The Blood of the Martyrs (14 page)

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.'

That hurt Rhodon; he had to try and defend the remains of something. ‘That's not the way I see it,' he said. ‘Mithras was my god and my crown.'

‘Now,' said Eunice, ‘you're saying that, friend, but what does it amount to? You were told about your redeemer. But you never asked yourself, who was he really? Did you now?'

‘No,' said Rhodon, ‘I didn't need to.'

‘Why not? Who told you?'

‘Well, the priests.' It made him feel bad, saying that, as though he had given something away to this woman. Well, he'd done it now.

‘Then supposing Mithras was only a story made up by these priests, what then?'

Rhodon looked unhappy: he did not want to think like this. ‘There must be priests,' he said.

‘But not between you and God. Not—you know—making up stories for the rest to believe. Not richer than other people.'

Rhodon thought of the sacred things which the priests did, which were in a way not real: the pretended murder, the frightening of the novices. But those in the higher grades knew it was all a pretence, just something which had to be done. And who but the priests could make the great sacrifice, the killing of the bull? ‘There must be priests,' he repeated firmly.

Eunice said to him, ‘There's only one sacrifice which matters, and that's the sacrifice of one's life for what's worth dying for. And that's a sacrifice that any one of us can make. Man or woman.' Or dog, thought Rhodon suddenly, and his eyes were full of tears. Eunice went on, ‘Our Redeemer made that sacrifice Himself. And He isn't a story. He was a real man.'

‘The Messiah,' said Phineas, but Rhodon did not know what he meant; he was beginning to attend to Eunice.

She went on, ‘He healed the sick and He taught about the Kingdom and about forgiveness, and in the end He gave His own body as the sacrifice for the Kingdom; that was the only way people would be sure to see it mattered. People all over the world.'

‘His own body,' said Rhodon, thinking of the Bull which was also Mithras, ‘His Self?'

‘Yes,' said Eunice, ‘He made them crucify Him. He gave Himself for the coming of the Kingdom. So now all of us can go towards it, we can live and work for it, just knowing it was worth His life.'

‘Others, too, have died for it,' the young wife Sapphira said eagerly. ‘Stephen—'

But Rhodon was thinking of something else. ‘Was he really a man,' he asked, ‘an ordinary man like us?'

‘He was a wood-worker, the son of a wood-worker.'

‘A skilled man,' said Rhodon with a kind of relief in his voice; ‘tell me some more about what he died for.'

That was how Rhodon came into the Church. He was rather slow at learning because he got the old and the new prayers mixed up, and besides, he got tired more easily
over anything than a man would have done who had not been once badly wounded. So it was some months before he could be baptised. But he liked it. He liked being in a Church again, feeling that there was an organisation round him, something to hold on to. He got used to women being in it, and sometimes, instead of going to the fish-shop, he went to Eunice's bakery in the evenings after work, especially in winter, when it was so warm and pleasant.

Sapphira was a little tied up by the children, especially when the new baby came. Besides, she found it nearly as good if Phineas went and told her all about it when he came back. Phineas had been born in Rome. His father, Gedaliah-bar-Jorim, was one of the Jerusalem Nazarenes, intensely patriotic, a friend of James, who had never quite got the hang of his queer elder brother, but had always stood by him in spite of the things he kept on saying in anger about his family and what a nuisance they were. In spite of his having obstinately gone to certain death in Jerusalem when he might have been the Messiah. When asked, he had not denied that he was the Messiah. And afterwards— It appeared that he might be going to be the Messiah after all.

When the dreadful news came that the Emperor Gaius was going to desecrate the Temple in Jerusalem, shaming all Judaea, Gedaliah-bar-Jorim was one of a deputation to Rome. Before they got there even, the Emperor was dead, but several of the deputation stayed on in Rome and married. Gedaliah married the daughter of a respectable, hard-working family and settled down to his trade of carpet weaving. A couple of years later, Phineas was born, the eldest son, much loved by his violent father, who brought him up to look forward to the sudden reappearance of the Messiah, this time visibly a God and a destroyer, and the establishment of the Kingdom. Any time it might happen, while he was at school or out in the street playing; he would be saved but his companions licked up by one enormous flame. Whenever there was a thunderstorm, little Phineas began to expect the Coming. But it kept on not coming, and Phineas began to have other thoughts about the Kingdom. And he got into touch with others in Rome—Gentile Christians—and even ate with them. His younger brothers
and sister seemed to be able to go on expecting the Messiah, in the same way, year after year, never disappointed. He couldn't do that. Yes, Jesus was the Messiah, but not, oh, not just to bring us all back to Jerusalem, to make it another Rome, ruling the world! He did not like even discussing it with his father now; they meant such different things by the same words.

Phineas had been baptised as a boy, and it was intended that he should, in due time, marry the daughter of a neighbour who was also a Jerusalem Nazarene—if the Messiah had not appeared by then. But he fell in love with a slave girl, redeemed her out of his own savings, and married her. Thank God she was at least a Jewess, though from one of the coast towns, and her fathers had been free; as Phineas was going now he might even have thought of marriage with a Gentile! And Sapphira was quiet and gentle and very grateful and a good housewife. And she believed everything that Phineas believed. That was good in a wife, but she should have paid attention to her father-in-law, and she did not. She even contradicted him, defending her husband and the foolish beliefs of these new Christians, as they called themselves. She even went to the meetings and sat with Gentile women—yes, and men—but at least she had given her father-in-law two healthy grandsons.

It was Phineas who had brought Sotion to the meetings. He had seen him hanging about several times, and when Sotion asked him point blank if he was a Christian, he had answered yes, very happily, and brought Sotion in to one of the gatherings at Eunice's house. Sotion had been very eager to join the Church and had asked quantities of questions. He was a freedman and his job was rent collecting. He was rather small, with bad teeth, and very friendly to everyone. Manasses had baptised him. Once he had gone as a delegate from their Church to the Church in Caesar's household, and had been very accurate and painstaking with his report.

It was just after Sotion's baptism, that Rhodon had saved up enough to buy his freedom. He went on working for Barnabas, at a slightly increased wage, and nothing was really altered except that he enjoyed being free. His master had never ill-used him, or indeed any of his slaves, and now
he let Rhodon take a little private work and do it at his old bench and forge after hours. Actually, Rhodon worked rather harder than he had done before, but also put a little more each week into the funds of the Church; that was another thing he enjoyed doing. But he still got tired rather suddenly and sometimes his arm ached.

Phineas and Rhodon and the watch-dog walked over together that night to Eunice's house; Rhodon had trained the watch-dog to stay on guard outside. On the way they picked up Sotion, who asked after Sapphira. Phineas explained that she couldn't come just now as she was still nursing the baby. He spoke softly and lovingly of her and the children. When they got to the bakery, they found Lalage and Sophrosyne there already; then Euphemia came and got them all laughing with a funny story about one of her customers. Then Niger came, looking as miserable as ever, and with him Felicio, the young Italian from his household whom he had brought once before, quiet and intelligent and well read, a slave. Then they heard Manasses's voice at the door, and the voices of the others from the household of Flavius Crispus. Soon it would be the full meeting. Rhodon wondered why Lalage had stood up, where she could see over Euphemia who was sitting in front of her, and why she was looking so excited.

Manasses in the doorway said, ‘Peace be with you.' And they all answered, ‘Peace—peace, brother,' and he came in, Josias behind him, then Phaon, then Dapyx with an awful boil on his neck that looked as if it might burst at any moment. ‘Persis can't come tonight; her mistress wants her. But—' And Manasses half turned to the door. Argas came in, and with him someone whom none of them knew except Eunice, and she jumped up, one hand at her mouth, with a queer look. ‘Peace be with you,' Argas said, and then turned to his friend, ‘You say it.'