“Everyone in the valley was touched with the fire of truth when Dioscholias preached,” Father Ramphion resumed. “Slaves and free-holders, men and women together.” He gestured, crooking his elbow so that the arc of his hand did not threaten the centurion or Calvus who sat nearest to him. “It was a night whose like may never again take place – until the return of the Anointed,
of course,” the priest added quickly. “You who are not saved cannot possibly imagine.”
Sabellia coughed and shot an offended glance at the local man. She had not, Perennius noticed, made any mention of the fact that she too was a Christian.
Father Ramphion took a skewer of meat from a tray, offered the skewer and then the tray itself to Sestius, and continued, “We could not continue a society in which man was the servant to man, once we knew that all men were the servants of God alone. That night we carried away the stones of fences which had stood between fields for as long as human memory survives. We plowed across the old boundaries. Since then we have lived in common, as the Anointed taught us through Dioscholias.”
The grilled lamb was delicious, particularly as it was set off by the tartness of some of the vegetable side-dishes. Perennius swallowed a bite and said, “Including your Ophitics, Azon and Erzites? In the commonality, that is?”
Father Ramphion spilled water from the earthenware goblet at his lips. He lowered the vessel and patted himself hard on the breastbone until the fit let him speak again. “Yes and no,” the priest said. He raised his eyes to the agent’s. “Their father was a local man who returned here after he received his discharge from the Army.” All three of the other men at the table nodded in understanding. “That was after Dioscholias had brought the fire of the Spirit to fall on the valley, however. There was discussion and prayer about the matter, of course. At last Dioscholias announced that the Lord would not have so arranged events except as evidence of his purpose. The father and his wife, and the sons of their marriage, have since shared fully in all the valley’s wealth – save its greatest wealth, the faith by which we are saved. They are not our slaves or our servants, but they perform tasks which free the rest of us to worship together in full community.”
Perennius nodded again and took more meat. He had wondered who stood guard while the whole village feasted. The symbiosis Ramphion had described made sense. The agent imagined that each party felt superior to those on the other side of the equation. The Christians could look down on the brothers damned to eternal Hell, while the brothers could sneer at the remainder of the village which labored in their behalf as surely as in its own. The present feast made the valley’s wealth certain; and from their generosity to strangers, Perennius did not doubt that the Christians treated their local sectarians as well as Father Ramphion had suggested.
Perennius was no longer worried about Sabellia. Father Ramphion had made it clear if not overt that the village did not want proselytes. It was equally clear that to the locals, the only Christians were those who were present or descended from those present when Dioscholias converted the village. The apostle was probably a local man himself, given the introversion of the faith as practiced here. A convert returning home from Caesarea, Egypt – some center of the new sect – with his own slant on the faith to which he was devoting himself. The situation seemed to make Sabellia angry, probably because of the sense of kinship she had briefly expected. That thought – that the Gallic woman had hoped for a sodality from which her present companions were barred – was unexpectedly painful to the agent. He returned to his meal.
Not only was the food excellent in itself, it was not flawed as it would have been at a rich man’s table by being eaten from metal dishes. The slightest astringence – pomegranate cells or a vinegar dressing – would bring with it an aftertaste of silver or even gold. Poor men who drank their wines from glazed earthenware tasted them with a purity denied to those who could afford the best – in jeweled metal. The water of the valley was all that thus far had been offered to accompany the food, however. It was clean and cool, complementing the meal without attempting to compete with it.