She seemed to accept it though; she took a deep breath and began to explain. ‘You see, the whole thing has to come from us. The dirt. People can’t be reborn if they’re all mixed with owning things. Thinking about the things they own. The lucky ones are allowed to start from the very bottom, without possessions, without power, without love.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Beric; ‘how can a man be lucky when he’s penniless and helpless and alone?’
‘Not alone any more,’ said Lalage. ‘He’s with us. He lived among us, among poor people, and women like me. And in the end He got the whip on His back and the nails in His hands and feet. He had to be crucified, because that’s the worst, filthiest kind of death. Nothing worse than that happens to the lowest of the dirt. He couldn’t have helped us if He hadn’t taken on our life and died our death.’
‘But then He’s dead. Crucified. Like a slave. Do you mean your leader is dead, Lalage?’
‘He had to suffer everything before He became our leader. Life and death.’
Beric considered all this. There obviously was a leader, alive or dead. Lalage wasn’t making it up. He thought he had heard about leaders who came back … But it was too puzzling to talk about any more. Instead he asked, ‘Lalage, what was that you did with your hands just now?’
‘That? Oh, that’s His sign, the sign of the poor and the hurt and the ones who are kind to one another. The brothers. See if you can make it.’ She guided his hands into the sign of the cross; it was a kind of magic; he felt dazed and rather happy. He sat quite quiet and she sat quiet too.
The slaves came in. ‘Will it be all right if we clear, sir?’ asked Argas, and Beric nodded. They began to clear up, talking to one another in whispers. Sannio and Mikkos took out the cups and dishes to wash up. Manasses and Phaon were tidying the couches. Suddenly Phaon began shaking the cushions violently and sobbing again: they were the cushions Tigellinus had been lying on. ‘Steady on, kid,’ said Manasses, ‘you’ll have the stuffing out.’
‘Wish I had his stuffing out!’ said Phaon.
Manasses said low: ‘Don’t be a fool. You’ll be lucky if you don’t get worse done to you than that before you’re much older. There’s some houses—’
‘You’ve told me that already!’ said Phaon, and his voice rose to a squeak. ‘But I won’t stand it! Not always.’
Argas looked up, frowning, from his bucket and rags, and Manasses caught the boy by the wrist and said very quietly, ‘It won’t go on always. We know that.’
Phaon choked and swallowed. ‘Yes,’ he whispered. ‘Yes. We are not to be oppressed. He shall fill the hungry with good things.’
Manasses whispered back the answer, ‘And the rich He shall send empty away.’
But Argas was watching Beric and Lalage, scrubbing towards them. Half aloud, he said to Lalage, ‘Got your pay yet?’
Lalage answered rather oddly, ‘I think I am being paid now.’
Beric was disturbed by her speaking. He looked up and saw Argas, but he did not seem to mind now that Argas had seen the spilled wine and the blow. Perhaps Argas, also, had once been free and proud and then lost everything—what was it?—lost power, lost possessions, lost love. He had never thought of Argas that way before; he had been one of the slaves, just one of the slaves. Now their glances met, fumbling, and he heard Lalage saying into his ear, ‘Make the sign, Beric, son of Caradoc the king, the way I showed you.’
Uncertainly he made the sign, and Argas, sitting back on his heels in the dirty water, answered him quick with the same sign, and Manasses and Phaon came slipping round from the other couch and made it too. Manasses whispered urgently to Lalage, ‘Does he know the Words, too?’
‘The words?’ said Beric, bewildered. ‘I don’t know what you’re all talking about! I don’t even know the name of the one you follow.’
Manasses, behind, whispered, ‘Take care!’
But Argas, watching him steadily, said, ‘We follow Jesus, the Christ, who died for us.’
Something in Beric gave a sickening 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.
