Lalage had time to ask herself these questions, more time than many of the brothers, and then it occurred to her that some of them had been partly asked or answered in the Greek plays which she had heard read at Acté’s house. So she found an old man who had once been a successful lecturer, but was now living in a garret close to hers, and she paid him a little to teach her to read, and once cleaned up his room for him; he kept a magpie to talk to; he said it was more intelligent than most of his audiences had been. Later on, when he died, Lalage took care of the magpie. Having learned to read, she borrowed one book at a time from Acté, and read so much that she even sometimes neglected her dancing. But she found new themes for dances, if only she could have had the music. But she was bound to dance to whatever music could be provided by the slaves where she went.
That bothered her and she prayed about it. And a few weeks later, an old woman whom she had seen sometimes at the love-feasts, but had not thought about, came to her and said, ‘Sister, do you ever need someone to play for your dancing? They used to say I was good in my time.’
‘What do you play?’ asked Lalage, interested at once.
‘Harp, double flute, castanets and drum,’ said the old woman. ‘I have been a widow ten years and I would like to play for you.’
‘If only you had your instruments here,’ said Lalage, ‘you could bring them along to my room and we could try out something.’
‘But I have them, sister,’ smiled the old woman. ‘It was laid on me to bring them today.’ She added, ‘Sometimes the Spirit tells me quite plainly what to do and sometimes I cannot understand clearly, but if I were with you, sister, you would interpret.’
They came back together, and the old woman, who was called Sophrosyne, played, and Lalage danced and was satisfied and told Sophrosyne to bring her things over. After that they lived together, and Lalage put up her price, because she now provided her own accompanist. Sophrosyne had been a Christian for a good many years. Her own husband had died in the hot weather and after a very few hours there was no doubt that he was not only dead, but changing rapidly into rotten meat. So when she heard about someone rising from the dead after three days she found it very striking indeed. That was what startled her; she liked stories about miracles, too, and when she retold them they had always become slightly more vivid. When she was waiting about, as she did a great deal now that she was Lalage’s accompanist, she was telling them to herself all the time, or thinking of new ones. She dreamed about them sometimes too, and then she and Lalage would talk over the dreams in the morning while Sophrosyne swept the room and Lalage did her practising.
After a while Lalage got a room in another quarter of Rome; it was rather bigger and she needed the space. She had to make up new dances, and once or twice she took a theme which had something to do with what she was thinking about, the phoenix, for instance, symbol of the soul rising after baptism; she danced that for her clients in a short feather tunic, with her legs greased with some special stuff to stop them getting burnt by the real, though quite small, flames which she lit on a kind of tray, and which afterwards smouldered as incense. Real flames, real blood, really difficult acrobatics at which you might hurt yourself—those were what the Romans liked. It was easier for her and Sophrosyne, from this new room, to get to the meetings at Eunice’s house, or in the household where Manasses was now, but she sometimes went back to the old church.
Acté was no longer Nero’s mistress, though, oddly enough, she remained his friend. The old Empress, Agrippina, had been murdered by her son. It was the new Empress, Poppaea, who now pulled Nero about by his passions. She was a queer one, attracted since her girlhood by Judaism, shivering at the bareness of it, feeling at the back of it the austere desert spaces filled with a powerful and volcanic God, blazing out of dry bushes, shimmering in mirages, clutching jealously and fiercely at his own, proclaiming that they and they alone were saved in a world which might at any moment break into flames and chaos. Rome was a world of little gods and goddesses, domestic, official or of the earth, each, as it were, taking on some different aspect of life; one could believe as much or as little as one chose in any of them; they were bound to be tolerant of one another. There were others as well, the Great Strangers mostly, whom one had for one’s own personal use and belief, about whom people felt passionately and gave up time and money and even respectability. But all the same, you would not find that the Initiates of Isis or of Cybele hated one another, or for that matter, despised someone who had made a different choice and gone, perhaps, on the pilgrimage to Eleusis. But Poppaea Sabina had found this one God who would not for a moment put up with rivals. How stirring, how satisfying! And the angry prophets, great, bearded male creatures, stalking the despised cities and the jagged mountains, striking out with their hands, shouting, full of living certainty—Poppaea wanted to be engulfed in all that, longed to feel her soul, tired of perpetual arrogance, at last beaten with the rods of Judaism, bound and quaking in glorious terror at the feet of the Ancient of Days. So she made advances, she protected the Jews in Rome. They would not worship the Divine Emperor? Marvellous daring! But she could make it all right by him. And she alone. She would show him and he would understand. Nero, too, had his longings.
Sometimes he turned towards mysteries and blood sacrifices, but sometimes away from that towards Hellenism, towards a cleaner, saner world, which had finished with blood—even the Arena bloodshed which the crowd liked so much. He would have games like the Olympic Games—no professionals. He would make Rome into a new Athens! Let the crowd, the filthy sons of Romulus, grumble as they would. And when he thought of Athens he would send for Acté again, and talk to her. She was never quite out of favour; nobody dared to treat her as a cast mistress, even though she so seldom now slept with the Emperor. Only when Poppaea was far gone with child, and then it was to console again the wild, half-frightened, half-angry boy. Sometimes with something on his conscience, some evil and horrible thing which he could not always tell her. That matter of Octavia … Acté could help, could calm him and make him a little reasonable, so long as she was never a rival to Poppaea. And she never let herself be that, even when Nero tried to tease her or anger her into saying things …
She said little at the meetings of the Church; they were used to her; she gave them money and visited the sick; they knew that she lived simply, so simply that some people laughed at her or called her a miser, yet not so simply as any of the rest of them—not really as simply as a Christian should have done. Things being as they were, Acté had to compromise. They understood that and they had no blame for her. She had been the one who had brought them together at the beginning, encouraged and protected the little Church; they took her for granted. Sometimes, even at the love-feasts, she looked very sad, but it was not for them to speak first. If she had chosen to ask for forgiveness for anything she would have had it. But perhaps the forgiveness of the congregation was no longer satisfying. Lalage talked to her sometimes. They understood one another, but not even Lalage spoke to Acté about the Emperor.
Manasses knew that Lalage was wiser about people than he was, and probably also a better interpreter of difficult sayings or dreams or visions; he had come to that conclusion after a long time, and reluctantly. So now he thought that almost any action she took was likely to be a right one. He hoped she would come early the next day after the dinner party and she knew he hoped so, but she had another engagement the next night and she was determined to get a good rest. Sophrosyne was careful not to wake her and it was well on in the morning before she stretched and yawned and remembered the night before. She intended to go to Crispus’s house, but before she had finished combing her hair the cobbler at the bottom tried to murder his wife again, and again the wife just got away in time and started screaming the place down. Lalage, knowing the wife, didn’t entirely wonder at it happening, but she ran down and stopped her screeching, or she’d have had the whole of the tenement in and all, of course, going for the husband, who probably didn’t reall
y want to kill his wife or she wouldn’t have escaped every time. If, thought Lalage, I can once get at that little bit of whatever it is that stops him from killing her and get it to grow, then things might be all right between them. She did up the cut on the wife’s head, listened to them both, had lunch with them—bread and figs—and put up with being patronised by the cobbler who was a citizen and never let you forget it. Had she been able to help them? One never knew—not till years and years afterwards. After all that, she had a word with the girl on the third floor who was going to have a baby pretty soon and was rather gloomy about it.
So it was not till later on in the afternoon, when by rights she ought to have been lying down, for it was another blazing day, that she managed to get over to Crispus’s house. Manasses seized on her. ‘Do talk to him, Lalage! I can’t.’
‘Netted a lion, have you?’ said Lalage. ‘How’s he shaping?’
‘He keeps on asking questions.’
‘That’s good.’
‘But I can’t answer him properly; it seems so queer, him asking. And I’m the deacon. It’s my place to answer.’
‘Can’t help remembering you’re still his servant, Manasses, and he might kick you?’
‘Yes. And sometimes—’
‘Wanting to kick him now he’s down? Balance, that’s what you want.’ She stood on one toe and lifted a leg slowly into the air. ‘And take it gently. Tell him it’s difficult for you; he’ll understand. He’s soft now, like clay, he’s open to you.’
‘You tell him, Lalage.’
‘He’s a nice boy,’ said Lalage.
She looked older by daylight, Manasses thought. She was older than either of them. A dancer could go on for a long time—what with make-up and lighting. So long as she kept up her practising: but Lalage did that. He brought her through to where Beric was sitting, doing household accounts. ‘This time of day,’ whispered Manasses, ‘he’s mostly been up with her. Whatever they were doing.’
‘Ah!’ said Lalage, ‘so that’s why you’re sending me to talk to him!’
Manasses didn’t like her saying that sort of thing: even if she didn’t mean anything by it. And perhaps she did, you never knew. She made him feel like a baby sometimes. He watched her go up to the Briton, then went away quickly; he wouldn’t watch. She was a wise one; the Spirit moved in her. Beric jumped up. ‘Lalage!’ he said, ‘come and sit here and tell me everything.’
‘Why don’t you ask Manasses?’ she said.
‘I do. But he seems to be always washing up or something. And Argas is shy today. I like Argas.’
‘Fun being a Christian?’
‘But I’m not a Christian!’ said Beric, rather shocked. ‘So far, I haven’t heard anything wrong. But there must be something.’
‘Why?’
‘Well—everyone says so.’
‘Yes, because you’ve only heard people talking about it who—aren’t dirt. Beric, have you said anything to Crispus about last night?’
‘No, of course not. He wouldn’t understand. He’s been kind to me, though.’ He hesitated a moment, looking at her deeply. ‘I know what else you want to ask me, Lalage. I haven’t told Flavia. I haven’t even seen her all today.’
Lalage leant over and tapped him lightly on the left side of his chest. ‘Does it hurt?’
‘Not quite as much as I thought it would.’
‘It will, though. But you’re brave. Now, what am I to tell you?’
‘Everything.’
She told him, then, about the surprising life and death of the Christ. She told him about love and forgiveness. She told him about the organisation of the Churches, about baptism and fasting and the love-feasts. He kept on interrupting and harking back and understanding things wrong. She told him about prayer. ‘What do you pray for?’ he asked.
‘Always, I suppose, that the Will may be done.’
‘Not for real things?’
‘That’s real. But not for money and food and things like that. We try to earn them honestly. And by the way, you haven’t paid me yet for last night.’ Beric blushed scarlet and suddenly realised how uncomfortable it was to have money relations with people you knew—friends. Lalage added, ‘I’d like something extra for Tigellinus, please, and I think you might give something to Phaon. He had a horrid time.’ Beric thought two things; first that he had glared at Phaon to make him go to Tigellinus for whatever fun Tigellinus wanted to have with him, and second, that it was going to be extraordinarily awkward being on these terms with the slaves. He said as much to Lalage. ‘But think how much more awkward it is being one of the slaves!’ she said. ‘No, Beric, I’m not sorry for you about that. And, you know, you can’t just get out of it by being kind to your slaves. A good Stoic is that: or a good Epicurean. Anybody except a good Roman, really! But it isn’t enough for a Christian.’
‘What does a Christian have to be, besides kind?’
‘It’s not what he has to be, it’s what he has to do. He can’t, you see, tolerate a state of things in which one person is a master and another person a slave. Sooner or later he has to do something about it.’
‘They’re Crispus’s slaves, not mine. You’re making it all very difficult, Lalage.’
‘It is difficult,’ she said, ‘as difficult as walking on your hands when you’ve never done it before. It’s only just at the very first that it seems easy and lovely. Before you know what the Kingdom really means. So don’t say you’re going to be a Christian and then complain that you haven’t been warned.’
‘Oh, you’ve warned me,’ he said. And then he banged his hand angrily on the table. ‘I wish I was back at yesterday and none of all this had happened!’
‘I know,’ said Lalage gently, ‘but it has happened. All of it. And you can’t get out of it now.’ She added, ‘Three days from today there’ll be a meeting at Eunice’s house. Do you want to come?’
‘Who’ll be there?’
‘Everyone who can get away.’
‘Will you be there?’
‘Yes, I’ve kept it. I’m free, too! Probably everyone from this house will come. It’ll be late, after they’re all supposed to be off for the day.’
‘So that’s where they’ve been, those three. Well, it’s funny what one doesn’t know about the slaves!’
‘It isn’t only those three. There are Josias and Dapyx from the kitchen.’
‘We got Manasses and Josias together; I remember. Josias is a decent, hard-working boy. But Dapyx—that Thracian? He’s a bit of a brute, surely?’
‘He’s been treated as if he was,’ said Lalage. ‘Do you remember anything about him?’
‘We got him straight from the market, I think,’ said Beric, bothered, ‘a prisoner of war with chalk on his feet, never been in a house before. The cook thought he could do with a rough boy to train.’
‘Yes,’ said Lalage, ‘and he’s been trained all right—with a whip. And the edge of a hot frying pan now and then. Manasses found he’d got maggots in a sore on his back. Nice thing to have in your kitchen, wasn’t it, Beric?’
‘Lalage, listen! I don’t always see what the cook and old Felix do. They don’t like me interfering. I’d no idea—’
‘That’s the sort of thing you’ll have to have ideas about. If you come to the meeting you’ll have to call him brother. And he won’t be washed. It’s no use looking like that, Beric. I told you we were dirt. And you told me you’d got to get used to being dirt. Remember?’
‘Yes,’ said Beric, low, ‘I remember. And it did all happen last night.’ He put his hand up to his face. ‘Dapyx is going to hate me a good deal.’
‘He’ll be much more frightened than anything else. You’ll have to get him over that. If you can.’
‘Three days from now,’ said Beric. ‘They saw the astrologers this morning. She’s going to be betrothed three days from now. And I shall have had to be there. I think I shall come to your meeting, Lalage.’
CHAPTER VI
Rhodon, Phineas and Sapphira,
Sotion, Dapyx
Rhodon was a metal-worker in a small Greek-speaking town in Bithynia. So were his father and grandfather, and as far as he knew all his fathers away back to the time when metal-working had been a secret craft with its rites of initiation and its own prayers. There were remains of those prayers in the things which Rhodon said or sang over his work, but he did not know what they meant. Only they were part of the skill.
He learnt his trade from his father, as soon as he was old enough to handle tools. But he was the third son, so when he was full grown he had to leave home with his bundle of tools, the skill in his hands and brains, his brown and black dog, Att, and something else as well, which was going to help him on his journeyings more than money. He had been admitted as a boy, and was a member of the third degree, a Soldier in the Church of Mithras. His father was high up, fully initiate, a Persian; he had tasted the honey, had eaten the bread and drunken the wine; at the most sacred times, in the middle of the months and especially at the equinoxes and solstices, he would stay all night in the Cave, and though he went back to work next day and his hand was no less steady, yet he would be muttering strange words which came from another language, and now and then he would laugh out loud with the joy of something he had experienced. Something which Rhodon too would experience in time.
It would all come. Somewhere, in some town, Rhodon would find his fellows and settle there as a skilled worker, and after a time he would be admitted to the first stage of full initiation as a Lion of Mithras, a fire-bearer. Then certain things would be made clear which were still hidden; then he would have the blood of baptism of which his father had once spoken, when the bull is killed at the altar and below, those who wait naked and fasting to be made into Lions, take the hot blood suddenly on their upturned faces and arms. In the meantime he had been through the rites of the first three degrees. His eyes and his hands had been bound; he had felt the touch of slimy things, heard and resisted the whisperings of the tempters; he had leapt the water and repeated the Words, which had at first been strange, but now filled him with comfort, so that he knew that even if he died on his journey, he could whisper them again as he died and One would come to his death-bed. In the last rite he had taken the mark on his forehead, the tiny brand, the touch of fire unflinchingly and gladly borne. Often for that matter Rhodon had got worse burns in his father’s smithy, and he had stood very steadily, so the mark was clear and sharp in the centre of his forehead; he had only to brush his hair back with a casual hand, and those who knew the mark would see that he was one of them.
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