The Blood of the Martyrs (10 page)

‘Yes,' said the young man Manasses.

Argas went down on his knees and said, ‘Forgive me, then, for I know that I have done wrong and I know that I have been angry and stupid and I know I have no right to ask it. Only—out of mercy …'

He could not go on speaking; the steadiness had all gone. But Manasses was kneeling beside him. ‘What have you done?' he asked.

Argas whispered as loud as he could, ‘At Ariminum—I wouldn't come in—I knew it was right, but—and I hurt
Rufus and he forgave me and I wouldn't take his forgiveness—'

‘You can take it now, from us,' said Manasses.

‘I have been angry—I have hurt people—I have lied—I have stolen—once I went to a witch—and then, oh, this is all worse!—I have denied Jesus and His teaching—' Argas was shaking all over with the difficulty of getting it out.

Manasses said, ‘He has taken you all the same. Even though you denied Him. You are forgiven. Do you also forgive?'

‘Who should I forgive?' asked Argas, puzzled. Now that he had said what he had it seemed to him that there had been a great weight on him and now it was off and he felt queer and light and a little dizzy.

‘All of us,' said Manasses.

And Eunice came to him. ‘You need to forgive me, anyway, son,' she said, ‘for I made you angry.'

‘It wasn't you,' said Argas, ‘it was my own sin turning on me. But I forgive you if you like. And if ever I get angry again—'

‘Well then, we forgive one another again, and that's all there is to it.' She said to the congregation, ‘Well, what shall we do?'

They began talking it over. Argas was now clinging on to Manasses, beginning to remember all the times in his life when he had not done the right and decent thing, seeing all his thoughts and actions lying like a dirty rag in the gutter, wanting to disown them. He could not bear to wait any longer for the hour when he could start fresh. Manasses was afraid he was going to get into real hysterics and knew that some of it was probably due to the fast and the sleepless night of praying. He knew also that if the boy went too far he would feel ashamed afterwards instead of glad. So he began praying for Argas, using soothing and complicated words. Argas became calmer. Manasses left him kneeling in the middle of the floor with his hands over his face, and the tears of repentance, which none of them would have dared to laugh at, dripping between his fingers, ‘I think we should do it,' said Manasses.

‘It's out of order,' said Rhodon, ‘let him wait the ordinary time. Like I had to.'

‘I don't want to take the risk of refusing him,' said Manasses. ‘He's like someone starving. What do you think, Lalage?'

‘I wish he hadn't chosen such a cold night, but I'm quite sure we'd better go down to the river with him. We don't often have a soul tearing its way through the body to us like this. Remember, Rhodon, he went through the ordinary waiting time with the brothers at Ariminum.'

‘And denied them! And denied Jesus Christ and His Father. Isn't he to have any punishment for that?'

‘Look at him, Rhodon. No, look at him as if it was you yourself. You don't cry like that for fun. Do you want to hurt him any more?'

‘It isn't that,' said Rhodon. ‘I've nothing against the lad. But I hate favouritism. But, of course, if you've all made up your minds—'

‘Favouritism, nonsense!' said Lalage. ‘Now, Eunice, you're the one that knows him. What do you say?'

‘I think we ought to,' said Eunice, ‘leave the leaven too long, and you spoil the whole batch. But who'll baptise him? I would if he was a girl, but—'

‘You aren't going to get yourself wet tonight, mother!' said Josias. ‘Tiber's frozen over at the edges. Maybe we ought to get someone older from the other Church.'

‘We must have a deacon,' said Rhodon. ‘I never saw a man baptised unless there was someone in authority doing it. It wouldn't be in order.'

‘I think it can be done by anyone through whom the Spirit moves,' said Lalage, ‘that's all. It can't matter what a man's called. Not with us!'

‘Well,' said Eunice, ‘are any of you moved to be the one to baptise this man?' She went and stood by him; he was not crying now, but listening.

At last Manasses said, ‘If you would all give me leave—I know I am young, but I think—I have tried to live as a Christian should, and a deacon can't do more than that. I will go down into the river with Argas and make him one of us.'

After a little they all agreed. Eunice said she would stand surety for him, and the others said that was all right if she didn't go into the water over her ankles, but they weren't going to let her catch cold. Then they all put on their cloaks and Eunice found blankets for the ones who hadn't got them. Phaon lighted a lantern and they all went out into the biting night, and locked and bolted the door of the bakery behind them. It was some way to the nearest part of the Tiber from where they were. They wrapped their cloaks tight and walked quickly, no one saying much. Sometimes they had to stand aside for a litter with torches, and once a drunk barged into them. At last they came to the street leading down to Tiber. Phaon went ahead with the lantern. ‘It's in flood,' he said.

They all gathered round the edge and the two young men, the Jew and the Greek, stripped; Josias took their tunics over his arm and Phaon held the lantern out as far as he could reach over the water. Here the flooded river was running too quick to freeze, but the steps were slippery and they gasped with cold as they went in, holding on to one another. They looked white and thin in the lantern light, stepping down into that tearing bubble and stick-streaked water, opaquely dark with mud. Josias watched anxiously as Manasses, leading, went down waist-deep. The steps ended and they were on mud and the river tore at them and they were almost out of the circle of lantern light, out of reach of the others. As the icy water bit on his loins and stomach it seemed to Argas that it was indeed the river of death and defeat; he could have flung himself down on to it, arms at sides, not swimming. He did not know what Manasses was saying to him. He only felt worthless, sick with himself; there was nothing right about him. They were breast-deep now, staggering in the current, He felt Manasses's hands on his shoulders, weighing on him like sin; his feet sunk into the sucking mud. He heard Manasses saying ‘into the name of Jesus.' And, with that name in his mind, he went down into the water, dark, choking, over his head and tear-hot face; he struggled up, towards the name of Jesus; three times Manasses ducked him; three times he felt the cold and darkness of death and each time his
body seemed to die a little, until as he came up the third time he felt nothing, but was only aware of the name that had been with him under the water, and heard his own voice shouting it. And then Manasses was pushing him back, out of the mud, out of the pull on legs and body of the black, drowning water. And he was going up, up, into lantern light and among faces, and the water streamed off him, out of his hair and ears and nostrils, taking away with it everything that he had finished with.

Eunice was rubbing him with a blanket, and Josias was rubbing Manasses, who was shaking all over with cold. Gradually Argas began to be aware that he had a body still, that blood was racing in it, that someone had pulled a tunic over his head, that he felt a marvellous warmth coming, even under his wet hair, even in his feet on the wet stones. People kept on taking his hands or kissing him; he could say nothing because the name was still ringing in his head, still filling him, he belonged with it now and it with him. Eunice said to Manasses, ‘You had the Spirit with you.' Manasses nodded; he did not say that he had also had a moment of terror when he thought he had lost hold of the man he was baptising, when he thought the river had got them both; he could not swim and he did not know that Argas could.

As they walked back, Argas gradually began to reinhabit his body, to like the movement of his legs walking, the touch of his neighbours on each side. Two or three times he laughed out loud. They came again to the bakery, unlocked the door and lighted the lamp. Manasses and Eunice gave him bread and salt. The grains of coarse salt were each separate beings; the texture of the bread was beautiful. For a moment he did not want to eat; what did this new person he had become want with eating? And then suddenly it became so lovely to take food from the hands of friends that he bit into the good bread, which the others then ate with him, and so, in the space of two hours, he got three things: repentance, baptism and the breaking of bread.

He was late getting back, but the old porter let him in and thought, by the way he looked, that he had been
sleeping with a woman for the first time and so, sympathetically shaking his head, did not even scold him. And he did his work without grumbling and while he stood, still as a statue, behind his master's couch at dinner, he had something filling his mind all the time, making the mere business of being alive worthwhile. Soon spring was beginning and there was almond in light blossom in the courtyards. And then the same thing happened. His master was going to take up a position somewhere in Gaul. Nobody told Argas till a few days before the move.

He told them at the next meeting at Eunice's house, trying not to be angry all the time, trying to let the Will be done on him. Eunice and Manasses put their heads together and Manasses went straight out, saying he thought he might be able to do something. He came back in half an hour; most of them had left, but Argas was staying on, wondering desperately whether he would ever see this room again, trying to pray. He saw that Manasses was not alone, that there was someone with him, not one of them, one of the masters. Eunice and Phaon stood up and so did Argas; Eunice whispered to him it was the Briton, and he knew that it must be the young master from Manasses's household. He saw someone about his own age, with queer blue eyes and a fair, long-shaped head, and the eyes were looking at him as masters ‘eyes mostly looked: remotely and appraisingly. He heard Manasses explaining that this was the dining-room slave whom he had spoken about—whose master was leaving Rome—he was sure he was for sale. And he, Manasses, would guarantee that he was satisfactory. ‘That him?' said the Briton. ‘Looks a bit young.' Argas came forward a couple of steps, aware that his destiny was in this man's hands, not knowing what to say. Eunice spoke for him too. ‘Boyfriend of yours, Eunice?' the Briton asked, and laughed. He walked over to Argas and began to handle him, looking at eyes and teeth. Obediently, Argas stripped; there was nothing wrong with him. He confirmed that he could read and write, was well trained, could do anything about the house. ‘You take him,' said Eunice, ‘he wants to come. Knows a good master when he sees one.' The Briton said, ‘Well, if we can get him reasonably cheap, I don't mind
taking him.' He turned his back on Manasses and ate one of Eunice's little cakes. The next day Argas was in the new household, trying to show that he had been a good bargain.

He wanted most of all to show the young master, the Briton. But, although Beric was quite pleasant to him, often had a word or two with him, and had never lost his temper with him at all badly, he could never speak to his master as he wanted. Never as though they were just two young men living in the same house. There was a barrier between them that nothing could break down. And, after the Scratch Cat began her tricks on the Briton, there was less chance than ever. Beric's temper began to fray; he was sometimes unjust, sometimes accused or threatened the slaves for things they hadn't done, or actually punished instead of only threatening. Once he had thrown a roll-book at Argas, cut Argas's cheek with the spike on the end and torn the book. Argas hated to see a book torn; it reminded him of
his
book. He caught himself wanting terribly to tell the Briton about that book. Fool, he wouldn't care! But all the same, he used to like to be the one to wait on the Briton, to wake him in the morning or carry a lamp for him or fill his bath. But now nobody liked that; the Briton might be in any kind of temper. And they all knew why!

Argas had wanted desperately to say something at dinner that day. If only the Briton hadn't been so far! And then afterwards, when he came in with the bucket of water, at first he had not understood, only he felt that something was happening, and he had to start it by speaking to Lalage. And then the barrier between him and Beric began to crumble; for the first time they looked at each other as one man to another. Some day he would be able to help the Briton, to do something for him, give him something—

After they had all said the Words together, and while Manasses was still praying quietly to himself, Beric looked at Argas as though something had amused him a lot and said, ‘Well, I've said your words. What are they going to do to me? Going to turn me into a fish?'

That made Argas feel rather uncomfortable, but he saw that the Briton had thought they were magic, so he said, ‘It's
not what they do with you, it's what you do with them. They aren't a spell; they only say what we want.'

‘A kingdom?'

‘Oh, it's not like you think, sir! Can I tell you?'

‘You'd better,' said Beric. It was really Manasses's place to tell the Briton, since he was by now the deacon and leader of the Church in Crispus's household, but he saw that the Spirit had come to Argas; so he and Phaon finished mopping up quickly, and took out the bucket and rags, leaving the other two. Manasses knew, just as Lalage, for instance, knew, that there were many ways in which the prayer could be interpreted, but Argas would probably explain it one way only. That didn't matter. What mattered was that he was the one who had been called to do it. Beric sat down on the couch and motioned to Argas to sit beside him. ‘This is a mad day,' he said. ‘Well, come on, tell me what it's all about.' Argas was shy, sitting on the same couch as his master, in this equality he had wanted so much. He tried to remember Athens, but by now he'd had too much Rome, and still for a moment he could not speak. Beric, suddenly wanting to help him, said, ‘Argas, were you ever free?'