They expected the fire would be under by morning, but it wasn’t. What was more it had got at the houses of the rich, even a new wing of the Palace on the Palatine. But Euphemia didn’t think it was the judgment any longer; she was a bit worried about her own little place. And it wasn’t only the fire; people were getting panicky and nasty; already there were the beginnings of looting. Euphemia put up her shutters and prayed.
Part Two
Hear a word, a word in a season, for the day is drawing nigh,
When the Cause shall call upon us, some to live and
some to die.
He that dies shall not die lonely, many an one
hath gone before,
He that lives shall bear no burden heavier than the
life they bore.
WILLIAM MORRIS
CHAPTER I
The Sign of the Cross
By the middle of the next day the fire was blazing in half a dozen new places, where sparks had been blown, and water was so low in all wells and cisterns that the fire brigade couldn’t do much. They concentrated on pulling down houses so as to isolate the fires and keep them from spreading, especially to the better class business and residential districts. But even so a great many respectable people who owned old houses in the Palatine and Esquiline districts, were burned out; and it was here that most of the looting took place. And sometimes in the smell and panic of fire, an owner would find himself uncomfortably and unexpectedly jostled by slaves who were more afraid of being burnt alive than of their master.
Most of the big households beyond the fire area sent out working parties to help. Balbus sent a number, including his litter slaves, which really showed that he was prepared to make a personal sacrifice. Actually, his house was on the farther side of the Esquiline, and there were moments when the fire came unpleasantly near. In fact he had a good many of his best objets d’art, jewels and plate packed ready to be taken away at a moment’s notice; Felicio was kept busy cataloguing them. But fortunately he did not, in the end, have to do anything drastic. The Praetorians, of course, were out, keeping order. Candidus had dealt with several looters; you couldn’t be too squeamish where property was concerned.
Crispus’s house, which was just beyond the forum of Augustus, was also unpleasantly near the fire. You couldn’t help smelling it all the time, and two of his most tedious old female cousins, whose house had been burnt, were taking refuge with him and would probably stay indefinitely. Here Beric organised the working party, and himself went out directing and working with it; he took almost all the able-bodied slaves except Manasses and Phaon; Crispus really didn’t want to send his dancing boys. And there must be someone in the house.
The working parties managed to get a fairly large area cleared, mostly slums; they came back filthy from their shifts. Of course, they were pulling down people’s homes, and often they had to deal with screeching old furies who couldn’t be made to realise that the great houses had to be protected at all costs. There were several relief camps for them to go to, not to speak of relatives in the country; food had been requisitioned for them, they could take any furniture and household goods that they could carry, and anyhow if their houses had been burned they would have been even worse off!
The Jewish Quarter across the Tiber, which was in no danger itself, sent out relief and working parties, and prepared to take in refugees, especially Jewish ones. Phineas and Rhodon both volunteered: Rhodon organised an extremely efficient working party, and was at it all day. Barnabas let him off work and had a good meal waiting for him when he got back. These working parties had to deal with looters too; sometimes they tied them up and left them for the fire to get them—unless someone else was merciful. Rhodon tried to get his gang not to do that, but sometimes he was so angry with the thieves that he wanted to himself. But once he stumbled over a man who had been tied up, obviously a thief, and the man called out his name. Rhodon did not recognise him, but it was the Armenian Abgar, who had been on the ship with him. Rhodon loosed him, told him if he was caught looting again he couldn’t expect to get mercy a second time, and then decided he’d got to give the man his address; he looked half-starved.
Beric and his party were pulling down the houses in the dip between them and the Esquiline; a good many people had left. While they were pulling down an empty slum-shack at the back of a tenement, which would have gone at a spark—Beric had no idea before of what was behind even the decent-looking poor streets, every inch of space crammed and stinking—they came on a charcoal scrawl on the wall, a fish. One of the men with Beric said, ‘Look, sir, there’s been one of these filthy Christians here, left his mark, he has,’ and put his pick through it. He added, ‘If you ask me, they’re the sort that would start a fire.’
That wasn’t the only time Beric heard something of the sort either. Everyone naturally wanted to blame someone or something for the disaster. Some people even said it had been done by the Emperor’s orders because he wanted to turn Rome into Athens, make them all into a set of bleeding Greek nancies, like he’d got in the Palace already! And there was some story about that when he came back from his country seat at Antium, which he did the moment he got news of the fire, he sent at once for his pet architects and told them to get out plans for rebuilding Rome. Wanting to change things, Nero was! Even Rome. Of course, that was obvious nonsense, but it showed that the Emperor was unpopular with the ordinary man in the street as well as with the Stoic senators. And oddly enough the admirable way that Nero organised the relief camps, and kept down the prices of food, made no difference; the people in the camps were so wretched that they had to blame someone, and those who were preparing to make a nice thing out of corn and meal, were naturally even more annoyed.
Other people said that the fire was sent as a punishment for neglecting the old gods, the gods of Rome, and was all due to the way the women had gone mucking off after foreign gods and mysteries and neglecting their duty. They were delighted when the big Temple of Isis and Serapis on the Esquiline went up, whereas the Capitol remained unhurt. And Beric heard two or three people say that it was the Christians, who were known to have no respect for anything, who had started all this, a pack of Levantine seditionists!
Beric hadn’t had any time to talk to Manasses or Argas; he’d had his hands full running things. He enjoyed the physical work and was a great deal better at it than the comparatively underfed slaves, who simply couldn’t keep up with him. Besides he had the best axe. Crispus came out to watch what was going on; the boy was on the top of a roof, cutting through the main beam, and shouting down directions to the others. I must send him off to the army soon, Crispus thought. Indeed, this was what had been planned all along and taken for granted. But he had kept putting it off, it had been pleasant having Beric in the house, almost like the son who’d never lived; he’d come to depend on the boy for all kinds of little things. But it wouldn’t do to go on. Wouldn’t be fair not to send Beric off to the army this year. He had found out about getting him his citizenship; that was done from time to time on a senatorial recommendation. He could say honestly that the boy would make a valuable soldier and servant of the State, and the thing was practically certain to be put through. Then he could be started off as Senior Centurion in a decent Legion—nothing too smart, of course, but where he’d learn his job thoroughly. One would have to make inquiries. And then—well, most likely his next service would be in Britain, helping the authorities there, and there’d be no chance of his coming back to Rome for years; and I’m getting old, thought Crispus. But the boy would have to take whatever service was decided on for him. You can’t think of yourself in these matters. Well, it must be done: and soon. There’d been that awkward moment with Candidus. Couldn’t blame young Candidus, of course. After all, Beric had no real status in Rome or in the household. Less than a freedman’s actually. Perhaps he oughtn’t to have let himself get so fond of the boy.
Crispus knew, and Beric did not, that the eldest of Caradoc’s sons, Rudri
, had proved unsatisfactory and had to be got rid of: you couldn’t risk any centres of disaffection in the Provinces. But the second one, Clinog, who was seven or eight years older than Beric, had been very tractable and had been successfully educated at Arretium, in Roman methods of government, so that he could, if necessary, be sent to Britain some day as a good Romanising influence, with the added prestige of being one of the royal family. Perhaps he had better arrange for Clinog and Beric to meet some time. Yes, he would see to all that as soon as Flavia’s wedding was over. And then he would be left without any young people in the house. And that reminded him, he had kept on promising dear old Eunice that he would do something definite about Phaon’s manumission. Well, at any rate, nothing could be done till after the fire. What a disaster! All those poor wretches. He decided to make a handsome contribution to the fire relief fund. Indeed, all good Stoics were doing so.
But the day he had seen that fish scrawled on the wall, Beric told Argas to come and see him later on. Argas, who was pretty exhausted with levering and pulling nodded. He wished he could get into a lovely hot bath, as Beric certainly would, and lie in it. Still, Manasses would probably have got him a basin-full, anyway. You couldn’t get really clean though, that way, nor the smoke properly out of your eyes, and when he went, later in the evening, to Beric’s room, he was neither as clean and comfortable as the Briton, nor had he had such a good supper. However, he didn’t say so. He stood waiting, not knowing what he was wanted for, nor whether Beric still thought of him at all as a brother.
Beric was sitting on his bed; there were a couple of chests by the wall, a lamp at the bed head and a curtain over the door-space; that was plenty. ‘Look, Argas, I’ve got something to ask you. Come on over, and sit.’ Argas came over, glad of the friendliness in Beric’s voice, and sat down on the floor beside him; he was, anyway, not clean enough to sit on Beric’s bed. ‘What exactly was that fish sign on the wall we pulled down?’
Argas stiffened, ‘Don’t you know?’
‘I wouldn’t ask you if I did.’
That bothered Argas. Beric wouldn’t have asked him—wouldn’t have spoken friendly. He turned his floundering mind back on to the Fish, the immediately calming and strengthening sign, ‘The Greek letters for fish—they stand for the Name Words: Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Saviour.’ Merely repeating the words had steadied him, steadied his voice. What did it matter even if the Briton was only a master, compared with that?
‘Are there any other signs?’ Beric asked.
‘You know the cross sign, the sign of the poor.’ He hesitated, then said firmly, ‘That’s been our sign of—of brotherhood—since Spartacus’s time, anyway.’
‘Why?’
‘He died for the people too, on the cross. And six thousand of his men. They were crucified all along the Appian way, drying up in the sun and dying slow for three days. Haven’t you heard?’
‘I suppose I have. But it didn’t stick in my mind. They were just rebels.’
‘They were. They were slaves rising against their masters mostly. But the masters won: they’d got the arms and the money; they could last out and cut off the food supplies from overseas. They were bound to win. That’s one reason against murder. Against me murdering you.’ Argas felt Beric’s hand on his shoulder, trying perhaps to stop him; but he was going on now! Beric had got to know. ‘So we remember Spartacus. There’s stories about him going round. In your own backyard, the whispering you don’t hear. When someone’s been whipped and can’t sleep, lies on his face moaning a bit, and the man next to him wakes up and curses him, and then starts telling the stories. For comfort in pain and dark. Spartacus and Eunus and Kleomenes of Sparta and Nabis and Jesus Christ. They were all of them for the oppressed ones, the common people. It’s been going on always for five hundred years. Maybe longer; I don’t know. Kleomenes was a king, but he freed the slaves in Sparta and divided the land; but the rich got him in the end, and he was killed and flayed and staked in Egypt. And the signs for Kleomenes are a snake and a vine and a cup. Nabis was King of Sparta too, afterwards, but he made the revolution again that had been stopped when they got Kleomenes, and he killed the rich. And it would have been all right in Sparta, only the Romans were called in from outside. The Achaean League—they were the other cities in Hellas that were rich and frightened in case it happened to them!—they made that betrayal. But they brought the Romans down on themselves, too. They hadn’t thought of that! When I was a boy we used to throw stones at the Achaean League processions and now I know why my father used to laugh when we did it. So then the Romans, came and helped the rich against King Nabis, and he was murdered, and all who’d been in his revolution were hunted down and killed and sold. And they thought they’d got it under for ever. The sign for Nabis is an axe.’
‘I didn’t hear it like that in my history lessons!’ said Beric, protesting.
‘No,’ said Argas, ‘you wouldn’t. After that the leaders weren’t kings. Eunus and Spartacus were slaves themselves and what they did was from below, from the very bottom. Both of them died for the slaves and died by torture. Eunus was a slave and a prophet and he foretold the Kingdom. He and his friends Kleon and Achaeus, they held all Sicily against Rome and the masters, and the free labourers sided with them too, for they’d felt oppression on their own bodies. They and the slaves held Sicily for a year.’
‘But, Argas’—Beric interrupted—‘they did the most horrible things in Sicily, those rebels. I know that!’
Argas who had been leaning against the bed, speaking softly, looking rather away from Beric into the shadows of the room, now turned and caught hard hold of Beric’s knees, one with each hand, and spoke straight at him, ‘Wouldn’t you do horrible things—wouldn’t you murder and burn and God knows what else if you’d been a slave—like they were? Not one of them hurt the girl who’d been kind to them, though she was the daughter of the worst of the masters! But there was no mercy for them. They were nailed and tortured and thrown down the cliffs to die, broken, in the sun. And it was the same for Spartacus. So their sign is the cross, and wherever that goes the thing isn’t dead, though the masters may think it is! But we remember.’
Beric looked down at Argas with something like horror; he wasn’t really clean, not round his eyes and ears, and there was a cut on his hand that was festering. Beric said, ‘That’s only one side.’
‘But it’s our side. And you made our sign.’
‘I wish you hadn’t told me, Argas! You’re making me feel—a traitor—to—Crispus and everything I’ve belonged with.’
‘You don’t belong there now. You belong with us.’
‘I didn’t know the sign meant—that.’
‘You know now. And it means the Kingdom. Because that always happened a little. When Kleomenes and Nabis freed the helots who’d been slaves for hundreds of years. When Spartacus and his men were fighting for freedom. Yes, and when they were all on the cross, dying together. Only we didn’t know what to call it before.’
‘Jesus wasn’t a slave.’
‘No, nor He wasn’t a king either! For all that the Nazarenes say He came from the house of David and He was called King of the Jews on the cross. Some people say He was a very poor man to begin with. But He wasn’t that either. He was in between, a craftsman, the kind that get security from their craft because it’s bound to be wanted anywhere. But all the same He made Himself one with Spartacus when He took the cross.’
‘And with the kings!’
‘Very likely. But the kings had to suffer, too. It’s no pleasure being the kind of king that chooses to die for the people.’
‘It’s no pleasure being a king against Rome.’
‘No. What’s it like being a king’s son, Beric?’ Argas had let go Beric’s knees and was sitting back on his heels, the way he’d been the first time, on the floor in the dirty water.
‘It’s not like that,’ said Beric, ‘it’s—it’s nothing now. My father wouldn’t have died for his people. He would have led them all
right, and died in battle. But that’s not the same thing. He didn’t think of them like your kings did. He didn’t love them.’
‘But if you went back now—’
‘They wouldn’t have me. I can’t speak British, even!’
‘You don’t belong there, then. You belong to us. Like I said.’
‘But, Argas, I don’t know if I’ll join. I don’t know if I want to join!’
‘You must. You’re going to, aren’t you? You can’t go back now. Not after I’ve told you what—what no other master in Rome—’ His voice was trembling.
Beric said quickly, ‘But surely all the slaves don’t know this?’
‘No. Not like I’ve said it. Not clear. But most Greeks know about Kleomenes and Nabis. And about Agis, the other one, the king that was betrayed by a kiss from his rich friend and was killed in front of his mother and grandmother. And most from Italy and Sicily know about Spartacus and Eunus. But the barbarians don’t know, not at first anyhow. And we Christians are careful about telling because we’ve got the final thing, where it’s all made plain at last. Where we know it’s not as simple as killing, but something that the masters can’t win against. And now you know, Beric. As though you’d been one of us,’
Beric didn’t know what to say or think. What would a Stoic say? That it was all nonsense, womanish? He seemed to remember that this King Kleomenes was a Stoic; only he’d heard the story differently. He hadn’t bothered much with Greek history anyway. Roman history was bad enough! He’d read about those slave revolts, how for a few years the escaped brutes had definitely threatened order and security and civilisation. Till they were put down. Why the hell hadn’t Lalage warned him what the sign of the cross meant? She must have known! He looked at Argas again. He was tired out. Beric was a bit stiff himself, but not tired like that. And what else? Was Argas afraid again now, frightened at having told him? He got up and began walking about the room, and became aware that Argas was following him with his eyes, watching to see what he’d do. Beric kept at a certain distance; he was afraid that if he let Argas touch him, or if he touched Argas, he would commit himself, out of pity, out of a feeling together that was very alarming, that he had never had before. Not with Flavia. Never in any casual encounter. Something that was not of the mind only, that was also of the body, but in some new way. He said, ‘Don’t be frightened of me, Argas. Whatever you’ve said, and whatever I say. And tell me when the next meeting is. I’ll come.’ Argas was now no longer upright but crouching down, his hands on the floor. He didn’t answer. ‘What’s the matter?’ Beric asked. Argas muttered something. Beric had to kneel beside him, to touch him. ‘Go on, tell me!’
The Blood of the Martyrs Page 17