The Blood of the Martyrs

by Naomi Mitchison

  He went north-east to Heraclea on the Bithynian coast, and then east along the coast road, mostly in sight of the Black Sea. He could have had a mule, but he was young and did not mind carrying his own bundle; a traveller on foot was less liable, too, to be set on by brigands. Yet even so, he might have found friends among the brigands. Besides, he was armed with a short sword and dagger of his father’s forging, and his dog would fight for him. As he walked he thought a great deal about the things he had been told, and above all about Mithras, the Redeemer and Mediator, the Bull-slayer, picturing him always as a young man, a companion, going out alone as he was: but into a world without even life, except for his dog, which must have been, he thought, a dog like his own Att, and the Bull which he must hunt over plains and mountains. The Bull which was also himself. Must every man, then, hunt for his Self, and, having found it for certain, track it down and at last kill it in the Cave in the mountains? Sacrifice it and make it one with the greater things which are called Time and Light and Truth.

  At midday he sat under a fig tree, sharing his bread and dried meat with the patient, watching dog, and wondering what his Self was. He was first a worker: surely at least he must never sacrifice his skill? His father and his father’s fathers before that had never done so, he need not think of it. What then? What, my dog, my Att, looking so wise at me, tell me what is my Self? I have kept the rules; I have said my prayers; I have been brave. I might have stayed at home another year, but I set out without complaining. Yes, I did go one night with the girls, when they went to the woods to ask Whoever it is they do ask for Whatever it is that women ask for, but I didn’t know what was going to happen. No, I did half know, and perhaps I ought to have stayed away. But that was only when I was in the second degree; since I have been a Soldier I have known no women. So that is not my Self. And you, Att, you go after all the bitches, don’t you, old son? But the first dog, he was a better dog than you, he only helped his Master. But you’d help me, wouldn’t you? And Mithras, whose Soldier I am, he will show me some day what my Self is, and be with me in the ultimate sacrifice.

  At Heraclea he had found friends of his father’s, worked for them a week, and been to the Cave with them. But he wanted to go farther; they gave him names at Amastris, four days’ journey on, and here again he stayed for a short time and then went east again, always feeling that he was on his hunt. In Paphlagonia people spoke a new language, but some of the words were the same, and in the towns they spoke Greek as well, and the services in the Caves were in some kind of Greek, so he could follow them, and the things that those in each degree had to do were always the same. When he came to the River Iris he turned south and struck up into the mountains. He was tired of the sea; there were high passes ahead of him; breathing hard and quick in the cold air, he and Att went up and up along the track marked here and there by the vulture-picked bones of pack-mules. So at last they were across the passes and into Armenia, and he began to think that he wanted to settle somewhere, for the rainy season would be coming on and one must stop sooner or later.

  Sometimes there were rumours of war. Once or twice he had seen companies of Roman soldiers on the march. But Rome had nothing to do with him, either as craftsman or as Mithraist. It was outside. He sat on the roadside, looking at those men in queer clothes carrying their gods, he supposed, on the ends of poles. His dog barked at the Romans and he himself laughed. He found a town by a river where he thought he would like to stay. For a day or two he stopped at the inn, watching those who came in and out. He liked the looks of them. He found out where the Cave was, and on the right day he went up there. It was above the town, where a spur of mountain came down to force a sharp bend in the river away below, and as he got nearer other men kept on glancing at him, and when he came to the Cave he was, of course, stopped. But when he pushed back his dark hair and showed the mark, they kissed him and made him welcome, and at the right moment in the service he stood up with the others of his degree and went through the movements. All was in order.

  After the service he was asked by the men who could speak Greek where he came from and what he wanted to do; he answered, of course, truthfully, and then another man in his trade who was a degree higher than himself, a Lion, suggested that he should come in with him. So after that Rhodon and his dog shared a room with this man, who was called Addon, and his wife and baby, and worked with him, sharing the profits. The wife only spoke some dialect, but she was a good cook. As he and Addon were in the same Church there was no need for any formal contract between them; they would be honest with one another.

  Rhodon enjoyed his work and made friends. He did the right things: drank little, never kept shavings of gold when he was given it to make up, did not go with women, but thought that some time he would get married and have sons. Addon’s wife had a young sister who might do; he had learnt the native words for different kinds of food and tools and ordinary things; she could be made to understand everything else. Now that he was working full time he thought less about his Self and Mithras who would be with him at the time of trial. He thought about it in the Cave, but then it was all made easy by singing and lights and movements and the sense of the other men who were with him. Mithras was the Redeemer; he could be trusted in all ways.

  In due time Rhodon was elected an official in the Mithraic community. He was one of those who were trusted with the money. They held meetings about it, and decided what was to go to the poor and what was to go to the Fathers, the officiating priests, who had no trade of their own but spent all their time on things to do with religion, keeping alight the fire on the altar, and making long prayers at dawn and midday and evening, prayers which were for the whole of the worshippers of Mithras in that town. This business was another thing which Rhodon liked doing. Soon he himself might be initiated into the next degree.

  From time to time news came through from the outside world, talk of kings and queens and battles. That was an affair for the nobles; the only thing that mattered to the ordinary townspeople were the sudden demands for money, usually from Parthia. Armenia was almost part of Parthia; the Parthian Kings were sons of light, initiated. The tax gatherers said that the sun himself, in the form of a golden man, had crowned them. But the forces of evil were always close to kings, whispering lies and blood into their ears. So wars came.

  And one day, out of the mountains, with no warning, war fell on the town, bad King Radamistus and his army of savage, clipped-speaking foreigners, driven back north again with the Parthians after them, hideously determined to take or destroy what they could before they themselves were destroyed. The townspeople fought, defending their homes against whoever these invaders were, whichever side they were on. They barricaded doors and windows, shut in the screaming women and fought till they were dead or prisoners, their houses in flames and their wives and children dead too, or crying for help that no one could give them. Addon was killed at his house door; his child’s brains were knocked out against the wall; his wife and the girl Rhodon had planned to marry were raped and then thrown back, half dead, into the burning house. Rhodon himself, wounded and flame-blistered, one arm useless, was dragged off after the retreating army with other prisoners in the same state as himself. If they could stand it, they would survive; if not, they died. Most of them were dead before they got down to the coast, but Rhodon was just alive, though not worth much. His dog had tried to follow; he was wounded, too, and limping. Rhodon saw someone throw a stone and break Att’s back; he was so hurt and miserable himself that it did not seem so bad at the time as it did afterwards.

  He did not know what was happening to him, but after a time he was in a city again, in Trapezus at the far end of the Black Sea, and sold to a dealer who had his raw blisters treated, his arm put into a splint, and gave him some stuff to drink which put him half asleep for days. When he woke up thoroughly, he was in a ship, chained by the ankles to other slaves, mostly prisoners of war; but he could move his arm again, though painfully. After a time he discovered that they were all
being shipped from one dealer to another. He found they were putting in at Heraclea, and got hold of a sailor, told him the name of those friends of his father’s, who would certainly ransom him, and promised a reward. All the time the ship lay in the harbour there he waited with intense eagerness for the voices he knew—for the chains to be struck off—for life to come back. But the sailor had never got in touch; he had spent an enjoyable time on shore drinking, and, when Rhodon reproached him bitterly, said that a good drink now was better than any reward in the future and anyway it would be a lot of fun giving Rhodon a good hiding.

  At one time the ship must have passed fairly near Rhodon’s old home, but Rhodon did not really know and he was so wretched that he could not make any more plans. While he was ill he had said the Words and had in his drugged sleep seen lights and heard voices. But now he could hardly ever bear to say them. He was alone and his Redeemer had not helped him. Every now and then he remembered little horrible things out of the fighting. Things that stayed with him, that could not be exorcised by any prayer.

  They touched at various ports. The slaves, still chained, had to scrub the decks. Sometimes someone on the quay would throw them a half-eaten piece of bread or fruit, and they scrambled for it, hurting one another. The ship became more and more filthy and stinking, especially when she was through the Hellespont and out in the open Aegean where she pitched a bit. At Delos, an agent took delivery of them and they were taken to one of the warehouses. Their owner scowled at them, as mixed a lot of Armenians and Cappa-docians and Phrygians and Bithynians as he’d ever laid eyes on! ‘Any of you speak Greek?’ Several, including Rhodon and another Greek-speaking Armenian whom he had got to know a little, a man called Abgar, from another hill-town, answered that they did. They were unchained and taken into a separate building with some moderately clean straw. They didn’t know or care what happened to the others. When their owner came in, Rhodon explained that he was a skilled man; that made a difference at once. He was given the first decent meal he’d had for weeks and allowed to wash and shave. He was taken to a forge and watched while he handled the tools; his arm was a bit stiff, but they decided that what he needed was exercise, massage and decent treatment; then he would be the main profit on a very random bunch of slaves, bought entirely as a speculation.

  Now that he was unchained, Rhodon could pray properly; but yet he didn’t seem to want to. It was all dead in him. Surely, he said to himself, surely it was He who saved me—Mithras my Redeemer? But he couldn’t persuade himself that it was. All that had been mixed up with the Cave, with worship together, with doing things in order and the organisation of the Church. It had been part of being strong, able to fight and defend himself and what he believed in. It had been part of being a craftsman working regularly every day at something he had been good at. There was nothing to hold on to here. He wasn’t part of anything; even when they started him on work again he wasn’t working his own way and time, for himself, but told what to do, for a master; they even made him hold his hammers a different way; it all stopped him feeling the way a craftsman should. But he had been alone before and not working, three years ago, when he walked whistling on the road east. Why had it been different then? Because of the dog perhaps? It wasn’t only that. It had been decent and in order, walking that warm white dust, on his way to work and a new home. He didn’t seem to be on his way to anything now.

  But he was on his way to Rome. The place he had heard of and never thought of seeing. By the time he got there he was nearly well. He was sold to a Jew called Barnabas, whose people had come to Rome two generations before; a tolerably rich man, but brought up, like all good Jews, to a skilled trade. He himself worked mainly as a jeweller, but he had several slaves doing coarser metal-work. It was some time before Rhodon got back to anything like his old skill; sometimes he was afraid he was not working fast enough and that his master might sell him as he constantly threatened to do during the first year. He could not bear the idea of being sold again, of digging up such precarious roots as he was beginning to make. He lived in the Jewish household in the Jewish Quarter of Rome and got to like the rhythm and routine of it; the non-Jewish slaves did any work there was on the Sabbath, but even they rested for most of it. And worked better during the week for the rest.

  So things went on for a long time. Rhodon still sang in a low voice the same words that he had sung over his work at the other end of the Mediterranean. He was fairly happy; he had many of the ordinary pleasures; after a couple of years his master began paying him a small wage, depending on the quality of his work, fairly enough considered. He saved most of it, banking it with his master. He might have got in touch with other Mithraists in Rome, but the thing had died in him, and, of course, there were very few in the Jewish Quarter. Rhodon had heard that somewhere else in Rome there was said to be a great Cave and worshippers, but it would have taken more of an effort to find it than he was able to make. He could not feel any more that he was part of the army of Mithras: how can a man be a soldier by himself? Not being a soldier any longer, you shamble along somehow and don’t think about it. He would have liked to keep a dog again, but his master would not let him.

  When he began to have wages he would sometimes buy fried fish which he liked very much, usually from a shop at the corner of the street. Gradually he got to know the owner of the shop, a young Jew called Phineas, and his wife Sapphira. They had a dog, but it was a watch-dog and usually chained up. He offered to take it out for a walk on the Sabbath, explaining that dogs liked walking, and that he was a Gentile so it was all right. They let him, and he very much enjoyed talking to the dog. Sometimes they asked him in to the living-room behind the shop, and as his hours of work were fairly regular, he could usually go in the evenings. When their two year old child was fractious he gave Sapphira a hand with it or the cooking, and he noticed that they were keeping slightly different fast-days from the ordinary ones, and that the evening after Sabbath, Phineas was usually out, and Sapphira, too, if she could get someone to come in and mind the child. After a time Rhodon offered to, and often did. His master asked him where he was going and when he explained, grunted, ‘Those Nazarenes!’ Rhodon asked what a Nazarene was, and gathered from his master that they had a new prophet, not one of the recognised ones, and that they associated with Gentiles.

  That seemed to be so, because when Rhodon was there, others would come in who were obvious Gentiles, and they greeted one another not with ordinary, suspicious politeness, as sensible dogs do, but with a ‘Peace be with you!’ of a pleased and open kind. When Rhodon came, the watch-dog was unchained and came in and bounced round him, and he sat on the floor beside the dog and stroked it and told it about Att. But if he had been doing that Sapphira always made him wash his hands before he touched the cooking-pots or the child.

  Sometimes there was an older Gentile woman there, a Greek, brisk and fattish; he gathered she had lately been freed and she spoke well of her patron, Flavius Crispus, and his daughter who was ever so pretty, but spoiled, the way only children often get. Rhodon did not always attend to what they said, because often he was talking to the watch-dog, telling him about the softness and wooliness of his own dog’s ears and throat which he would hold up to be stroked, and how Att had been faithful to death, as a good dog ought to be. But one day, when there were several, including the Greek woman, in the room, he heard someone speak of a Redeemer, and it occurred to him that he had already heard words like Redeemer and Saviour, words which once he had known very well, but he had never heard spoken in the presence of women. Nor did he think that any Jew could be a Mithraist. He looked up, puzzling, and suddenly the Greek woman pointed to him and said, ‘Have you ever spoken to him, Phineas?’ Phineas shook his head. ‘Just because of him being a Gentile! So there he sits with the dog—’

  ‘He likes the dog, Eunice,’ said Phineas.

  Rhodon stopped stroking the dog and said, ‘What is it you haven’t spoken to me about? Is it the Redeemer?’

  ‘I told you so!�
�� Eunice said.

  Phineas said, ‘If I tell you, Rhodon, you must promise never to tell any outside people.’

  Rhodon stood up and lifted his right hand. ‘In the name of Mithras, I promise,’ he said. It was the most binding promise he could make.

  Phineas looked extremely taken aback. ‘Are you a Mithraist?’ he asked.

  Rhodon answered, sadly enough, ‘I used to be. At home. But not since I’ve been in Rome.’

  They all seemed bothered. Then Eunice said, ‘You wanted a Redeemer, didn’t you now? Someone to be with you and in you, to help you to understand the great things—things that get too difficult for a man by himself?’ Rhodon nodded; that was it, though it was disturbing to hear a woman speak of it. ‘So you took Mithras for your Redeemer. But he was only a story.’