The Blood of the Martyrs (7 page)

His present master, Flavius Crispus, preferred the old-fashioned comic dancing with masks at his dinner-parties, or even recitations. Manasses used to read aloud to him sometimes, when his secretary was busy, and also helped with the ordinary waiting at table, saw to the wines, and so on. It was a rather stricter household, and for a time he disliked it, but Josias, who worked in the kitchen, liked it more. It was difficult for them to get away for the love-feasts, but by and by they found that they were not the only Christians in the new household, either. There was a little imp of a boy, Phaon, whom Manasses had to teach to dance—he was quite good when he took any trouble. He was a slave, but his mother, Eunice, was a freedwoman and Christian; she had sometimes been to the meetings in Caesar's household, and now there were meetings in her house, which Manasses and Josias could go to. Euphemia, another freedwoman, used to come, and Rhodon the metal-worker, and Phineas and
Sapphira, and sometimes others. Lalage used to come when she was in that part of the city. She had been baptised almost at the same time that Manasses and Josias were re-baptised, after the meeting had decided that their old purification did not count. And later on Niger, who was black and having a bad time where he was, came, when he could manage to get away.

But the meetings were often in the house of Crispus, in summer always in the unused boiler-room, where the furnaces for the hot water system stood cold for eight months of the year. By that time Argas had come, and Dapyx, and then little Persis. Sometimes, too, there would be brothers who were strangers, who had only just come to Rome. They were always welcome and always trusted, and usually, but not quite always, the trust was justified. But there was one man who prophesied and spoke with tongues, and they lent him money, more than they could really afford, and then he walked out on them and they never got any of it back. More of them than not were Jews, but still quite a number were Greeks or other Gentiles: Manasses hardly even noticed now. And sometimes there would be a new convert, like Sotion, the freedman who lived quite near and who had begun to come to the meetings lately.

It was another life going on all the time under and beside the ordinary slave's life. The two lives did not really overlap. On the whole the Christians in Crispus's household were good servants, unusually truthful and honest. But none of them would have dreamed of breathing a word of all this to their master. It was nothing to do with the masters. And so when Manasses looked up from clearing the table and saw Beric the Briton making the sign—their sign—it was like suddenly seeing light through a brick wall. And then, when it was apparent that the Briton did not really know what he was doing or who they were, he had been sickeningly afraid. But he had gathered up his courage and spoken gently, and he had seen that the Briton was afraid too, only in a different way. And then? Was it that he had forgiven the Briton for being one of the masters, or had the Briton forgiven him and Argas for being slaves? They had become each a little in the power of the other. But not this time as he had always
before been in the power of his masters. Not in hate. But in some suspended feeling that was half way to love, that was a reaching out from either side to the other.

Lalage had gone out and left them alone. She had said, laughing, that she would come back and be paid the next day, and the Briton had stood looking after her, one hand out as if he would have stopped her, but not finding anything to say. Then he turned back to them, saying, ‘The words—what was it you meant by the words? Is that how you know one another?'

‘Yes,' said Manasses, adding, ‘They are the words of our prayer.'

‘Your prayer,' said Beric; he was stumbling over it, thinking hard and slowly, ‘to your Leader. But He is dead.'

‘He is risen,' said little Phaon quickly, but Manasses said, ‘Yes, He is dead.' Time enough for the other thing later.

‘Then,' said Beric, ‘is this to call Him back?'

Manasses was thinking what to say, but Argas said, ‘He will come when the time is ripe and the people have suffered enough. This is to show we are His!'

Manasses said, ‘He taught us to pledge ourselves to His Father in heaven, who is the Father of us all, with these words and in this manner of praying …' And then he hesitated, because it was so queer to be saying the words in front of one of the masters.

But Beric said, ‘Go on, Manasses.'

And Manasses stood up by the table which still wanted wiping over and lifted his hands and said, ‘Our Father which art in Heaven …'

Then Argas stood up too and suddenly touched Beric's hand and said to him, ‘Say it with us, brother.' And he and Phaon and the Briton all stood and repeated it line for line after Manasses.

Bersabe's eldest girl had been sold three years ago. So now she kept trying to hide Persis, dressing her in old rags and sending her to work in the dirty back kitchen where perhaps she mightn't be noticed. Hoping her master wouldn't see. If it was to be again like it had been with Roxane, she would die; she had wanted to die then, but she was too tough. Besides, there had been Persis and the little ones—though she hated them for months, hated them for not being Roxane, and then, for forgetting her; she never forgot Roxane, day or night. But from that day to this no word of her first baby, the little soft thing she'd nursed through her childhood, stolen milk for, been beaten for, been so proud of, that silky dark hair—oh, all the summer evenings she'd sat on the step combing Roxane's hair and singing to her, happy, oh yes, as happy as a slave woman could be!—and then: she kept on dreaming still of the dealer's agent, the fat Syrian. Bersabe had always thought these things happened in other households, to other mothers, not to her. But it had happened. So now she must never be proud of Persis, mustn't touch her softly or get the tangles out of her hair, never beg a piece of stuff for a dress for her. But Persis was cross with her mother: why couldn't she ever be allowed into the front part of the house, why was she always treated like a baby? On her own she begged herself a dress from one of the daughters of the house, and oh, then, when she put it on, smoothing it against herself, Bersabe couldn't help seeing that the child was a woman, and that she was terribly like Roxane. And Bersabe threw up her arms and howled, flung herself into a corner and cried—as she knew she was bound to be made to cry, some day soon. But Persis combed out her own hair and looked at her reflection in a pan of water.

It was less than a year since Bersabe had been a member of the congregation of the church at Philippi. Sometimes still she caught herself asking luck from other gods. But now, more and more, when she was unhappy, her mind wheeled back to the low room, away from the glare and noise and laughter of the street, to that feeling of unbounded kindness and trust that sometimes overwhelmed her into tears and sometimes into singing or the sudden sharp cry of delight, and that stayed with her, at work or asleep, for days and days afterwards. She had never taken Persis with her: not taking her was part of the insistence that Persis was only a child. Now she was sure she must take her, and at once.

Epaphroditus, the deacon, was a little doubtful about baptising Persis, but Bersabe wept and stormed, and Evodia advised it, and Persis had fasted and seemed to know the Words and the Way of Life and to be eager for it herself. Actually, she was very frightened. Two or three days after she had dressed herself up in that cast-off dress, feeling so grand, her master had called to her as she was carrying a bucket of water through to the kitchen; she left the bucket and ran over, pleased to be noticed. But after that it wasn't so nice. He asked her how old she was and what she could do, and a lot of other questions, and tilted up her face with a finger under her chin and looked at her in a way that made her want to cry. She had scuttled back to her mother and the two of them had cried in one another's arms, and neither had said anything about Roxane but both remembered her, and for the thousandth time Bersabe wondered if she was alive or dead … or just being hurt. Now in the meeting they were both praying that the thing need not happen, if only the Lord Jesus would take it away! And when Persis was taken to the pool under the waterfall and felt the water of baptism, she thought that perhaps it would be all right, oh, she was almost sure it would! And when they brought her back she was lifting her arms for joy and some of the congregation thanked God for letting them see so lovely a sight. But Bersabe stayed behind to talk to Evodia and Syntyche, the two senior women of the congregation; they talked it over together, while Bersabe sobbed and Persis listened and became every moment colder and more frightened and less
able to think that the baptism had changed anything. Evodia took her aside and told her that in this town or that she might be able to find a church and friends, but above all she now had a Friend for ever, the Friend whose presence she had felt when the waters touched her. But already Persis, swaying from her two days' fast, had forgotten how she had felt then. Only she remembered the names of the towns and the signs which she might look for, and repeated to herself the words which could make her known. But she could not bear the ruthful looks of the older women and the way they would not let her forget what might be going to happen to her.

That night and for three more nights, she cried herself to sleep, and Bersabe slipped away from work to come and sit with her and smooth her hair and stare and stare at her lovely mouth and soft eyebrows and straight little nose—as she had not dared to stare and love while the thing might yet be averted. As she stared she prayed. And the fourth day the same dealer's agent who had taken Roxane came to take Persis. Bersabe asked him very humbly if he could tell her where Roxane was, but he had no idea; she had changed hands several times. Bersabe was remembering what changing hands meant in the way of stripping and handling. She had been a pretty slave girl herself, away in Asia. At least there were some things people didn't want to do to women after they got grey hair. One of the daughters of the house gave Persis a silver piece, and they were all quite nice to poor old Bersabe after Persis was taken away. She had screamed rather at the end, in fact both of them had.

Persis was put on board ship and taken to Delos. All the time on the ship she cried and whimpered and did not think much about the church at Philippi or any of the Words she had been taught, only about her mother and her little brothers and the warm kitchen and the way to the well, and a certain crack in the wall that she always used to run her finger along, and a certain tree she used to climb, with handholds shiny from children's using. But when she got to Delos she stopped being homesick because the immediate things that were done to her or that she thought were going to be done, were so very horrible that she couldn't think of anything else. The slave dealers were mostly no worse than
other merchants and generally more interested in the price than in any other aspects of their merchandise, but in the hot, steep, crowded little city of Delos, something bad used to get at them: the smells and cries and the foreign voices and the constant handling of foreign and helpless women and boys. So it was a place where human beings asked much for mercy and got little. The dealers would get bored with their stuff and wouldn't even mind spoiling it; there was plenty more. When they had been drinking they would go down to the warehouse at the docks and knock the chained barbarians about; anything that was hopelessly spoiled could be thrown into the sea. Of course, Persis was not treated like that; she was too valuable; she only heard it and sometimes saw it. She was darker and slenderer than the Greek girls, and easy to teach. By the time she had changed hands a few times, been re-embarked and landed again at Ostia, she was still technically a virgin. It did not make much difference when she ceased to be, except that she was hurt in a new way. Sometimes she could hardly remember her mother and Philippi now; the barrier of horror between herself and all that was too strong. She did remember that Rome was the name of a city where there were churches, but it was too much to hope that she would ever find one. It was too much to hope that she would ever find friends or kindness again.

In the first household the mistress whipped her and sold her, because of what the master did. In the second she was so frightened of the overseer that she dropped her work whenever she saw him and couldn't remember what she'd been told to do for five minutes on end. It was almost a relief to be re-sold to the same dealer, who fed her up and was tolerably gentle to her and even let her play marbles and cat's cradle with some girls of her own age, and finally sold her into a decent house, where she was to be trained as maid to Flavia, the only daughter of her new master, Flavius Crispus. There was nothing special to be frightened about here over her master; he was oldish and kindly. There was a young master in the house too, but he was apparently not even a Roman. The slaves called him ‘The Briton' and by and by someone told her that he really did come from an island weeks away in the cold middle of the sea, where his father had been a king.

He was quite well liked. He had asked Persis her name and spoken to her once or twice, but he didn't do anything to her. After a time she couldn't help knowing that he was really interested in her young mistress Flavia.

The old slave woman who was training her found her quick and clever at doing hair and pleating and pinning. She thought Flavia was very beautiful with her crisp shining curls and brilliant eyes, and she would have loved her if Flavia had been at all nice to her. However, she was safe here; she could look up and breathe again; she could remember if she chose to. She could look about the new household and wonder if she would make any friends.

It was very puzzling at first, trying to keep it all in her head. There was no regular overseer, but one or two old slaves or freedmen, and the Briton kept a general eye on things. The head cook was an Italian freedman, good at the traditional dishes. There was the usual amount of scolding and threatening, but very little real punishment, and on the whole it was fairly cheerful and the food not bad. There was no one else from as far East as she was—by race at least—but there were several Jews, plenty of Greeks or Sicilians, some Thracians or North Gauls for the heavy work, but no Britons. Perhaps Crispus had thought it wasn't tactful to have them in the same house as the boy he had brought up. There was nearly as much Greek as Latin spoken in the house; however, Persis had to learn Latin quickly, for Flavia, although she could read and write Greek fluently, was not going to take the trouble to speak it so as to make things easier for the new girl.

There was a boy about the same age as Persis, one of the Greeks; he was a dining-room slave, clever at dancing and miming and all sorts of tricks, and able to get round the old master. He was born in the house; Eunice, his mother, had been in the kitchen for years and, even now she'd been freed, was still in and out quite often. It was she who had spoken in a friendly way to Persis, asking her to come over some evening to her little bakery, which was quite close. Persis hadn't wanted to at first; she didn't like Phaon, who was a cheeky, teasing little devil, quite sure he was going to be freed himself soon; and besides, she knew about the house
where she was now, the best and the worst of it. She wasn't going to risk looking outside; there wouldn't be anything worth looking at. She knew what a slave girl's life was now; it wasn't any use doing any silly hoping or picturing.

All the same, fat old Eunice asked her again; she said, rather surprisingly, ‘My boy said you were lonely.' Persis thought angrily, what right had he to talk about me! And then, but he didn't look as if he cared. And while she was thinking that, Eunice had taken her by the arm, and then Persis found herself crying and sobbing that she had lost her mother—had lost everything—and Eunice stumped straight off to Flavia's old slave woman and said she was taking Persis along with her that evening and there was to be no fuss, and before Persis had quite stopped hiccoughing from her burst of tears, she was out in the street, with Eunice patting her and talking to her. Persis hardly listened to the words; it was the kindness behind them that mattered. That was like the rich warm smell of new bread that she breathed in at the bakery, curled up on a rug on the floor at Eunice's feet. By and by Phaon came tumbling in. Persis made to jump up, but Eunice wouldn't let her, and Phaon curled up on the rug too. He was much nicer now; he didn't tease her at all, and perhaps, thought Persis, his teasing me before was just his way of trying to make friends. She stayed there for the best part of the evening, and forgot she was a slave girl who had been bought and sold and forcibly made adult at Delos and other toughening places, and remembered she was fifteen and it was still nice to dig one's fingers into dough and play silly games with Phaon and his mother.

After that she came fairly often, whenever she could get away for half an hour. Sometimes she would find one or two of the others, Manasses perhaps, or Josias or Argas, another of the Greek boys. But she didn't pay much attention to them; what she wanted was to be allowed to be clean and a child again. Perhaps, after all, the whole world wasn't hateful.

Sometimes she and Phaon helped with the baking. Most of it was rye bread or some mixture, but there were always a few white loaves for the better class customers, and often Eunice made them up into fancy twists. Phaon was very good
at this; he would give the dough a flip and mould it with his fingers, and it turned into a swan or a rose. ‘Make something else, do!' said Persis. He laughed and dipped his hands into the flour and began on another lump of dough. In a couple of minutes it had turned into a fish with beautiful fins. His mother looked at it, smiled, and then said, very seriously.

‘I can't bake that, Phaon.'

‘Why not?' asked Persis, ‘it's lovely!' And then saw that Phaon and his mother were looking at one another with a strange sort of understanding, and suddenly remembered something she had forgotten for more than a year and said breathlessly, ‘Do you mean the fish is—something else?'

‘It's only a joke,' said Phaon quickly, and Persis thought, oh no, of course not, that would have been too good to be true, and looked it, for Eunice took her hand and asked,

‘Did you ever hear of a fish that meant something different?'

‘Oh yes,' said Persis, and knew she was bound to cry in a minute, because remembering that meant remembering everything. In a blur she saw the piles of cut wood and the round oven and the table with the dough on it, and Phaon looking straight at her, catching at her, saying very eagerly,