The Blood of the Martyrs (13 page)

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 really 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.'

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.

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.