The Blood of the Martyrs (27 page)

The next day there was a spot of trouble in the house because old Domina Aelia complained of a ghost in the passage between her wing of the villa and the main building. It mewed at her. Somebody must have been murdering someone! Various rites were gone through, much to Crispus's irritation, but Beric was worried in case he had brought the ghost with him. Suppose it didn't go and they got hold of someone who was really good at smelling out ghosts, and it was traced to him?

He had heard Crispus saying there would be one extra for dinner, and wondered who the guest could be. One of their country neighbours perhaps. He had been down to the swimming-pool for a rapid, angry swim, and was coming back to the house when he saw someone he did not know riding up. At the house, Crispus was talking to the rider, who then turned to him, held out his hand and said something which he didn't understand, but which yet was familiar, which made him forget all he was thinking, and he seemed to know the answer though he didn't understand that either. ‘You know, Beric,' said Crispus, beaming, ‘you and your brother look very much alike. Yes, I should have seen it anywhere.'

During dinner, Beric listened to the talk between Crispus and Clinog on municipal government. His brother seemed to know a great deal about roads and aqueducts and how to build main drains and conduct municipal sacrifices; it was rather intimidating. And also rather worrying; because such things were generally useful, they weren't a matter of pride and power and therefore obviously evil; but they were certainly part of the rule of Rome. Would they even be possible if everyone was poor? Didn't this prove that there had got to be riches and order? But—now Clinog was discussing the high price they had to pay for public works slaves, unless there were criminals or prisoners of war to be had cheap. And they were sometimes more bother than they were worth in disciplining, and didn't always last. Yes, it was always an effective threat to the household slaves to say they'd be sold for road work, everyone knew what that meant. Discipline, yes. Worked to death and not a chance of getting out of it. And that was what public works meant. So
one would have to do without them. Drains and baths and all. Dropping civilisation. Unless they could be done some other way? But he couldn't think how.

The next day he and Clinog went for a long ride. At first they talked about old days, but it wasn't much of a success, because Beric remembered so little. Crispus had asked Clinog to have a steadying talk with his younger brother, so when the conversation about Britain had petered out, he began to discuss the machinery of running a city so that the citizens should be secure, healthy, proud of themselves and their own civil and religious institutions, and yet unquestionably loyal to the central authorities. He talked about magistracies, and the difficulties of always finding the right man who was willing to take the job, about public contracts and the necessity of getting them into the proper forms and words, and about guilds, which were extremely important for keeping the artisan class suitably employed in their leisure time, as well as being pleasing to the gods. All the time he kept on using lots of technical phrases and words, which he liked very much, and finally said that he hoped in time to be sent back to the Province to help on the civil side of government. He'd like to get one or two British towns properly organised, as an example to the rest. Rivers bridged, swamps drained, streets cleaned, markets policed, weights and measures inspected, first and second class baths provided for all citizens. He knew already where the best building stone and brick clay was. ‘And there would be no labour difficulties,' he said, with a real enthusiasm, ‘there would always be cheap slaves coming in from the north and west, wherever we happened to be going forward.'

‘Clinog,' said Beric slowly, ‘suppose things had gone a bit differently, you and I'd have been cheap slaves from the west.'

Clinog stared at him. ‘Well, we are not!' he said, ‘and it's a damned ungrateful boy you are to be thinking such things! Considering poor old father, we've been in luck, yes! What are you looking so black at me for, Beric? Is it the truth I am speaking or not?'

‘I don't feel like you do about Rome,' Beric said.

They were walking their horses up a field. Clinog said nothing for a minute, then, rather carefully, ‘Most likely you will not have heard, Beric, but—remember Rudri?'

‘Only the way he used to pull my hair. What's happened to him?'

‘He's dead. Myself, I don't know the rights of it, but it seemed to them he wasn't loyal. It's dangerous to think any way but one about Rome. I like to live.'

‘But Rudri didn't—
do
anything?'

‘No. Only thought. And talked. It doesn't do to talk. No indeed.'

‘But, Clinog—aren't you really keen on these drains and roads of yours?'

‘To be sure I am. I'm not the kind to go leading revolts. That gets nowhere.'

‘So you'll use chain-gangs of Britons who
have
revolted to make roads for the legions!'

‘They would be used for something by someone, Beric. No use having silly thoughts about slaves, even if they happen to be Britons. Ah, they'll knock all that out of you when you're a soldier or whatever it is, indeed yes. I suppose you will get a fine command later on. You'll be a Governor yet. You will be taking your patron's name when you've been made a citizen. Flavius Bericus. Look you, my good brother, what is it now?'

But Beric said nothing, only gave his horse a kick, then after a time let Clinog draw level with him again, and asked ‘Have you ever killed anyone, Clinog?'

‘Yes. Have you?'

‘Yes. Did it get you down?'

‘No. It was no one that mattered. Certainly not. I had every right to kill him, as a matter of fact.'

‘Mine didn't matter, either. But perhaps one never has a right to kill anyone.'

‘It would be impossible to have an orderly world without the right of killing.'

‘I'm not sure. But—I was thinking of killing someone else.'

‘Don't you go killing a citizen, Beric. Is it?'

‘Yes. You'd know his name.'

‘I don't like the sound of it, no! Are you jealous? Or what?'

‘He has—injured some friends of mine. He's likely to go on doing it. If I kill him, I don't intend to get caught.'

‘I should hope not, indeed! You've got to look out, young Beric, because if any of us, who are not citizens, do get caught—'

‘Yes, I know. I am wondering how I can do it.'

‘Now, think, couldn't you just leave it alone? Who are these friends of yours? … Well, if you won't tell me! But we can't always go running into danger for the sake of friends. That was all very pretty in our stories of heroes—you won't remember them, though, nor the music that went with them!—but now we are in Rome. A man can't so much as have a blood feud here. Mind you, Beric, I feel for you, I do indeed, for it is hard not to be able to take revenge, but it is no good here. And it may be the Romans have the right of it. You can't have that and also these fine aqueducts which do not leak at all. Must you do this?'

‘I won't if there's another way.'

‘That's right, boy. There's a way round as often as not.'

‘I hope there's going to be for me.' They turned their horses for home now. Beric was thinking about the practical difficulties of killing Tigellinus, the man who stood for the rule of Rome. One had to do something against that. Yes.

Clinog naturally went to pay his respects to Domina Aelia; she always wanted to know what was going on, and she particularly liked talking to young men. One day when she was sitting out on the terrace, she made Beric sit beside her and describe Flavia's wedding, which he did rather uncomfortably. ‘You'd have liked to be the one, wouldn't you?' she said suddenly. ‘Come, own up, boy!'

‘Yes,' he said, sullenly as she laughed.

‘You're well out of it,' said the old lady energetically, smacking his hand, ‘that girl was spoiled! Catch me going to her wedding. I told Crispus how it would be, but he's as stupid as the rest of you. That girl's been allowed to think she can do as she likes.
You
won't know, but her maids will, that's certain. She's had everything except the thing that matters. D'you know what I mean by that, boy?' He shook
his head. ‘Something to serve. And if there's no something, then someone. That's what marriage is for. And how it used to be. But now! Catch any of these young couples serving one another!'

Beric said, ‘Aelius Candidus isn't worth serving, anyhow.'

‘No. Nor's she. Ah, you'd have found that out, quick enough! I shan't be surprised if she finds someone else. Though her poor father will be. You men! I like you, Beric, always have, ever since the days I used to tan your bottom for you. Wish I'd done it oftener to her. Have you found anything to serve, Beric?' He hesitated, and she pounced on him again. ‘A thing, I said. Not a girl, Blue-eyes! Nor yet a boy.' She laughed at him again, but he didn't mind; he was wondering if he had.

‘I think I have, Domina Aelia,' he said at last. ‘Only, is it a thing? You can't serve a thing.'

‘Rightness is a thing. The gods are things. Rome is a thing. Or was—before the Emperor.'

‘What I want to serve is people. All men. All free.'

‘Oh, you Stoics! You'll get over that. I know you, talking about equality. Freedom of noble souls! What does it amount to? I'll tell you something, Beric. There's only one kind of equality that makes sense and that's equality in something you can measure—land or money. How d'you like that?'

‘You're quite right, Domina Aelia,' Beric said.

‘I'm glad you've the grace to say so, boy! That was the kind of equality Tiberius Gracchus and all those Stoic friends of his tried to make for the Roman people, and what happened to him?'

‘He had to die for it.'

‘And no one said thank you and no one was a penny the better. But at any rate Tiberius Gracchus had the sense not to talk about doing it for all men! He did it for the sake of the race, so that the poor citizens could afford to bring up their sons to be soldiers. That was sense. But you and your ideas!'

‘All that was nearly two hundred years ago, Domina Aelia. Ideas change; they take in more.'

‘And mean less! I shall be pleased when you're a Roman citizen yourself, Beric. You shall come and choose yourself a signet ring from my box. Yes, one from my side of the family. The big sardonyx, if you like it, boy. Better you have it than young Candidus, for all those ideas of yours.'

She reached for her stick, got up and nodded wisely at Beric.

But Beric was finding he had to start thinking about it all over again. If he had found something worth living and dying for, he wasn't doing much about it now! Could he write to Argas and ask what was happening, say something friendly, anyhow? Every two days or so Crispus sent in a slave with letters, who came back with the answers and news from the capital. Beric tried to find out if anything more was being done about the Christians, but Crispus wouldn't say a word to him on that subject. And if he wrote to Argas, what could he say that wouldn't be a give-away in case somebody else read it, as they were almost sure to do? Crispus would be certain to get wind of it, too. Above all, he didn't want to get Argas into trouble again. Perhaps he ought to try and make friends with some of the slaves here. Difficult with the country boys; they just grinned and said, ‘Oh yes, sir!' to anything; their own lives were tucked away, underneath somewhere; you couldn't get at them. Hermeias definitely avoided him, felt that something had happened which was not at all nice. Beric wasn't sure how much he liked or trusted Lamprion, who was a regular, slick young Greek, ready for anything. It was he, Beric remembered, who'd been Manasses's chief tormentor in the ragging of the Jewish slaves, had held his nose and stuffed pork into his mouth. And he, Beric, at the time he thought it funny, though he had stopped them breaking Manasses's teeth, which would have spoilt him rather as a thing; he had good teeth … But if Manasses had forgiven Lamprion, that was good enough. Beric set himself to try to be friendly with him, talk to him as an equal, not a slave.

Lamprion talked back all right, and in no time was on terms of a cheeky familiarity which Beric disliked very much, but couldn't do a thing about now! He had asked Lamprion to call him by his name when they were alone,
but every time he did it made him squirm. He was secretly delighted when Crispus scolded Lamprion for carelessly letting the roast get cold one day. But he felt a beast about it afterwards and prayed and tried to get it right. The slaves always seemed to get hold of the gossip from Rome; so it was from Lamprion that Beric first heard that people were saying that the Praefect of the Praetorians had been visiting at the house of Aelius Candidus at hours when the master of the house was quite definitely away on duty at the prison. Beric was aware that Lamprion was watching him for a word or a wince, that in a moment he would be making a sly remark about Flavia—But just before the remark came, Beric turned on Lamprion, saying shortly that he had no business to repeat such stories of this kind. And Lamprion slid off his perch into frightened obsequiousness. Beric looked at him fiercely; he was glad it was over, glad the man was frightened back into slavery again! It was a good thing he could do that so easily still. He hoped coldly that Lamprion would do something silly soon, so that Crispus would order a whipping for him. Unfortunately, it was not at all likely; Lamprion hardly ever got punished. He wasn't that sort.

And so Domina Aelia had been right about her granddaughter, Tigellinus coming … in the hot afternoons, no doubt. And if Aelius Candidus found out, it would be extremely difficult for him to do anything effective. It was nice to realise that, at any rate. But Beric carefully did not say a thing to Crispus about it.