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.
