The Blood of the Martyrs (32 page)

‘Well, just as you like, of course.' Hermeias shrugged his shoulders slightly. If the Briton insisted on putting his head into a wasps' nest! Beric pushed the curtain back and walked in. They were sitting opposite one another. She was
looking—exceedingly pretty. Doing her hair a new way. You wanted to get it in your hand—Crispus frowned at him, motioning him to go, but he said quickly, ‘I have some bad news.'

‘The gods avert it!' said Crispus mechanically, then, ‘What—more than I know already?'

‘Gallio is arrested,' Beric said, not even glancing at Flavia now, ‘they're searching his house,' and he slipped the letter back to Crispus, who gasped and went rather pale. ‘Is there nothing I can do?' Beric asked.

‘No. Nothing.' He held on to the letter. ‘Thank you, my boy. Thank you. I shall have to see what I can do—later. I shall have to see the authorities.'

‘Perhaps,' said Flavia sweetly, ‘
I
could do something, father?' Then she turned to Beric. ‘You're not being very amiable this morning, are you?'

‘Flavia!' said Crispus.

‘That maid of mine that you used to be so interested in is waiting about somewhere, Beric,' she went on, curling back in her chair like a soft kitten. ‘Wouldn't you like to see her?'

‘Thanks. I shall go and kiss her at once!' said Beric savagely, and walked out.

So that was what she was like now. After Aelius Candidus and Ofonius Tigellinus. To start with. It suited her. And Crispus? What had her father done that she should want to hurt him? Not brought her up properly, he thought, remembering what Domina Aelia had said, not shown her anything worth dying for. So she's taken to power: power over people, because she's a woman. But if she'd been a man it would have been power over money and politics.

People too, in the end. He almost bumped into Persis. ‘Please,' she said, ‘could I speak to you a minute?'

‘Of course,' he said, and suddenly wondered if perhaps she had a private message to him from her mistress, then hated himself for thinking it—for being such a fool—for wanting to eat carrion. He gave her a little push, ‘We'll go along to my room, Persis.'

She followed him and, half way, whispered, ‘Please—could I see Argas or Phaon, too?'

‘Oh, all right,' he said, and called across to a slave, ‘Here, Mikkos, tell that fool Argas to get me a clean bath towel!'

She slipped into the room after him. He sat down on the bed and pulled her down, gently, beside him. ‘I told Flavia I was going to kiss you,' he said, ‘and you can tell her I did if she asks you. There, silly! What d'you think one asks a pretty girl to come to one's room for?'

‘I thought—I thought … Oh, aren't you one of us any longer—'

‘Yes, of course I am. Persis, you're a little goose. Why did you shove me away?'

‘I—I didn't know—if you were a friend still.'

‘I'm a friend.' He picked up her hand and kissed the fingers, one after the other. ‘There—not frightened? You
are
a pretty girl, you know, Persis. Would you rather not be?'

‘Not till the Kingdom's come. I'd like to be then. When we're all free.'

‘I'm not thinking of you as a slave, Persis. You know that?'

‘I know, brother.'

Argas came in quickly. ‘You wanted me?' And then to Persis, very low: ‘Peace, sister.'

‘She wanted you,' Beric said. ‘Now then, Persis, what is it?'

Persis said, ‘After the last meeting—Lalage and Sophrosyne were arrested.'

Argas made the sign of the cross, jerkily. That was that. ‘On the same charge?' Beric asked. She nodded. ‘Getting close, isn't it?'

‘I keep on hearing,' said Persis, ‘when that man—when Tigellinus is in the house—about the things they're going to do to us. Oh, he keeps on talking about it! The things they're going to do to the women. I think I could bear being killed. But …'

‘Who's to be deacon now?' Argas said.

‘You, Argas?'

‘I can't be. It's all I can do to get away for a meeting. I'm not even sure of that.' He glanced at Beric. ‘What about Phineas or Eunice?'

‘He said he didn't want to be; he didn't feel sure enough. It had better be her; she's not suspected yet. At least, we don't think so.'

‘They've got her name as like as not. Per sis, are we going to talk about this in front of
him
?'

‘Go and talk in the passage if you think it's safer,' said Beric, and let go Persis's hand.

‘Don't be silly, Argas,' said Persis, ‘he's one of us.'

‘
Is he
?'

‘Look here, Argas,' said Beric, cold and quietly, getting to his feet, ‘I don't think I'm going to stand for this. You can go to the Arena your own way. I shan't help you.'

The two men stood very close in the small room, each face a few inches from the other, tense, enemy face. Persis had jumped up too. ‘You can't—you're Christians! Oh, stop looking like that, Argas. Remember Manasses. He wouldn't—remember Jesus!' Argas gave a kind of gasping cry and jerked up his hand in front of his mouth. Persis was whispering to him, ‘Say you're sorry, Argas. It was your fault. Oh do make it right!' But Argas couldn't. It was not fair—not fair—that the masters should be able to say such things! Then, from out in the courtyard, Sannio was calling for Persis. ‘Oh,' she said, ‘I must go. Oh you are unkind to me to quarrel. Both of you!'

‘Wait a minute,' said Beric, and pushed through the curtains with his arm round her and kissed her in front of Sannio—whatever he thought this time!—before she ran off. Then he went back into the room and Argas was still there, Argas who was a Christian and had been whipped for it, who had a right to be angry—as he would have been angry if he had been a whipped British slave, with the Kingdom always being taken out of his reach. He looked gently at Argas and said, ‘Why did you want me so much at the love-feast?'

Again Argas gave that little cry of war against himself. He looked away and down, past Beric, and muttered, ‘We're so few now. We don't know what's going to happen to us. Nor to anything. We can't look forward to the next time now. Maybe there won't be any next time. I can die all right. It's been worth it. If I knew it would go on.'

‘I can't help you to be certain of that, Argas,' Beric said.

‘No. Not really. Only—I wanted you in. Then our Church would have gone on. Even if all the rest of us zgot killed.'

‘I might be killed too.'

‘You. They wouldn't kill you.'

‘Why not? I'm not even a citizen.'

‘You're—different.'

‘Am I? Am I, Argas?' He took Argas's hand and held it against his own chest, over the heart. Argas at last looked up and met his eyes. ‘Aren't we brothers, Argas?' he said again.

‘Then why won't you—take our baptism—now—be one of us? We wouldn't feel so few then.'

‘Listen, Argas,' said Beric, ‘I wanted to be baptised last time. Before all this. It's not because I'm afraid that I'm not asking for it now. You know that, don't you?'

‘Yes,' said Argas, ‘I know that, Beric.'

‘There are two things. First, there's Crispus. Well, I've got to decide sooner or later how much I've the right to hurt him. I expect I've got to. And then. I haven't told anyone this. I killed Sotion.'

‘But—you know we don't kill. Ever. You can't be in the Kingdom if you're a murderer.'

‘I know. So you see why I can't come to the love-feast. But—do you think it really counted about Sotion? He was only a miserable little thing. I killed him like you'd kill a beetle on the floor.'

‘Sotion was our enemy and we forgave him. It wasn't easy, but we did it. All of us. Manasses forgave him almost at once, and then he showed us how. We had to see what it was like for Sotion to do it. He did it for money; he was a poor man.'

‘Not so poor as most of you.'

‘Well, we didn't let ourselves be tempted, and he did. That's all. He was stupider than the rest of us, too; he didn't see what he was missing. Most likely the police had got something on him, besides, and so they made him do it. We thought out all that when we were in prison. And you spoiled our forgiveness by killing him.'

‘Then—I'm out of it.' Suddenly Beric felt very much upset; this was much worse than having a ghost after one!

‘Not if you're sorry for killing him, Beric. Not if you'll see you had no right to kill him, if you'll take the weight of having done it. Then we can forgive you in Jesus' name and you can be baptised and wash it off. Shall we, Beric?'

Beric stood silent. He was sorry for something—something to do with them all and the Kingdom—but was he sorry that Sotion was dead? The man was certainly better out of the way, wasn't he? If they'd all forgiven him, would he possibly have become different? Would he not have given any more names? It was so very unlikely that anyone would change that much, that you couldn't take it into account. Or could you? The prisoners could forgive him because it was the only thing they could do about him, the only action they could take. But he, Beric, he'd had a choice of actions … He couldn't put himself into the man's place, as Argas apparently could. Because he'd never been poor himself, never had the beginnings of that temptation. You don't understand other people's temptations when you haven't had them yourself. And there was Argas, wanting to baptise him so much! Into danger. Into death. If that mattered. He couldn't quite think about it, couldn't yet picture death affecting him. If he let Argas do it, then Argas would feel as if he were free …

Persis came slipping back between the curtains. ‘She didn't want me after all! Oh, is it all right? Have you forgiven one another?'

‘We didn't even need to say so,' Beric answered her.

But Argas said, ‘Persis, he's our brother. But he killed Sotion.'

‘Oh!' said Persis. ‘Then it wasn't because you're a gentleman that you wouldn't come to the love-feast, but because you're a murderer.'

‘I'm sorry if you want me to be sorry,' said Beric, ‘but he had to be got rid of.'

‘You're pretending to be God,' Persis said.

‘There's someone who needs to be got rid of much more,' Beric said low, ‘and that's Tigellinus. And I'm going to do
it. I'm going to deliver you from evil. I'm going to be God's instrument.'

‘Tigellinus …' said Persis. ‘Oh—not because of
her
?'

‘No,' said Beric, ‘because of you. All of you. And you've got to help me, Persis. You've got to be God's instrument too. You've got to let me in when—he's with
her
. He won't be armed then.'

‘You're trying to tempt me,' said Persis. ‘How can I? You're wicked, Beric. You mustn't.'

‘But think, Persis, it's for Lalage and all of them in prison. Manasses. Euphemia. If I do this, then those things at the Games won't happen. The things you were afraid of. They won't happen to you.'

‘I'd rather they happened than you do this sin—and make me help you—to stop them. If they're God's will—'

‘Why do you say they are? I think they're the will of Tigellinus.'

‘Then God will strike him.'

‘Yes, through me. And you, Persis. If you don't help me I'll do it myself, but I'm more likely to be caught.'

‘Oh, Beric, you're twisting me—Argas, help me, it's getting so difficult!'

Argas had been listening, trying to sort it out. The difficulty had been that when he first heard Beric say he was going to kill Tigellinus, he had felt a most disconcerting hope and excitement. He had first to fight against this in himself, to think what Manasses would have said, how Manasses would have been able, quite easily, to think of it. Or Lalage. He stood there, fingering the bath towel he had brought at the beginning, praying, thinking over his direct instructions from Jesus who had understood everything—the Way of Life. Sense, it had been. And Persis was pulling at his arm, and Beric, who was at last being friends with him again, was standing there, certain of what he was going to do. Seeing ahead of him. And had got to be stopped.

‘Well,' said Beric, ‘isn't it sense?'

He had to answer. ‘No,' he said, ‘not so much sense in the end as the Way of Life. I'll try and tell you. Give me a minute, Beric. It's not too easy. You want to do something
good in the end, good for all of us. Right. But to get there you're going to do something bad. Something directly forbidden. Something that'll keep you out of the Kingdom.'

‘If I could do this for you, it wouldn't matter me being out of the Kingdom. I'd do that. I'd lose my chance of the Kingdom. I'd go back to where I was. I'd die too; perhaps I'll have to. Jesus said if you took the sword you'd got to be killed by the sword. I think someone's got to be that now, and I will be.'

‘But it's not so easy. We can't let you buy us out that way. If we did we'd be murderers too. You can't get out of having to be good. Having to look after your own soul. What you're trying to do is to get behind what's plain and sense. To say you know best. Better than Jesus and everyone else who's thought about it. Listen, Beric; if you do this wrong thing it will spoil the good thing it was meant to help. Like your killing Sotion spoiled our forgiving him. You'll get us all mixed up in it, in our minds I mean, making us feel our Kingdom and our love for one another is happening because of a murder. Because of a sin. Which it can't be. It's got to be founded on love and just nothing else. It isn't like ordinary things that are founded on hate or money or some kind of rule. It's a different kind of thing. You know. You felt it yourself. It didn't have anything to do with murder: did it?'

‘But Tigellinus is part of the
thing
,' said Beric, ‘the thing we're trying to get rid of so that the Kingdom will be able to come. So that there'll be the kind of equality that we'll be able to love one another in!'