The Blood of the Martyrs by Naomi Mitchison Page B

He felt himself a living person again, a man, and it seemed to him that everyone recognised it, not only the brothers. There was a kind of friendliness about all sorts of people who had beenjust hateful before. Perhaps it only was that he was no longer immediately hating himself, but that was how it looked to him. Grand.
    He heard a good deal more about what they believed and what they did. He learnt the signs. He thought he would like to do everything with them, to belong really, to take what they had to give. To be reborn. It would be fine to throw off all the thoughts and hates that had been getting him down all this time, to have them washed away. He would like to be good. He would fast for two days and then they would baptise him and he would be able to share in everything.
    And then, of course, the same thing happened. His master’s brother was going to Rome and wanted a few extra slaves to take with him. Casually looking round the dining-room slaves for his choice, he jerked a thumb at Argas and said he would take him.
    There were five days to go before they left, but Argas bitterly refused to be baptised. Again he was betrayed and hating everyone, half hating even Rufus and Vono and the others who were for the moment secure. For after all, nothing was altered. Life had turned back its devilish face on to him. Nothing counted but luck, and he, being a slave, had bad luck. Rufus tried to talk to him; Argas knocked him down and blacked his eye. The others caught Argas and held his arms. Rufus, who was, after all, one of the secretaries and someone of a certain importance in the household, sat up dizzily and said to Argas that it was quite all right, they were still friends, he forgave him. ‘The hell you do!’ yelled Argas and broke away from the others and ran off. The next day Rufus met him and tried to say the same thing, but again Argas bolted; why couldn’t Rufus have had him whipped while he was about it? That would have been the ordinary thing and made the bad luck complete.
    As they left, someone pushed a bundle of food into his hand; when he opened it at their midday halt, he found that one roll of bread had been split and inside, in Rufus’s handwriting, was a note giving him the name of a woman in Rome and the street she lived in. If there had been any more nonsense about forgiveness, Argas would have torn itup. As it was, he shrugged his shoulders and kept it. And they went on and up and over the hills for days, and down through dust and thunder, past market carts yoked to white oxen, and ugly little houses, and vegetable fields stinking of city manure, and so to the gates of Rome.
    The new household was much like the old. Argas lived in it suspiciously and angrily, working no more than he had to. After a time he thought of the note with the woman’s name and address and decided to try and find it. He didn’t know what it would be, a witch or a brothel or anything. It was winter now, and cold, and he had no thick cloak or tunic; his master had gone out and he had the evening—at least if he wasn’t wanted before he got back. He hurried across Rome, staring about him a bit, but mostly at the shops; he would have liked to steal something—anything almost. He came to the street and asked, and was at once told to go to the bakery, which he had spotted already by the good smell. He knocked and a woman opened. ‘Are you Eunice, daughter of Hermas?’ he asked roughly. The woman said yes, and asked him to come in. When the door was shut she said kindly, ‘Who are you?’ He blinked at the bright edge of fire under the oven door and answered his name and his master’s name. ‘But who sent you?’ she went on. ‘Have you come to buy bread—cake? No? But someone must have sent you, surely?’
    For a moment he didn’t want to answer. But if he didn’t answer he would be turned out of the warm room. He muttered that he had come from