Читать книгу The Blood Of The Martyrs - Naomi Mitchison - Страница 13

Bersabe’s eldest girl had been sold three years ago. So now she kept trying to hide Persis, dressing her in old rags and sending her to work in the dirty back kitchen where perhaps she mightn’t be noticed. Hoping her master wouldn’t see. If it was to be again like it had been with Roxane, she would die; she had wanted to die then, but she was too tough. Besides, there had been Persis and the little ones—though she hated them for months, hated them for not being Roxane, and then, for forgetting her; she never forgot Roxane, day or night. But from that day to this no word of her first baby, the little soft thing she’d nursed through her childhood, stolen milk for, been beaten for, been so proud of, that silky dark hair—oh, all the summer evenings she’d sat on the step combing Roxane’s hair and singing to her, happy, oh yes, as happy as a slave woman could be!—and then: she kept on dreaming still of the dealer’s agent, the fat Syrian. Bersabe had always thought these things happened in other households, to other mothers, not to her. But it had happened. So now she must never be proud of Persis, mustn’t touch her softly or get the tangles out of her hair, never beg a piece of stuff for a dress for her. But Persis was cross with her mother: why couldn’t she ever be allowed into the front part of the house, why was she always treated like a baby? On her own she begged herself a dress from one of the daughters of the house, and oh, then, when she put it on, smoothing it against herself, Bersabe couldn’t help seeing that the child was a woman, and that she was terribly like Roxane. And Bersabe threw up her arms and howled, flung herself into a corner and cried—as she knew she was bound to be made to cry, some day soon. But Persis combed out her own hair and looked at her reflection in a pan of water.

It was less than a year since Bersabe had been a member of the congregation of the church at Philippi. Sometimes still she caught herself asking luck from other gods. But now, more and more, when she was unhappy, her mind wheeled back to the low room, away from the glare and noise and laughter of the street, to that feeling of unbounded kindness and trust that sometimes overwhelmed her into tears and sometimes into singing or the sudden sharp cry of delight, and that stayed with her, at work or asleep, for days and days afterwards. She had never taken Persis with her: not taking her was part of the insistence that Persis was only a child. Now she was sure she must take her, and at once.

Epaphroditus, the deacon, was a little doubtful about baptising Persis, but Bersabe wept and stormed, and Evodia advised it, and Persis had fasted and seemed to know the Words and the Way of Life and to be eager for it herself. Actually, she was very frightened. Two or three days after she had dressed herself up in that cast-off dress, feeling so grand, her master had called to her as she was carrying a bucket of water through to the kitchen; she left the bucket and ran over, pleased to be noticed. But after that it wasn’t so nice. He asked her how old she was and what she could do, and a lot of other questions, and tilted up her face with a finger under her chin and looked at her in a way that made her want to cry. She had scuttled back to her mother and the two of them had cried in one another’s arms, and neither had said anything about Roxane but both remembered her, and for the thousandth time Bersabe wondered if she was alive or dead … or just being hurt. Now in the meeting they were both praying that the thing need not happen, if only the Lord Jesus would take it away! And when Persis was taken to the pool under the waterfall and felt the water of baptism, she thought that perhaps it would be all right, oh, she was almost sure it would! And when they brought her back she was lifting her arms for joy and some of the congregation thanked God for letting them see so lovely a sight. But Bersabe stayed behind to talk to Evodia and Syntyche, the two senior women of the congregation; they talked it over together, while Bersabe sobbed and Persis listened and became every moment colder and more frightened and less able to think that the baptism had changed anything. Evodia took her aside and told her that in this town or that she might be able to find a church and friends, but above all she now had a Friend for ever, the Friend whose presence she had felt when the waters touched her. But already Persis, swaying from her two days’ fast, had forgotten how she had felt then. Only she remembered the names of the towns and the signs which she might look for, and repeated to herself the words which could make her known. But she could not bear the ruthful looks of the older women and the way they would not let her forget what might be going to happen to her.

That night and for three more nights, she cried herself to sleep, and Bersabe slipped away from work to come and sit with her and smooth her hair and stare and stare at her lovely mouth and soft eyebrows and straight little nose—as she had not dared to stare and love while the thing might yet be averted. As she stared she prayed. And the fourth day the same dealer’s agent who had taken Roxane came to take Persis. Bersabe asked him very humbly if he could tell her where Roxane was, but he had no idea; she had changed hands several times. Bersabe was remembering what changing hands meant in the way of stripping and handling. She had been a pretty slave girl herself, away in Asia. At least there were some things people didn’t want to do to women after they got grey hair. One of the daughters of the house gave Persis a silver piece, and they were all quite nice to poor old Bersabe after Persis was taken away. She had screamed rather at the end, in fact both of them had.

Persis was put on board ship and taken to Delos. All the time on the ship she cried and whimpered and did not think much about the church at Philippi or any of the Words she had been taught, only about her mother and her little brothers and the warm kitchen and the way to the well, and a certain crack in the wall that she always used to run her finger along, and a certain tree she used to climb, with handholds shiny from children’s using. But when she got to Delos she stopped being homesick because the immediate things that were done to her or that she thought were going to be done, were so very horrible that she couldn’t think of anything else. The slave dealers were mostly no worse than other merchants and generally more interested in the price than in any other aspects of their merchandise, but in the hot, steep, crowded little city of Delos, something bad used to get at them: the smells and cries and the foreign voices and the constant handling of foreign and helpless women and boys. So it was a place where human beings asked much for mercy and got little. The dealers would get bored with their stuff and wouldn’t even mind spoiling it; there was plenty more. When they had been drinking they would go down to the warehouse at the docks and knock the chained barbarians about; anything that was hopelessly spoiled could be thrown into the sea. Of course, Persis was not treated like that; she was too valuable; she only heard it and sometimes saw it. She was darker and slenderer than the Greek girls, and easy to teach. By the time she had changed hands a few times, been re-embarked and landed again at Ostia, she was still technically a virgin. It did not make much difference when she ceased to be, except that she was hurt in a new way. Sometimes she could hardly remember her mother and Philippi now; the barrier of horror between herself and all that was too strong. She did remember that Rome was the name of a city where there were churches, but it was too much to hope that she would ever find one. It was too much to hope that she would ever find friends or kindness again.

In the first household the mistress whipped her and sold her, because of what the master did. In the second she was so frightened of the overseer that she dropped her work whenever she saw him and couldn’t remember what she’d been told to do for five minutes on end. It was almost a relief to be re-sold to the same dealer, who fed her up and was tolerably gentle to her and even let her play marbles and cat’s cradle with some girls of her own age, and finally sold her into a decent house, where she was to be trained as maid to Flavia, the only daughter of her new master, Flavius Crispus. There was nothing special to be frightened about here over her master; he was oldish and kindly. There was a young master in the house too, but he was apparently not even a Roman. The slaves called him ‘The Briton’ and by and by someone told her that he really did come from an island weeks away in the cold middle of the sea, where his father had been a king.

He was quite well liked. He had asked Persis her name and spoken to her once or twice, but he didn’t do anything to her. After a time she couldn’t help knowing that he was really interested in her young mistress Flavia.

The old slave woman who was training her found her quick and clever at doing hair and pleating and pinning. She thought Flavia was very beautiful with her crisp shining curls and brilliant eyes, and she would have loved her if Flavia had been at all nice to her. However, she was safe here; she could look up and breathe again; she could remember if she chose to. She could look about the new household and wonder if she would make any friends.

It was very puzzling at first, trying to keep it all in her head. There was no regular overseer, but one or two old slaves or freedmen, and the Briton kept a general eye on things. The head cook was an Italian freedman, good at the traditional dishes. There was the usual amount of scolding and threatening, but very little real punishment, and on the whole it was fairly cheerful and the food not bad. There was no one else from as far East as she was—by race at least—but there were several Jews, plenty of Greeks or Sicilians, some Thracians or North Gauls for the heavy work, but no Britons. Perhaps Crispus had thought it wasn’t tactful to have them in the same house as the boy he had brought up. There was nearly as much Greek as Latin spoken in the house; however, Persis had to learn Latin quickly, for Flavia, although she could read and write Greek fluently, was not going to take the trouble to speak it so as to make things easier for the new girl.

There was a boy about the same age as Persis, one of the Greeks; he was a dining-room slave, clever at dancing and miming and all sorts of tricks, and able to get round the old master. He was born in the house; Eunice, his mother, had been in the kitchen for years and, even now she’d been freed, was still in and out quite often. It was she who had spoken in a friendly way to Persis, asking her to come over some evening to her little bakery, which was quite close. Persis hadn’t wanted to at first; she didn’t like Phaon, who was a cheeky, teasing little devil, quite sure he was going to be freed himself soon; and besides, she knew about the house where she was now, the best and the worst of it. She wasn’t going to risk looking outside; there wouldn’t be anything worth looking at. She knew what a slave girl’s life was now; it wasn’t any use doing any silly hoping or picturing.

All the same, fat old Eunice asked her again; she said, rather surprisingly, ‘My boy said you were lonely.’ Persis thought angrily, what right had he to talk about me! And then, but he didn’t look as if he cared. And while she was thinking that, Eunice had taken her by the arm, and then Persis found herself crying and sobbing that she had lost her mother—had lost everything—and Eunice stumped straight off to Flavia’s old slave woman and said she was taking Persis along with her that evening and there was to be no fuss, and before Persis had quite stopped hiccoughing from her burst of tears, she was out in the street, with Eunice patting her and talking to her. Persis hardly listened to the words; it was the kindness behind them that mattered. That was like the rich warm smell of new bread that she breathed in at the bakery, curled up on a rug on the floor at Eunice’s feet. By and by Phaon came tumbling in. Persis made to jump up, but Eunice wouldn’t let her, and Phaon curled up on the rug too. He was much nicer now; he didn’t tease her at all, and perhaps, thought Persis, his teasing me before was just his way of trying to make friends. She stayed there for the best part of the evening, and forgot she was a slave girl who had been bought and sold and forcibly made adult at Delos and other toughening places, and remembered she was fifteen and it was still nice to dig one’s fingers into dough and play silly games with Phaon and his mother.

After that she came fairly often, whenever she could get away for half an hour. Sometimes she would find one or two of the others, Manasses perhaps, or Josias or Argas, another of the Greek boys. But she didn’t pay much attention to them; what she wanted was to be allowed to be clean and a child again. Perhaps, after all, the whole world wasn’t hateful.

Sometimes she and Phaon helped with the baking. Most of it was rye bread or some mixture, but there were always a few white loaves for the better class customers, and often Eunice made them up into fancy twists. Phaon was very good at this; he would give the dough a flip and mould it with his fingers, and it turned into a swan or a rose. ‘Make something else, do!’ said Persis. He laughed and dipped his hands into the flour and began on another lump of dough. In a couple of minutes it had turned into a fish with beautiful fins. His mother looked at it, smiled, and then said, very seriously.

‘I can’t bake that, Phaon.’

‘Why not?’ asked Persis, ‘it’s lovely!’ And then saw that Phaon and his mother were looking at one another with a strange sort of understanding, and suddenly remembered something she had forgotten for more than a year and said breathlessly, ‘Do you mean the fish is—something else?’

‘It’s only a joke,’ said Phaon quickly, and Persis thought, oh no, of course not, that would have been too good to be true, and looked it, for Eunice took her hand and asked,

‘Did you ever hear of a fish that meant something different?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Persis, and knew she was bound to cry in a minute, because remembering that meant remembering everything. In a blur she saw the piles of cut wood and the round oven and the table with the dough on it, and Phaon looking straight at her, catching at her, saying very eagerly,

‘What was your fish, Persis?’

Was it dangerous to say? Hadn’t there been some warning from Evodia?—she musn’t speak unless she was sure. But oh, in this little room she’d had kindness! ‘They were the Name letters,’ she said, and it all came back to her, and she stared at the dough-white flesh and murmured them.

‘Persis, how lovely!’ said Phaon, and kissed her, but not teasingly; no, like a brother.

And, ‘Why didn’t you tell us, dear?’ said Eunice. ‘You could have been coming to the meetings—all this time.’

‘But I didn’t know,’ said Persis. ‘I thought—oh, I thought it was all no use and Jesus had forgotten me.’

‘That doesn’t happen,’ said Eunice. ‘Now tell me: what was your Church and of whom your baptism?’

‘Philippi,’ said Persis, ‘and I was baptised by Epaphroditus—but then, you see, I was sold—’

‘I know, my lamb, my lamb,’ said Eunice, cuddling her, ‘but you’ve come here. Think if you’d been sold, the way my brother was—he was a skilled man, of course, a joiner—right away into Spain, where there’s no Church—unless he was able to make one.’

‘Don’t you know about him, then?’ asked Persis.

‘No, my dear, and it will be seven years, come midsummer. Only I keep on hoping he found what he could make a Church out of, with God’s help.’

‘But what could he make a Church out of?’

‘Why, what I’ve been trying to give you, all this time, not knowing you were one of us: poor folk’s feeling for each other. Kindliness, as you might say, or, it might be, love. Once you’ve got it, and you do get it mostly, among slaves and that, then you can build on it. You can start telling what He said it was, and how He lived and died to make it plain for those that can’t see. My brother could have told all that. A skilled man, he was. But you’ll come to the meetings now, Persis. Sometimes we hold them here and sometimes at the house, in one of the back rooms.’

‘Do any of the masters know?’

‘No, nor your young lady. It’s no concern of theirs. It’s ours.’

‘But Epaphroditus at Philippi, he was a gentleman, or almost.’

‘It’s not that way in Rome. Of course, one of them might perhaps come. If he’d had a bad time—got in wrong with the Emperor, say. But it doesn’t come natural to them. A gentleman wouldn’t want to share, not really.’

‘Epaphroditus had a farm. But I know it didn’t pay. Mother said he never got any new clothes, and that old mule of his was a sight!’

Phaon giggled. ‘I don’t see the old man putting all his money into the bag, nor yet your Scratch-Cat not getting herself a new dress!’ That last was their name for Flavia; sometimes the scratching was quite literal—on the face. Persis knew already. Phaon added, ‘I can bring you into the meeting, Persis, can’t I? They’ll want someone to stand surety for you, and I never have for anyone yet. May I?’

‘Oh do, Phaon!’ said Persis, ‘who else is in the Church?’

‘Oh, Manasses and Argas and Josias, and one or two from other houses. There’s always enough of us, sometimes the full twelve, sometimes more. I am glad you’re one of us, Persis!’

If only mother knew,’ she said.

‘Perhaps she’ll have a dream,’ said Phaon hopefully. ‘Oh, Persis, I’m simply longing for the next meeting! Come on, we can’t leave the Fish. He’s done what he was meant for. Look, you take one end and I’ll take the other. We’ll make him into a loaf.’

After that she was never really unhappy, even when Flavia hurt her and she couldn’t help crying, or when the old woman scolded her. Nothing was bad for long, and Argas and Manasses used to save her sweets from the dining-room. And once or twice, when she had done Flavia’s hair really beautifully, Flavia gave her an old dress. She was rather frightened of the Briton, who never seemed to notice whether she was there or not, but was always looking at Flavia. She shut her mind tight against what else he might be doing; it was none of her business. Things were different in Rome, at any rate for the ladies and gentlemen.

She had to stay up late, of course, when Flavia kept late hours. She slept on a mattress just outside the door of her mistress’s room, ready to jump up if she was called; in winter she always had to get up once in the night to refill the lamp, in case Flavia might wake in the dark. The mattress was her own territory; there was a hole in it, next to the wall, where she kept things; there was a fish amulet there, which Eunice had given her; she didn’t dare to wear it, but it was lovely to put in her hand and feel, and know that her cheek was resting just above it all night.

She was sitting on her mattress, waiting, half asleep, when Flavia came back to her room after the dinner-party. How beautiful she looks, thought Persis, and wondered if it was nice being her. Nice being rich and having all those lovely clothes and jewels. Nice being a Roman. Or didn’t you notice if you were like that to begin with? She had jumped up, and now she ran into the room to light all the lamps; the one by the bed was a very pretty, silver, three-necked one, and it burned special oil, scented, from Alexandria. Flavia flopped down to be unpinned, stretching and yawning. ‘What a lovely colour madam has tonight!’ said Persis shyly.

Flavia laughed and looked at herself in the silver mirror and said over her shoulder, ‘I’m going to be betrothed next week.’

‘Ooh, madam!’ said Persis, feeling so pleased to have been told.

‘Yes, and I shall have to see about a new dress. Candidus is going to give me an emerald necklace. And bracelets. Don’t pull my hair, you little idiot! I wish I knew what kind of bracelets the Empress was wearing. Well, when I am married I shall be able to go to the Palace and everywhere. I wonder if Tigellinus will give me anything. I like a man to have black hairs on his arms; that’s a sign of strength. Tigellinus has black hairs right on to his shoulders. They say that means a man’s always going to get his own way.’

‘Oh, does it, madam?’ said Persis, and tried not to think about the Briton’s arms, which certainly had fair hair.

‘Does it—does it!’ said Flavia. ‘You silly little thing, why don’t you try? I believe you’d scream if anyone kissed you. You are stupid! When I’m married I’ll see if Candidus hasn’t got a big slave with nice black hairy arms—you know, you’d love it!’

‘Oh, please, I wouldn’t!’ said Persis, terrified.

‘You little fool, of course you would! Everyone does. I ought to have emerald ear-rings, too. Open the shutters a little. How intolerably hot it is. You can fan me now, but don’t stop till I’m really asleep, or I’ll bite you.’