The Blood of the Martyrs (42 page)

He followed Aelius Candidus into his office and stood for some time while the Deputy-Governor, carefully ignoring him, gave some orders to a sergeant: about the transfer of a large batch of prisoners to the Circus Maximus. There were huge dungeons there under the seats and among the foundations, suitable for the temporary reception of criminals. No, there would be no need to feed them while they were there: it would be a mere waste of public money. He dismissed the underling, sat back, and made a note on his tablets. Then he looked at Beric and found that his prisoner was regarding him quite calmly, as though from across a dinner-table. As though he had never been beaten up. As one gentleman to another. Which left one to make the decision whether to treat him as such, having regard to his patron, Flavius Crispus, or whether it was too intolerable altogether that any prisoner should look at one like that, in which case measures must be taken to stop it. Aelius Candidus tapped on his teeth with the end of his pen. At last he decided, leant forward and said, ‘You realise, of course, that your execution is only a matter of days?'

‘I know that,' said Beric. He was not sure what this comparatively civilised, man to man tone, meant.

‘Your patron has asked to see you, but I fear that would be inadvisable. However, there are certain concessions which might be made. It might, for instance, be possible to allow you a citizen's death, in which case your body would be returned for burial.' Beric said nothing. ‘A death without previous—unpleasantness, such as you have already experienced. That would be preferable, I think? We reserve our other forms of death, of which there are a great variety, for treasonable and disgusting offences … such as Christianity. You have, of course, committed a private crime—for private reasons. We realise that.'

Beric looked at him carefully, wondering what all this was about. It would be rather a bore really, to have to make decisions and choices at this stage. He knew he was going to be killed: couldn't it just happen to him? Couldn't he at least say goodbye to his will? ‘Yes,' he said, ‘it was a private quarrel.' But as he said that he thought how much he would like to say that it wasn't anything of the kind, that
it had nothing at all to do with a very worthless individual called Flavia! When Tigellinus got in that first kick after they'd roped him, he had said to Flavia that he wished he'd killed
her
anyway; now he was sorry he had said that; he didn't either love her or hate her.

‘Quite so,' Candidus said. After all, the Briton was behaving decently. It might even be possible to allow Flavius Crispus to see him in a day or two, when it would be less obvious what had been done to him. Candidus slightly regretted last night's procedure. Not much, of course. In any case Tigellinus would have been content with nothing less. There had been a time, not so long ago, when he had admired the Praefect of the Praetorians quite immensely, liked being with him, feeling he was sharing in that toughness and power. Well, he didn't want to do any sharing now. One must get power for oneself. Not be involved in the fall of Tigellinus, when that happened—as it was pretty well bound to. Stand alone and not necessarily give away such knowledge as one had: knowledge about people, giving one power over them. ‘Your patron,' he said again, ‘must have been very much disturbed at finding all those Christians in his household. We shall have to get hold of this other boy, Phaon. He appears to have run away. However, I think there will be no difficulty in tracing him. The fact that he has bolted is in itself a proof of his guilt. Unfortunately, suspicions exist in certain quarters about your patron himself. Naturally, I am anxious to dispel them. Are you sure there is nothing you could tell me, as man to man, which would prove a help over this? You will be aware, from what I have already said, that certain concessions might be allowed. Or even further ones.' He was not, certainly, going to promise the Briton his life, but if the Briton thought he was … ‘The greatest service you could do for your patron,' Candidus went on, ‘would be to indicate what other members of the household might be infected with this Christianity. So that the whole thing could be stamped out and all suspicions removed.'

‘I told you I was not a Christian,' Beric said: he was tired of all this.

‘You have obviously had some connections with them,' Candidus said, but still in quite a reasonable voice. ‘After all—you have been seen with them. With this notorious woman Lalage. Of course, I am not classing you with them. Especially if you can help me to clear your patron's name.' He paused invitingly.

And Beric suddenly felt that it was quite impossible for him to be in any kind of fellowship with this man, in the world of gentlemen, outside of which slaves were tortured. ‘Candidus,' he said, ‘I was quite certainly not a Christian last night. But just as certainly I have become one since. And I am a Christian now.'

The Deputy-Governor stood up, and he was all at once looking just like he had looked in the night. But Beric was not afraid of him now, not even in the body. The Deputy-Governor took a step forward. ‘Very well,' he said. ‘If that is the case, then back to the Christians you go. There will be no concessions. You will die with them—publicly—in the Arena. Your body, such as is left of it, will not receive burial. I shall arrange for you to die in some manner which will be thoroughly amusing for the cheap seats.'

Then he picked up a metal-studded glove which was lying on the table and hit Beric across the face. Then he shouted for the guards and had Beric marched out of his office. As they came out into the yard he gave Beric the hell of a kick, and Beric, not unnaturally, stumbled, lost his balance, threw up his arms but had them jerked down by the chains, and fell over on to his face. One of the guards kicked him up. People were watching from all over the yard, and especially Lalage, Manasses, Euphemia and Argas. When he went down Lalage began to pray hard and quietly. Then Beric came over to them; his face and arm were both grazed and bleeding again. But it was apparent that he was not paying any attention to that.

Beric was with them again; he had not been fit for baptism; he had been deeply ashamed before them; he had failed; he had been one of the rich. Now he was no longer ashamed. He had said he was a Christian; he knew he was; clearly he was in the Kingdom with them. Since he had said what he was, things had been done to him which
should have made him wild with fury and frustration. They had not done so. He had been hurt, yes, but only on top of an excitement which blanketed that pain from penetrating to anywhere it could harm him.

‘What happened to you in there, brother?' Lalage asked, with a kind of respect in her voice which was new to him.

‘He wanted me to talk,' Beric said. ‘He tried a clever new trick on me. But I said I had not been one of you yesterday; and I said I was one of you now. And I am!'

The four looked at one another and up at him, standing chained and sore and happy in front of them. Then Euphemia got up and went over to the well and let down the bucket to draw some water. Here in the prison it could not be running water; it could not even be clean water; it had to be prison water. But it would do for baptism.

Paul said to her, ‘I see he is back. What does he say now? Will he accept his redemption?'

‘I am drawing the water for his baptism, Paul,' Euphemia said.

‘Has he repented, then? Of everything?'

‘He is one of us, Paul.' She had hauled the bucket up, and now rested it for a moment on the edge of the well. It had strained her hurt arm a bit.

‘Good,' said Paul. ‘I knew he would come. I knew he would listen to me. I will baptise him.'

‘I'm not sure,' said Euphemia, ‘and, of course, it's not for the likes of me to say, but I do somehow think Paul, that he'd sooner it was us.' She picked up the bucket and took it over, hobbling rather, and letting it down to the ground once or twice. She had been in longer than the others and the bad food was telling on her, as well as everything else.

As she said that, the sudden darkening in Paul's mind that his immediate anger made, warned him not to answer. He stood looking down into the well, accepting what had been said to him, certainly with innocence by this woman, accepting the lesson in the spirit of the fellowship they were in together. Yes, he had been proud and he had been rebuked. He had in him this terrible capacity for work and pride; they went with one another. He could see through people, he could see their weaknesses, he must guard against
using his own power. Yet were we not all means towards the one overwhelming end? Yes, but each must be so in his or her own way—one way for the Greek and another for the Jew. Not only Paul's way. Ah, if one way only were possible, then how easy for the shepherd, then indeed no need for any shepherd, all could be in the one flock. God did not allow any such easiness, putting us above the animals. So Paul of Tarsus, God's shepherd, must never rest, never until death. Nor must he complain when men, not being sheep, went tortuously or must be lured round barriers of prejudice and old wrongs and ideas out of a past world.

But now the pride and darkness had cleared out of his mind. He crossed the yard, on the way stopping to speak to two prisoners who were quarrelling bitterly over a few sour-smelling beans, letting their poor, half-starved bodies get the better of them, until they were stopped and reminded of the great thing which they carried in them, the Christ. Would there become, Paul asked himself, a tradition of suffering for Christians, before the end and the judgment and the establishment of the Kingdom? It was easier for men to act by help of a tradition, above all in suffering; being one of a race which had suffered much, he understood that: although here was something beyond what any of the Prophets had known. And the future?

He came to the others. Manasses was on his feet now, but seeing Paul, he hesitated. ‘Do you want to question him, Paul?' he asked.

Paul said to Beric, ‘Are you surely repenting of what you were?'

‘Yes,' said Beric. ‘I was one of the rich. But I am forgiven for that by my friends.' And he knelt in front of Manasses, and Argas and Lalage, being sureties for him and having known his temptations and his tests, knelt one on each side.

‘I've got to do it with my left hand,' Manasses said, ‘but I don't think it matters.' Euphemia held the bucket for him. For a minute they all stayed quiet, waiting and aware, in the grip of the validity of what they were doing. Others had gathered round, forgetting their pain and hunger and lice, and they too, were very quiet, or whispered the word
Jesus, the one word which did not break their love for one another, but was part of it. Then Manasses took water in the palm of his hand and spilled it, three times, over Beric's head. ‘Beric,' he said, ‘with this water I baptise you into the Name of Jesus.'

‘And into the fellowship of Jesus,' Lalage said.

Then Beric bent and kissed the feet of the man who had baptised him, who had been a slave in the same house where he had been a master, and as he did so a few drops of blood and water ran down his cheek and rested on Manasses's instep. But none of them noticed that.

He stood up again. It had not been magic nor childish. He was not suddenly changed. It was only a sign that marked a change which had been happening and which was now complete. Lalage slowly got to her feet beside him, holding on to his arm. But at the other side Argas still knelt, half doubled up, head against the side of his knee. Beric's hand reached down to his hair and neck and bruised shoulders, alive still and warm, an object of affection and respect and brotherhood, so soon and stupidly to be destroyed. And Beric smiled across at Paul of Tarsus, the older man, rather outside their group. Paul had these other notions about what it was all for; that didn't matter; Beric didn't need to think about them, there was no longer time for thought, only for action. Paul had been preaching the Kingdom all these years, founding Churches in one place after another, away overseas, and whatever he might have said, these Churches had made their own image of the Kingdom and all its implications, not out of cobwebs, but out of the way men and women were acting by one another; and so it would go on living. Queer to think that Paul had organised all this, seen all those separate people, lighted all those flames, keeping a purpose in front of him through all the long, tedious years of middle age, the years none of the rest of them were going to have. Beric said to his friends, ‘The Deputy-Governor says I am to die with you. And probably today. I shall be a witness too; I shall be some use.'

‘I wonder how long they'll go on killing us,' Manasses said.

‘Until they see they can't win,' Lalage said. ‘But then they'll try and stop us some other way. They'll try and change us back into ordinary people, under their rule, obeying and worshipping them. When they find they can't do it by frightening us, they'll try something else. I hope we'll always be strong. As strong as we five are now.' She crossed herself.

Manasses said, ‘Perhaps they'll try and tempt them that are in our place, so to speak, by offering them money or power. Trying to make the Churches into part of their rule perhaps. Do you think that would be possible Lalage?'

‘I hope not. It would be so terribly difficult to resist that. If they're offered all the kingdoms of the earth in return for—giving up our Kingdom. Or changing it. Oh, Manasses, we're lucky to be now, when the temptations are so easy to see and resist, when we need only be brave and steadfast for a little time. And that's a thing that any slave can be, or any poor girl who can't read or write.'

‘Those'll be the ones that'll go on remembering us, Lalage,' Euphemia said.

Argas said, ‘It'll be hard for all them that are coming after us. They'll need more strength than us really. They'll need to learn to be cunning, to see round everything. But maybe there'll be others in it then, not just us slaves, but free men and women, who've had a proper education so they can understand and not let themselves be tempted. Folks like you, Beric. Would you rather be then?'