Читать книгу The Blood Of The Martyrs - Naomi Mitchison - Страница 9

In the hot afternoon, Beric who was no longer a child, had been with Flavia, who was no longer a child either. She had amused herself, but it was beginning to be dangerous. Supposing Beric came clear out of the dream in which he stroked and kissed her, in which he did what she wanted and no more? Well, there would soon be something better to think about than Beric: by no means a dream this time, but real. But Beric did not know. It was no business of the Briton’s to whom she was betrothed; she was more than certain that her father had not mentioned it in his presence so far. It would be funny when he knew. And suddenly she was bored with his light wavy hair and the red sunburn on his neck and shoulders, and his fingers merely repeating an old story. She sat up sharply, saying that she must dress. His hands slipped on her, he tried to hold her, but she pushed him off, and he, as his dreams subsided, remembered that he had to see to his arrangements for the dinner party that evening. He would have liked to kiss her gently goodbye, but she, suddenly brisk, would have none of it, shoved him impatiently, so that he knocked over a basket of grapes from the little table. He would have picked them up, but now she couldn’t bear him in the room one moment longer. ‘Let the slaves!’ she said, stamping. ‘What are they there for! And go quietly, you big ox!’

When he went out, she trod her toes into one of the fallen grape bunches; the juice was warm and sticky and a lovely colour on her instep; she paddled it about a little on the tiled floor, then clapped her hands. Little Persis came running in, with anxious eyes on her mistress, who was now slipping off her short sweaty muslin shift, dropped it, one hem in the grape juice, as Persis saw with half an eye of worry, and called for powder.

As Persis powdered her all over, Flavia stretched again and again, and stuck her fingers into her brown hair, pulling it back in crisp hot masses from her cheeks and neck. Her face was the right kind of face for a sixteen year old Roman aristocrat; her small breasts which the girl was powdering would certainly grow. She had enjoyed herself so far; she was going to enjoy herself much more when she left home. She had not yet made anyone do what she wanted except the slaves and Beric, but that was going to happen too.

The other slaves came in to dress her and admire her and brush her hair, the old woman who was supposed to be so good, but whom Flavia didn’t trust an inch, and the round-faced Italian maid who giggled. Persis was the youngest and newest and easiest to hurt. She began to clear up the squashed grapes. Her sleek black head bent to the floor; there was a tempting patch of brown shoulder. Flavia tiptoed and gave it a quick pinch; Persis jumped and squealed; the other two slaves laughed, applauding their mistress and wondering what she was going to try on them. She looked round idly and viciously for something to do or throw or hurt; the Italian girl ran and brought in her pet monkey, hoping she would tease it instead of teasing them.

In the meantime the dinner party had to be arranged. The food, of course, had been ordered days before; both the head cook and Beric had been to the market, though actually most of the meat, poultry, vegetables, fruit and cheese had come in from Flavius Crispus’s country estate, a pleasant little place to which old Domina Aelia, the grandmother, had retired. The flowers for the garlands had come from there too, but in this heat it was difficult to keep the roses from dropping. As for the entertainment, Beric had put the two dancing boys through a rehearsal of their new mime: Ulysses and the Cyclops—with the gouging out of the eye done as realistically as possible. Phaon was a tiresome, temperamental little brat, but the dancing boys were bound to be rather spoilt. He had been born in the house; his mother, Eunice, had been freed five years back, and now ran a little bakery. Sometimes she brought in some extra fancy rolls—there would be some today, shaped like swans and butterflies. Phaon was fifteen and his legs were pretty enough to—eat. He knew that all right, and half the time he was showing off like a regular Greek, which was what the guests liked, and then suddenly he’d go queer and sullen, as if he hated the kind of life he was leading, which was stupid and ungrateful of him; not many slaves were as well treated and as well trained as Flavius Crispus’s dancing boys.

The other was a young Jew, Manasses, older than Phaon and with much more experience; in fact, it was he who had taught Phaon; he was easier to deal with, and his dark curls and dark sidelong eyes made him a good contrast with the little Greek. But Beric didn’t like him much. Jews were a nuisance in a household anyhow, with all the different kinds of food they refused to eat, and their praying, and trying to sneak off from work one day a week. In the Jewish Quarter in Rome you could go there one day and there wouldn’t be a soul about, not so much as chopping wood or drawing water. Of course, there were certain things which he, Beric, did not eat—goose, for instance; naturally, no Britons ate goose! It always made him feel uncomfortable to see the Romans actually enjoy eating it, especially Flavia; it made him feel squirmy, as though he didn’t want to touch her for an hour or two afterwards. But everybody knew that pork was one of the best foods there is! He remembered helping in a great game one day when the rest of the household made the Jew slaves eat it—held them down and jammed it into their mouths. Most of them were sick afterwards. It was all in fun, of course, and the rest of them had laughed like anything.

Some of the others had manhandled Manasses a bit that time; the rest of the slaves were always jealous of the dancing boys, and, on the whole, Beric saw the point of that. Of course, all the dining-room slaves had a better time; they had the pick of what was left over—they were supposed not to, but neither Beric nor Crispus were going to be hard on them; when there were no guests they often talked to the slaves who were waiting on them; naturally they were more intelligent and trustworthy—and better-looking than the rest, too! They were mostly Greeks, Lamprion, Sannio, Argas, Mikkos, and the rest.

By now Beric did most of the running of the household, thus, as he sometimes said to himself, saving the price and keep of an overseer. Today, for instance, he had hired a professional dancing girl entirely on his own; well, as a matter of fact, Flavius Crispus had seen her somewhere when he was dining out, but it was Beric who had found out her name and where she lived. Sometimes he wondered what was going to happen to him later on, when he was a man grown, with a great brown moustache like his father. Not that he wasn’t big and strong enough now; they all said so at the gymnasium; he could throw most of his friends. But—later on? Some day soon he must ask Flavius Crispus.

Thirteen years ago, the British king, Caradoc, son of Cymbeline, had been chased out of Essex by the legions, west along the Thames valley and into Wales. There had been fighting there, the usual betrayal of barbarians by one another, and in the end Caradoc and his wife and children had been taken to Rome, where the old Emperor Claudius had, on one of his good days, seen and pardoned them—not, of course, to go back to Britain, but to live on as clients in Rome. And the youngest boy was given to Flavius Crispus to be brought up with his own motherless little girl. Beric had howled and kicked at first, but it was all a long time ago. Caradoc and his wife were dead years back, and Beric had not grieved much; he had never tried to get in touch with his brothers, who were probably somewhere in Italy; nor did he think of himself as the son of a king except sometimes with Fla Flavia. When they were quite little, she had made him crowns out of anything that came to hand, and pretended to do him homage. And again this last year it seemed to heighten everything for her; she had whispered it at him, king’s son, king’s son, making him do this or that, touch her or not touch her, thinking of new games to play with him as the afternoons burned and blazed from winter into July, and inside the shutters the square, dusky, rose-scented room was her practice ground where she would make him follow and beg or cry with rage or laugh low with delight. The slave girls whispered to one another sometimes that he was a king’s son, but he didn’t know or care about that. He wasn’t interested in slave girls, though last year at Saturnalia he had given special presents to Flavia’s maids: but not for what they said—only for what they left unsaid.

Now he went along to see if there were any more directions for the dinner party. He found Crispus quite worried, and indeed it was a rather awkward party. Beric had never bothered much about Roman politics, but even he couldn’t help knowing that no senator could enjoy having the present Praefect of the Praetorians to dinner. He was sorry and worried that Crispus should have to do it, sorry from affection and worried because—well, Crispus had never held any important office of State, had never been involved in any kind of scandal or conspiracy, but still … Even Beric felt uneasy when he thought about what had been happening in Rome lately.

Beric knew most of the other guests already, old friends of the family: a second cousin, Flavius Scaevinus; Aelius Balbus, a cousin on the other side of the family; Junius Gallio, the ex-Proconsul of Achaea: and Gallio’s nephew, young Annaeus Lucan, the poet: also Aelius Candidus, Balbus’s son, who had just exchanged out of one of the less distinguished City Corps and taken a commission in the Praetorians. Hence Ofonius Tigellinus, the Praefect. There was one other guest whom Beric did not know, Erasixenos, an Alexandrian, exceedingly rich; he was to sit next to Tigellinus; they were said to have tastes in common—Crispus coughed a little over this—and Beric was to see, above all, that they were to have everything they wanted in the way of entertainment.

Beric did not always come to the dinner parties, only when he was wanted to make up numbers, and he usually sat at the lowest end of the third couch, where he could supervise the service; often he didn’t get much conversation, and he knew he wouldn’t tonight, as his neighbour would be Lucan, who was sure to be bored anyhow and would probably leave early. He said soothingly to Crispus that he was quite sure the dinner would be a success: the partridges especially were sure to be delicious; he had got hold of the recipe for that new stuffing and had just been down to the kitchen to taste it himself. Crispus began to say something to him about Aelius Candidus and then stopped. He patted Beric on the shoulder. ‘You’re a good boy,’ he said.

Beric found the dinner party as dull as he had expected. There were awkward moments, too; none of the aristocrats liked sitting at the same table as Tigellinus. Flavius Scaevinus was positively rude and left early. That was stupid of him; times had changed and it was no use supposing one was living under Augustus. Even Beric knew that. The partridges, however, were a great success, though Tigellinus had rather a coarse way of biting out the breast and throwing the rest on to the floor. Lucan, who affected plain living and high thinking, and had come in a plain green tunic with darns in several places, talked to Beric for a few minutes. Apparently he had an idea that because Britain was damp, foggy, full of unpleasant wild animals and without central heating, it was also the home of freedom and nobility.

Beric agreed enthusiastically, trying to look the part, but when Lucan began talking across the table to Erasixenos about some new Alexandrian religion, he couldn’t help remembering the way his father, King Caradoc, and his big brothers, Prince Rudri and Prince Clinog, had spoken and thought about the peasants and servants and men at arms: not the tall, fair Britons whom Lucan was thinking of, the conquerors, the sea-goers, the ones that fetched the big prices on the slave market, but the ordinary, middle-height, middle-coloured countrymen who were there all the time, however much their huts were burnt and their beasts stolen, and they themselves kicked and prodded and made to fight behind the palisades, half armed, while the long-haired warriors ramped round and sang war songs. Freedom? That was how King Caradoc had been able to speak up in front of the Divine Claudius; he wasn’t afraid; he was free and noble and all that, just right for the Stoics to make up stories about, and he, Beric, he could look handsome and strong and free. But it wasn’t the whole story about Britain. Well, who cared. Suddenly he began to feel sad and wished it were true, wished Britain had been a kind of Stoic paradise. He wanted something—he didn’t know what—something real.

Erasixenos was talking about Egyptian religions; Lucan apparently had been, or was going to, write one of his poems about Egypt. Beric had an idea that Lucan’s notions about Egypt were as cock-eyed as his ideas about Britain. Probably Egypt was full of ordinary stupid men and women, and the ghosts and devils were a different shape, but you had to get rid of them the same sort of way. For that matter he had seen a crocodile with his own eyes in the arena. Why were the Romans always so interested in new kinds of gods? They had plenty of gods of their own, only they weren’t—what was it?—they weren’t active, not in people’s real lives. Not any longer. So the Romans had to go somewhere else to get rid of the devils and spirits and bits of bad luck that were always floating round. They had to go somewhere else to get that feeling you do get out of the gods when you know they are there, the way they had been when he was a child. But the Romans had killed the Druids; and if he saw a Druid now he wouldn’t look twice.

Beric watched the slaves clearing away the empty sea-urchins, and fish-bones, the half-eaten hams and roast boar and ducks and sucking pig, the pie-crust and broken rolls and blobs of honey—it would all get finished up in the kitchen—the walnut shells and fruit rinds. Everyone had eaten much too much, of course, but what was the use of being rich if you weren’t going to have as much as possible of everything. It was sweaty weather though, even between the water-cooled marble walls. A slave went round to each diner with wet towels, fans, a nice little earthenware pot amusingly and appropriately painted, and fresh cushions to lie on.

Then the two boys began dancing their mime, all dressed up with the new masks and stiff short tunics. The pretty little round bottom of Phaon as a rather frivolous Ulysses flipped up now and then, and once Tigellinus reached over and pinched it. Tigellinus, also, watched with interest the mimed gouging out of the Cyclops’s eye; it seemed to be the kind of thing he knew about. The Stoics, naturally, found it boring, but Aelius Candidus liked it. At the end, the boys pulled their masks off and bowed. Tigellinus clapped and beckoned Phaon to come over. Phaon didn’t want to, but Beric caught his eye and glared at him to do what he was told. Tigellinus wasn’t going to eat him, after all, spoiled little brat!

The garlands were brought round by some of the girls; Tigellinus had a little fun with his, at any rate he went to a party to enjoy himself, which was more than the Stoics did! Lucan insisted on a garland of plain leaves, though he didn’t go quite so far as to ask for poetic bays. Aelius Balbus was appointed toast-master and everybody shifted a bit and settled down to the drinking, beginning with the Emperor of course. Unfortunately this started Tigellinus and Erasixenos off on several new stories about the doings of the Divine Nero, and, as one of them was about a girl who happened to be the niece of Gallio’s sister-in-law, it was all rather a pity. In any case Gallio was in a bad temper; however, he would probably get better when the wine had warmed him up a little. Poor old Crispus really disliked hearing that kind of story about the Emperor; he tried hard to disbelieve them. Aelius Candidus obviously thought them grand, but was a little shy, with his father there, of telling any himself.

After that there were drinks and compliments all round the table, not to Beric, of course, except from his neighbour Lucan, who was really drinking to Freedom, even if she had fled to the barbarians. Beric wasn’t sure if he liked being called a barbarian. He always rather hated it when he was explained away to guests, as that tin soldier Aelius Candidus was doing now at the far side of the table to Tigellinus, who got it a bit wrong and said loudly that it must be awkward having one of these Germans about the place, especially if there was a pretty daughter.

At that Beric shut himself away, closing himself against everything but his own dream. As the toasts went round he drank more deeply than usual. The slaves refilled his cup, but he did not notice their hands on the heavy jugs. It was as though he were back in the room Fla with Flavia. Circles of colour swelled and burst across his mind, golden and rose, golden and hot black. Out of childhood a great blue pond swam up, almost level to the marshes, the high reeds, the very green, slimy marsh plants. Fish rose turning, bursting bubbles, enormous dragonflies planed, touched the surface of the pond to shivers, almost, almost submerging in one long ripple the willing marshes. The Horse-Goddess lifting circles of colour for the delight of warriors, golden and rose, golden and hot black, stepped with one hot hard hoof sizzling into the great pond of childhood, that he knew now as the great reed-blocked Thames, few forded, flooding suddenly, king-river of Britain. He was the king’s son, master of rushes and water and the golden Goddess.

But now Crispus was proposing the health of Aelius Candidus in a long and involved speech, since he had by now got outside a good deal of his own excellent wine, as indeed they all had. ‘Here’s a young fellow,’ he said, beaming round the table, ‘excellent young fellow. Going to have a most distinguished career. Going to start it by marrying my daughter!’

Everyone clapped. And the dream, found out, shrivelled into contemptible childishness. Would never visit Beric again. That had been said. That. Crispus went on, ‘So now I ask you all to drink to the health and prosperity of my future son-in-law, Marcus Aelius Candidus!’ It was only then that Beric noticed the red splash on his tunic where the wine had spilled when he jerked his cup. He didn’t care, but Argas came round and wiped it up; Argas laid a hand on his shoulder for a moment, but Beric didn’t seem to feel it.

Now Candidus was drinking Flavia’s health and there was plenty of applause, and Balbus asked if the little lady herself might not be induced to honour them with her company for a short time. Crispus, pleased, hesitated, and asked Beric what sort of show the dancer was going to give them. Beric answered low, that it was classical dancing—this seemed to disappoint Tigellinus—and that he was sure there was nothing Flavia could mind, at which Candidus shouted over at him to ask the little beauty to give them the pleasure of her society. Beric turned furiously to Crispus—he wasn’t even going to say yes or no to Candidus! But Crispus sent one of the slaves.

Lucan took his leave now; women bored him, and ladies bored him even more than women. Two of the slaves held back the curtains for Flavia to make an entrance. Beric, alone at his end of the couch, would not even look at her, but the others did, and a pretty picture she made, eyes downcast, cheeks flushed, lightly veiled over girlish curls, a white flower in place, silver sandals; at once the atmosphere of the dining-room responded. ‘If I was perfectly certain I could stand on my feet,’ said Candidus, ‘I’d take my garland and lay it at yours!’ Daintily she stepped round and sat on the edge of the middle couch between her father and future father-in-law; offered wine, she duly refused it; in any case she didn’t like it much. Tigellinus gave her a good stare and whispered to Erasixenos.

Now it was time for the dancer. ‘Ah—what is the young person’s name, again?’ asked Crispus. Beric answered that it was Lalage, and someone inevitably quoted Horace. Lalage appeared with her accompanist, a little old woman who crouched down in a corner with her harp and double flutes. The dancer was a striking young woman, black-haired, rather angular, fairly tall, expressionless. She was wearing a long heavy cloak which she threw off, abruptly, holding it for a moment at the end of one muscular arm. Under it she was wearing the traditional Maenad dress, the wide, finely pleated skirt, flaring out from the hips, the vine leaves low on the waist and the fawn skin over one shoulder, leaving the other breast professionally bared. Her accompanist played a single chord on the harp and Lalage took up her position. She looked at the supper party, then over her shoulder to the harpist: ‘If they talk, stop playing!’

The dancing was definitely good. After a few formal movements, the Maenad awoke, turning a succession of rapid cart-wheels all in the same square-yard of floor. She spun this way and that, and the skirt swirled into queer shapes. For a moment she sank into a slower rhythm; they could hear her panting. Aelius Candidus looked with interest at the nipple on the bared breast. ‘Do you like ’em sticking up that way?’ he asked Erasixenos in nothing like a whisper. ‘Just have a good look at this girl’s.’

Lalage frowned and stamped, and Gallio from the other couch growled at him: ‘You keep your eyes for your own girl, my lad!’

‘Yes,’ beamed Candidus, ‘I was just wondering about hers.’

Flavia ducked her head and giggled, and Beric said across the table and none too pleasantly: ‘If you do any more wondering out loud, the dance will stop.’

‘What did you say?’ observed Candidus loftily.

And Beric: ‘I said shut up!’

The dance came to an end, applauded, and Candidus threw a couple of gold coins. Lalage kicked them with one bare heel over to the harpist, who picked them up, and Flavia observed that she was glad she was going to have such a generous husband. Candidus glared at her, then at the dancer. But it wasn’t either of them; it was that Briton. Speaking like one of themselves! So you’d got to do something about it; got to put him in his place once and for all. Wouldn’t do to let these fellows behave as if they were citizens. His future father-in-law had been soft: obviously. So it was up to him.

Even Tigellinus was feeling all the more amiable for his wine. But a wave of cruel and efficient sobriety had come over Candidus. He walked over to the Briton; the slaves dodged quickly out of his way; Flavia caught her breath. ‘Do you know what you are?’ he said heavily, leaning at Beric. ‘An impudent foreigner taking advantages of the privileges Rome gives you. But that isn’t allowed, Mister Briton.’ For a moment Beric could think of nothing to say. ‘No. Not allowed,’ said Candidus, and smacked Beric’s face.

Flavia, peeping round her father, laughed out loud. So did Tigellinus. Beric jumped to his feet, but Crispus reached over and caught his hand: ‘No, Beric!’

‘If I weren’t under this roof—’ said Beric, low and heavily.

And Flavia, peeping round again, rubbed it in: ‘No, you’d never abuse father’s hospitality, would you, Beric?’

Candidus walked back to his own place almost steadily, and Beric dropped his head in his hands; nobody paid any attention to him. He heard Balbus scolding Candidus, saying he must always avoid getting involved in quarrels with persons not of his own race and class. He heard Tigellinus tickling Lalage and getting his ears boxed and laughing enormously. He heard Crispus telling Flavia that it was time for her to say good night; on the way out she pinched him, but still he didn’t look up. Then he began to hear a discussion about foreigners in Rome. Balbus and Crispus were talking rather low about the way each of these sets of foreign immigrants now had streets of their own: Syrians here, Phrygians there, Egyptians over by the Tibur, the Jews in their own quarter protected by the Empress Poppaea: Greeks everywhere. Every kind of poisonous foreigner, prostitutes and abortionists and murderers, men and women who would hire themselves out to anyone for anything! And probably the worst of the lot were a sect of Jews called Christians who hadn’t even any respectable people among them, but worshipped all kind of obscene animals, fishes and donkeys and whatnot.

Beric took a breath and sat up straight. On the couch in front of him Tigellinus and Erasixenos were having lots of fun with Lalage, but she was a sufficiently muscular and sharp-tongued woman to be able to deal with them. Her old accompanist watched from a corner as she must have watched the same thing evening after evening at other houses. Candidus was by now in a rather disconnected stage of drink. He seemed to be asleep for a few minutes; then he woke up and bit Lalage’s toe. Gallio clapped his hands and Phaon came running with the damp cloths and little pot. Crispus and Balbus were still talking about foreigners. Then—was it after all possible that Crispus thought of him, Beric, as a foreigner, as—an impudent foreigner taking advantage of what wasn’t his? And Fla she: Flavia had laughed at him; there was no getting over that.

A black slave with a horribly long knife at his belt came in, rattled the knife hilt to make Tigellinus attend, and handed him a set of tablets. He looked at them and swore, then heaved himself rapidly up, shedding Lalage like a blanket; she was on her feet at once, shook herself, and did a fade-out. Tigellinus explained to his host that he must go; it was an Imperial summons. ‘I’m sorry, Crispus,’ he said, ‘very sorry. This was just developing into a most agreeable evening.’ He added that it might mean a turn-out of the Praetorians, and prodded Candidus, who got up, remarking that when duty called beauty must wait. Beric got up too: it was his duty to see the guests off, to light their torches and hunt out their slaves. Tigellinus tipped him—inadvertently perhaps, not as a deliberate insult. Candidus merely hiccuped when Beric, holding himself in, wished them good night.

A minute or two later Erasixenos left too, though very politely; he was one of the foreigners. But if one had plenty of money it wouldn’t matter. Anyhow, the Greeks were different. Beric walked back through the main courtyard of the house, under the midsummer stars. He didn’t want to go into the dining-room again. The slaves would look at him—he knew they had seen, and he’d take it out of them next morning if they said a word!—look at him as if—as if—But perhaps they knew. For a few minutes he stood with his back to a pillar looking up at that soft, thick star-glow. The Stoics found comfort in contemplation of the movement of the stars. He didn’t. He went through into the small courtyard with the little fountain and the flower-pots. There was Flavia. He wanted to hit her, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t even say anything angry and splendid. He only said, ‘You might have told me.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I might, but I didn’t. You’re not very good at concealing your feelings, are you?’

‘I didn’t have to—this afternoon, Flavia—you knew about this, then!’

‘Of course I did. It was no business of yours. It’s no business of yours now! You’ve got a lot to learn, Beric.’

‘I see. And you’ve been learning on me, just because I happened to be there.’

‘Well, if you hadn’t happened to be there, it wouldn’t have been you I learnt on!’

She giggled, and suddenly, instead of being hurt and ashamed, he was wildly angry. He said, ‘I think I am going to tell your father—everything.’

Flavia answered lightly, but with anger answering his: ‘But, you see, he wouldn’t believe you, because naturally I wouldn’t dream of admitting it, and he’d have the skin taken off your back for saying such a thing!’

Could she really have said that? Flavia? He tried to struggle back. ‘I am the son of a king, Flavia!’

‘Very possibly,’ she said, and tucked in a curl that was beginning to slip, ‘but no one remembers that any longer except you. Actually you wouldn’t be here at all if the Divine Claudius hadn’t happened to be rather sloppy. All the Emperors get like that. Gaius wanted to make his horse a Consul.’ He gasped at that and she went on, still lightly. ‘And the thing about horses is that there’s always a groom to keep them in their places—with a whip. Natives have to be kept in order in much the same way. You heard what Gallio said. And felt it!’

‘Flavia!’ he said. ‘Flavia! You don’t mean it!’

‘Oh yes, I do,’ she said. ‘I waited here to tell you, because I’ve made up my mind to have nothing more to do with creatures like you. No, don’t try to touch me. I mean what I say.’

He half shouted, ‘I won’t stand this! I won’t have you treating me like dirt!’

‘You are dirt,’ said Flavia, ‘and you’d better get used to it,’ and she turned her back and left him.

The three old men in the dining-room were still talking. For a time they discussed these Christians, a little nervously. It was odd to find oneself at a party, even after absorbing the drink and sobering down, talking about such an unpleasant subject; but they had been upset by Tigellinus. They were wondering now about the whole structure of the State which these Christians, alone among the foreigners and atheists, definitely wished to destroy or at any rate did not support. ‘They believe in nothing, I understand,’ said Balbus; ‘they have no temples, no priests, and they say they are going to destroy the world!’

‘They always talk in terms of destruction: flames and judgment and violence,’ Crispus said. ‘They seem unable to understand what the State is.’

‘That’s because they are State-less, slaves and worse. When the police hear of a Christian meeting, depend on it, it’s in one of the tenements in the Aventine. They swarm in there; it ought to be cleared.’

‘Nothing but a fire’s going to clear that. You know, Balbus, these tenements are a disgrace, and I don’t care who the landlords are! Full of thieves and poisoners and Christians and cheap astrologers and the gods alone know what else!’

‘The common Jews aren’t so bad; they’re fine fighters and they make good citizens so long as they don’t quarrel with their neighbours; and at any rate they don’t obtrude their superstitions; I’ve met some very decent Jews.’

‘Of course. You must have had plenty to do with Jews in your time, Gallio.’

‘Eh?’ said Gallio, starting awake. ‘Jews. Yes, yes. Much more honest than the Greeks. Often won’t take a bribe. But excitable. Dear me, yes.’

‘You never came across any Christians, did you?’

‘Oh, sometimes. The strict Jews can’t stand them. Seems they’re slack about religious observations. Don’t insist on all this nonsense about special food.’

‘I told you so,’ said Balbus. ‘Atheists! Even the Jews think so. Sometimes I wonder, Gallio, whether it isn’t the worst of a career like yours—and a damned fine career, too—that in Provincial administration you’re having to deal all the time with inferior races, Jews and Greeks and that class of person. It must have been intolerably tedious.’

Gallio looked at him and scratched in his beard a moment. ‘Sure they are inferior?’ he said.

‘Well,’—Balbus was almost shocked—‘naturally!’

‘I don’t know,’ Gallio said, ‘seems different when you’re not in Rome. There was one Jew at Corinth. A little dark man. Queer way of looking at you—that’s why I remember him. Paul or some such name. Yes, Marcus Antonius Paulus. Curious how they remember Anthony still in the East. Kind of immortality, that.’

‘What had this Paul done?’

‘Nothing. Made some rather good tents. As a matter of fact, I bought some from him. But the other Jews wanted his blood. He’d put their backs up somehow.’

‘But was he one of these Christians?’

‘Don’t know. He seemed perfectly respectable. I let him go, of course. He didn’t strike me as inferior.’

‘All the same, these Levantines …’

‘There seem to be so many of them,’ Crispus said. ‘Now this fellow Erasixenos, I wouldn’t have asked him two or three years ago. But now…’ He shrugged his shoulders.

‘Yes,’ said Balbus, ‘our Divine Nero admires their taste so much! And the rest of us have to ask them to dinner.’

Crispus looked round; two or three of the slaves were still there. ‘Boys, you may go,’ he said quickly, ‘all of you.’

‘Ah, thanks,’ said Balbus, ‘though I wasn’t going to say anything treasonable! Only that Tigellinus makes me sick. To see the way he looked at your daughter!’

‘We’re old-fashioned, I’m afraid. Perhaps he isn’t as bad as he seems. I can’t believe everything I hear about the Emperor.’

‘You’d better start practising, then,’ said Gallio, and laughed shortly.

But Crispus went rambling on with his regrets. The wine made him reminiscent and long winded. But there was no hurry. No hurry for any of them. Nothing left for three old men, all more or less retired from public life, to do or change. So they could go on talking. ‘It was so different those first five years, Gallio,’ he said, ‘when your brother Seneca was Nero’s tutor. We all thought he might be going to be the philosopher-king at last: the old dream. Yes, yes. But it was only because things had got so bad just before, with all the informers and murders and confiscations and scandals, and women and slaves in high places. But, you know, Balbus, it seemed like a fresh start with every Emperor, and then …’ He shook his head and emptied his wine-cup.

‘I was only a child when the Divine Augustus died,’ said Balbus, reminiscent too, ‘but I can remember the grief there was in all classes. And I remember, too, my father saying that we’d got a scholar and philosopher in Tiberius, a true Roman, hard-working, modest—well, there, we all know what came of it, and my poor father knew, too, to his cost, before the end.’

‘I was out of Rome those last five years of Tiberius,’ said Crispus, ‘a young man on my first job in the Provinces. It wasn’t till I came back that I realised how things were at home.’

‘It was the gloom, the blackness on everything—wasn’t it, Gallio?’ Balbus said. ‘You couldn’t enjoy yourself nor feel secure. There was that unhappy madman, betrayed by his wife and his friends, and at last by his own scholarship, glowering and pouncing between here and Capri. And then when he died and young Gaius took over—Caligula they called him, remember, Crispus?—it seemed like the good old days. Yes, the exiles came back, there were free elections and free speech again; we thought Rome could be Rome … But it was hardly a year before the prosecutions and the tyranny came back; Gaius was as mad as Tiberius. The things we had to put through in the Senate! Enough to make one ashamed to bear one’s grandfather’s name. And then Gaius was murdered and the Divine Claudius came shambling and stammering on; but still, he was no tyrant. No, Gallio, he kept the Provinces together and he might have done well for Rome, but for trusting his wives and his freedmen. It didn’t send him mad, being Caesar, but whether Nero is going the same way as Tiberius and Gaius—what do you think, Gallio?’

‘He’s not mad; he’s bad,’ Gallio answered. ‘It would take more than my poor brother and Burrus to hold a boy like that. He took after his mother. And she was a devil. But he only murdered her for a worse woman yet. Women and slaves!’

‘But, oh dear, why must the gods treat us like this?’ said Crispus.

‘Why? I’ll tell you. We’re to blame ourselves. Power’s a nasty, dangerous stuff, bad enough for a grown man. Poison to a boy. Even if Nero hadn’t had that mother. And we’ve been so afraid of civil war again—and the gods know we had reason to be afraid—that we let these Julio-Claudians have power. Tons of it. Enough to burst them, to send them mad. We gave it them with both hands—anything to keep us out of a civil war. We wouldn’t see that it was more than they could stand, any of them.’

‘Augustus stood it.’

‘He didn’t have it from childhood. And it wasn’t all in his hands, either. There was still a Senate and People of Rome with a will of its own that it could make known. And certain powers not given up. But now: think! We’ve given everything. Civil and military power. Judicial and executive. Haven’t we, Balbus?’

‘It’s not possible to run an empire efficiently unless there’s power at the centre; what we complain about is its misuse. It keeps on getting into the wrong hands—creatures like Pallas and Narcissus in the last reign—not even Italians!—and now men like Tigellinus and all those clever little snakes of freedmen, who can’t even get the whip marks off their backs, and women like Poppaea—the Divine Empress creeping from one bed to another—oh, it makes my blood boil!’

Gallio laughed. ‘Drink and cool down. It’s our doing. Not that we could have helped it. Being what we are. And the world as it is. The people who want power are the ones who get it, and it’s not a thing that decent people want. You wouldn’t like to be Emperor, would you, Crispus?’

‘The gods forbid!’

‘Nor I. We’ve some regard for our souls. It’s the ones without souls—women and half-men like these Imperial Ganymedes, and brutes without education like our dear Tigellinus. They’re the kind that want power. And take it.’

‘But the Emperors?’

‘Can an Emperor have a soul? Ask my brother: Seneca’ll tell you fast enough! Poor little silly Imperial soul, smothered to death with flattery and luxury and pride and anger uncontrolled. No, you can’t have it both ways. Not power and a soul.’

‘At any rate,’ said Crispus, ‘it isn’t so bad in the Provinces; they say that in Gaul, for instance, there is something nearer the old Roman life.’

‘Comes of being a week’s journey from the capital. Gaul can’t be gathered up into the same bundle of power as Rome. But suppose now—well, I’m no poet, this is more my nephew’s line!—but say one could get letters—and legions—to and fro to the Provinces in a matter of hours: flying horses! Well, then, they’d be under the same power too, and no different.’

‘In the same fear and shame as we are.’

‘Yes, but mark you, Crispus, the Empire’d be that much more efficient. The Imperial administration that much more unified. No rebellions possible. Can’t have it both ways. See, Crispus?’

Balbus, who had been calming down, swirling the wine round in his cup, broke in: ‘I’m not so sure, Gallio; is it all so damned efficient? What about the finances? Rome could live on what she made and took—well, in the usual way!—under the Republic. If you were a citizen that meant a decent security. But an Imperial Court with all the trimmings is a different matter; it’s upset the balance of things. It has to be fed and paid for, with imports all the time, and I’m not sure if that’s going so nicely. Here in Rome, half the citizens are on the dole. And I’d like to know just how the Exchequer are paying for these pageants and parades and cardboard imitations of the Olympic Games that are got up to keep their minds off reality!’

Crispus sighed. ‘We all need to have our minds taken off reality these days. It’s nice to think of those two young people starting life together. Though I could have wished your Candidus hadn’t chosen to go into the Praetorians.’

‘He’d set his heart on it,’ said Balbus, ‘and it’s certainly a career. When the old ways of looking at things are breaking down—the continuity of the family and all that—well, young people want to make their own lives. We shall have to see the astrologers, Crispus, and get them to fix a day.’

Gallio grunted. ‘Astrologers! Mean to say you believe in that sort of nonsense, Balbus?’

‘Well, my dear fellow, there’s a lot in it, y’know—’

‘Lot of moonshine. Well, good night, Crispus, and thanks. Coming, Balbus? Yes, of course I’m walking. Think I’m going to be carried about in a litter like one of Nero’s nancies? You don’t know old Gallio!’

When he had seen his two old friends off, Crispus went along to bed, still sighing and shaking his head and wondering if it could be true that the Emperor was no better than the rest, that something was really wrong, so badly wrong that it could not be put right by going back—back to the manners and decencies and truthfulness and civilisation of Augustus—or farther. The slaves, however, waited to clear up, and Lalage was waiting to be paid. Hearing Crispus call for his personal servant to give him the usual ten minutes‘ bedtime massage, Argas came back to the dining-room. But by then Beric was there again, sitting on the end of the couch in his old place and glaring across the table at the other couch where Candidus had been. He shouted at Argas to get out and keep out. Argas who had seen what happened, the spilled wine and the blow! Argas shrugged his shoulders and went out. ‘No good,’ he said to Sannio, ‘the Briton’s there. And a nasty temper he’s in.’

‘Well,’ said Sannio, ‘the little cat’s done the dirty on him. Sitting there as if butter wouldn’t melt in her claws. Oh my, oh my!’

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.