‘Clinog,’ said Beric slowly, ‘suppose things had gone a bit differently, you and I’d have been cheap slaves from the west.’
Clinog stared at him. ‘Well, we are not!’ he said, ‘and it’s a damned ungrateful boy you are to be thinking such things! Considering poor old father, we’ve been in luck, yes! What are you looking so black at me for, Beric? Is it the truth I am speaking or not?’
‘I don’t feel like you do about Rome,’ Beric said.
They were walking their horses up a field. Clinog said nothing for a minute, then, rather carefully, ‘Most likely you will not have heard, Beric, but—remember Rudri?’
‘Only the way he used to pull my hair. What’s happened to him?’
‘He’s dead. Myself, I don’t know the rights of it, but it seemed to them he wasn’t loyal. It’s dangerous to think any way but one about Rome. I like to live.’
‘But Rudri didn’t—do anything?’
‘No. Only thought. And talked. It doesn’t do to talk. No indeed.’
‘But, Clinog—aren’t you really keen on these drains and roads of yours?’
‘To be sure I am. I’m not the kind to go leading revolts. That gets nowhere.’
‘So you’ll use chain-gangs of Britons who have revolted to make roads for the legions!’
‘They would be used for something by someone, Beric. No use having silly thoughts about slaves, even if they happen to be Britons. Ah, they’ll knock all that out of you when you’re a soldier or whatever it is, indeed yes. I suppose you will get a fine command later on. You’ll be a Governor yet. You will be taking your patron’s name when you’ve been made a citizen. Flavius Bericus. Look you, my good brother, what is it now?’
But Beric said nothing, only gave his horse a kick, then after a time let Clinog draw level with him again, and asked ‘Have you ever killed anyone, Clinog?’
‘Yes. Have you?’
‘Yes. Did it get you down?’
‘No. It was no one that mattered. Certainly not. I had every right to kill him, as a matter of fact.’
‘Mine didn’t matter, either. But perhaps one never has a right to kill anyone.’
‘It would be impossible to have an orderly world without the right of killing.’
‘I’m not sure. But—I was thinking of killing someone else.’
‘Don’t you go killing a citizen, Beric. Is it?’
‘Yes. You’d know his name.’
‘I don’t like the sound of it, no! Are you jealous? Or what?’
‘He has—injured some friends of mine. He’s likely to go on doing it. If I kill him, I don’t intend to get caught.’
‘I should hope not, indeed! You’ve got to look out, young Beric, because if any of us, who are not citizens, do get caught—’
‘Yes, I know. I am wondering how I can do it.’
‘Now, think, couldn’t you just leave it alone? Who are these friends of yours? … Well, if you won’t tell me! But we can’t always go running into danger for the sake of friends. That was all very pretty in our stories of heroes—you won’t remember them, though, nor the music that went with them!—but now we are in Rome. A man can’t so much as have a blood feud here. Mind you, Beric, I feel for you, I do indeed, for it is hard not to be able to take revenge, but it is no good here. And it may be the Romans have the right of it. You can’t have that and also these fine aqueducts which do not leak at all. Must you do this?’
‘I won’t if there’s another way.’
‘That’s right, boy. There’s a way round as often as not.’
‘I hope there’s going to be for me.’ They turned their horses for home now. Beric was thinking about the practical difficulties of killing Tigellinus, the man who stood for the rule of Rome. One had to do something against that. Yes.
Clinog naturally went to pay his respects to Domina Aelia; she always wanted to know what was going on, and she particularly liked talking to young men. One day when she was sitting out on the terrace, she made Beric sit beside her and describe Flavia’s wedding, which he did rather uncomfortably. ‘You’d have liked to be the one, wouldn’t you?’ she said suddenly. ‘Come, own up, boy!’
‘Yes,’ he said, sullenly as she laughed.
‘You’re well out of it,’ said the old lady energetically, smacking his hand, ‘that girl was spoiled! Catch me going to her wedding. I told Crispus how it would be, but he’s as stupid as the rest of you. That girl’s been allowed to think she can do as she likes. You won’t know, but her maids will, that’s certain. She’s had everything except the thing that matters. D’you know what I mean by that, boy?’ He shook his head. ‘Something to serve. And if there’s no something, then someone. That’s what marriage is for. And how it used to be. But now! Catch any of these young couples serving one another!’
Beric said, ‘Aelius Candidus isn’t worth serving, anyhow.’
‘No. Nor’s she. Ah, you’d have found that out, quick enough! I shan’t be surprised if she finds someone else. Though her poor father will be. You men! I like you, Beric, always have, ever since the days I used to tan your bottom for you. Wish I’d done it oftener to her. Have you found anything to serve, Beric?’ He hesitated, and she pounced on him again. ‘A thing, I said. Not a girl, Blue-eyes! Nor yet a boy.’ She laughed at him again, but he didn’t mind; he was wondering if he had.
‘I think I have, Domina Aelia,’ he said at last. ‘Only, is it a thing? You can’t serve a thing.’
‘Rightness is a thing. The gods are things. Rome is a thing. Or was—before the Emperor.’
‘What I want to serve is people. All men. All free.’
‘Oh, you Stoics! You’ll get over that. I know you, talking about equality. Freedom of noble souls! What does it amount to? I’ll tell you something, Beric. There’s only one kind of equality that makes sense and that’s equality in something you can measure—land or money. How d’you like that?’
‘You’re quite right, Domina Aelia,’ Beric said.
‘I’m glad you’ve the grace to say so, boy! That was the kind of equality Tiberius Gracchus and all those Stoic friends of his tried to make for the Roman people, and what happened to him?’
‘He had to die for it.’
‘And no one said thank you and no one was a penny the better. But at any rate Tiberius Gracchus had the sense not to talk about doing it for all men! He did it for the sake of the race, so that the poor citizens could afford to bring up their sons to be soldiers. That was sense. But you and your ideas!’
‘All that was nearly two hundred years ago, Domina Aelia. Ideas change; they take in more.’
‘And mean less! I shall be pleased when you’re a Roman citizen yourself, Beric. You shall come and choose yourself a signet ring from my box. Yes, one from my side of the family. The big sardonyx, if you like it, boy. Better you have it than young Candidus, for all those ideas of yours.’
She reached for her stick, got up and nodded wisely at Beric.
But Beric was finding he had to start thinking about it all over again. If he had found something worth living and dying for, he wasn’t doing much about it now! Could he write to Argas and ask what was happening, say something friendly, anyhow? Every two days or so Crispus sent in a slave with letters, who came back with the answers and news from the capital. Beric tried to find out if anything more was being done about the Christians, but Crispus wouldn’t say a word to him on that subject. And if he wrote to Argas, what could he say that wouldn’t be a give-away in case somebody else read it, as they were almost sure to do? Crispus would be certain to get wind of it, too. Above all, he didn’t want to get Argas into trouble again. Perhaps he ought to try and make friends with some of the slaves here. Difficult with the country boys; they just grinned and said, ‘Oh yes, sir!’ to anything; their own lives were tucked away, underneath somewhere; you couldn’t get at them. Hermeias definitely avoided him, felt that something had happened which was not at all nice. Beric wasn’t sure how much he liked or trusted Lamprion, who was a
regular, slick young Greek, ready for anything. It was he, Beric remembered, who’d been Manasses’s chief tormentor in the ragging of the Jewish slaves, had held his nose and stuffed pork into his mouth. And he, Beric, at the time he thought it funny, though he had stopped them breaking Manasses’s teeth, which would have spoilt him rather as a thing; he had good teeth … But if Manasses had forgiven Lamprion, that was good enough. Beric set himself to try to be friendly with him, talk to him as an equal, not a slave.
Lamprion talked back all right, and in no time was on terms of a cheeky familiarity which Beric disliked very much, but couldn’t do a thing about now! He had asked Lamprion to call him by his name when they were alone, but every time he did it made him squirm. He was secretly delighted when Crispus scolded Lamprion for carelessly letting the roast get cold one day. But he felt a beast about it afterwards and prayed and tried to get it right. The slaves always seemed to get hold of the gossip from Rome; so it was from Lamprion that Beric first heard that people were saying that the Praefect of the Praetorians had been visiting at the house of Aelius Candidus at hours when the master of the house was quite definitely away on duty at the prison. Beric was aware that Lamprion was watching him for a word or a wince, that in a moment he would be making a sly remark about Flavia—But just before the remark came, Beric turned on Lamprion, saying shortly that he had no business to repeat such stories of this kind. And Lamprion slid off his perch into frightened obsequiousness. Beric looked at him fiercely; he was glad it was over, glad the man was frightened back into slavery again! It was a good thing he could do that so easily still. He hoped coldly that Lamprion would do something silly soon, so that Crispus would order a whipping for him. Unfortunately, it was not at all likely; Lamprion hardly ever got punished. He wasn’t that sort.
And so Domina Aelia had been right about her granddaughter, Tigellinus coming … in the hot afternoons, no doubt. And if Aelius Candidus found out, it would be extremely difficult for him to do anything effective. It was nice to realise that, at any rate. But Beric carefully did not say a thing to Crispus about it.
Clinog stayed with them till near the end of August; they had some good days hunting. Beric did not speak again about killing, and Clinog hoped he had got over it. Better not raise the question again. The meeting between the brothers had been a success, Crispus thought; Beric was settling down. Probably the whole thing had been exaggerated. At any rate it had been taken in time. And then one afternoon, Sannio turned up, to say that Manasses had been arrested again and taken to prison.
Crispus was very angry. With Beric standing by, he questioned Sannio, who said that there was nothing fresh against Manasses. No, there had been no more meetings, nothing had been said or done. It had all just come out of the blue. A squad of Praetorians had turned up at the house and taken him off. But was Sannio telling the truth? Beric followed him out and took him along to his own room. ‘What else happened?’ he asked.
‘They didn’t take Argas, sir,’ said Sannio, looking at Beric sideways.
‘Why should they have?’ Beric asked sharply. ‘It’s all nonsense!’
‘Yes, of course, sir. Just as you say, sir. Argas seemed a bit down about it, all the same.’
‘Has he—talked to you much—these last weeks?’
‘Oh no sir, not about what he wasn’t supposed to talk about. Not a word, sir.’
‘If you weren’t such a bloody liar,’ said Beric, ‘it would be easier to talk to you, I believe you’ve been decent to him—and the others. They must have said something.’
Sannio looked uncomfortable. ‘I don’t want to get into trouble, sir. Nor yet to get any of the rest into trouble—’
‘You won’t with me.’
‘That’s what Argas said—to start with.’
‘Doesn’t he now?’
‘Well, sir, he was upset like, you going away, without saying much. And not sending any word. Not that you could have most likely. I kept on telling the young bastard—’
‘Hell,’ said Beric. ‘I ought to have done something. I’m a coward.’ He made the sign of the cross, slowly and deliberately, at Sannio, who blinked.
‘I know it, sir,’ he said, ‘but I’m not one of them. You’re not, sir, surely?’
‘I nearly am. Enough for you to tell the police, Sannio.’
‘Don’t you go putting it so awkward, sir! I couldn’t help thinking there might be something—well, what I mean is, if it was just you being a bit gone on your Argas, the way I thought at first, you’d no call to fuss about the others the way you did. Only what I never did see was—’
‘Well, what?’
‘You being decent to me too, sir,’ Sannio said, floundering. ‘When I was in your working party. Spoke to me like you’d speak to a free man. And then—you seemed to know what was wrong in the house: not big things, kind of little things a gentleman wouldn’t notice, not in an ordinary way. What I mean is, I don’t see why, even if you do know that sign—’
‘Why I’d do things for the rest of you as well as for the Christians? Is that it? Because if one’s a Christian, one’s bound to think of you all as persons. Not just slaves. Not just things one owns and makes work.’
‘I see, sir,’ said Sannio, and scratched his head. But why, thought Beric, hadn’t it worked with Lamprion? Perhaps it just doesn’t take on everyone. Only on people who’re ready for it, who want to be in the Kingdom, more or less? Fairly decent people? He just didn’t have the experience to know about it. Sannio said, ‘They’ve been arresting a lot of the Christians this last week. Everyone says now it was them started the fire.’
‘What’s going to happen to them?’
‘Well, sir, it’s being said they’re going to be made an example of. In the Arena, like. Or burnt in the Emperor’s new garden.’
Beric rubbed his hands across his face, then asked, in a queer, calm way, ‘What do you think of that, Sannio?’
‘Seems silly to me. If they’re no worse than our people. And you, sir. If you’re so near being one.’ He hesitated, then said, ‘Excuse me, sir, but don’t you go trying to go back. You won’t do any good and you might get into it yourself.’
‘What would that matter?’ said Beric.
‘It would to me,’ said Sannio, obviously not lying.
After a moment Beric said, ‘Can you tell me the names of any who’ve been arrested?’
‘No one you’d know, sir,’ Sannio answered, and then realised that perhaps, things being how they were, that wasn’t so. He gave a few names, mostly of slaves from other households, but Beric shook his head. Then: ‘Oh, and Euphemia from the little scent shop—’ And saw he had hit it this time.
Then Beric remembered that Lalage had been lodging with Euphemia. ‘Was anyone else arrested at her house?’ he asked quickly.
‘I don’t think so, sir.’ Sannio would terribly have liked to do something for the Briton, something big, something to show that he, Sannio, was as good as young Argas any day. Only if, after all, what he’d thought about him and Argas wasn’t true—The Briton looked like he’d done that evening when Aelius Candidus hit him, when they’d all been on his side. They’d all been hit themselves, one way and another. Sannio had dodged it pretty often. He wished the Briton could dodge it now, think of something else. What did gentlemen think about? Sannio had been in the house five years, since he’d been a boy; the Briton had always been friendly to him. He ought to have known what to say. Only he’d never felt like this to one of his masters before.
Beric said heavily, ‘What did Manasses do when they arrested him?’
‘Nothing,’ said Sannio. ‘You see, sir, he wouldn’t want to get anyone else into trouble.’
‘They’ll have a note of who was arrested before. Or if they haven’t they’ll—question him.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Sannio put his hand, gingerly, on the Briton’s shoulder. Would that be all right or would he be snapped at?
After a minute, Beric jumped up, took his hand and shook it, then said, ‘I�
��m going back to Rome tonight. Pack for me at once, will you, Sannio?’ Then he went out, leaving Sannio to put his things into the saddle-bags. There was some money loose on the top of the chest, one piece had rolled on to the floor; obviously the Briton wouldn’t have noticed if that piece hadn’t rejoined the others. But Sannio carefully picked it up and put it back with the rest.
Beric went through and found Crispus explaining the situation to Clinog, who had never even heard of Christians. ‘I’m going back,’ said Beric, ‘to see what’s happening.’
‘You are doing nothing of the sort,’ said Crispus. ‘I absolutely and categorically forbid you to leave this house.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Beric, ‘but it’s my duty.’
‘I shall keep you here by force if necessary,’ said Crispus. ‘Clinog, stop your brother from being a fool.’
Caradoc’s sons regarded one another. Clinog said, ‘It will do no harm to talk things over, surely now, Beric?’
‘No,’ said Beric, ‘but if you try to hold me I’ll knock you down.’
Clinog turned uncertainly to Crispus. ‘Could you tell me, sir, why isn’t he to go?’
‘Because he has been mixed up with this Christianity. You had better know, Clinog.’
‘But,’ said Clinog, shocked, ‘if it is what you have been telling me, he would never have been in it. No!’
Beric said, ‘You’ve heard about it all wrong, Clinog.’
‘Well, Beric, aren’t they enemies of society?’
‘Enemies of things as they are. Are you happy with things as they are, Clinog? Are you doing what you want?’
‘I have nothing to complain of, indeed no! Nor have you. Remember Rudri—’
The Blood of the Martyrs Page 26