‘No,’ said Paul, ‘your soul is what counts with God. Give it to us, Beric. Make a sacrifice of it. That sacrifice will not be rejected.’
‘I don’t see it your way,’ Beric said. It was all making him feel more miserable than ever; this wasn’t his idea of baptism, nor what Manasses and Argas had made him think it was. It seemed to him now that it was being offered to him as something magic, a kind of private mystery. He didn’t want that; he wasn’t a child or a fool. He only wanted to be with the others again. And yet he couldn’t bear that either—to see what he’d done to them!
Luke came out; his hands were bloodstained, and he went over to the prison well; one of the women drew up a bucket of water for him and poured it over his hands while he rubbed them with a palmful of oil from the little flask at his belt. Then he came over to the two on the bench and nodded gravely at Paul, then said to Beric, ‘You’re the Briton. I’ve been hearing about you.’
‘Oh—who from?’
‘Manasses and Lalage. And that new boy, Argas. You want to know what’s happened to them, do you? Well, they’re not too good; they’ve got some bones broken among them. I’m going to get them out here; they want to see you.’ He came close and took Beric’s head between his hands and tilted it towards the light; he lifted one eyelid and Beric winced away. ‘That hurting?’
‘I keep on seeing flashes that hurt a bit; I expect I was hit there a good deal.’
‘I might be able to patch you up,’ Luke said, ‘but—’
‘It’s not worth it, is it—honestly?’
‘No,’ said Luke, ‘I’m afraid not.’ Then he saw Euphemia helping Lalage out and went over to them. As he did so, Beric got up and shuffled away towards the far side of the yard, as fast as his chains would let him. He had got that glimpse of Lalage, not strong nor light and steady on her feet as a dancer should be, but weak and hobbling, a bandage round her head and ears, her hair loose and draggled over it; and it was more than he could bear.
Then he saw Gallio. He hesitated; if he was seen talking to Gallio it might make danger for Crispus; nor would Gallio necessarily care to speak to him. However Gallio beckoned to him. ‘Well, young man,’ he said, ‘most unfortunate you didn’t do what you intended to do.’
‘Perhaps I was wrong,’ Beric said slowly, ‘perhaps I was spoiling something.’
‘Wish you’d spoiled Tigellinus’s beauty for him! Have they hurt you much, Beric?’
‘They’ve hurt the others worse.’
‘What, the slaves? Yes, hard on them having no rights. When they happen to be human. That’s not contemplated in most legal codes: so far. Are you a Christian, Beric?’
‘I don’t know. I meant to be. I can’t think about it now.’
‘Afraid you’ll have to,’ Gallio said, ‘here’s Paul.’
‘Oh,’ said Beric, ‘isn’t it enough to be beaten up without Paul talking at me too!’ He went over to the wall and leant against it, pressing his hurt face and eyes against his hands.
Gallio intercepted Paul, tapping him on the shoulder, ‘Better leave the lad alone, hadn’t you, Paul? He’s had quite a doing.’
‘How can I leave him alone?’ Paul said. ‘His soul is in danger; I must save it for him.’
‘What, by baptising him? Paul, he is certain to be executed for this attempted assassination, poor boy. Will it make any difference whether or not you get him into your society or Church or whatever it is?’
‘Most certainly it will! Either he accepts his redemption or he does not; if he does he has accepted an event for all eternity, an event not only in the eternity of the universe, but also in his own individual eternity. Surely it’s plain to you by now Gallio, after all the times I have spoken to you about it!’
‘Afraid I never quite manage to take it in, Paul! Somehow this business of the immortality of the soul never strikes me as very convincing.’
‘What you cannot realise—what you will not allow yourself to realise!—is that something new has happened, not before Adam or Troy, but quite lately; something has at last emerged from the current of the world’s being which can reverse that current, which is no longer part of it nor under its power. Men have died and their souls have died with them, but we who have become one with the new event, will not die except in the world’s way.’
‘As most of you here will do within the next few days. And you think that the laws of natural science will not take effect on them!’
‘Your natural science is only of this world; I am speaking of another world, of the spiritual world.’
‘I could understand,’ said Gallio slowly, ‘if you insisted that this world is also a spiritual world, if you claimed for it a reality beyond phenomenal reality. But this split you make! No, that may seem easy for a scholar of your Eastern classics, but I fear my own Western scholarship cannot allow it. The curious thing is, Paul, that a good many of your people here are certainly not thinking of any other and separate world. They are thinking of your Kingdom, and all that it implies, in this world. Which is a sufficiently subversive idea, in all conscience, but at least a rational one.’
‘Some of our people have not understood; they are poor and ignorant. But because they have accepted the event, they will receive its consequences.’
‘Immortality? Taking back their poor little slaves’ bodies to wear for ever? Or other bodies in which their souls would be most uncomfortable? Senatorial bodies, no doubt! That’s not what they’re here for Paul, nor why they’re dying. Frankly, if I thought they’d been taking that kind of drug, I should cease to respect them. As it is, I do respect them. Indeed, I find them—singularly persuasive. Ah, Beric, you’re back.’
‘Yes,’ said Beric, ‘I’ve got to face Paul sooner or later. I’ve got to say I can’t be baptised.’
‘Paul says it’s to save your immortal soul, Beric. No, Paul, let me speak! Don’t you care about that?’
‘No,’ said Beric. ‘I did care about the Kingdom; I did care about the new way of living for everyone. I wanted to help that. And I’m not even going to be able to die for it like the slaves can!’
Paul said very gently, ‘You will be able to die for it if you are one of us, Beric. Come, let Manasses and Lalage stand for you; it is the one thing you can do for them now. There will be no need of questions on doctrine, nor of prayer and fasting, for any of you. Come Beric, and be part of the Will.’
‘I can’t!’ said Beric, but more desperately and less certainly than he had said it before.
‘You must face them,’ said Paul. ‘Beric, you must face the moment of your own birth.’
‘No!’ said Beric again.
‘Coward,’ Paul said quietly. ‘Come.’
Then Beric tossed his head back, ignoring all kinds of pain. ‘Oh, very well!’ said Caradoc’s son, and stalked off, his chains rattling and jarring down on his ankles, ahead of Paul, back to the others.
‘Clever chap you are, Paul!’ Gallio said, ‘but keep off the mystery stuff with that lad. It won’t take.’
The others were out in the yard now. Lalage was sitting up on a bench, stiff and pale, one foot propped awkwardly in front of her, the bandage round her head discoloured at one side. Manasses was half sitting, propped up on the ground beside her; every now and then she stroked his forehead a little. Luke had just had to take a couple of fingers off his already hurt right hand which had been crushed again, but he did not feel this very much at the moment; the hand was done up in rags and lay loosely on his knee. Argas lay on the ground, sometimes twitching and rolling over on to his other side; he had been very sick and now his face was drawn with shock and pain. The flies were on all of them, and they hardly had strength to try and knock them away. There was not much more any of the doctors could do for them; it was no worse than what had happened to a good many others. Several markedly unpleasant things had not been done to any of them yet. They could all stand up if they had to.
Beric came up to them and took it all in, smelling stale blood and vomit and the doc
tors’ ointments and the peculiar smell of a hurt woman, very nasty, very disconcerting for any man to have in his nostrils. He knelt down beside Argas and took his hand; the terrible thing was that they were all smiling at him. Argas held his hand pretty hard. Then he said, ‘We didn’t say anything against you, none of us did. And we said you couldn’t be a Christian if you’d tried to kill. And Manasses and me, we wouldn’t say anything against Crispus.’
‘That was good of you,’ Beric said. Then: ‘I said I wasn’t a Christian. They wanted me to say it was a Christian plot; I didn’t. Argas, I suppose I’ve killed you. All three of you.’
‘We were going to be killed anyhow,’ Manasses said. ‘But a sin has to take its consequences.’
‘It was my sin, and it’s you who are taking the consequences.’
‘Surely I should be my brother’s keeper,’ Manasses said. ‘Besides, you take the consequences too, just because we are really together, really part of the same thing. Beric, you denied you were one of us for the sake of the Kingdom. But you are one of us—aren’t you?’
‘I can’t be,’ Beric said. ‘I don’t deserve anything except to be killed myself. I’ve smashed our Church. Argas, did they get Phaon, too?’
‘Crispus saved him,’ Argas said, sitting half up, Beric’s arm behind him, ‘and Persis, too. I promised to tell you. He got them safe away because it was the only thing he could do for you.’
‘Did he know they were Christians?’
‘He knew. Beric, there was a minute when I was talking to him, oh, as if he were you! That wouldn’t have happened but for this.’
‘And the others?’
‘Josias killed himself,’ Argas said.
Beric looked quickly at Manasses, and Manasses said, curiously sadly, ‘Me and Josias, we’re separated now for the first time in our lives. You see Beric, the rich hurt him so much early on when he was a boy, that they broke his spirit. And I wasn’t there to help him past this time.’
It was beyond anything Beric could say; he couldn’t even look at Manasses; he stumbled on, ‘Dapyx?’
‘Don’t know,’ Argas said, his mouth contracting as one of the burns began to throb again.
But Euphemia had come up to them and had sat down by Lalage. ‘I’m afraid I do know,’ she said, ‘Dapyx is dead. And—well, he didn’t die right, not as one of us. They just killed him the way you’d kill vermin.’
‘The way us slaves always have been killed,’ Argas said. ‘Oh, Beric, why couldn’t you have talked to him? You might have got him back to us.’
‘Rhodon?’ Beric asked in a low voice.
‘They took him off to be questioned last night, with us, and none of us have seen him since,’ Lalage said; it gave Beric a new pain in his body and legs to hear her hurt whisper.
‘So that’s what I’ve done,’ he said. None of them answered. He had to face it. He said again, ‘I meant to help you. I thought I was only risking my own life. I’ve done just the opposite of what I intended.’
Lalage sat forward a little, brushing the flies away from her eyes and the sticky edge of the bandage. ‘As if it mattered whether any one of us did or didn’t do just what he intended!’ she said. ‘Still thinking you’re God, Beric? Still thinking you’re so very important? Forget you’ve been a master, Beric. Be meek.’
‘Is that what’s wrong, Lalage—my pride? That’s gone now. You can be proud all right, all of you. You saw what the right way was, and then you stuck to it, whole; you just did the day to day, ordinary things that are so damned difficult until one does take it whole. You managed to live in this way of yours that’s really a threat to the world as it’s always been, and when the world saw you were a threat you still went on. And you’re here. And other people will go on because of you. Others like you. But I—I had too bloody much education and I thought I knew better than all of you.’
‘It wasn’t exactly that,’ Lalage said, ‘education’s lovely—to read all the poets in the world! And if what we’ve got is sense, then learning more sense ought to help us to be Christians. But maybe it was just because of it being a rich man’s education, sort of teaching you that you could learn anything by yourself out of books without caring about other people, and saying your judgment that you’d made up in a nice, clean, quiet room was fit to deal with living and acting. That’s what was wrong. Wasn’t it, Beric?’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it was like that, Lalage. I’m only just beginning to learn anything real. And it’s too late.’
‘It’s not too late for you, Beric. You can be part of it yet. We wouldn’t baptise you before. We will now; you’re ready.’
‘Am I?’ he said. ‘Do you think so, Lalage? Oh, I can’t be. I’m not fit to be one of you!’
‘That’s for us to say. Isn’t it, Manasses?’
But Manasses was suddenly looking neither at her nor yet at Beric, but beyond: at the Deputy-Governor of the prison, who was coming towards them, who was standing over them, whose presence had jerked them all, somehow, on to their feet, expecting whatever would have to be forgiven next. Euphemia had one supporting arm round Lalage, and Beric one round Argas, but awkwardly, because they were both chained. Then the Deputy-Governor snatched Beric away by the chains between his wrists and ankles and ordered him to follow. Beric went stumbling after him, dumb and darkened with hate and trying to deal with the nasty stabs of physical fear, coming from all the bits of his face and body which had been hurt; they were new on him and he didn’t like them at all.
And then it occurred to him that there was a connection between this hate and this fear, which might perhaps be broken by the only action he could take. As he followed Aelius Candidus across the yard he began to put himself into the other man’s place, to try to know what he was feeling. It must be hell all right with Flavia; that was bound to make you act like a devil, even if you weren’t one already. Aelius Candidus certainly had it in him to be a devil. Would he have been if things had been different? If he hadn’t been brought up as a Roman gentleman, to power, to having absolute rights over the bodies and minds of other men and women? There was no law or justice to hold him back in his dealings with them, or so little as to make no odds, and nothing had happened to make him question that or admit any principle of general justice—as opposed to Roman citizens’ law. So then he gets hurt by Flavia, thought Beric, and on top of being a bully and really lawless, he’s angry and frightened: and so he wants to hurt me. But if I’m angry and frightened too, I’m no better than he is. So I’m not going to be. I’m not going to want to hurt him. I don’t want to hurt him. He is hurting himself very thoroughly by being part of the Thing which also includes Flavia and Tigellinus and which he can’t escape except by changing his whole self. But I can think of Flavia now without being hurt. That all finished when she said those things to Tigellinus after they got me.
He followed Aelius Candidus into his office and stood for some time while the Deputy-Governor, carefully ignoring him, gave some orders to a sergeant: about the transfer of a large batch of prisoners to the Circus Maximus. There were huge dungeons there under the seats and among the foundations, suitable for the temporary reception of criminals. No, there would be no need to feed them while they were there: it would be a mere waste of public money. He dismissed the underling, sat back, and made a note on his tablets. Then he looked at Beric and found that his prisoner was regarding him quite calmly, as though from across a dinner-table. As though he had never been beaten up. As one gentleman to another. Which left one to make the decision whether to treat him as such, having regard to his patron, Flavius Crispus, or whether it was too intolerable altogether that any prisoner should look at one like that, in which case measures must be taken to stop it. Aelius Candidus tapped on his teeth with the end of his pen. At last he decided, leant forward and said, ‘You realise, of course, that your execution is only a matter of days?’
‘I know that,’ said Beric. He was not sure what this comparatively civilised, man to man tone, meant.
�
��Your patron has asked to see you, but I fear that would be inadvisable. However, there are certain concessions which might be made. It might, for instance, be possible to allow you a citizen’s death, in which case your body would be returned for burial.’ Beric said nothing. ‘A death without previous—unpleasantness, such as you have already experienced. That would be preferable, I think? We reserve our other forms of death, of which there are a great variety, for treasonable and disgusting offences … such as Christianity. You have, of course, committed a private crime—for private reasons. We realise that.’
Beric looked at him carefully, wondering what all this was about. It would be rather a bore really, to have to make decisions and choices at this stage. He knew he was going to be killed: couldn’t it just happen to him? Couldn’t he at least say goodbye to his will? ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it was a private quarrel.’ But as he said that he thought how much he would like to say that it wasn’t anything of the kind, that it had nothing at all to do with a very worthless individual called Flavia! When Tigellinus got in that first kick after they’d roped him, he had said to Flavia that he wished he’d killed her anyway; now he was sorry he had said that; he didn’t either love her or hate her.
‘Quite so,’ Candidus said. After all, the Briton was behaving decently. It might even be possible to allow Flavius Crispus to see him in a day or two, when it would be less obvious what had been done to him. Candidus slightly regretted last night’s procedure. Not much, of course. In any case Tigellinus would have been content with nothing less. There had been a time, not so long ago, when he had admired the Praefect of the Praetorians quite immensely, liked being with him, feeling he was sharing in that toughness and power. Well, he didn’t want to do any sharing now. One must get power for oneself. Not be involved in the fall of Tigellinus, when that happened—as it was pretty well bound to. Stand alone and not necessarily give away such knowledge as one had: knowledge about people, giving one power over them. ‘Your patron,’ he said again, ‘must have been very much disturbed at finding all those Christians in his household. We shall have to get hold of this other boy, Phaon. He appears to have run away. However, I think there will be no difficulty in tracing him. The fact that he has bolted is in itself a proof of his guilt. Unfortunately, suspicions exist in certain quarters about your patron himself. Naturally, I am anxious to dispel them. Are you sure there is nothing you could tell me, as man to man, which would prove a help over this? You will be aware, from what I have already said, that certain concessions might be allowed. Or even further ones.’ He was not, certainly, going to promise the Briton his life, but if the Briton thought he was … ‘The greatest service you could do for your patron,’ Candidus went on, ‘would be to indicate what other members of the household might be infected with this Christianity. So that the whole thing could be stamped out and all suspicions removed.’
The Blood of the Martyrs Page 39
