Free The Blood of the Martyrs by Naomi Mitchison Page A

Manasses.’
    And Manasses stood up by the table which still wanted wiping over and lifted his hands and said, ‘Our Father which art in Heaven …’
    Then Argas stood up too and suddenly touched Beric’s hand and said to him, ‘Say it with us, brother.’ And he and Phaon and the Briton all stood and repeated it line for line after Manasses.

CHAPTER III
Persis, Eunice and Phaon
    Bersabe’s eldest girl had been sold three years ago. So now she kept trying to hide Persis, dressing her in old rags and sending her to work in the dirty back kitchen where perhaps she mightn’t be noticed. Hoping her master wouldn’t see. If it was to be again like it had been with Roxane, she would die; she had wanted to die then, but she was too tough. Besides, there had been Persis and the little ones—though she hated them for months, hated them for not being Roxane, and then, for forgetting her; she never forgot Roxane, day or night. But from that day to this no word of her first baby, the little soft thing she’d nursed through her childhood, stolen milk for, been beaten for, been so proud of, that silky dark hair—oh, all the summer evenings she’d sat on the step combing Roxane’s hair and singing to her, happy, oh yes, as happy as a slave woman could be!—and then: she kept on dreaming still of the dealer’s agent, the fat Syrian. Bersabe had always thought these things happened in other households, to other mothers, not to her. But it had happened. So now she must never be proud of Persis, mustn’t touch her softly or get the tangles out of her hair, never beg a piece of stuff for a dress for her. But Persis was cross with her mother: why couldn’t she ever be allowed into the front part of the house, why was she always treated like a baby? On her own she begged herself a dress from one of the daughters of the house, and oh, then, when she put it on, smoothing it against herself, Bersabe couldn’t help seeing that the child was a woman, and that she was terribly like Roxane. And Bersabe threw up her arms and howled, flung herself into a corner and cried—as she knew she was bound to be made to cry, some day soon. But Persis combed out her own hair and looked at her reflection in a pan of water.
    It was less than a year since Bersabe had been a member of the congregation of the church at Philippi. Sometimes still she caught herself asking luck from other gods. But now, more and more, when she was unhappy, her mind wheeled back to the low room, away from the glare and noise and laughter of the street, to that feeling of unbounded kindness and trust that sometimes overwhelmed her into tears and sometimes into singing or the sudden sharp cry of delight, and that stayed with her, at work or asleep, for days and days afterwards. She had never taken Persis with her: not taking her was part of the insistence that Persis was only a child. Now she was sure she must take her, and at once.
    Epaphroditus, the deacon, was a little doubtful about baptising Persis, but Bersabe wept and stormed, and Evodia advised it, and Persis had fasted and seemed to know the Words and the Way of Life and to be eager for it herself. Actually, she was very frightened. Two or three days after she had dressed herself up in that cast-off dress, feeling so grand, her master had called to her as she was carrying a bucket of water through to the kitchen; she left the bucket and ran over, pleased to be noticed. But after that it wasn’t so nice. He asked her how old she was and what she could do, and a lot of other questions, and tilted up her face with a finger under her chin and looked at her in a way that made her want to cry. She had scuttled back to her mother and the two of them had cried in one another’s arms, and neither had said anything about Roxane but both remembered her, and for the thousandth time Bersabe wondered if she was alive or dead … or just being hurt. Now in