only woke, with a jump that sent his heart pounding into his throat and stomach, when somebody laid a hand on his shoulder and said his name; he saw that the room was half full of people. He didn’t know who any of them were, except Rhodon the metal-worker. He only knew that this must be the congregation.
Eunice said, ‘I have told them.’ He stood and they looked at him; it was like being put up to be sold; their eyes were stripping him. One of them, a young man rather older than he was, began asking him questions; he knew the answers. They had been in his mind since summer; they were sense. He knew the Words. When he was through, a woman in a long cloak of good stuff and wearing fur shoes, asked him other questions, putting things a different way; he answered her too. Now they were whispering to one another. He thought he must do the hardest part now; he collected his mind and steadied it. He asked: ‘Are you the congregation that I am—going to join?’
‘Yes,’ said the young man Manasses.
Argas went down on his knees and said, ‘Forgive me, then, for I know that I have done wrong and I know that I have been angry and stupid and I know I have no right to ask it. Only—out of mercy …’
He could not go on speaking; the steadiness had all gone. But Manasses was kneeling beside him. ‘What have you done?’ he asked.
Argas whispered as loud as he could, ‘At Ariminum—I wouldn’t come in—I knew it was right, but—and I hurt Rufus and he forgave me and I wouldn’t take his forgiveness—’
‘You can take it now, from us,’ said Manasses.
‘I have been angry—I have hurt people—I have lied—I have stolen—once I went to a witch—and then, oh, this is all worse!—I have denied Jesus and His teaching—’ Argas was shaking all over with the difficulty of getting it out.
Manasses said, ‘He has taken you all the same. Even though you denied Him. You are forgiven. Do you also forgive?’
‘Who should I forgive?’ asked Argas, puzzled. Now that he had said what he had it seemed to him that there had been a great weight on him and now it was off and he felt queer and light and a little dizzy.
‘All of us,’ said Manasses.
And Eunice came to him. ‘You need to forgive me, anyway, son,’ she said, ‘for I made you angry.’
‘It wasn’t you,’ said Argas, ‘it was my own sin turning on me. But I forgive you if you like. And if ever I get angry again—’
‘Well then, we forgive one another again, and that’s all there is to it.’ She said to the congregation, ‘Well, what shall we do?’
They began talking it over. Argas was now clinging on to Manasses, beginning to remember all the times in his life when he had not done the right and decent thing, seeing all his thoughts and actions lying like a dirty rag in the gutter, wanting to disown them. He could not bear to wait any longer for the hour when he could start fresh. Manasses was afraid he was going to get into real hysterics and knew that some of it was probably due to the fast and the sleepless night of praying. He knew also that if the boy went too far he would feel ashamed afterwards instead of glad. So he began praying for Argas, using soothing and complicated words. Argas became calmer. Manasses left him kneeling in the middle of the floor with his hands over his face, and the tears of repentance, which none of them would have dared to laugh at, dripping between his fingers, ‘I think we should do it,’ said Manasses.
‘It’s out of order,’ said Rhodon, ‘let him wait the ordinary time. Like I had to.’
‘I don’t want to take the risk of refusing him,’ said Manasses. ‘He’s like someone starving. What do you think, Lalage?’
‘I wish he hadn’t chosen such a cold night, but I’m quite sure we’d better go down to the river with him. We don’t often have a soul tearing its way through the body to us like this. Remember, Rhodon, he went through the ordinary waiting time with the brothers at Ariminum.’
‘And denied them! And denied Jesus Christ and His Father. Isn’t he to have any punishment for that?’
‘Look at him, Rhodon. No, look at him as if it was you yourself. You don’t cry like that for fun. Do you want to hurt him any more?’
‘It isn’t that,’ said Rhodon. ‘I’ve nothing against the lad. But I hate favouritism. But, of course, if you’ve all made up your minds—’
‘Favouritism, nonsense!’ said Lalage. ‘Now, Eunice, you’re the one that knows him. What do you say?’
‘I think we ought to,’ said Eunice, ‘leave the leaven too long, and you spoil the whole batch. But who’ll baptise him? I would if he was a girl, but—’
‘You aren’t going to get yourself wet tonight, mother!’ said Josias. ‘Tiber’s frozen over at the edges. Maybe we ought to get someone older from the other Church.’
‘We must have a deacon,’ said Rhodon. ‘I never saw a man baptised unless there was someone in authority doing it. It wouldn’t be in order.’
‘I think it can be done by anyone through whom the Spirit moves,’ said Lalage, ‘that’s all. It can’t matter what a man’s called. Not with us!’
‘Well,’ said Eunice, ‘are any of you moved to be the one to baptise this man?’ She went and stood by him; he was not crying now, but listening.
At last Manasses said, ‘If you would all give me leave—I know I am young, but I think—I have tried to live as a Christian should, and a deacon can’t do more than that. I will go down into the river with Argas and make him one of us.’
After a little they all agreed. Eunice said she would stand surety for him, and the others said that was all right if she didn’t go into the water over her ankles, but they weren’t going to let her catch cold. Then they all put on their cloaks and Eunice found blankets for the ones who hadn’t got them. Phaon lighted a lantern and they all went out into the biting night, and locked and bolted the door of the bakery behind them. It was some way to the nearest part of the Tiber from where they were. They wrapped their cloaks tight and walked quickly, no one saying much. Sometimes they had to stand aside for a litter with torches, and once a drunk barged into them. At last they came to the street leading down to Tiber. Phaon went ahead with the lantern. ‘It’s in flood,’ he said.
They all gathered round the edge and the two young men, the Jew and the Greek, stripped; Josias took their tunics over his arm and Phaon held the lantern out as far as he could reach over the water. Here the flooded river was running too quick to freeze, but the steps were slippery and they gasped with cold as they went in, holding on to one another. They looked white and thin in the lantern light, stepping down into that tearing bubble and stick-streaked water, opaquely dark with mud. Josias watched anxiously as Manasses, leading, went down waist-deep. The steps ended and they were on mud and the river tore at them and they were almost out of the circle of lantern light, out of reach of the others. As the icy water bit on his loins and stomach it seemed to Argas that it was indeed the river of death and defeat; he could have flung himself down on to it, arms at sides, not swimming. He did not know what Manasses was saying to him. He only felt worthless, sick with himself; there was nothing right about him. They were breast-deep now, staggering in the current, He felt Manasses’s hands on his shoulders, weighing on him like sin; his feet sunk into the sucking mud. He heard Manasses saying ‘into the name of Jesus.’ And, with that name in his mind,
