A profound obscurity reigned in the great sleeping-chamber of
Macellum, an ancient palace of Cappadocian princes.
The bed of the young Julian was very hard,--a wooden pallet, laid with
a panther-skin. So the young Julian himself willed it, being bred in
the austere principles of the Stoics by Mardonius, his tutor, a
passionate disciple of ancient philosophy.
Julian was not asleep. The wind, blowing in fierce gusts, howled like
an imprisoned beast between the chinks of the walls. Then all fell
back again into silence, and in the intent pause large drops of rain
could be heard splashing from the height of the roof upon the ringing
flagstones. The keen ear of Julian detected at moments the rustling of
the rapid flight of a bat. He distinguished, too, the regular
breathing of his brother, a delicate and girlish lad, who slept upon a
soft bed under mouldy hangings, the last trace of luxury in this
deserted castle. In the next room could be heard the heavy snore of
Mardonius.
Suddenly, the door of the secret staircase in the wall turned softly
upon 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 of
Julian.
"Can you not sleep? You are not in pain? Are you hungry? That old
sinner Mardonius always keeps you fasting. I've brought you cakes of
honey. They're good.... Taste!"
Making Julian eat was the favourite occupation of Labda; but she dared
not indulge in it by day--dreading the severe Mardonius--and so
brought her delicacies mysteriously under cover of night. Labda, who
was purblind and could scarcely drag her limbs along, always wore the
black religious habit. Although a devout Christian, she was regarded
as being in reality a Thessalian sorceress. The grimmest
superstitions, old and new, fused in her brain into a strange religion
not far removed from madness. She mingled prayers with spells,
Olympian gods with demons, Christian rites with the black arts. Her
body was behung with crosses, and amulets carved out of the bones of
the dead; and scapularies, containing the ashes of martyrs, swung from
her shoulders. The old woman felt for Julian a pious affection,
regarding him as the sole and legitimate successor of Constantine the
Great, and holding Constantius, the reigning Emperor, a murderer and a
usurper.
Labda knew better than anybody the family tree and traditions of the
race 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 tell
them to Julian, keeping nothing back, so that he, at the narrative of
events which his childish brain could not yet comprehend, felt his
heart gripped by fear and indignation. With dull eyes, in a low
monotonous listless sing-song, Labda, looking like one of the Fates,
would recite these gruesome epic tales of a few years ago, as if they
had been so many legends of remotest antiquity.
Placing the lamp in a stone niche, Labda blessed Julian, with a sign
of the cross; ascertained that the amulet of amber was safe on his
breast, and, pronouncing some charms to exorcise ill spirits,
vanished.
A heavy half-slumber fell upon Julian. It was warm; great drops of
rain, 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 murmuring
at his ear the terrible secrets of his family. All that he had learnt
from her, and all that he had seen in infancy, fused into a single
fearful 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 barbers
with an ingenious dress of false hair. Julian, brought thither to kiss
the hand of his uncle for the last time, is afraid. The purple, the
diadem, with its stones glittering under the flame of torches, dazzle
him. Through the heavy Arabian perfumes, for the first time in his
life he comes into contact with the odour of a corpse. But bishops,
eunuchs, generals, acclaim the Emperor as if he were alive; and the
ambassadors bow down before him and return thanks, observing all the
punctilious ceremony of diplomatic etiquette. Scribes read out the
edicts, the laws, the decrees of the senate, and implore the approval
of the dead man; a flattering murmur surges to and fro among the
multitudes; they declare that he, the Emperor, is so great that by a
special mercy of Providence he reigns after death.
The child knows that he whom all glorify has killed his own son, a
brave young man, whose only fault lay in the people's too great love
of him. This son had been slandered by his stepmother, who loved him
with an unholy love, and had taken her revenge upon him thus as Phædra
upon Hippolytus. Afterwards the wife of Constantine had been surprised
in adulterous intimacy with a slave of the Imperial stables and had
been stifled in a bath heated to a white heat. And so on, corpse, upon
corpse, victim after victim. Finally, tormented by conscience,
Constantine the Great had implored priests to shrive his soul from
guilt. He was refused. Thereupon the Bishop Ozius succeeded in
convincing him that one religion only possessed the power of purifying
from sins like his. And therefore it had come to pass that now the
sumptuous _Labarum_, the standard bearing wrought in precious stones
the monogram of Christ, glittered above the catafalque of the
parricide.
Julian strove to awake, to open his eyes, and could not.
Ringing drops fell continually, like heavy tears, and the wind blew
on: but it seemed to him that it was Labda, the old Fate, babbling
near him with her toothless gums the terrible tales of the Flavii.
Julian dreamed again. He was in the subterranean vaults of Constantius
Chlorus, surrounded by porphyry sarcophagi containing the ashes of
kings. Labda is hiding him in one of the darkest corners and has
wrapped in her cloak the sickly Gallus, who is shivering with fever.
Suddenly, above their heads in the palace, groanings resound from room
to room.
Julian recognises the voice of his father; struggles to answer him--to
run 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 Cæsar, disguised as
monks, invade the vault. The Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia directs the
search; and coats of mail glitter under the black robes of the
searchers.
"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 her
breast. Again comes the solemn cry--
"In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost--who
is there?"
The legionaries, sword in hand, explore every hole and corner; Labda
throws 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 the
Emperor?"
And the legionaries force all the kneeling three to kiss the cross
which Eusebius holds out to them, and to take the oath of faithfulness
to the new Emperor. Julian remembers the great cross of cypress-wood.
There was an enamelled picture of Christ on it. On the dark base of
the wood stains of fresh blood were still visible, imprinted by the
fingers of the cross-bearing assassin.
Was it the blood of the father of Julian, or of one of his six
cousins, Dalmatius, Hannibal, Nepotian, Constantine the Younger, or of
the others? The murderer, in order to ascend the throne, had taken six
corpses 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 hush
seemed curiously insupportable. Suddenly, voices and steps resounded
from room to room, reverberated along the high arcades of Macellum as
formerly along the vaults of the Flavii. Julian shivered. It seemed to
him that he was dreaming still.
The steps approached; the voices became distinct.
The lad cried out, "Gallus, awake! Mardonius, don't you hear
something?"
Gallus awoke. Barefooted, his grey hair dishevelled, and clothed in a
short sleeping-tunic, Mardonius, his face bloated, yellow and wrinkled
like 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 was
being shut from the outside. The stone columns of the public staircase
flushed with the light of torches, illumining the purple dragon of a
standard-bearer and the cross upon the breastplates of legionaries.
"In the name of the most orthodox and blessed Augustus, Constantius
Imperator! I, Marcus Scuda, Tribune of the Fretensian Legion, take
under my safeguard Julian and Gallus, sons of the Patrician, Julius
Flavius!"
Mardonius, with drawn sword, stood in a warlike attitude in front of
the closed door of the chamber, barring the way of the soldiers. This
glaive was rusty and useless, and served the old tutor only to show,
during his lessons in the Iliad, how Hector used to fight Achilles. At
this moment Mardonius, although he would have been incapable of
killing 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 want
me 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 time
in his life he beheld the two last descendants of Constantius Chlorus.
Gallus seemed tall and strong, but his skin was fine and white as a
young girl's; his eyes, of a wan blue, were indolent and listless; his
flaxen hair, the distinguishing trait of the house of Constantine,
spread in curls over his powerful neck. But in spite of his masculine
appearance, downy beard, and eighteen years, Gallus at that moment
looked a child. His lips trembled, he blinked sleep-swollen eyelids,
and, crossing himself, continually whispered: "Lord, have mercy upon
me!"
Julian was a thin child, sickly and pale, with irregular features,
thick glossy black hair, too long a nose, and a too prominent lower
lip. But his eyes were astonishing. Large, strange, and variable, they
shone with a brightness rare in a child's eyes, and an almost morbid
or 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 only
conscious of anger. With closed teeth, the panther-skin of his bed
flung over his shoulder, he gazed at Scuda fixedly, his lower lip
trembling with bridled rage. In his right hand, hidden by the fur, he
gripped the handle of a slim Persian dagger given him by Labda; it was
tipped with the keenest of poisons.
"A true wolf's cub!" said one of the legionaries, pointing out Julian
to his companion.
Scuda was about to cross the threshold of the chamber, when a wild
chance of safety flashed upon Mardonius. Throwing aside his tragic
sword, he seized the mantle of the tribune, and began to scream in a
shrill feminine voice:
"Do you know what you're doing, rascals? How dare you insult an envoy
of Constantius? It is I who am charged to conduct these two young
princes 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 was
unmistakably that of a eunuch; and the tribune knew well what special
favour eunuchs enjoyed at Court.
Mardonius hunted in a drawer, lit on a roll of parchment, held it out
to the tribune, who unrolled it and immediately grew pale. He only
read the first lines, but saw the name of the Emperor, who referred to
himself in the edict as Our Eternity,--_Nostra æternitas_,--but
remarked neither the date nor the year.
When he perceived, swinging from the parchment, the great Imperial
seal 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 know
everything!" retorted Mardonius, hastily snatching the decree from the
trembling hands of Scuda.
"Don't ruin us! We are all brothers, we're all sinners! I entreat you
in 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 legionary
tried, by fair means or foul, to hustle Mardonius; but they overbore
the rioter by main force.
When the sound of steps died away, and Mardonius was assured that all
peril was over, he was seized by a wild fit of laughter which shook
the whole of his soft fleshy person. Forgetting all tutorial dignity,
the old man in his short night tunic began to dance, crying out
gleefully--
"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 into
the room through the great iron-clamped window.