The Blood of the Martyrs (49 page)

The questioning was over now; the cold water, dark and swingy from the last pouring, three quarters filled the kneading trough. The young women moved away a little, into the farthest end of the room. The two who were standing surety, and the others, came to the trough; a naked man was no special treat to old Eunice now. Phaon stood, thinking about the confessions, and the sins which were to be wiped out by this. There was so much that he hadn't experienced at all himself. Could he know enough about it to forgive? He'd never even slept with a woman, though he and Persis had held one another very closely and kindly that time in the pitch-dark cellar, waiting and wondering and trying to be brave. But sin? I've got that to come, he thought grimly, unless I'm very lucky. Unless by the help of Jesus I can keep single-hearted. And I don't believe my life's likely to be that easy. You might keep single-hearted if you lived in the middle of a desert, but in Rome—? I'm sure to be tempted soon and sometimes one doesn't see it's a temptation till too late. We've all got the capacity for making the wrong choice, for sin; that's why it's so exciting to be a Christian, and be aware of that capacity, and of what means to take so as to deal with it, and then it's possible to be different—or if one fails, to get forgiveness. But they were waiting for him. He had now to become the channel between those two and their salvation.

He signed to them to take their tunics off, and noticed casually, the hard, jutting body muscles on Eprius, and how he shivered all over from moment to moment. He
took Eprius first; there was just room for him to kneel, crouching down in the cold water of the trough. He got into it as far as he could and Phaon took a jug and poured the water three times over his head; the man's dark, rather curly hair straightened down into wet rats' tails and he stayed very still and his eyes seemed to look at nothing. Felicio, watching him, thought, in a minute I too, am going to do this fantastic thing! I, too, am going to squat ludicrously in a trough of cold water like a boys' game of forfeits. I shall have these words said over me by young Phaon, and all of us will understand them differently—. And now Eprius had been half lifted out by the others and stood on the floor smiling and dripping; someone was drying him with an end of blanket that had been hanging by the oven, helping him into his tunic again, surrounding him with brotherly help and friendship. And Phaon had signed for Felicio to step into the trough.

On the edge of the water Felicio noticed a little dusty scum of flour. The sudden cold which he must not dissipate by any natural movement, stopped him from noticing what was happening for a moment. Then there was water on his head, cold again but not cold enough to get through to the racing thoughts in the brain underneath, tucked in there, sheltering itself behind the senses, only making human contact through them, never directly. And the rite was over, he had deliberately accepted danger and superstition, yes, but he had already weighed that up, had made up his mind, and now old Niger had him by the arm, was helping him out, looking no end happy, poor devil, smiling with those white teeth of his. Still wet, Felicio kissed him; it was the obvious thing to do.

Then he and Eprius and Phaon were given bread to end their fast, and milk and a little honey, to show how sweet forgiveness and acceptance were. Everyone was talking a bit, feeling release and happiness. Then Eunice asked two of the men to help her empty the trough. It didn't do to leave anything about—anything that might look queer. So, after lightening it by a few pailsful, they carried it out and poured the baptismal water away into the gutter and then tipped the trough up near the warmth of the oven, to dry out, ready for the next batch of dough.

‘Well, I'm off,' Megallis said abruptly, and stood up.

Eunice went over to her and took her hand. ‘What does your man think of you going out so late at night, dear? Does he—know at all?'

‘He ought to know if he's not daft,' Megallis said.

‘But suppose he tried to stop you?'

‘He wouldn't dare.'

‘Or—well, there's the police.

‘He'd not do
that
again,' Megallis answered, low and sombrely. ‘He's never so much as asked me where I'm going. Keeps off it like. Sometimes he'll try giving me a present, a comb, it might be, or some beads. Trying to get back to where we was. But it can't be done, not now. Not unless he comes right over—to us—and I don't see him doing that.'

‘Everything's possible,' Eunice said earnestly. ‘You must believe that, dear. I've been praying for him to see—oh, ever since. I do hope you're praying too. And it might happen. Oh, how happy we'd all be if he did!'

Megallis rubbed her eyes with her hand. ‘Oh well, I'll pray. Yes, I'd be happy all right. I'd be that happy I wouldn't know what to do. Well, good night all, and peace with you.'

Niger stood up. ‘I'll walk your way, sister.'

‘All right,' said Felicio, ‘and then back to the house? I'll be looking out for you by the door.'

‘You are a size, Niger!' said Megallis, a bit more cheerfully. ‘I feel ever so safe with you!'

‘Peace, brothers and sisters,' said Niger, and the two of them went out together.

Then Phineas helped his wife and sister to wrap their veils thickly round themselves, and all three left. Then Mikkos got up. ‘Coming, young Phaon?'

‘In a minute,' said the deacon, ‘you go on.'

Sannio got up stiffly. ‘You'd better let me rub that knee of yours, son,' Eunice said. ‘Just you come on over tomorrow.' Mikkos, Sannio and Persis all said good night and peace, and went out.

Phaon was still talking to Eprius, but at last the elder man said he must be going back to his barracks. ‘Are you happy now, brother?' Phaon asked.

‘I am,' said Eprius. ‘I feel like an honest man again. I'll be back next week, that's sure. Give me a blessing now.' He knelt for Phaon's blessing, then went out, steadily and joyfully. Eunice blew out one of the lamps; you couldn't go wasting oil. Phaon picked up some breadcrumbs and ate them; he was rather hungry still. He drew a fish with his finger in the flour dust on the table between the new loaves. Felicio thought he must be going, but he didn't seem to want to go. His hair was damp still; he rubbed his fingers through it. Anyone would have thought he'd been out in the rain, instead of—where he had been.

Then there was a knock on the door, not their own special knock. All looked up, surprised, because it was so late now, and well, one didn't know, these days. Phaon brushed his hand across the fish, rubbing it out. Eunice went to the door and saw who it was. ‘Why, come in!' she said, and brought Nausiphanes over to the warm oven and the light of the one lamp. Nausiphanes said, ‘I watched the lot of you coming out. Lucky I'm not a police spy Eunice! Well, have you done it?' He motioned with his head towards Felicio.

‘It is done,' Feliocio said, ‘I am a Christian now, for all my life.'

Nausiphanes said nothing for a time, then, ‘I meant never to speak to you again. That's stupid perhaps. However great an intellectual disappointment may have been, there should still be the possibility of friendship. And so you have gone through this rite, Felicio. Do you feel different now?'

It was difficult to answer. Difficult to get back into this other world. Felicio made an attempt to regard himself scientifically, but somehow could not get that focus. Phaon said, ‘It is not always the one who is changed that sees the change clearest, Nausiphanes.'

‘All the same,' said Nausiphanes, ‘I want to know what Felicio himself thinks.'

Felicio could only be truthful. He said, ‘No, I don't feel changed. Eprius, the guard who was baptised with me was, I think. But—if anything sudden did happen to me, if it wasn't just slowly getting to think that the whole thing was too good to be out of, then the change came at the moment that Beric was killed.'

None of them spoke for a little. Nausiphanes sat down besides the oven, stretching out his cold feet in cheap sandals towards the warmth that remained in the bricks. At last he said, ‘And you others—do you accept that?'

‘There's no holding nor binding the Spirit,' Eunice said. ‘It's always coming unexpected, from behind the outside look of things, if you see what I mean, Nausiphanes.'

‘Phaon?'

‘It's not magic, our baptism; we don't any of us suppose it to be that. It's a sign. It's the accepting of a kind of question and answer, a new kind. It's difficult to find words, Nausiphanes, though I'll need to find them sooner or later.'

‘Perhaps it's too soon for any words,' Felicio said. ‘We can't just explain the thing which we are in the middle of experiencing. Words come later.'

‘Whatever else there is going to be in the world,' Phaon said, ‘this will have happened.'

Again nobody spoke for a time. Niger will be waiting, Felicio thought, my new brother. And when he sees me he will feel suddenly happy. I have done that at least. ‘If I thought it was you Christians,' Nausiphanes said, abruptly yet slowly, ‘who could break the power and rule of Rome, I might think differently of you. But it is an irrational power and rule; it is the Platonic State gone bad—as everything does when it comes to Rome. How can it be attacked except by reason?'

‘People don't listen to reason,' Felicio said. ‘That has been tried. They aren't made that way—not yet. We don't understand our own minds; only we know they do not work predictably, as machines work.'

‘If only they did!' Nausiphanes cried out, suddenly so tired of arguing all the year round in the streets of a great city, with fools.

‘Then there'd be no need for us to pray,' Eunice said.

‘We've all got to go the best way we can,' Phaon said, troubled. ‘But if we can get help, like mother and Felicio and I have got it—'

‘Yes?' asked Nausiphanes.

‘We can bear pain and death better,' Felicio answered for Phaon.

‘And somehow we don't get so tired,' Eunice said. She'd had a long day of it, what with the kneading and the baking and the customers, and the housework, and the meeting at the end of it.

And her son had fasted for two days, but he didn't show a thing! And there was Felicio who could read and write and do regular accounts and all that, and he'd fasted too, but he didn't show it either. And there'd been the others who were dead now after having been witnesses. And she did somehow like Nausiphanes, for all he wasn't one of them. She looked round at the three men, still sitting there, still wanting to talk. If only you could be kind to everyone in the world like you could be to your neighbours. I'll cut one of my cakes for them, she thought, I can't really afford to I suppose, but there, what's the use of saving up these days. And maybe I can make them a hot drink, too.

The Piso conspiracy, in which several of the people in this
book were involved, gathered supporters and strength for
another few months. Then it was betrayed by a freedman
of Flavius Scaevinus, on the very night before the day
fixed for Nero's assassination. Those who were first
denounced, including Scaevinus himself, and Lucan,
were tortured into giving other names. Nero and his
advisers insisted on a thorough purge. Seneca was ordered
to kill himself, and did so. Others were exiled. It was the
final breach between Nero and the old aristocracy.
Tigellinus and his secret police were given a free
hand. A year later Gallio, who had been
under suspicion since the conspiracy,
had to kill himself. There is no
official record of the trial or
execution of Paul.

THE BLOOD OF THE MARTYRS

Naomi Mitchison was born in Edinburgh in 1897 and educated at the Dragon School and St Anne's College Oxford. As a member of the Haldane family (her father was a noted physiologist and her brother the famous genetic scientist and essayist J. B. S. Haldane), Naomi Mitchison has been equally distinguished as one of the foremost historical novelists of her generation.

In 1916 she married the Labour politician Dick Mitchison, later Baron Mitchison, QC, and during their years in London she took an active part in social and political affairs, including women's rights and the cause of birth control. Her career as a writer began with
The Conquered
(1923), a novel about the Celts whose approach anticipated similarly imaginative reconstructions from later writers of the Scottish Renaissance such as Neil Gunn, Grassic Gibbon and Eric Linklater. Further novels were set in ancient classical times, most notably
The Corn King and the Spring Queen
(1931) which drew on her interest in myth and ritual and the writings of J. G. Frazer.
The Blood of the Martyrs
(1939) brought her hatred of oppression and a perennial concern for human decency to a tale of the early Christian movement. Naomi Mitchison returned to Scotland in 1937 to live at Carradale in Kintyre, and her novel
The Bull Calves
(1947) deals with the years after the Jacobite '45 and the Haldane family history at that time. Involved with local politics, conversation and Highland affairs, she has also travelled widely, and her long association with an African tribe in Botswana led to her adoption as an honorary chief in the 1960s.

In a life full of cultural and creative commitment Naomi Mitchison knew and corresponded with a host of fellow writers, including E. M. Forster, W. H. Auden, Wyndham Lewis, Aldous Huxley and Neil Gunn. There are over seventy books to her name, including biographies, essays, short stories and poetry. Her entertaining memoirs have been published as
Small Talk
(1973),
All Change Here
(1975) and
You May Well Ask
(1979). She died in 1999.