His days were exhausting, but he did not let up on the demands he placed on himself even at night. After a brief, plain dinner with Helena, he would retire to his offices to spend the remainder of the evening, sometimes until dawn, dictating correspondence to a team of secretaries working in shifts. This he would intersperse with extensive readings of philosophy, particularly Plato and his beloved Marcus Aurelius. He was the only man I ever knew for whom the revolutions of the sun and moon meant nothing — he rarely slept more than two or three hours consecutively, and this whenever the need might hit him, several times during the course of a day. This strange habit he kept as long as I knew him, and I once even witnessed him drop off into a short nap only moments before he planned to send his generals with twenty thousand men into battle. The advantage was, of course, that there was never a time the enemy was able to take him by surprise, for he worked and thought at even the most abandoned hours of the night. The disadvantage was that when he needed to consult with an adviser or friend, that person was summoned forthwith, regardless of his state of wakefulness.
And so it happened that just in the darkest hour before sunrise, when the only souls awake and abroad were sentries or other men bound by duty, inclination, or suffering; in the hour when a man feels most abandoned to the loneliness of night and the forces of evil and temptation; when God Himself seems to disappear in that dreadful, seemingly unending hour before sunrise; just before saffron-robed Dawn hastened from Oceanus' streams to bring light to immortals and mortals alike, there came a knock at my door.
For a physician, a knock at the door in the dead of night is not something to be taken lightly, particularly if his only patients are the Caesar and his wife, though even these were merely half-patients, if you wilclass="underline" Julian was still undecided as to the relative effectiveness of Oribasius' ancient Asclepian healing techniques, as compared with my more scientific, Hippocratic approach. Though I was dismayed at being roused from my warm bed at such an hour, I was nevertheless gratified that he had seen the sense of relying on my own practices, rather than on the superstitious nonsense of my friendly rival. I hurriedly dressed and followed the messenger through the deserted streets, sweeping past the sleepy palace guards with a quick nod and a whispered password, down the silent, darkened corridors to the small room that Julian had taken for his office.
The space glowed almost with the brightness of day, by the light of thirty or forty candles and small oil lamps set on every available shelf and sill, forming long stalactites, as in a cave, from the drippings over the past several months. An unshaved, pasty-faced scribe sat slumped on a small stool in a corner, his quill dropped from his hand to the floor beneath him, his head fallen onto his breast, exposing a pink, round bald spot in the midst of a thick shock of unkempt black hair. Julian paced back and forth, muttering to himself as if composing a letter in his mind, ignoring the snorting and snoring scribe in the corner.
'Good morning, Julian,' I greeted him, unsure whether it was his health I was to inquire about, or Helena's.
He paused in his pacing and looked at me, his own face drawn and pale, his hair mussed, as if he had just awakened from one of his thrice-daily naps. Without a word of greeting in return, he stalked up to me.
'Caesarius, do you believe in spirits?'
The question was so strange I could not help but burst out laughing, which annoyed him. He resumed his restless pacing. I composed my face and sat heavily on a bench in the corner, opposite the scribe, hearkening back in my mind to the children's stories I had heard long ago.
'Spirits, Julian?' I asked, still chuckling. 'Ghosts and vampires of fable, werewolves that wander the roads at night? I'm going back to bed.'
'Yes, yes…' he muttered in some embarrassment. 'No, that's not exactly what I meant.' At this, Julian stopped and looked at me meaningfully for a long moment. I paused, not knowing precisely what to say. This was why he had awakened me?
'I had a vision,' he said, and paused again.
'Perhaps your irregular sleeping habits are distressing you?' I inquired, puzzled.
'No, no, no. I called you, Caesarius, because this evening I had a dream, from which I have just awakened. A beautiful woman approached me, a smile on her lips and love in her eyes, in a diaphanous gown that trailed behind her. Her hair was in a style that I have seen only in the sculptures of the wives of the ancient founders of Rome. I watched as she came close, bearing in her arms a burden, which I took to be a baby.'
I stifled a yawn, for dawn was just beginning to redden the sky.
'It was merely anticipation at your prospects of becoming a father, Julian,' I said reassuringly. 'There is nothing to be concerned about.'
He shook his head at me in exasperation.
'No, Caesarius, you didn't let me finish. She came close and as I stood there she held the burden out to me, smiling. When I took it, I noticed it was uncommonly heavy, and I found it was a cornucopia — a horn of plenty, bursting with ripe fruit, figs and melons, wheat and corn, the empty gaps filled with gold coins, dried fish, fragrant herbs, spices from all corners of the earth — everything needed to sustain life.'
I stared at him, still puzzled but increasingly disquieted. 'Julian,' I said calmly, 'such dreams are unholy, unworthy of your concern. All men have them, but only naive pagans, seers and oracles and the like, would place any stock in them at all. If you read the Scriptures before you sleep, you dream of Christ's works. If you read fables — you dream of ghosts.'
He glanced at me quizzically and, I thought, somewhat disdainfully, and his eyes lingered on me for just a moment before he continued with his story, ignoring me as if I had not interrupted him.
'I looked at her more closely,' he said, 'and she smiled sweetly, and I knew inside that she was the genius publicus, the guardian deity of Rome itself, in the form of a goddess; Caesarius, I saw her so clearly, so vividly I could describe her to you in every detail, every hair, every eyelash — you would think she was in this very room with us! This was no dream, I assure you. It was truly a vision. And then after leaving in my arms all the riches of the Empire, she slowly turned away and vanished.'
At this my drowsiness, too, had vanished, and I looked at him with sharp rebuke.
'Nonsense. You're asking me to interpret a dream which I believe is simply the product of an overheated imagination and a dyspeptic stomach. I'm not a soothsayer, Julian, I'm a physician. We are Christians, not worshipers of the old gods. Eat some meat, get some strength into your muscles, and stay away from silly tales before bedtime.' I saw that my lecture was having little success, for still he stared at me, his face as white as when I had first arrived this evening. 'What could you possibly be frightened of?' I continued. 'At worst, it was only a dream.'
Ruefully he turned and renewed his silent pacing, as the white plastered walls of the room gradually turned a rosy pink with the light now slanting through the small ogive window. A tiny cross, seemingly placed on the wall for the specific purpose of catching the sun's earliest morning rays, gleamed from a polished stone set in the middle. The gathering brightness and airiness of the room was in stark contrast to the dark circles forming under Julian's eyes, and the pained expression on his face.
'I'm not frightened,' he said in a calm voice, as he waved his hand at me in dismissal. 'I simply wished to tell you of my vision. I see that was a waste of time.'
V
'Oh, sweet Jesus,' he moaned.
'Don't take the Lord's name in vain.'
'I'm not, Caesarius — I'm praying.'
I rolled my eyes and continued massaging the mint oil into the growing goose egg on the back of his head, which I had already shaved and stitched up with cat gut.