The Blood of the Martyrs

by Naomi Mitchison

  Phaon was crying, clutching and rubbing himself where Tigellinus had pinched him. ‘I hate him!’ he said, ‘I hate him, I’d like to kill him!’

  Argas caught hold of him. ‘No, you don’t,’ he said, ‘you don’t, Phaon.’ And he whispered some words to Phaon which seemed to calm him down. The slaves yawned. They would have liked to go to bed, but they knew they’d catch it if they left the clearing-up till morning. Lalage was talking in a corner to Manasses, quite low, about something which seemed to interest them both. Sannio made a dirty joke, but Argas didn’t laugh.

  At last Lalage said, ‘Well, I shall go in, temper or no temper, and make that precious Briton of yours pay up. And extra for Tigellinus!’ She patted Phaon and he smiled a little. The accompanist had nodded to sleep on a bench.

  Lalage went into the room quietly, for she could be very quiet, and found herself behind Beric; she stood and watched him, for something seemed to be happening to him which was the kind of thing she understood. He was standing beside the couch where Candidus had been and he was talking to empty air, but, as Lalage listened, it became quite plain what he was doing. ‘Now, you swine,’ he snarled, ‘you Aelius Candidus, you’ve struck me. Struck me before witnesses. Me, a king’s son.’ He clutched about with his hands, felt at his belt, drew out a knife and pulled its edge across his thumb. Then he lifted it and held it point down and spoke again to emptiness, again from snarling misery. ‘No, go down on your knees, Roman, and beg for your miserable life. Say it. Say it after me. I, Aelius Candidus, in fear and trembling, beg of you, Beric, son of Caradoc the King …’

  But already the harsh aching voice was quivering and dropping. He let the knife go, and, as it dropped with a little clatter, he turned and saw Lalage. In the moment before his anger, she spoke, gently: ‘But it wouldn’t have been any good, you know, even if you had done it then.’

  ‘It would have been!’ said Beric. ‘Now—now—oh, she said I was dirt and I’d got to get used to it!’

  ‘Who said that?’

  ‘Flavia.’

  ‘Was she—your Flavia?’

  ‘I thought she was. I don’t know. Oh, I don’t know anything now! It’s all gone!’ He made a wild gesture. ‘All my life now—Romans are going to be able to treat me like that—like dirt! She said—’

  ‘I know,’ said Lalage soothingly, and now you can remember all the things you didn’t say to her. Poor king’s son!’

  ‘King’s son!’ he said; ‘yes, and then—dirt. Impudent native. She’d have me whipped. And now I’m blubbering about it to a dancing girl!’

  ‘Why not?’ said Lalage, ‘I’m dirt, too.’ And she smiled at him.

  Suddenly he grabbed at her, pulled her down beside him. ‘Listen!’ he said, ‘I’ve never thought about it before—hardly ever—but it’s all true. I am dirt. I’m nothing. I’m only here by the accident of Claudius Caesar being soft! My father’s dead. It’s all just a mistake that I’m not a chained slave. And it’s a mistake they might take back. Then I’d be a slave really.’

  ‘And couldn’t you bear it?’

  ‘No. No! I thought I was happy and now I know it’s all lost.’

  ‘All lost. But that’s the best time in life. No, look at me, Beric, son of Caradoc, listen. When everything is lost you can be born again.’

  ‘I wish I could! As a Roman. The equal of anyone. Instead of dirt!’

  ‘Dirt? You?’ She shook him; he felt in her hands and arms that she was strong, a dancer at the top of her physical powers, and he listened, feeling an increasing strangeness and excitement. ‘Look at you; you’re wearing a clean tunic. I expect you’ve got a dozen more put away. You’ve got gold pins at your shoulders. You’re not hungry. You’re not in pain. You’ve only been hit once. If it comes to dirt, I’m more like the real thing. I used to belong to an old woman who hired me out. To anyone. That makes you feel properly dirty. Coming back dirty in the mornings and knowing it was all going to happen again. Well, I made enough to pay her off and start on my own. And even now—you saw for yourself what I have to put up with: and look as if I liked it. But I don’t feel as if I was dirt. All that had to happen to me just so as to give me a chance to become myself—to be reborn as my real self.’

  She stopped. Beric wanted her to go on. ‘How?’ he said; ‘tell me some more!’ But Lalage made a funny movement with her right hand, touching her forehead and chest in a queer way. She was silent for a minute, looking away from him, and all at once he became wildly impatient: ‘Go on!’ he half shouted at her.

  Lalage turned to him again, speaking very firmly: ‘This is only the beginning. You’re going to have His help. Even I can see that.’

  Now Beric was completely bewildered. ‘Whose help?’

  ‘The help of One who lived for us who’ve lost hope and found it again and been reborn. Who promised that He would feed the hungry and give their turn to the humble and meek. Who will see there is equal justice at last, not one scale weighted. Not Romans and natives, Beric. Not masters and servants. Not ladies and whores.’

  He thought he was beginning to understand. ‘Is it—a leader? Against Rome?’ Rome had killed King Cymbeline his grandfather and King Caradoc his father and Togodumnus his uncle—and the Queen of the Iceni—and oh, everywhere, the King of the Parthians, the Queen of Egypt, the King of the Jews … But Lalage was speaking again and he wanted to listen.

  ‘He’s not the kind of leader you’re thinking of still. He’s not a king. But yet He’s stronger than all the rich and all the power they’ve got. He’s the strength of the poor. My strength. I would like to tell you about Him,’ she went on, slowly and softly.

  Beric found he was wanting to put himself into her hands. ‘I promise—’ he began, and then wondered what he had meant to promise.

  She seemed to accept it though; she took a deep breath and began to explain. ‘You see, the whole thing has to come from us. The dirt. People can’t be reborn if they’re all mixed with owning things. Thinking about the things they own. The lucky ones are allowed to start from the very bottom, without possessions, without power, without love.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Beric; ‘how can a man be lucky when he’s penniless and helpless and alone?’

  ‘Not alone any more,’ said Lalage. ‘He’s with us. He lived among us, among poor people, and women like me. And in the end He got the whip on His back and the nails in His hands and feet. He had to be crucified, because that’s the worst, filthiest kind of death. Nothing worse than that happens to the lowest of the dirt. He couldn’t have helped us if He hadn’t taken on our life and died our death.’

  ‘But then He’s dead. Crucified. Like a slave. Do you mean your leader is dead, Lalage?’

  ‘He had to suffer everything before He became our leader. Life and death.’

  Beric considered all this. There obviously was a leader, alive or dead. Lalage wasn’t making it up. He thought he had heard about leaders who came back … But it was too puzzling to talk about any more. Instead he asked, ‘Lalage, what was that you did with your hands just now?’

  ‘That? Oh, that’s His sign, the sign of the poor and the hurt and the ones who are kind to one another. The brothers. See if you can make it.’ She guided his hands into the sign of the cross; it was a kind of magic; he felt dazed and rather happy. He sat quite quiet and she sat quiet too.

  The slaves came in. ‘Will it be all right if we clear, sir?’ asked Argas, and Beric nodded. They began to clear up, talking to one another in whispers. Sannio and Mikkos took out the cups and dishes to wash up. Manasses and Phaon were tidying the couches. Suddenly Phaon began shaking the cushions violently and sobbing again: they were the cushions Tigellinus had been lying on. ‘Steady on, kid,’ said Manasses, ‘you’ll have the stuffing out.’

  ‘Wish I had his stuffing out!’ said Phaon.

  Manasses said low: ‘Don’t be a fool. You’ll be lucky if you don’t get worse done to you than that before you’re much older. There’s some houses—’


  ‘You’ve told me that already!’ said Phaon, and his voice rose to a squeak. ‘But I won’t stand it! Not always.’

  Argas looked up, frowning, from his bucket and rags, and Manasses caught the boy by the wrist and said very quietly, ‘It won’t go on always. We know that.’

  Phaon choked and swallowed. ‘Yes,’ he whispered. ‘Yes. We are not to be oppressed. He shall fill the hungry with good things.’

  Manasses whispered back the answer, ‘And the rich He shall send empty away.’

  But Argas was watching Beric and Lalage, scrubbing towards them. Half aloud, he said to Lalage, ‘Got your pay yet?’

  Lalage answered rather oddly, ‘I think I am being paid now.’

  Beric was disturbed by her speaking. He looked up and saw Argas, but he did not seem to mind now that Argas had seen the spilled wine and the blow. Perhaps Argas, also, had once been free and proud and then lost everything—what was it?—lost power, lost possessions, lost love. He had never thought of Argas that way before; he had been one of the slaves, just one of the slaves. Now their glances met, fumbling, and he heard Lalage saying into his ear, ‘Make the sign, Beric, son of Caradoc the king, the way I showed you.’

  Uncertainly he made the sign, and Argas, sitting back on his heels in the dirty water, answered him quick with the same sign, and Manasses and Phaon came slipping round from the other couch and made it too. Manasses whispered urgently to Lalage, ‘Does he know the Words, too?’

  ‘The words?’ said Beric, bewildered. ‘I don’t know what you’re all talking about! I don’t even know the name of the one you follow.’

  Manasses, behind, whispered, ‘Take care!’

  But Argas, watching him steadily, said, ‘We follow Jesus, the Christ, who died for us.’

  Something in Beric gave a sickening jump. He said in horror: ‘Then you’re—Christians?’ And he looked from one to the other; he was in a trap. Somehow the slaves had got him down, tangled him, like Flavia had. Only it was Lalage this time!

  She answered him. ‘Yes, friend.’ And the others nodded.

  He broke out, increasingly upset, ‘You, Manasses. You poured me out my wine this evening. And you were a Christian all the time!’

  He clenched his fists, he wanted to hurt Manasses. If only Manasses hadn’t stayed so quiet. If Manasses hadn’t smiled and said, ‘Do I look as if I wanted to poison you?’

  ‘But,’ said Beric, ‘Christians are—’

  ‘Dirt,’ said Lalage. ‘So we are. I told you.’

  ‘But you dance in all the best houses, Lalage!’ said Beric desperately. ‘And Manasses … Argas … little Phaon … I can’t understand it. In this house! And you look just the same as you always did!’

  ‘Do we?’ said Argas.

  Beric stood up, looked from him to Manasses, went over to Phaon and tilted up his face and stared at it. ‘No,’ he said, ‘you don’t. No. You don’t look like slaves. You look like men. So that’s what it does.’

  Manasses said, ‘We’ve been reborn. We’ve been like this ever since, but you’ve only just seen it. Friend.’

  ‘Why are you calling me friend?’ Beric asked. He only wanted to know, but Manasses and the other slaves took it as a rebuke and stood silent and uncomfortable.

  It was Lalage who answered. ‘Because you made our sign. After that none of us could help calling you friend. Don’t you like him to say it? Isn’t it a good word?’

  ‘I—I think I like it,’ said Beric.

  Suddenly Phaon said, ‘She laughed at you—I saw her. They do laugh. When one of us is hurt. They don’t think of us as people. We’re only people when—when He’s with us.’

  Beric flushed, for a moment hating that anyone should speak of that. Of her laughing. And of him and the slaves in the same breath, the same thought! Young Argas was watching him; a slave has to know what the masters are thinking. He said, ‘I’m a man, aren’t I? As it might be—your brother.’ Beric did not answer. Argas said humbly, ‘You don’t like to think that?’ What was going to happen? What was their master going to make happen?

  Argas was still kneeling in the dirty water. He had been doing the dirty work all evening while Beric lay on a couch among the gentlemen. While Tigellinus had been pulling Phaon and Lalage about, treating them like animals, like things. And he, Beric—he hadn’t noticed that they were people. He had been thinking about himself, sorry for himself, wrapped up in himself like a snail in its stupid shell. Now he had looked out and seen the others. ‘I don’t mind—brother,’ he said.

  CHAPTER II

  Mannases and Josias

  Eleazar the son of Esrom and Nathan the son of Berechiah took their instructions and set out together, northward through Galilee, barefoot, without money or even a change of clothes. That was nothing. They were both of them brave and simple men, who had been convinced that a certain course of action was right and obviously right; if others could be convinced of it, well and good. But if they were not open to conviction, then the two would go on. According to the country, much of which was very hilly and difficult, and according to how long they stopped in any village or group of houses, they would cover anything from three to twenty miles in a day. But sometimes they would stop for several days in a village, talking about the new way of life, and healing the sick and casting out fear of devils and evil spirits.

  These two men were convinced that there was a kind of relationship between people, which was attainable, as they knew from their own experience, and which was worth everything else in life. When people were in this relationship, they loved and trusted and understood each other without too many words; they were no longer separated by fear and suspicion and competition and class. In this relationship men and women could at last meet without each thinking the other was hoping to do some evil. When the relationship happened, those who experienced it were very happy; they did not any longer want power and glory and possessions. If everybody in the world could have it, then nobody would want these things and there would be no more tyranny and hatred and privilege and oppression of the poor by the rich. In the meantime it was not possible for the rich to enter into this relationship, because their possessions put up a barrier of envy and greed between them and their neighbours; they could not have this happiness, which was blessing, unless they separated themselves from their possessions, and indeed some of them did so, because they wanted to come into the Kingdom of Heaven so much more than they had ever in their lives wanted anything else.

  Eleazar and Nathan were so confident about all this, as indeed they had every reason to be, that people were constantly asking them for help. So few men walked about the world with that look of certainty about them, that look of being removed from ordinary human insecurity and fear, that it seemed as though they could deal with all difficulties. When men and women came to them with pains and terrors, they could usually take them away, and they themselves were not in the least afraid of darkness and wild beasts and all those things that ordinarily send village folk flying to shelter. But when they spoke about the Kingdom of Heaven, some people were always frightened, because this was an idea which contradicted everything that they had been brought up to believe in. It meant that people would no longer care about making money or having a grand position, and would not any more respect and honour those who had done so. It meant that women would be the equals of their fathers and husbands, and that parents could have no right to the labour of their sons. So, although the doctrine of the Kingdom of Heaven was plain and obvious sense, yet there were many who hated it and who tried to hurt the two who were carrying it about. Yet they always escaped, for there were always some to help them, and they did not think evil of those who persecuted them; they were only sorry for them and sometimes puzzled.

  They thought it was very probable that some of those who were carrying the doctrine might be caught and killed, and above all they thought that Jesus-bar-Joseph, from whom they had taken their instructions, might Himself be killed, for He was a man who always spoke His mind, and, al
though He was very clever and could make those who argued against Him look fools and worse, yet sooner or later He would fall into the hands of His enemies. And indeed He had said Himself that this might happen, but all the same the Kingdom was to grow and flourish until it spread over all Judaea. Then there would be no more Kings in one palace and Governors in another, no more High Priests and rich merchants who ate up the lives and happiness of the Am Harez, the common people. And a nation which had become one in trust and amity and comradeship would be able to stand even against Rome.

  So after a time they heard that Jesus-bar-Joseph had gone to Jerusalem for Passover, to teach the new way of life to the Passover pilgrims, and the rich had caught Him at last and crucified Him; and they were very sad, but they knew that the Kingdom must go on and that the things which had convinced them the year before were still true. And a few months later they heard that this same Jesus, whose disciples they were, had been seen again, alive, after His death and burial. This did not surprise them, because they had always supposed that He was of such a kind that this sort of thing might happen, and they hoped that they too might one day see Him again. They did not speak about this rising again in their teaching. Why should they? The plain facts of the Kingdom of Heaven were nothing to do with such happenings.

  Usually they were given food at the village where they came in the evening; sometimes they worked for it. Nathan had been a shepherd and he would go out and watch the flocks on the hills with the other shepherds and talk to them; Eleazar had been a fisherman, and whenever they came to a village by a river where they did netting, he could at least mend nets in the evening. Both of them tried to stay over the Sabbath in whatever village or town they happened to be in, but if they had either to walk or to work on that day, they did not worry about it very much. But they kept the Law as far as they could, and, though they wandered away north into Phoenicia, they only preached in the Jewish villages or streets. They never thought of preaching to the Gentiles.