‘You’d better tell them, Hadassa,’ Eunice said, and began slowly grinding down some spices, while Hadassa, stammering on it rather, told what had happened. The whole room smelt of strong country herbs, as Eunice crumbled them fine, and then of imported cinnamon and nutmeg; she was careful of these; a little went a long way and she baked her spice bread once a week. You’d got to think of it like that, even if there wasn’t going to be a next week for you.
When Hadassa had finished speaking, she picked up the child again, saying she must go. The other three said nothing for a little. Phaon sat on the edge of the table, frowning, pleating Beric’s cloak between his fingers. ‘But to burn her,’ said Beric at last. ‘I can’t—I can’t see why!’
‘You’re looking for reason on the other side,’ Phaon said. ‘It’s not there.’
‘But—people don’t do things without a reason!’
‘Don’t they?’ said Phaon. ‘You wouldn’t think masters always went by reason if you were a slave!’ It was odd, Beric thought, in a passing way, how easily young Phaon was speaking to him as an equal; it wasn’t with the kind of passionate brotherhood that Argas felt, but yet it wasn’t insolent—supposing you had any right to mind that … Only there was something a bit stinging about it.
‘It must be the Will,’ Eunice said, ‘but I can’t bear thinking of her, poor little woman, all alone—’
‘She won’t be alone,’ Phaon said. ‘She was one of us and she’s got that still whatever happens; it’s part of her now. Bound to come back suddenly and give her strength. Bound to.’
‘But if it’s the Will for Sapphira to die,’ said Beric, ‘what about Phineas? Did his father go against the Will when he bought him out? He wasn’t trusting in the Will, anyway.’
‘And I went to them, wanting them to do something,’ Eunice said. ‘But only—oh, only in the direction of the Will, if you see what I mean. We know what direction that is, Beric, we’re pointed in it, at least we hope we are. It’s what we’re trying to learn all the time we’re being Christians—thinking about being, I mean—it’s the Way of Life. So long as we act along that way, you see, we’re part of the Will.’
‘Everything can’t be the Father’s Will,’ Phaon said, ‘or we wouldn’t need to pray for it to be done. We do pray because mostly things go against it. See, Beric? Not things really: people. Only it looks like things when you’re a slave. Oh, I’ve thought about this a lot.’
‘Lately?’
‘Ever since Argas got that beating for me. You’ve got to have some kind of a knock before you start thinking properly: that was mine. I’ve kept on going over what our Words really meant. And when we ask for the Will to be done—that doesn’t mean just asking, it means living, but you know that, Beric—well, we ask for strength to make things happen in the way that’ll bring the Kingdom. We ask to be able, by what we do ourselves, to change people round so that they want the Kingdom too. And one way we’re going to do that is by dying for it.’
‘But about Phineas,’ said Beric, groping back, for all this seemed somehow related to what was in his mind, ‘was it in the direction of the Will and the Kingdom for his father to rescue him?’
‘He didn’t seem to think so,’ Eunice said, ‘not by what Hadassa was saying. As I see it, Sapphira was part of the Kingdom for him; they’d had experience of it together. I know, because I’ve watched them at the meetings. So if she dies, he’s lost. Anyway for a time.’
Phaon said, ‘If two people love each other beyond the love of neighbours, well, that’s dangerous in a way. They think of one another, the same way most people think of themselves, cutting out the rest of the world. So for them the Kingdom is bounded by a single human life and when that’s over the Kingdom’s over. That’s why Jesus warned us about it, saying we mustn’t love anyone better than we loved the Kingdom. And you bet He knew.’
‘It’s difficult,’ said Beric. ‘You can’t help liking some people more than others.’
‘You can like them all right, but you oughtn’t to love them. Not deep. Not beyond what’s due to a man or a woman. You mustn’t want to give your life more for one than for another. That’s what’s the matter with Argas; he’s too set on you.’
‘You young devil!’ said Beric. ‘No. Sorry, Phaon. You’ve got a cold mind, haven’t you? Anyway, Argas hates me too, sometimes; I know that much.’
‘Yes, when he feels you’re his master. But I don’t care if you are or aren’t. It’s all part of the same thing. Aren’t I right, mother?’
‘I expect you are, son, but you’re young. And I’m old, so I see it too. And I keep on praying not to love you too much—not to keep you from whatever it might be.’
Phaon slid down from the table, went over to his mother and kissed her. ‘It was all right you trying to save me from things when I was a kid and didn’t really know what it was being a Christian. But now I’m on my own feet. Though it was you helped to put me there: I’ll always remember that, mother. See?’ Then he said to Beric, ‘So what’s happened about Phineas and Sapphira is against the Will, to my way of thinking. But most of all for him. When she dies she’s got a chance of being a witness—showing people. If she dies as a Christian.’
‘If only she can die that way, not just thinking about her husband and her babies!’ said Eunice. ‘You don’t know how easy it is to slip off into that, son.’
‘If she’s really a Christian—’
‘But to be burnt alive!’ said Beric. ‘When you begin to think what that’s going to be like—could any of us bear it?’
‘Not by ourselves. But just because we aren’t alone any longer, we can bear it. We’re all with one another in this pain and this death, and Jesus is with us all, showing us how.’
‘But if none of that were to happen, it would be still more part of the Will.’
‘If the Kingdom could come without our dying for it, yes. But it doesn’t just happen on its own, like magic or a flower growing. It’s made out of people’s lives—and deaths!’
‘I don’t see why it’s got to be deaths as well as lives.’
‘Because the other side isn’t reasonable. So they can’t be touched by a reasonable thing like living. We haven’t much power in our lives, we slaves and poor folk. We only have it when we dare to risk everything. When we go beyond reason.’
‘Yes. We’ve got to risk everything. I too.’ Beric was silent for a moment, walking up and down the bakery, smelling spices and flour. ‘And a young mother’s got to be burnt alive tomorrow night—’
‘It’s not only her,’ Eunice said, ‘and we can’t save them all; not if we had all the money in the Emperor’s Treasury. Only if we could stop ordinary people from wanting to burn us alive.’ Then she added, ‘I suppose you’ll be at the Games tomorrow with Flavius Crispus?’
‘Yes,’ said Beric, ‘but there’ll be none of this the first day. Only the processions and the races. No killing till the evening. And then—’
‘Flavius Crispus doesn’t have to go to that, does he?’
‘No. It’s not official. Just a new stunt. Nero getting the people of Rome on his side! Nobody decent will go.’
‘Meaning, none of the good Stoics?’
‘Not one of them, Phaon.’
‘Not one of them burnt alive! That’s left to us. That’s why it’s we who’ll win and not the good Stoics.’
‘Will you come to the next meeting, Beric?’ Eunice asked.
He shook his head. ‘No.’
‘Won’t you? It would help us if you would. All that’s left of us. In four days, Beric.’
‘Four days!’ said Beric, and laughed abruptly and shortly. ‘That’s a long time. I never knew before how long four days was. That may be after our days and times, Eunice; it may be nothing to do with us. I’m going back now, for there’s something I’ve got to see to before that.’ He hesitated, then knelt in front of her on the floor of badly-laid bricks. ‘You might give me a blessing, Eunice.’
She, being deacon now, gave him h
er blessing, and the two went out together, and she wondered what it was Beric had got to see to and whether it was in the Way of the Will. Perhaps her blessing might help to make it so. At least she was sure of her own son.
That night Abgar came to see Eunice; he seemed to be very hungry, so she fed him. He talked a lot about Rhodon in a kind of gabbling dialect Greek that she found very hard to follow; he seemed to want to make some kind of sacrifice for Rhodon, a blood sacrifice, his own blood. Eunice wasn’t certain how much he really understood the Way of Life; you didn’t get killed in the Arena or burnt alive as a blood sacrifice, but as a witness. Could she make him see that? She wasn’t sure. But she couldn’t feel he was ready for baptism; he didn’t seem to have the right idea about that either; he looked at it, somehow, as a kind of magic drowning that would make him part of a god. After he left she prayed for him to be given understanding and for herself to see just how to give it to him.
You would have known it was the beginning of the Games next day. Most of the shops had special displays and everyone wore their best. It was still free seats for citizens—and citizens only, except by special privilege and request, and the citizens took care to let you know. Though, of course, that made some who weren’t anything of the kind pretend to be! Naturally, rich men—and women, too—brought their attendants in with them; but even so, there was no nonsense about slaves getting into the citizens’ free seats. This was the one time of all when you felt it was something, being a Roman citizen— even a slum-Roman. Tertius Satellius would be there with his wife Megallis; he would in fact, be there every day of the Games; and if the silly little bitch wasn’t in a good humour again after that, he’d like to know what would make her! Free dinners were provided on most days for citizens and their wives, and sometimes there was the chance of a lottery ticket.
You would hear the noise right across Rome as the procession wound along from the Capitol after the sacrifices had been made. There were trumpets and cymbals and the shouting and cheering that ran in waves along the crowds. Eunice stayed indoors and began to cry. This was the beginning. And nothing had stopped it. God had done nothing. As if it didn’t matter; as if people’s lives were no more value than animal’s lives. And you knew you were right and you knew the Kingdom was on its way and this was only the last struggle of the old powers against it; but all the same the triumphant, dreadful noise kept going on all the morning, and all the afternoon too, you could hear it bursting up in great sickening lumps of noise. It was the horse-racing today. But tomorrow you’d hear the shouting going on again—and you’d know what it was for—you’d know— So Eunice’s hands as she kneaded were shaky, and her spice bread didn’t rise as light as it should have, and when she opened her door, thinking it was a customer, her smile wasn’t quite what it should have been, either.
She didn’t know who this thin, heavily-veiled girl could be, but asked her in; perhaps she had come to give an order. Eunice could have done with a few special orders; there wasn’t any silver and not much copper left under the loose brick now. But the girl said nothing for a minute, only leant against the wall, still holding the veil tight over her face with one hand; with the other she made the cross sign, though in rather an odd way. Eunice answered it; the girl might be a spy, but it wasn’t very likely, and what was one risk more or less now, anyway? ‘Who are you, sister?’ she asked.
In a low voice, the girl answered, ‘I am Noumi, daughter of Gedaliah-bar-Jorim. You have seen me before—sister.’ And she loosed a few fingerfuls of the veil, showing her dark eyes and fine, narrow eyebrows. She went on: ‘My brother Phineas tells me that I must go to Claudia Acté and that you will be able to show me where her house is.’
‘To see Claudia Acté—why?’
Noumi’s whisper answered, ‘Sapphira.’
‘If you’re thinking she can help,’ Eunice said, ‘well, I’m afraid you mustn’t set too much on it. I know Acté’s been doing all she can. Did Phineas think she could?’
Noumi said, ‘Our father locked him away, because he was saying—things that should not have been said. He might even have run back to the prison after all we have done. It was I who took him in his food. He says that if Sapphira dies he will go away from us for always, and he will not hope any more for the Coming, nor keep the Law, nor believe that Jesus was and will be the Messiah.’ She shivered. ‘So I had to come.’
Eunice took out her own veil, ready to go, and saw to the oven fire. There was a batch of bread in, and she might get back in time; well, if it was burnt, it was burnt. But one’s business didn’t get much chance, these days. The girl was watching her; she couldn’t be more than fourteen. And brought up with all that about being God’s own people and the rest of the world lumped together as so much dirt, not counting somehow; she knew what the Jews said. And she felt, herself, a bit coarse and used beside this delicate young virgin, fawn-eyed and soft-voiced. She thought of all the years of her slavery, and Phaon’s father, a Greek slave in another household and not much catch really, and it had all been in street corners like dogs, with half an ear open in case the overseer was after you. And when Phaon was born they nearly took him away and sold her as a wet-nurse. But she had found what made it all right, made her able to hold her head up, yes, and behave decent and bake as good fancy rolls as any in Rome, and not mind if she was just a stupid old freedwoman who would never be young or pretty again—she had got hold of something so much bigger than all that, which yet took account of her as a person. As an equal. So she and the young girl went over towards the Palatine and across, taking short cuts and avoiding the big streets and squares. ‘Do you know this part of Rome, dear?’ she asked.
But Noumi shook her head. ‘I have never been outside our quarter before.’ After a time she said again. ‘Once I burnt my finger against the stove at home. And people do that to one another!’
‘Didn’t you ever think before of the danger you were in—being one of us?’ Eunice asked.
‘No,’ said the girl. ‘Why should it have been dangerous? I cannot understand why this is happening. We have always tried to be good; we have kept the Law, even in our hearts, and we have believed that Jesus would come and set up his Kingdom. You believe that?’ she asked suddenly.
‘We keep the Way of Life, and we believe that the Kingdom which Jesus showed us will come,’ Eunice answered.
The high back walls of the Palace grounds were on their left now; here and there heavy creepers hung over them, dark and dusty, leaved or with late blossom. The little houses at the farther side of the narrow street were mostly in the gift of the Julio-Claudian family; here lived an old nurse, there an old cup-bearer or valet. And here was the home of yet another faithful servant, Claudia Acté. As with the rest, the outer wall was clean and newly whitewashed, but without windows. Eunice knocked. When the porter opened, she spoke timidly; the porter might be one of them, but she could not count on it; at least he seemed more friendly than in most houses. They were told they must wait; Lady Claudia Acté was not at home just now. But, at any rate, they had not been turned away. The porter took them through into a tiny, pretty courtyard with blue-painted wooden pillars and a round marble basin with fish in it. They were put to wait in a small room off it with low benches round the walls and cushions. Eunice leant back in a hunch; she was tired. But Noumi sat up very straight and still, looking out through the door-space into the courtyard, and the sunlight gradually tilting out of it, pulling a line of shadow after it up the pillars as the first day of the Games drew on towards evening and that much advertised fireworks display. After a time, Noumi asked, ‘What is she like?’
‘Who? Claudia Acté? She’s ever so nice and kind. But, of course, she’s had a different kind of life from us—from me, I mean.’ For Noumi, the daughter of Gedaliah, had never been whipped or sold or half-starved or any such commonplace things.
But the girl looked startled. ‘And very different from my life! I could never have imagined—oh, never!— that I would have to go and beg from this Palac
e woman. Yet I will do it.’
Now and then someone passed through the courtyard; it might have been one of the Christians that Acté had taken in after the fire. They’d be safe here. Or wouldn’t they be? Eunice thought of her bread; it would be hopelessly spoiled. Well, that couldn’t be helped. But it wouldn’t be so nice if all her money ran out, now when she was deacon, and there was so much to see to. She had given most of the money Beric had handed over to what remained of another Church, to help their people in prison. But at last there was the sound of the outer door, and a voice that Eunice remembered from meetings where she had been as a delegate. ‘Here she is!’ Eunice said, and picked herself up, ready to go out into the courtyard. But Noumi had sprung out of the room and in front of the woman who had just come in, and had fallen at her feet. Eunice watched; better if the girl could do it by herself. Noumi, on her knees, told Acté what had happened and begged for her help.
Acté listened very patiently, her forehead wrinkled with dismay at one thing more which she had got to try and do. She looked exhausted, and indeed, she had slept little for the last week. She had done what she could; here and there a prisoner freed; here and there a person or family saved, for the moment, from arrest. But it was very precarious; she did not know how long she herself would be left unmolested. Tigellinus and the police must certainly know about her. And she had not been able to see Nero for some weeks. She had tried to, but nothing seemed to come of it; perhaps the channels which she had thought friendly and trustworthy had been blocked. Once or twice she had spoken to Asteropé, and the singing girl had faithfully and tactfully given her message, but told her afterwards that the Emperor had pretended not to hear, or had passed it over with a casual word. Nero was not looking Acté’s way just now. Asteropé had herself got an order for the pardon of a couple of criminals and had handed it on to Acté—she was no Christian, but Acté had been good to her mother, Alexandra, and Greeks should stick together when possible.
The Blood of the Martyrs Page 34