Poppaea smiled. ‘And your new little lady—is she an Athenian?’
‘No,’ said Nero, ‘the purest Roman. Like my Poppaea Sabina, who must now go to her own rooms and rest.’ He kissed her hand and raised her gently to her feet. ‘Yes, I may say I owe the introduction to Tigellinus … indirectly. I feel I may be able to mould the little lady’s tastes towards higher things. I shall tell you how it passes, my love. You will be amused.’
CHAPTER X
Business Meeting
Eunice said to herself that the days were drawing in, and lighted the lamp and trimmed it; then she opened the oven door to see how her batch of bread and cakes was going. For a minute she stood close to the table, quite quiet, thinking about Euphemia and Lalage and the others. It was still a deliberate effort to remember them joyfully, without pain, as they’d wanted to be remembered, not just to miss them, not just to hate their murderers. She had to say over to herself, slowly and carefully and paying attention to the meaning, certain words and phrases; these told her exactly how and why her friends had died, agreeing to it. Then she would be able to remember them steadily and it did not hurt, or at least the pain did not make her angry or frightened or anything but set and steady. She lifted her head again and lit the second lamp, and there was a knock on the door, their new knock. It was her son Phaon, the deacon; she kissed him. ‘Well?’ she said. ‘What’s the business tonight, son?’
‘If the meeting agrees, I think we should baptise Felicio and Eprius. No mother, I won’t have anything to eat; I’m fasting for them. That’ll bring us up to twelve in this Church.’
Eunice counted on her fingers and verified it. ‘We’re not up to what we were. Not yet.’
‘We’re going to be, mother. Megallis says that her friend will be ready for us soon.’
‘That’s Marulla, isn’t it? I’ll have a talk to her, shall I?’
‘You ought to have gone on being deacon, mother, instead of me!’
‘You know I didn’t have the Spirit, my lamb, not really. I wasn’t somehow able to get everyone together and tell them the next step, the way you are. I was ever so glad to hand it over to you when you got back. How’s things in the house now, son?’
‘Not too bad. The old man’s going to free me at New Year. I asked him to.’
‘You never did! But I’m ever so glad. Well, I don’t see how you come to talk to him like you do!’
‘Don’t you, mother?’ said Phaon, curling up on the rug beside the hot side of the oven and looking up at her, smiling.
‘Well, there, I suppose I do. Ever since that day he came here and sat down on that very stool with his hands over his face— But you telling him you’d got to come back from the country to be in Rome again!’
‘Persis and I. We had our work to do. We just told him. He knows we’re all coming tonight. And—well, mother, it’s a funny thing, but I like the old man quite a bit and, what’s more, he likes me.’
‘Maybe you can help him, son.’
‘It would be a queer thing if I couldn’t help anyone who wanted to be helped. Asked to be.’
‘Does he?’ Phaon nodded. ‘And I used to be that frightened of what he could do to you. Does he ever talk about— her, now?’
‘Not much. Of course, she comes to the house and everyone pretends not to know a thing, and Persis keeps out of the way.’
‘How does she look, son? She used to be ever so pretty. But she can’t be happy now.’
‘If she isn’t it doesn’t show, not yet, anyway. But, of course, what she’s doing is dangerous; it might crack up any time. Nero Caesar doesn’t care what his women’s pasts were like, but he’s apt to be nasty about their futures.’
‘I don’t like to hear you talk that way, Phaon. After all, she’s your master’s daughter. But there, I suppose you’re right not to respect anyone.’
‘Only for what they do. I respect a man like Paul that can do things by letters; he can do things by remembering just exactly what someone is like in a Church the other side of the Empire, and what they’re likely to get wrong. I couldn’t do that. Here’s the rest coming.’
It was the others from the household; Sannio, Mikkos and Persis. They gave the peace greeting and sat down on the bed. Sannio still limped a little; they had done something to one of his knees. Blephano had apologised for that to his master; they had not intended it to have such a permanent effect, but the man had been extremely obstinate and a State Department must take its course.
After that four came together: Phineas and Sapphira, with Noumi, and Abgar, whom Phineas had helping in his shop now. Hadassa had been fetched by some of her husband’s relations and taken off to the other side of Rome; they had word of her sometimes. Occasionally one of Phineas’s brothers came to the Church, as a kind of gesture, but it was not much of a success; Noumi almost always came, though, and her father allowed it; he had been very much shaken by the delay in the Coming. Noumi always liked, if she could, to sit by Eunice; they had shared in an experience which nobody else was able to know about. When it was shared it became more possible to think about it calmly and reasonably.
Then someone knocked and came in alone out of the darkness; he was a man with a short beard, tough and upright, in ordinary working clothes; he gave the peace greeting rather hesitatingly. Phaon got up off the floor and came to the newcomer. ‘It will be tonight, brother,’ he said, ‘if the rest say yes.’
The man held on to his hand. ‘Tonight,’ he said, ‘and then—then—’
‘You will have paid,’ said Phaon gravely.
‘And it will be all right,’ said the man. ‘You’re sure—in spite of everything—oh, you are going to have me, aren’t you?’
‘We will have you, Eprius, even if you’d been the Praefect of the Praetorians,’ said Phaon. ‘Brother, you’ve done the things I told you?’ He looked closely and deeply at the man, who was nearly twice his age, and the man shivered and gulped and nodded.
Then Megallis came in, with a dark, thick-set woman, veiled as she was. ‘Peace!’ said Megallis, rather out of breath. ‘Oh, I’m not late, am I? You see, Marulla couldn’t get away earlier; they gave her an extra lot of weaving to do. She was almost too tired to come, weren’t you, dear?—but I told her it would be worth it.’
‘This is your third meeting, isn’t it, sister?’ Phaon asked. He put his hands on her shoulder and watched her; her eyeballs were moving a little and her eyelids twitching, but that would have come after a whole day’s weaving, if she’d been made to hurry over it. To penetrate this, he said rather loudly, ‘Have you understood? You have. Good. And have you kept quiet?’
‘I saw them die,’ the woman said, slowly and with a certain effort. ‘I know about holding my tongue.’
‘Even if you are questioned—directly?’
‘Yes,’ said the woman. ‘Let alone I’m not the kind that gets spoken to, unless they’re after me about my work. Besides: I know you can’t talk about things to do with the gods.’
For today Phaon let that pass. People took different ways coming to the same place. This woman’s way had begun when she was sitting just behind Megallis at the Circus, with her husband and father-in-law, who were weavers. She had heard what Megallis had said so very plainly about the woman down on the sand. The woman, so little and far off, kneeling it looked like, and then her face and shoulder abruptly streaked with red where the beast had clawed her; and the loud voice of Megallis going on explaining what kind of person this Euphemia was. And suddenly Marulla had sort of woken up and thought, what can be happening? And she looked down again and the woman on the sand was tumbled right over with a nasty brown lion right on top of her, tearing, and Megallis had been pulled back with a hand over her mouth. But still Marulla seemed to go on hearing what she had been saying and still she didn’t know what could be happening, only she did know she was bound to see Megallis again and find out. Even if her husband hit her the same way Megallis was being hit by hers. And so, after getting acquainted and asking first o
ne question and then another, and after certain promises and delays and inquiries, Marulla had been taken to the bakery and had there discovered that, as she had supposed, there was something happening here in Rome and that it applied to women like herself and Megallis in their common day to day life. There was something new now. So that you weren’t utterly bound down by that life, even when it wasn’t so good. There was this as well.
Then Niger and Felicio came in together. Again Phaon met them and whispered to Felicio before they sat down. And then Eunice said, ‘This is all of us that’s likely to come, friends, but have I your leave to ask in someone else to the meeting? I’ll be surety for him and Phineas knows him a little, too.’
‘Who is it, mother?’ Phaon asked.
‘It’s my neighbour Carpus, son. He works for a big potter, but he’s hoping to set up on his own soon. He must have had his suspicions, because he spoke to me a little time after—what happened. Of course, I put him off then, the way we’d agreed to, but later on he spoke to me again. And he told me a bit about himself, enough for me to take a chance, with God’s help. So at last we had a talk, and now he’s asking your leave to come to a meeting.’
‘You bring him in, mother,’ said Mikkos, and after a bit of talking they all agreed to have him, and Eunice went out to fetch him along.
Felicio, sitting on the edge of the kneading trough, said nothing. He felt a continuous kind of surprise, the same that he had been aware of all these weeks since he had made his decision. Was he really doing this? In spite of everything Nausiphanes had said. And indeed, in all their arguments, Nausiphanes had undoubtedly had the best of it. But yet he was going tonight to do something irrational and superstitious, as Nausiphanes had said, and he was glad that he was going to do it. He knew also that it was dangerous and likely to lead to torture, domestic or public, and perhaps death in the Arena, such as he had seen with his own eyes: and he knew that he was afraid of physical pain, much more afraid than Niger, for instance: but still he was glad. So glad that it was all he could do not to throw back his head and laugh out loud. How then, measure up this irrational gladness against the Epicurean truth which, also, he recognised? Perhaps because people’s motives are, in the end, not rational, although they ought to be in the direction of reason. And that was the direction of the action which he intended taking tonight, although it had also elements of gross unreason, such as had made Nausiphanes say that he would never speak to him again if he became an initiate. But this unreason was only in it so as to make a hold on the unreason in the human soul: which, if one is honest one knows to be there. True enough, the superstitions in Christianity might grow and spread and come to outweigh their usefulness, their present necessity. But he and Phaon and Persis and the rest, they were not responsible for the future.
And so, in an increasing bewilderment, but also with a gladness which became more overwhelming hour by hour, Felicio had done the things which Phaon had told him to do. He had prayed and fasted and fixed his mind upon the Way of Life, and, having decided that this was the right end of the stick, he had given over for a time his rational and ironic and individual will into the keeping of others and of their Jesus, who would soon be his own Jesus, and must be also for ever, Beric’s Jesus.
Now, sitting there, regarding all this process soberly and calmly and somehow lightly, Felicio knew as well that the black litter slave, the beast of burden who could not really understand all that was involved and could not possibly do so, since he had not even the words, let alone the reasoning powers, necessary for this, was yet feeling with him in a manner that had not been analysed by the Philosophers nor even expressed by the poets. Niger, whose back was still scarred and ugly from last summer’s floggings, sat on the floor, cross-legged. Felicio reached down and touched his shoulder, felt the big rough hand on his own, and knew that they had both escaped from their common slavery.
But by now the meeting had started. Eunice had come back with her neighbour Carpus, a youngish man, his hands and arms and the front of his tunic flecked here and there with grey clay smudges. The members of the Church had gone up to him with peace greetings and handshakes, and now he sat on the floor beside Eunice, staring all round him.
Then there was silence for a moment, and then all said the Words together, and Phaon spoke to them, shortly and gravely, reminding them of their dangers and their obligations. Now anyone who had some matters to bring up before the meeting could do so. Phineas and Eunice told how they had distributed the money from the fund and answered questions. Then Sannio said, ‘What I want to know is, what’s due to happen now? Did any of us hear anything from the other Churches?’
Eunice said, ‘Well, I did see Claudia Acté just once, last week. But she doesn’t know. Nobody does. We’ve just got to wait.’
‘To wait for a Sign,’ Phineas said. ‘A true Sign.’
‘What would that be, now?’ Eprius asked, humbly and eagerly.
‘It’s watching the times and then coming to our own conclusions,’ said Phaon. ‘If we think something looks like happening and then it does, that’s a sign. See? Or with people, when we know what ought to happen and it does, that’s a sign too. Each time that comes off we go a step forward. I tell you how it is, Eprius. We’ve asked a certain kind of question—we’ve asked the world—and we’ve got our answer.’ He turned to his mother, and Carpus who was listening and puzzling. ‘Does he know what’s been going on? How things have shaped with us in this Church?’
‘Part I know,’ said Carpus, ‘but couldn’t you tell me?’
‘Sum it up, like,’ said Mikkos. ‘I’ve kept on trying to, only I don’t rightly know how.’
Here and there the others nodded or murmured yes. Phaon, looking round, had the sense of the meeting. He stayed quiet for a moment, praying for it to come in order into his mind and onto his tongue. Felicio knew that was what he was asking, and prayed too, that all should be made clear.
‘Out of us fifteen,’ said Phaon, ‘of whom ten are baptised, six were in the Church that met here last summer. And one—that is you, Noumi—was in another Church. Five months ago there were another nine in our Church. And after that one more. They are dead. They have become a sign. What we know to be true was manifested on them. Most of us knew them, but you Carpus, you did not know any of them, so I will name them to you. There were the two deacons of our Church, Manasses and Lalage.’
Suddenly, out of the shadow, Niger cried out, ‘Oh Lalage, you were so lovely! The way you said things made me see them right.’
‘They were beaten and tortured and they stayed unshaken,’ Phaon said, his breath coming quickly now, but his voice still high and steady. ‘We lost them for ourselves, but they are not lost; we are all better for them; because of them the Kingdom is nearer for all the world and they are part of it for ever. They could have bought their lives Carpus, but they never even thought of that. They had been given knowledge and experience of the Kingdom with us, as you will all be given it, and that is so good that there’s never really any choice for any of us once we’ve known it. Because we had known it, Persis and I were ready to die, but that sign was not made on us. And Argas and Euphemia were also tortured and they also died in the sight of all Rome for the Kingdom, and Sophrosyne was beaten and died in prison. They were all led into temptation, because all of them might have denied and might have saved their lives. But they were delivered from that evil.’
Phaon was trembling a little now, speaking at Carpus who had known none of the witnesses. But when he had said Euphemia’s name he had heard Megallis start and draw in her breath quickly, and he could see that Sannio was crying and Persis was crying, and Sapphira and Phineas were holding on to one another, and he heard a deep groan from Eprius like someone who was going to be sick. Yet all he had said was simply what had happened. Yes, that was all, Felicio thought, and I have faced this; I will not even move when it comes to Beric’s name.
‘And Rhodon was tortured to death in prison and he was a witness, too,’ said Phaon, remem
bering the metal-worker with his scarred hands and orderly mind, who must have been hard to kill. And now it was Abgar who cried out and beat on himself barbarian-fashion.
And then Megallis suddenly said, ‘Stop!’ And she stood up from her place, her hands twitching at her veil, and then said, ‘I saw him in the prison when I went to see Euphemia. I’d be bound to know anyone again that I saw there, wouldn’t I friends? And not a word have I said until this day, but oh, I’d swear it was him I saw a month ago, alive and well, only he’d grown a beard like, so it was—’
‘Where?’ asked Abgar, standing too, and shaking from head to foot.
‘It was near that temple in the new quarter,’ Megallis said, ‘the temple that’s half dug into the hill. To some foreign god. To Mithras or someone. And he’d got ever such a big dog with him.’
Phineas had been leaning forward to listen; now he and Eunice glanced at one another, and then he backed out of the lamp’s tell-tale circle; he did not want Eunice to remember what Rhodon had been. But Eunice did remember, very well.
Sannio said, ‘It couldn’t have been him, Megallis. Just couldn’t. You got it wrong. I know. Mikkos and me, we were in that prison and we heard he was dead. Heard it read out of a book when they took us through to the office. You couldn’t have a thing in the prison book if it wasn’t true. You heard that too, Mikkos?’
‘I did,’ said Mikkos. ‘Listen Megallis, they’d just taken the chains off us, and there was our master come for us at last—not that he could have before—and he kept hold of us, me with one hand and Sannio with the other, and I know I kept holding on to the ends of his toga, fair like a baby I was, and the chap at the desk was reading out the names. And Rhodon was one. Not that I knew anything about him then, only times like that, you keep any little thing you hear in your head afterwards. You must have seen wrong, Megallis.’
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