and the head adorned by the deftest of barberswith an ingenious dress of false hair. Julian, brought thither to kissthe hand of his uncle for the last time, is afraid. The purple, thediadem, with its stones glittering under the flame of torches, dazzlehim. Through the heavy Arabian perfumes, for the first time in hislife he comes into contact with the odour of a corpse. But bishops,eunuchs, generals, acclaim the Emperor as if he were alive; and theambassadors bow down before him and return thanks, observing all thepunctilious ceremony of diplomatic etiquette. Scribes read out theedicts, the laws, the decrees of the senate, and implore the approvalof the dead man; a flattering murmur surges to and fro among themultitudes; they declare that he, the Emperor, is so great that by aspecial mercy of Providence he reigns after death.
The child knows that he whom all glorify has killed his own son, abrave young man, whose only fault lay in the people's too great loveof him. This son had been slandered by his stepmother, who loved himwith an unholy love, and had taken her revenge upon him thus as Phaedraupon Hippolytus. Afterwards the wife of Constantine had been surprisedin adulterous intimacy with a slave of the Imperial stables and hadbeen stifled in a bath heated to a white heat. And so on, corpse, uponcorpse, victim after victim. Finally, tormented by conscience,Constantine the Great had implored priests to shrive his soul fromguilt. He was refused. Thereupon the Bishop Ozius succeeded inconvincing him that one religion only possessed the power of purifyingfrom sins like his. And therefore it had come to pass that now thesumptuous _Labarum_, the standard bearing wrought in precious stonesthe monogram of Christ, glittered above the catafalque of theparricide.
Julian strove to awake, to open his eyes, and could not.
Ringing drops fell continually, like heavy tears, and the wind blewon: but it seemed to him that it was Labda, the old Fate, babblingnear him with her toothless gums the terrible tales of the Flavii.
Julian dreamed again. He was in the subterranean vaults of ConstantiusChlorus, surrounded by porphyry sarcophagi containing the ashes ofkings. Labda is hiding him in one of the darkest corners and haswrapped in her cloak the sickly Gallus, who is shivering with fever.Suddenly, above their heads in the palace, groanings resound from roomto room.
Julian recognises the voice of his father; struggles to answer him--torun to his aid--but Labda holds back the child, murmuring, "Quiet!quiet! or they will be upon us!" and hides him under her chlamys.Hasty steps clatter upon the staircase--come nearer and nearer still;the door bursts into shivers and the soldiers of Caesar, disguised asmonks, invade the vault. The Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia directs thesearch; and coats of mail glitter under the black robes of thesearchers.
"In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost,answer--who is there?"
Labda is crouching in a corner, still locking the children to herbreast. Again comes the solemn cry--
"In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost--whois there?"
The legionaries, sword in hand, explore every hole and corner; Labdathrows herself at their feet; shows them the sickly Gallus and Julian,defenceless--
"Fear God! what harm can a six-year-old innocent like this do to theEmperor?"
And the legionaries force all the kneeling three to kiss the crosswhich Eusebius holds out to them, and to take the oath of faithfulnessto the new Emperor. Julian remembers the great cross of cypress-wood.There was an enamelled picture of Christ on it. On the dark base ofthe wood stains of fresh blood were still visible, imprinted by thefingers of the cross-bearing assassin.
Was it the blood of the father of Julian, or of one of his sixcousins, Dalmatius, Hannibal, Nepotian, Constantine the Younger, or ofthe others? The murderer, in order to ascend the throne, had taken sixcorpses in his stride, doing each deed in the name of the Crucified.And still round the tyrant, day after day, rose the cloud of victims,a multitude which no man could number.
Julian awoke full of fears. The rain had ceased and the wind fallen.The lamp burned steadily in its niche. Julian sat up on his bed,listening in the silence to the beatings of his own heart. The hushseemed curiously insupportable. Suddenly, voices and steps resoundedfrom room to room, reverberated along the high arcades of Macellum asformerly along the vaults of the Flavii. Julian shivered. It seemed tohim that he was dreaming still.
The steps approached; the voices became distinct.
The lad cried out, "Gallus, awake! Mardonius, don't you hearsomething?"
Gallus awoke. Barefooted, his grey hair dishevelled, and clothed in ashort sleeping-tunic, Mardonius, his face bloated, yellow and wrinkledlike an old woman's, rushed towards the secret door.
"The soldiers of the Prefect!... Dress!... We must fly."
He was too late. The grinding of iron bolts told that the door wasbeing shut from the outside. The stone columns of the public staircaseflushed with the light of torches, illumining the purple dragon of astandard-bearer and the cross upon the breastplates of legionaries.
"In the name of the most orthodox and blessed Augustus, ConstantiusImperator! I, Marcus Scuda, Tribune of the Fretensian Legion, takeunder my safeguard Julian and Gallus, sons of the Patrician, JuliusFlavius!"
Mardonius, with drawn sword, stood in a warlike attitude in front ofthe closed door of the chamber, barring the way of the soldiers. Thisglaive was rusty and useless, and served the old tutor only to show,during his lessons in the Iliad, how Hector used to fight Achilles. Atthis moment Mardonius, although he would have been incapable ofkilling a hen, was brandishing the sword in the face of Publius,according to the most correct traditions of Homeric warfare. Publius,who was drunk, flew into a passion:
"Get out of my way, windbag! Clear out, I tell you, if you don't wantme to slit you!"
He seized Mardonius by the throat and hurled him against the wall.
Scuda ran to the door of the chamber and opened it. For the first timein his life he beheld the two last descendants of Constantius Chlorus.Gallus seemed tall and strong, but his skin was fine and white as ayoung girl's; his eyes, of a wan blue, were indolent and listless; hisflaxen hair, the distinguishing trait of the house of Constantine,spread in curls over his powerful neck. But in spite of his masculineappearance, downy beard, and eighteen years, Gallus at that momentlooked a child. His lips trembled, he blinked sleep-swollen eyelids,and, crossing himself, continually whispered: "Lord, have mercy uponme!"
Julian was a thin child, sickly and pale, with irregular features,thick glossy black hair, too long a nose, and a too prominent lowerlip. But his eyes were astonishing. Large, strange, and variable, theyshone with a brightness rare in a child's eyes, and an almost morbidor insane concentration.
Publius, who in his youth had often seen Constantine the Great,mused--
"That little rascal will be like his uncle!"
In the presence of the soldiers fear abandoned Julian. He was onlyconscious of anger. With closed teeth, the panther-skin of his bedflung over his shoulder, he gazed at Scuda fixedly, his lower liptrembling with bridled rage. In his right hand, hidden by the fur, hegripped the handle of a slim Persian dagger given him by Labda; it wastipped with the keenest of poisons.
"A true wolf's cub!" said one of the legionaries, pointing out Julianto his companion.
Scuda was about to cross the threshold of the chamber, when a wildchance of safety flashed upon Mardonius. Throwing aside his tragicsword, he seized the mantle of the tribune, and began to scream in ashrill feminine voice:
"Do you know what you're doing, rascals? How dare you insult an envoyof Constantius? It is I who am charged to conduct these two youngprinces to Court. The august Emperor has restored them to his favour.Here is the order from Contantinople!"
"What is he saying?... what order is it?"
Scuda stared at Mardonius. His faded and wrinkled visage wasunmistakably that of a eunuch; and the tribune knew well what specialfavour eunuchs enjoyed at Court.
Mardonius hunted in a drawer, lit on a roll of parchment, held it outto the tribune, who unrolled it and immediately grew pale. He onlyread the first lines, but saw the name of the Emperor, who referred tohimself in the edict as Our Eternity,--_Nostra aeternitas_,--butremarked neither the date nor the year.
When he perceived, swinging from the parchment, the great Imperialseal of dark green wax, attached by golden threads, his eyes clouded;he felt his knees give way--
"Pardon, there is some mistake ..."
"Away with you! away with you at once! the Emperor shall knoweverything!" retorted Mardonius, hastily snatching the decree from thetrembling hands of Scuda.
"Don't ruin us! We are all brothers, we're all sinners! I entreat youin the name of Christ!"
"I know what acts you commit, in the name of Christ! Go! Go at once."
The tribune gave the order to retire. A single drunken legionarytried, by fair means or foul, to hustle Mardonius; but they overborethe rioter by main force.
When the sound of steps died away, and Mardonius was assured that allperil was over, he was seized by a wild fit of laughter which shookthe whole of his soft fleshy person. Forgetting all tutorial dignity,the old man in his short night tunic began to dance, crying outgleefully--
"Children, children! Glory to Hermes! We've hoodwinked them cleverly!That edict was annulled three years ago! Ah, the idiots, the idiots!"
At the breaking of dawn, Julian fell into a deep sleep. He awoke late,refreshed and light-hearted, when the sun was shining brightly intothe room through the great iron-clamped window.
The Death of the Gods Page 3