full of sins, and I have not been able to keep the Law, and I have forgotten about everything and I did not know that Jesus was the Christ! I want to be purified again and born again, Claudia Acté!’
She looked at him very pitifully and said, ‘I think that can be done, Manasses, for you were only half baptised. Now, will you look after this girl for me?’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I will do anything for you. But what am I to say if Pallas asks?’
‘Pallas will not be here much longer,’ said Acté, and her face hardened. ‘I know that. Lie to him and tell the others they are to lie, or Acté will be very angry. We shall get Pallas out very soon.’
‘But the Empress—’ said Manasses astonished, knowing that Pallas and the Empress Agrippina had acted together in the past, and now knew too much about one another ever to quarrel.
‘That account may be closed too,’ said Acté, ‘but keep your mouth shut. Get the name of this girl’s Madam, and go to her in the morning with this’—and she took a purse out of the fold of her dress and gave it to him— ‘and say that Acté needed the girl.’ Watching him, she added, ‘It is good to know that I can trust you. I will send you word about the breaking of bread.’
He knelt in front of her as he had done as a child with Eleazer and said, ‘Give me a blessing.’
She laid her hands on his head and gave it and he forgot that she was a Gentile woman and only felt the blessing and the trust again, and knew that the teaching of Jesus was not in vain.
That was the beginning of many things, including his friendship with Lalage, the hurt girl. He and Josias came to the breaking of bread and they learnt how in the love-feast all those eating together could be sure of the temporary experience of the Kingdom and got from it enough faith to go on in a world which seemed utterly against them. But even in Caesar’s household and even under the protection of Claudia Acté, it was necessary to be very secret. Because the Kingdom of Heaven could only come—and this was plain to everybody—after the overthrow of the world of success, of Emperors and Governors, of priesthoods and Senate, of the rich and strong: the world of Rome. And the only thing worth asking for and living for was the coming of the Kingdom.
After a while they had one of the periodical siftings out of the Palace, and once more Manasses and Josias were sold, this time to a very respectable household, where Manasses was expected to do other things besides dance. Actually, his dancing did not improve at all after he was sixteen. He grew too tall and solid for the boy parts, and fortunately for him nobody had chosen to take effective physical measures to keep him young; it was not done quite so often to Jew boys because they made such a fuss and sometimes killed themselves. After a time he was allowed to cut his long curly hair; it curled still, but close over his head.
His present master, Flavius Crispus, preferred the old-fashioned comic dancing with masks at his dinner-parties, or even recitations. Manasses used to read aloud to him sometimes, when his secretary was busy, and also helped with the ordinary waiting at table, saw to the wines, and so on. It was a rather stricter household, and for a time he disliked it, but Josias, who worked in the kitchen, liked it more. It was difficult for them to get away for the love-feasts, but by and by they found that they were not the only Christians in the new household, either. There was a little imp of a boy, Phaon, whom Manasses had to teach to dance—he was quite good when he took any trouble. He was a slave, but his mother, Eunice, was a freedwoman and Christian; she had sometimes been to the meetings in Caesar’s household, and now there were meetings in her house, which Manasses and Josias could go to. Euphemia, another freedwoman, used to come, and Rhodon the metal-worker, and Phineas and Sapphira, and sometimes others. Lalage used to come when she was in that part of the city. She had been baptised almost at the same time that Manasses and Josias were re-baptised, after the meeting had decided that their old purification did not count. And later on Niger, who was black and having a bad time where he was, came, when he could manage to get away.
But the meetings were often in the house of Crispus, in summer always in the unused boiler-room, where the furnaces for the hot water system stood cold for eight months of the year. By that time Argas had come, and Dapyx, and then little Persis. Sometimes, too, there would be brothers who were strangers, who had only just come to Rome. They were always welcome and always trusted, and usually, but not quite always, the trust was justified. But there was one man who prophesied and spoke with tongues, and they lent him money, more than they could really afford, and then he walked out on them and they never got any of it back. More of them than not were Jews, but still quite a number were Greeks or other Gentiles: Manasses hardly even noticed now. And sometimes there would be a new convert, like Sotion, the freedman who lived quite near and who had begun to come to the meetings lately.
It was another life going on all the time under and beside the ordinary slave’s life. The two lives did not really overlap. On the whole the Christians in Crispus’s household were good servants, unusually truthful and honest. But none of them would have dreamed of breathing a word of all this to their master. It was nothing to do with the masters. And so when Manasses looked up from clearing the table and saw Beric the Briton making the sign—their sign—it was like suddenly seeing light through a brick wall. And then, when it was apparent that the Briton did not really know what he was doing or who they were, he had been sickeningly afraid. But he had gathered up his courage and spoken gently, and he had seen that the Briton was afraid too, only in a different way. And then? Was it that he had forgiven the Briton for being one of the masters, or had the Briton forgiven him and Argas for being slaves? They had become each a little in the power of the other. But not this time as he had always before been in the power of his masters. Not in hate. But in some suspended feeling that was half way to love, that was a reaching out from either side to the other.
Lalage had gone out and left them alone. She had said, laughing, that she would come back and be paid the next day, and the Briton had stood looking after her, one hand out as if he would have stopped her, but not finding anything to say. Then he turned back to them, saying, ‘The words—what was it you meant by the words? Is that how you know one another?’
‘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.
