The Blood of the Martyrs by Naomi Mitchison

Author:Naomi Mitchison [Naomi Mitchison]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781847674937
Publisher: Canongate Books
Published: 2009-09-27T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER V

Compromise

The traditional flame-coloured veil was not very becoming to Flavia, but she was too excited to notice, and nobody else paid any attention. The wedding was an occasion for much more than that. It was something which Balbus and Crispus had planned goodness knows how long ago. So often plans went wrong. But not this one. It had not even been disarranged by the fire.

One of the cousins acted as presiding matron; the sacrifice was made in due form. Crispus was delighted with everything. Almost all his friends had come, also his wider family—freedmen and freed women, including for instance, Eunice, and also Beric’s old tutor, Nausiphanes, who now had a little school of his own. There were tables of food and wine, not only in the dining-room, but along the sides of the main courtyard, where silk hangings between the pillars kept the sun at bay yet glowed in all their colours with percolating light. Beric went round, seeing that everybody had all they wanted; he was pleased to see Nausiphanes again; he found he wanted to discuss with his old tutor certain points which had definitely not interested him a couple of years ago. For a minute or two Nausiphanes thought the boy was merely being polite in a rather heavy-handed way, but then discovered to his surprise, that Beric was genuinely interested, that something had penetrated his British head after all! Why was it, though, that Beric wanted to know about the theory of the State and its rights over individuals? He himself disbelieved profoundly in the State and all its manifestations, whether civil or religious; but these things weren’t meat for boys. He answered cautiously, suggested a few books to read, including one in Latin by an Epicurean author, Catius, ‘But perhaps I shouldn’t suggest that,’ he said, ‘some people consider him subversive.’

‘I’ll be careful,’ Beric said, speaking as someone who was not unused to subversive thoughts.

‘One begins asking questions about the Universe,’ Nausiphanes said, ‘and ends by asking questions about particular institutions. And the answers may be rather startling.’

‘But we must always go on questioning, mustn’t we?’ Beric said.

‘That depends,’ said Nausiphanes. ‘It was never a Roman vice.’

Beric very much wanted to ask his tutor if he had ever heard of the Christians, but it was difficult in the crowd.

However, a few minutes afterwards, Lucan, who was being rather greedy about the lobsters, brought up the subject himself, asking Beric if he’d ever heard of them. Beric admitted cautiously that he had. ‘Is it any good?’ asked Lucan. ‘Could I get anything out of it?’

‘Not for poems, I don’t think,’ Beric said, adding that he really knew next to nothing about it.

‘Probably all hysterics,’ Lucan said, taking another lobster.

‘They certainly didn’t set Rome on fire.’

‘No one in their senses thinks that.’ Lucan then asked in an undertone if it was true that some of Crispus’s household had been arrested. Beric said that was so. ‘Low types, no doubt?’ Lucan asked. ‘Asiatics? No Greeks?’

‘Two were Greeks,’ Beric said, ‘and they were some of the best of our boys.

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