Thessalonica

That was as temperate an answer as George could have looked for from any priest. But the Avars and the Romans had struggled against each other now for most of a decade. The war remained unwon on either side, which, he presumed, also meant neither God nor the gods and spirits of the Slavs and Avars had prevailed.

He might have been able to say something to that effect to Father Luke, as he could not have to Bishop Eusebius. But when he opened his mouth to speak, his teeth chattered so loudly, he could not. He and the rest of the militiamen on the wall had stood in the driving rain longer than the Avar wizard had done, and were more drenched than he. The breeze was chilly, too.

Father Luke took off his cloak, which was thick even if soaked, and wrapped it around Georges shoulders. “That’s all right, Your Reverence,” the shoemaker said, trying to shrug it off. “Here, you keep it.”

“I may not be the Son of God, to give up my life for mankind, but I should be a poor sort of priest indeed if I did not give up my cloak for a friend,” Father Luke said.

Just then, Dactylius sneezed. That gave George the excuse he needed to shed the cloak: he passed it to Dactylius. The jeweler tried to protest, too, but kept on sneezing. That let George and Father Luke ignore him, and left them both warm in spirit if less so in body.

John and Sabbatius came up onto the wall to replace George and Dactylius. So far as George knew, nobody had told Sabbatius that John was in the habit of making jokes about him. One of these days, Sabbatius would find out, and there would be trouble. Not wishing either to borrow or to cause the latter, George kept his mouth shut and headed for home.

When the shoemaker got to his shop, Irene said, “Wasn’t that a dreadful storm a couple of hours ago? I see you’re still all wet, poor thing, and the roof has a new leak in it, too. I put a bowl down under it to catch the drips.”

“It was quite a storm,” George agreed. If it had seemed nothing more than that to his wife, he was as well pleased.

“Storm like that, I’m glad the Slavs didn’t attack,” Theodore said. “They could have caused all sorts of trouble, and you might not have noticed them in the rain till too late.”

“That’s true, too,” George said, and sneezed as vigorously as Dactylius had up on the wall.

“Come upstairs. Get out of that wet tunic.” Irene took charge of him with brisk efficiency. “Drink some warm wine with honey in it. That will make you feel better.”

“If I don’t feel better, I won’t notice after I drink enough of it,” George said.

Ignoring that, Irene maneuvered him much as Rufus might have done up on the wall. And, sure enough, in dry clothes and with hot wine in him, he did think the world a kindlier place than he had when he was all wet and shivery. He stretched the upper for a boot he was working on over the last and smoothed the leather with a round file.

“That’s good work, Father,” Theodore said, looking over his shoulder.

He paid more attention to it himself than he had been doing. “It is, isn’t it?” he said, surprised at how surprised he sounded. Looking down at his hands, he added, “They know what they’re up to, anyhow. Now if I could only leave them behind to work while the rest of me goes upstairs to supper or off to the tavern, that would be pretty fine.”

Theodore snorted. “While you’re at it, why not wish for a bronze man, like the one the Poet says Hephaestus made to help him with his work?”

“Why not indeed?” George said mildly--too mildly to suit his son, who might have been hoping for an argument, as he often did these days. He went back to work himself.

George let his hands guide the file over the leather once more, since they’d proved they could tend to that by themselves. When Theodore had learned to read Greek, the teacher taught him Homer, from whose poems boys had been learning to read for more than a thousand years. Even now, in these Christian times, the Iliad and the Odyssey gave the old gods a shadowy life they would not have had without them.

Was that good or bad? Homer wrote so well that, while you were reading him, you couldn’t help believing in his gods and heroes--George remembered as much from his own days in school. No wonder some bishops would sooner have had students taught from the Holy Scriptures alone, thereby interring the memory of the pagan gods for good.

“But the words are so fine,” George murmured. While he’d mused, his hands had smoothed out the whole toe of the boot. He opened and closed them, almost as if to make sure they were still willing to respond to his will. Maybe he’d come closer to imitating Hephaestus than either he or his son had thought.

That night, Irene said, “Something more happened today than you let on in front of the children--or in front of me, either, come to that. What was it?”

He didn’t bother asking how she knew. They’d slept side by side more than half their lives; he often wondered if she knew him better than he knew himself. “It wasn’t an ordinary storm,” he said, and went on to explain how the thirteen thunder spirits and however many little rumblers there had been had let the Slavs shoot at the Romans for a while without fear of reprisal, and how they’d nearly let the Slavs do worse than that, too.

Irene shivered, then took him in her arms, as much, he judged, to reassure herself he still lay beside her as because the night was chilly. “That is a terrible thing,” she said in the quiet dark: “That the power of the Lord could not rout these sky-things the Avars worship.”

“It is a terrible thing,” George answered, remembering how frightened he’d been when Father Luke’s first prayer faded to drive the thunder spirits and rumblers away from Thessalonica. “It’s what I’ve been saying: the powers feed off the belief the Slavs and Avars give them.”

“God doesn’t feed off our power. He gives us power, the way He did with Rufus in the church of St. Demetrius. The pagan powers from the old days that still lurk here fear Him. Why don’t these others?”

“Because they’re stronger,” George said patiently. “I think Father Luke did very well. When he saw he couldn’t force the Avar powers out of the sky, he went with them instead of against them. He used their own nature to get them to drench the barbarians along with us, and that ruined whatever plan the Avars had.”

“It worked, but was it right?” Irene asked. “Satan will give you what you want, too, if you ask it of him. Asking is the sin.”

“I don’t think Father Luke sinned. I think he did what he had to do. And I think he was clever to come up with it so quickly after the first prayer faded.”

Irene shivered again, and held him tighter. “I hope you’re right.”

“So do I,” George said. He didn’t want to think about what being wrong might mean. That his wife was holding him, and he her, gave him something else to think about. Since he was a man, what that something was soon became evident. Irene laughed a quiet laugh, deep down in her throat, and reached between them.

They made love with their tunics hiked up rather than naked; the night was cold. They were generally happy with each other in bed, one reason they got on well with each other outside the bedroom. Tonight, though, Irene responded to his caresses with more fervor than she’d shown in … he couldn’t remember how long. Her excitement drove his, too.

Only afterwards, his tunic down past his knees again to warm as much of him as it could, did he wonder whether Irene also had a good many things she was trying not to think about.

He yawned and snuggled closer to her. She was already nearly asleep. All the jokes said that was something men did, but it happened with her more often than with him. Not that he wasn’t sleepy himself, no indeed. Soon after her breathing grew deep and regular, his did, too. The last thought he remembered having was a vague hope that she would find herself worried more often.

“You! Shoemaker!”

The gruff growl made George look up from his work. There in the doorway stood Menas, looking large and well fed and unpleasant. One look at his proud, meaty face said he remembered and still resented Georges remark up on the wall: he was the sort of man who would remember for a long time anything diminishing his self-importance.

No help for it. “What can I do for you today, sir?” George asked.

“I hear you’ve been telling lies about me,” Menas said heavily.

“No, sir,” George said, surprised now. “So far as I know, sir, I haven’t said anything about you at all.”

“Lying again,” Menas said. “Well, you’ll pay for that, too. You’re going to tell me the stinking joke going through the taverns, the one that says God gave me my legs back so I could run away from the Slavs, that isn’t yours?”

“No, that’s not mine,” the shoemaker said. But he had heard it--where? At Paul’s tavern, coming out of John’s mouth, that was where. He’d worried it would land John in trouble with Menas. He’d never imagined it would land him in trouble with the noble instead.

“Not only a liar, but a bad liar.” Menas thrust out his big, square chin. “If it’s not your joke, wretch, whose is it?” His thick-fingered hands opened and closed, opened and closed, as if around the neck of anyone rash enough to tell jokes on him.

“I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t know that.” George lied without hesitation. If he threw John to this wolf--no, this bear, a better description for Menas--how was he supposed to live with himself afterwards?

“Of course you don’t--it’s yours. Who else would have wanted to tarnish God’s miracle by calling me a coward?”

“I’ve never wanted to tarnish any of God’s miracles,” George replied with absolute conviction.

Menas would hear none of it. He shook his fist at the shoemaker. “Not a true word comes out of your mouth. Tell me you didn’t say to my face that God’s curing me didn’t mean anything in particular, and that He cared more about the city than about any of the people in it.”

“That’s not what I said, sir,” George told him, aware as he spoke that he had no hope of being believed. The noble had closed his mind, locked the door, arid thrown away the key.

“You mocked me then and you’ve made vicious jokes about me ever since,” Menas declared, heedless not only of George’s denials but also of having mentioned only one joke bare moments before.

George stood up. If he could not convince Menas he had done him no harm, maybe he could convince him he might do harm if provoked. “Sir, I tell you again I did not do those things, but I also tell you you’re starting to make me sorry I didn’t.”

“You’re not sorry,” Menas said. “You don’t know what sorry is. But I tell you this, shoemaker--you’re going to find out.” He turned on his heel and stamped up the street, waves of indignation rising from his back as heat rose from a blacksmith’s forge.

Theodore and Sophia both stared at George. “He’s an important fellow, Father,” Sophia said worriedly. “I wish he weren’t angry at you.”

“I wish he weren’t, too,” George answered steadily.

“That’s not your joke,” Irene said. “I know who tells jokes like that.” To his relief, she did not upbraid him for protecting John.

“Do you know who told that joke?” Theodore asked. George nodded. His son burst out, “Then why didn’t you tell Menas?”

“Because a man who betrays his friends has no friends left after a while--and doesn’t deserve any, either,” George said. “And because, if Menas weren’t angry at me for this, he’d be angry at me for something else. He’s decided he’s going to be angry at me, and he’s the kind of man who doesn’t change his mind about things like that.”

“It’s one thing if a tanner or a butcher is angry at you,” Sophia said. “All they can do is insult you in the street, or something like that. But if Menas is angry at you, he could . . .” She paused, trying to think of the worst thing she could. After a moment, she went on, “He could set lawyers on you.”

“Heaven forbid!” Irene exclaimed. George would have said the same thing if his wife hadn’t beaten him to it. He didn’t have a lot of money; the next rich shoemaker of whom he heard would be the first. Not only would he find it hard to fend off the attacks of lawyers trained in Berytus or Constantinople (and find it all the harder because judges would surely be prejudiced in favor of the lawyers’ wealthy, prominent client), he would also be tied up in court for so long, he wouldn’t be able to tend to what business he had. Serving on the militia gave him that kind of trouble, but half the men--better than half the men--in Thessalonica had it now. If Menas decided to persecute him by prosecuting him, that wouldn’t be so.

“We’ll just have to see what happens, that’s all,” he said. “Maybe--” He stopped.

“Maybe some Slav will shoot him in the face with an arrow,” Theodore said. “Shooting him in the heart wouldn’t do--I’m sure it’s too hard for an arrow to hurt.”

“Theodore …” George’s voice carried a warning for a couple of reasons. Theodore hadn’t bothered keeping his voice down. If word of what he’d said got to Menas, the noble would have another reason for hating George. And the shoemaker did not feel comfortable about wishing anyone dead. He’d had the thought his son had spoken aloud, but he’d stopped before he said it. Words, he told himself, were what gave thought power.

Theodore said, “Sometimes I think you’re too kind-hearted for your own good.”

George walked over and swatted him in the backside. He leaped into the air with a yelp. “There,” George said. “Think again.” Theodore did his best to look indignant, but couldn’t help