The Blood Of The Martyrs. Naomi Mitchison
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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.
Eleazar the son of Esrom and Nathan the son of Berechiah took their instructions and set out together, northward through Galilee, barefoot, without money or even a change of clothes. That was nothing. They were both of them brave and simple men, who had been convinced that a certain course of action was right and obviously right; if others could be convinced of it, well and good. But if they were not open to conviction, then the two would go on. According to the country, much of which was very hilly and difficult, and according to how long they stopped in any village or group of houses, they would cover anything from three to twenty miles in a day. But sometimes they would stop for several days in a village, talking about the new way of life, and healing the sick and casting out fear of devils and evil spirits.
These two men were convinced that there was a kind of relationship between people, which was attainable, as they knew from their own experience, and which was worth everything else in life. When people were in this relationship, they loved and trusted and understood each other without too many words; they were no longer separated by fear and suspicion and competition and class. In this relationship men and women could at last meet without each thinking the other was hoping to do some evil. When the relationship happened, those who experienced it were very happy; they did not any longer want power and glory and possessions. If everybody in the world could have it, then nobody would want these things and there would be no more tyranny and hatred and privilege and oppression of the poor by the rich. In the meantime it was not possible for the rich to enter into this relationship, because their possessions put up a barrier of envy and greed between them and their neighbours; they could not have this happiness, which was blessing, unless they separated themselves from their possessions, and indeed some of them did so, because they wanted to come into the Kingdom of Heaven so much more than they had ever in their lives wanted anything else.
Eleazar and Nathan were so confident about all this, as indeed they had every reason to be, that people were constantly asking them for help. So few men walked about the world with that look of certainty about them, that look of being removed from ordinary human insecurity and fear, that it seemed as though they could deal with all difficulties. When men and women came to them with pains and terrors, they could usually take them away, and they themselves were not in the least afraid of darkness and wild beasts and all those things that ordinarily send village folk flying to shelter. But when they spoke about the Kingdom of Heaven, some people were always frightened, because this was an idea which contradicted everything that they had been brought up to believe in. It meant that people would no longer care about making money or having a grand position, and would not any more respect and honour those who had done so. It meant that women would be the equals of their fathers and husbands, and that parents could have no right to the labour of their sons. So, although the doctrine of the Kingdom of Heaven was plain and obvious sense, yet there were many who hated it and who tried to hurt the two who were carrying it about. Yet they always escaped, for there were always some to help them, and they did not think evil of those who persecuted them; they were only sorry for them and sometimes puzzled.
They thought it was very probable that some of those who were carrying the doctrine might be caught and killed, and above all they thought that Jesus-bar-Joseph, from whom they had taken their instructions, might Himself be killed, for He was a man who always spoke His mind, and, although He was very clever and could make those who argued against Him look fools and worse, yet sooner or later He would fall into the hands of His enemies. And indeed He had said Himself that this might happen, but all the same the Kingdom was to grow and flourish until it spread over all Judaea. Then there would be no more Kings in one palace and Governors in another, no more High Priests and rich merchants who ate up the lives and happiness of the Am Harez, the common people. And a nation which had become one in trust and amity and comradeship would be able to stand even against Rome.
So after a time they heard that Jesus-bar-Joseph had gone to Jerusalem for Passover, to teach the new way of life to the Passover pilgrims, and the rich had caught Him at last and crucified Him; and they were very sad, but they knew that the Kingdom must go on and that the things which had convinced them the year before were still true. And a few months later they heard that this same Jesus, whose disciples they were, had been seen again, alive, after His death and burial. This did not surprise them, because they had always supposed that He was of such a kind that this sort of thing might happen, and they hoped that they too might one day see Him again. They did not speak about this rising again in their teaching. Why should they? The plain facts of the Kingdom of Heaven were nothing to do with such happenings.
Usually they were given food at the village where they came in the evening; sometimes they worked for it. Nathan had been a shepherd and he would go out and watch the flocks on the hills with the other shepherds and talk to them; Eleazar had been a fisherman, and whenever they came to a village by a river where they did netting, he could at least mend nets in the evening. Both of them tried to stay over the Sabbath