The Blood Of The Martyrs. Naomi Mitchison
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‘Yes,’ said Manasses, adding, ‘They are the words of our prayer.’
‘Your prayer,’ said Beric; he was stumbling over it, thinking hard and slowly, ‘to your Leader. But He is dead.’
‘He is risen,’ said little Phaon quickly, but Manasses said, ‘Yes, He is dead.’ Time enough for the other thing later.
‘Then,’ said Beric, ‘is this to call Him back?’
Manasses was thinking what to say, but Argas said, ‘He will come when the time is ripe and the people have suffered enough. This is to show we are His!’
Manasses said, ‘He taught us to pledge ourselves to His Father in heaven, who is the Father of us all, with these words and in this manner of praying …’ And then he hesitated, because it was so queer to be saying the words in front of one of the masters.
But Beric said, ‘Go on, Manasses.’
And Manasses stood up by the table which still wanted wiping over and lifted his hands and said, ‘Our Father which art in Heaven …’
Then Argas stood up too and suddenly touched Beric’s hand and said to him, ‘Say it with us, brother.’ And he and Phaon and the Briton all stood and repeated it line for line after Manasses.
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