Thessalonica

XII

People packed the narrow, winding streets. They pounded one another on the back. They shouted out bits of song, generally off-key. Men and women kissed in doorways or sometimes out in the middle of the street, blocking other traffic. Nobody showered them with abuse, not now. George would have bet anything anyone cared to name that not all, or even most, of the couples embracing were married to each other. Nobody cared, not now.

He spied a familiar tall, thin figure. The Thessalonicans were so overjoyed at being delivered from the Slavs and Avars, they even included Benjamin the Jew in their celebration. No one showered him with abuse either, not now. He looked absurdly confused. He had no idea how to cope with acceptance. It wasn’t anything he’d ever had to worry about before.

Then he spotted George. He smiled, waved, and picked his way through the crowd toward the shoemaker. He clasped his hand. “Praise the Lord, to see you here and well,” he exclaimed. “I had heard you were lost beyond the wall, which grieved me greatly.”

“I was lost beyond the wall,” George said. “I managed to get back.”

“God must think well of you,” Benjamin said.

George wondered about that. If God thought so well of him, why had He put him through so much trouble and danger? Why had He inflicted Menas on him? Why, for that matter, had He cured Menas, so the noble had a fresh chance to inflict himself not just on George but also on the rest of Thessalonica?

Before George could come up with answers for any of those questions, a different, more obvious one occurred to him. “You can see me!” he exclaimed. Of itself, his hand went to his head. Yes, he was still wearing Perseus’ cap. “How is it you can see me?”

“With my eyes?” Benjamin suggested, which was, George supposed, about as near as the sobersided Jew came to making a joke. Before either of them could take the question further, the crowd separated them. Someone stepped on George’s toes. In the crush, whether that fellow saw him or not was irrelevant.

Under the rim of Perseus’ cap, George scratched his head. The Slavic demons and demigods hadn’t plagued the Jewish district of Thessalonica, and now Benjamin not only penetrated the pagan Greek enchantment that lay over George, he didn’t even seem to notice there was an enchantment to penetrate. George didn’t know exactly what that meant. Whatever it was, he had the strong feeling Bishop Eusebius would not approve.

He got stepped on several more times before he finally reached his own street, and elbowed, and kneed, and poked. In close quarters, invisibility had its disadvantages, too. When he did get to his own street, the first thing he found was Claudia arguing with the woman who lived next door to her and Dactylius. Between them was a pile of garbage someone--George didn’t know who--had thrown into the street right between the two houses. If the two women knew the Slavs and Avars had been routed and the siege of Thessalonica broken, they didn’t care. George smiled. Some things didn’t change.

But if Claudia and her neighbor remained intent on their own private quarrel, the rest of the street celebrated along with the rest of the city. People passed jars of wine back and forth. Those who still had salt meat or candied fruit stored away brought them out and shared them with friends--and sometimes with passersby, too--confident they could replace them now.

And, everywhere, people were embracing. George almost walked past a young couple in a doorway three or four doors down from his house and shop. They didn’t seem any different from scores of other happy pairs he’d seen … till he noticed that one of them was Constantine the potter’s son and the other his daughter Sophia.

He coughed. At the same time, he took off Perseus’ cap, returning to visibility. Constantine and Sophia jumped in the air, then flew apart from each other as if he’d dumped a pad of water over them.

“Father!” Sophia exclaimed. She managed to pack a multitude of meanings into the one word: joy at having him come back again, along with something that wasn’t joy at all at having him come back at that particular moment

“Uh, we didn’t see you, sir,” Constantine added.

“I know. I noticed,” George said. Constantine and Sophia both turned red. The cap of invisibility wasn’t why they hadn’t seen him. They’d been otherwise occupied. If he’d kept quiet, he might have stood there for an hour before they noticed him. “Maybe you won’t see me the next time, either,” he went on. “Maybe I’ll be more annoyed about it the next time, too. Go on home, Constantine. Sophia, you come with me.”

Constantine went, without a murmur. Only later did George realize that, with a sword on his belt and with his right arm and tunic splashed with blood obviously not his own, he looked well able to enforce any orders he might give. Even Sophia followed him without arguing.

In his own doorway, he found Theodore kissing the plump daughter--plump despite the siege--of Dalmatius the oil-seller, who lived in the next street over. He hadn’t known the two of them cared about each other (for that matter, he didn’t know whether they would care about each other tomorrow, or in an hour). An evenhanded man, he coughed as loudly as he had with Sophia and Constantine.

Theodore and his friend--her name, George remembered, was Lucretia--sprang apart, as Sophia and Constantine had done. “Hello, Father,” Theodore said sounding a little less reproachful than Sophia had.

“Hello,” George answered mildly. Lucretia headed for home without George’s suggesting it. He wondered how many more she’d kiss before she got there. Then he wondered if Theodore was wondering the same thing.

A moment later, such abstractions stopped troubling his mind, for Irene came running out of the shop and threw herself into his arms. He tilted her face up and kissed her, doing a good and thorough job of it. Sophia and Theodore both coughed. They sounded downright consumptive as each tried to outdo the other.

Irene ignored them. Her lips were urgent against her husband’s. George ignored his children, too, till he started to laugh. That ruined the kiss. “We’re married,” he growled at Sophia and Theodore, and returned to what he’d been doing when he was so rudely interrupted.

Except for his son and daughter, no one paid one more kissing couple any mind. Claudia and her next-door neighbor, by contrast, had drawn a fair-sized crowd. A quarrel in Thessalonica, just then, was remarkable for its rarity.

“Thank God you’re safe!” Irene exclaimed when her lips separated from George’s again. She dragged him into the shop. A couple of braziers made it a little warmer in there than it had been outside. If Theodore and Sophia hadn’t followed them in, George got the idea his wife might have dragged him down onto the floor of the shop, too. Before he got in there, he doubted whether he would have been able to do anything in response to that. Just when he decided he would, he found he didn’t have the chance.

“Were there really centaurs out there, Father?” Sophia asked. “People are saying so, but people are always saying all sorts of things that aren’t true, so they can make a better story out of them.”

“There really were centaurs,” George said solemnly. He could feel the truth of that on the insides of his thighs. He wasn’t used to riding a donkey, let alone a horse, let alone a supernatural being with a mind of its own--a mind, when he was aboard Crotus, full of mad, drunken fury.

“And those other things?” Irene asked. She shivered against George and crossed herself. “I didn’t want to look up in the sky, for fear I’d believe what I was seeing.”

Only Irene, George thought with a smile, would put it like that. But the smile quickly faded. “Those other things were there, too. I’m glad they’re gone.”

“God overcame them,” Irene said.

George wondered about that. The Slavic thunder god and gods of sun and moon had paled before the power of the Lord, but they hadn’t vanished. And the struggle between Triglav and St. Demetrius had barely begun before the centaurs distracted and then overwhelmed the Slavic wizards and their Avar leader, thus returning the conflict, at least as George perceived it, to the mundane plane.

“However it happened, the siege is over,” he said, “and that’s what matters.”

Nobody argued with him. “The Slavs and Avars won’t be back here any time soon, either,” Theodore said. “We taught ‘em a proper lesson, we did.” To listen to him, he’d beaten back the barbarians single-handedly during his brief stretch of duty on the wall.

“You still have that cap,” Irene said, pointing to it. By the way she spoke, it might have been Joseph’s coat of many colors soaked in blood.

“Yes, and glad of it, too,” George said. “Without it, we wouldn’t have had the centaurs in front of the city, or Father Luke with ‘em, and who knows what would have happened?

I’ve got to go up into the hills and give it back, but I want to use it one more time before I do.”

“I don’t want you to do that,” Irene said.

“Well, I’m going to,” George answered in a tone that brooked no argument. Irene stared at him. He wasn’t the sort of man who commonly ignored what his wife wanted. Maybe that was what let him get away with it

Even after midnight, revelers remained on the streets of Thessalonica. In a way, George liked that. The people of the poor, beleaguered city deserved to celebrate their victory over the Slavs and Avars. In another way, noisy roisterers on the street were a nuisance to the shoemaker. He would have preferred everything around him to be dead quiet. That would have made what he was doing more impressive.

Maybe I should have waited, he thought. What if he’s out celebrating? What do I do then? He shook his head. He couldn’t afford to wait, not if he wanted to keep the peace in his own home. At the moment, Irene wasn’t arguing with him. If Perseus’ cap stayed in his home for several days before he got around to using it, that would change. He knew his wife. She would come up with a reason why he shouldn’t use it, and likely reasons why he ought to get rid of it, too. And they would be good reasons--he was sure of it. If he turned them down, he would have a quarrel on his hands. He didn’t want that.

And so, instead of a quarrel on his hands, he had Perseus’ cap on his head. He slipped through Thessalonica’s streets unnoticed, unremarked upon. Some of the things he noticed while slipping through the streets were themselves remarkable, but he kept quiet.

The district by the citadel, up in the northeastern part of the city, was where the rich people lived. One of the privileges of being rich was taking shelter in the citadel if the city wall was breached. George went slowly; he seldom came to that part of town. From the outside, the house he was looking for wouldn’t be much different from its neighbors. And, in the darkness, the differences were next to impossible to make out.

“I don’t want to knock on the wrong door,” the shoemaker muttered. “I really don’t want to knock on the wrong door.”

At last, he found what he thought was the right door. He tried it, gently, so as not to disturb anyone inside. It was barred. He muttered again. He’d known it would be, but had hoped that, just this once, life would make things easy for him. No such luck. He rapped loudly on the door, as if he had every right in the world to go straight in. When nothing happened, he rapped again, even louder.

A tiny window with a metal grate was set into the timbers of the door. After a little while, a small part of a face, dimly lit by a lamp or taper, appeared on the other side of the window. “Who disturbs Menas’ rest at this ungodly hour?” asked a voice presumably connected to the face.

“I am an angel,” George announced. He stood very close to the door, so the servant inside could tell where his voice was coming from--and could note that he was hearing it without being able to see anyone speaking. “I am come to test both you and your master. Open at once, or you will share his fate.”

In a way, this was the weak part of his plan, and he knew it. If Menas’ servant liked the rich noble and was loyal to him, he would leave the door closed, and George wouldn’t be able to get in. The only thing invisibility would be good for then was to keep anyone from seeing how foolish he looked.

Coming to Menas’ home, though, he’d pinned his hopes on the idea that no one who knew Menas and had to work for him was likely to like him. And so it proved. The door flew open. The servant said, “If you want Menas, you can bloody well have him!”

“You have passed your test,” George said, and squeezed past the fellow, careful not to touch him as he did so.

Lamps set in wall niches lighted the halls of Menas’ home; George wished he could have afforded to use oil so prodigally. There were a lot of corridors, too--he wandered for a bit before finding the one that led to Menas’ bedchamber The noble’s own snores guided the shoemaker down the corridor to the proper room.

There, dim shadows, lay Menas and his wife. She snored, too. George took a deep breath, then shouted at the top of his lungs: “Injustice!”

Both shapes sat up in bed and looked around wildly. Menas started to cry out. George whacked him with the flat of his blade. The rich noble tried to reach down under the bed, where he likely kept a sword of his own. George stepped on his hand.

About then, Menas realized that, while he could hear and feel whoever was in the chamber with him, he couldn’t see anyone but his wife. “Injustice!” George shouted again. Menas’ wife opened her mouth to scream. George yelled once more: “Silence!”

Menas’ wife didn’t scream. The noble did: “Ho! My men! Help! To me! A murder! To me!”

George whacked him again. He howled. Down the hall, George heard the servants stirring. That was liable to be trouble. If they came after him, they could trap him in these narrow halls without having to see him. Then, if he wanted to escape, he’d have to cut his way through them, which he hadn’t intended to do.

But the servants did not come to Menas’ rescue. Instead one after another, they ran outside, into the chilly night. Maybe the doorman had told them what sort of visitor the household had. Maybe they weren’t interested in rescuing Menas any which way. George wouldn’t have been.

He laughed, unpleasantly. “You see what the wages of injustice are,” he boomed, trying to sound as impressive-- and as much unlike George the shoemaker--as he could.

“Who--who--who are you?” Menas, now, Menas sounded like an owl.

His wife had a different question: “What are you?”

“I am an angel,” George declared, as he had for the servant. Menas’ wife crossed herself. George had already seen--and was very glad--that that did not destroy the power in Perseus’ cap. He went on, speaking to Menas: “Wretch, God did not give you back your legs so that you could use your regained bodily vigor to wrong those who have done you no harm. The grave awaits such wickedness, the grave and eternal torment.”

He didn’t sound like himself. After a moment, he realized he did sound like Bishop Eusebius. That was all right, he supposed; angels could reasonably sound like churchmen. Churchmen certainly thought they sounded like angels.

“But--I’ve never done anything like that.” This was not the angry, blustering Menas George had come to know and loathe. This was a frightened Menas. But it was also an utterly bewildered Menas. With no small shock, George realized the noble had no idea he’d done anything wrong or reprehensible.

Hesitantly, Menas’ wife spoke up: “Maybe, dear, maybe the angel means that shoemaker who was persecuting you.”

George felt like kissing her, though that wouldn’t have done his impersonation any good. If he’d had to mention himself, Menas was liable to have put two and two together.

On the other hand, maybe he wouldn’t have. Menas seemed to have trouble putting one and one together. “That Gregory or George or whatever his name was?” he exclaimed. “Not likely! He deserved whatever happened to him, the way he spread lies about me through the city.”

He never knew how close he came to having his big belly ripped open by a sword he never saw. “Fool!” George shouted. “Arrogant idiot!” He whacked Menas with the flat of the blade again. The temptation to let it turn in his hand, to slash instead of whacking, was as strong in his mouth as the maddening taste of wine in a centaur’s. Menas cringed. Fighting down the urge to murder, George went on, “Being a liar and a cheat yourself, you reckon all men possessed of a like mean-spiritedness.” He knew he was stealing that phrase from Father Luke, but did not think the priest would mind. “The shoemaker told you the truth: he did not slander you.”

Menas hadn’t even bothered to remember his name. That infuriated him more than almost anything else.

“Really?” The rich noble sounded astonished. “Everyone said he did.”

“And you believed gossips and liars, not the man himself,” George said scornfully. “Know you not what rumor and gossip are worth?” He still thought Menas hadn’t listened very well to what “everybody” said, too, but kept quiet about that, not wanting to escape trouble by putting John into it.

“What must he do to be saved?” Menas’ wife asked the question, perhaps because she thought her husband wouldn’t.

Stirred by that, Menas spoke up, in a petulant voice: “I suppose you’re going to tell me I have to pay him ten pounds of gold, or something outrageous like that.” He stuck out his chin and looked stubborn.

Did he suspect George was George, and not an angel at all? Or had he been visited by a veritable angel before, and made to pay compensation for whatever he’d done to prompt the visit? George wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He answered, “Leave the man at peace and trouble him no more. That will suffice. Obey me not, and the grave and the pangs of hell await you.”

“I’ll obey,” Menas said quickly. “I will.” Now he sounded perfectly tractable. George wondered why. It occurred to him that, if Menas were an angel (an unlikely thought), he would have demanded money in exchange for good behavior. George’s not doing so must have struck the noble as particularly holy, even downright angelic.

He didn’t mind Menas’ thinking him holy. He didn’t want Menas thinking him soft. He walloped the noble with the flat of the blade again, and shouted, “Obey!”

By then, Menas’ head was probably ringing like a gong. George hoped he hadn’t broken that head, although his own heart wouldn’t have broken if it turned out he had.

Deciding the wisest thing he could do was not overstay his welcome, he left the bedchamber then. For good measure, he slammed the door shut behind him, which made Menas’ wife scream. George didn’t mind that; if she was impressed with him as an angel, she would help hold her husband to the straight and narrow.

As things were, George discovered he’d almost stayed too long. After fleeing the house, a couple of servants had nerved themselves to go back inside. “We’d better see if there’s anything left of the boss,” the one in front said to the other, who seemed to be doing his best to walk in his footprints.

“Hope not,” the one behind him said--but he said it quietly, in case Menas should have disappointed his hopes.

George flattened himself against the wall of the corridor. That just gave the servants room to squeeze past without touching him. As soon as they were past, he shouted “Beware!” and ran for the door. Their frightened shouts rang most enjoyably in his ears as he dashed out into the night.

More servants were coming toward the house. So were a couple of neighbors. So was a priest; the church of the Archangels wasn’t far away, and somebody must have run and fetched him. George wasn’t sure the power in Perseus’ cap could survive an exorcism aimed directly at it. Then again, he didn’t have to put it to the test, and he didn’t. Hoping--and praying a little, too--the lesson he’d given Menas would stick, he dodged around the people cautiously approaching and headed home.

John said, “Let me make sure I understand this. You hung around in the woods until the Slavs and Avars got driven away. Then you came back into Thessalonica through one of the gates we opened to come out and chase ‘em.”

“That’s right,” George said. And it was right. It omitted a good deal--and all the most interesting parts--but it was the essence of what had happened. George was as well pleased to have the interesting parts omitted.

John rolled his eyes. “There’s only two problems with it. The first one is, I don’t believe a word of it. How come nobody saw you coming in?”

“I don’t know,” George answered stolidly. He’d said the same thing whenever any of his friends asked him that question. Even more stolidly, he went on, “I suppose everybody was too busy staring at the herd of centaurs to pay any attention to one ordinary shoemaker.”

The tavern comic grunted. “If I hadn’t seen them with my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe that, either. I’m still not sure I do.”

“Fine. Don’t believe it, then. Believe we’re still under siege,” George said. “Me, I’m going to go out there and do some hunting.” The Litaean Gate loomed up ahead of the two men.

“That’s the other reason I don’t believe the story you’re telling,” John said. “If I’d been dodging Slavs for however long it was, I wouldn’t want to stick my nose outside the wall now. There are still barbarians skulking through the woods, you know. You remind me of the clever fellow during the storm at sea. He saw everybody else on the ship grab something to save himself with, so he took hold of the anchor.”

“Heh,” George said. “Have you used that one at Paul’s place yet, or are you trying it out on me first?”

“I’m trying to keep you from getting killed,” John said with some asperity. “I thought you’d gone and done it once, with a little help from your friend Menas, but then you came back again--however you came back again.” He gave George a dark look. “And now you want to go out there some more. You used to be such a sensible fellow.”

“I’m sensible enough to know when I need to do some hunting,” George said. Someone else went out of the Litaean Gate. George pointed. “See? I’m not the only one, either. Why don’t you nag him for a while?”

“I’m not his mother--I’m your mother,” John said, which startled a grunt of laughter out of George. John threw his hands in the air. “All right, go ahead. See if I care. But if you come back dead, don’t run crying to me saying I didn’t warn you.”

George contemplated following that through to its logical conclusion, but his own logical conclusion was that it didn’t have one. He walked out through the gate. When he looked back, John was still framed in the gateway, staring out after him. The tavern comic shook his head and turned back toward the center of the city. George headed out to the woods.

Once trees and brush screened him from view, he took Perseus’ cap out of the large leather wallet he was wearing on his belt in place of the more usual pouch. John had assumed he’d be bringing small game back to Thessalonica in it. He would, too, if he caught any. Meanwhile, though, the pouch let him take the cap out unnoticed. As soon as he put the cap on his head, he was unnoticed, too.

He headed north, toward Lete. When he got farther up into the hills, he intended to take off the cap, in the hope that a centaur or satyr would find him then and guide him to the pagan village, which he was still unsure of finding without such aid. In the meantime, he killed several rabbits that, thanks to Perseus’ cap, never knew he was there. It wasn’t sporting, but he wasn’t hunting for sport--he was hunting for the pot.

He spent the night in a chilly bed of leaves and boughs. Early the next morning, noises from beyond the brush ahead made him move forward cautiously. He had seen a couple of small bands of Slavs in the woods: poor, hungry-looking fellows for whom he would have felt more sympathy had he not known they would have cut his throat if he were visible. If he was coming up on another such, he wanted to make sure they had no idea he was anywhere close by.

These noises, though, weren’t quite like the ones the barbarians had made. As George drew closer, he realized they weren’t like any noises he’d ever heard in the woods. As he drew closer still, he realized that didn’t mean they were altogether unfamiliar.

Thanks to the cap, he made no noise working his way through the undergrowth. He bit down hard on his lower lip to keep from exclaiming, which would have been heard. He’d found a satyr, all right: there on the stump of a toppled forest giant stood Ampelus. And there, back to the satyr, golden tail in the air, stood Xanthippe the centaur. Nephele hadn’t been interested--which was putting it mildly--but the female had said other centaurs would sometimes sport with satyrs.

And some sport it was, too. Ampelus had both equipment and stamina to make George acutely aware of his merely human shortcomings (a most appropriate word) in those regards. At the end, when Xanthippe let out a sound half moan, half whinny, what George felt--as opposed to what the female centaur felt--was closer to awe than to excitement.

And, even afterwards, Ampelus tried to persuade Xanthippe to stay for another round. The centaur laughed. “One--and in especial one of that sort--sufficeth.”

“Not for me,” Ampelus said grumpily. Sure enough, the satyr’s body showed how ready it was for another go.

Xanthippe laughed. “Then thou mayest sate thyself.” Centaurs habitually used the familiar second-person pronoun when speaking to satyrs. Was it, here, the familiarity of insult or intimacy? A bit of each, George thought.

Laughing still, Xanthippe cantered away. Ampelus took a few trotting steps after the female centaur, then seemed to realize the game truly was over. The satyr stroked its own flesh. If what had gone before failed to satisfy it. . . it was, George supposed, true to its own nature.

With Xanthippe gone, the shoemaker thought he could reveal his own presence without embarrassing anyone-- not that Ampelus was liable to embarrassment under any circumstances. As soon as George took off Perseus’ cap, Ampelus stiffened, now with wariness rather than lust. Before the satyr could flee, George stepped out into the clearing.

“Oh. Is you.” Ampelus relaxed. An enormous grin stretched over the satyr’s not-quite-human features. “You know what I do?”

George knew exactly what the satyr had done. He shook his head anyhow. “Could you tell me on the way to Lete?” he asked.

“All right, I do,” Ampelus said. “Sooner tell you than other satyrs. They talk too much in front of centaurs, and I get a kicking like you don’t believe.” The bruise Nephele’s hoof had given the satyr was gone from its flesh by now, but evidently not from its memory.

Ampelus bragged all the way up to the pagan village hidden in the lulls. George had heard much the same from men. The satyr, by what he’d seen, boasted only of what it had truly done. As much as its incredible performance, that served to set it apart from mankind.

As they approached Lete, a woman who had been spreading tunics and cloaks on the branches of a tree to dry paused in her work and stared at Ampelus. The satyr leaped in the air with glee. “Maybe this the one Ithys get,” it said. “You go to village yourself now, George. I have to find this out.” It trotted toward the woman. She didn’t run for her life, so maybe she was the one with whom Ithys had frolicked--which meant Ithys’ bragging hadn’t been a pack of lies, either.

When George got to Gorgonius’ shop, the carpenter nodded as if he’d been expecting him just then. “See, I knew you’d be back,” Gorgonius said. “Is everything well down in the city?”

“Yes, the siege is broken,” George answered. A moment later, he realized Gorgonius might have meant something else. “And everything’s well with me, too--I think.” He set Perseus’ cap on a table. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” the carpenter said. “You’re a good fellow, even if you are a Christian.” George jumped to hear the name. Gorgonius laughed. “I can say it. No centaurs or satyrs to frighten now, so why not? I’m willing enough to let you go your way. Your bishops down in the city, though, they wouldn’t be willing to let me go mine.”

“When there were only a few Christians, pagans persecuted them,” George said with a shrug. “Now it’s the other way around, that’s all.”

It was Gorgonius’ turn to look surprised. “I hadn’t thought of it like that,” he admitted. “Shall we drink some wine on it?” When George nodded, he went on, “I’ve got some chicken left over from yesterday, too, if you’d like that.”

George nodded again. He reached into the wallet, took out a rabbit, and laid it by the ancient leather cap. “Why don’t you take this, then? You can use it tomorrow, or it’ll keep a couple of days more if you leave it out in the cold.”

“You’re a gentleman,” Gorgonius said. “Don’t go away. I’ll be back with the wine and the food.”

He brought everything in on a fancy wooden tray he must have made himself. Along with the chicken, he had bread and sun-dried apples. One cup of wine became several. George taught him a couple of tavern songs from Thessalonica that hadn’t made their way up into the hills before. In turn, Gorgonius sang a couple so old they’d been forgotten down in the city. They might have been old, but they weren’t bad. George hoped he’d remember them.

After a while, Gorgonius said, “You’ll spend the night in my barn again. Better that than finding some place to he up in the woods, I expect.”

“I should be all right, as long as I have--” George stopped and stared suspiciously at his winecup. Once he left Lete, he wouldn’t have Perseus’ cap anymore. He covered his mistake as best he could, saying, Thanks again.”

“Any time, any time.” Maybe Gorgonius hadn’t noticed the error anyhow; he sounded pretty vague himself. He held out the dipper. “More wine?”

“Why not?” George said.

As he had the last time he slept in Lete, George spent a little while brushing wisps of hay out of his hair and off his tunic when he woke up in the morning. Gorgonius gave him a flat loaf of barley bread and a small flask of wine. “You want to have a care going home, you know,” he said seriously. “You won’t be wearing the cap, mind you.”

“Yes, I understand that,” George answered. No, the carpenter hadn’t noticed his flub the night before. “I’ll keep my eyes open.”

“Come up here again,” Gorgonius said as the shoemaker stepped out into the street. You’ll be welcome.”

“Why don’t you come down to Thessalonica?” George said. “I won’t tell Bishop Eusebius you’re there.” He realized Irene would have some detailed opinions to express about the prospect of a visit from a pagan. But, since Perseus’ cap had saved not only George but also, very possibly, Thessalonica itself, the shoemaker had some opinions of his own, too.

“Who knows?” Gorgonius said. “Maybe I’ll even do that. You never can tell.” He sounded as if he might have meant it, and was surprised to discover as much.

As George headed out of Lete and down toward Thessalonica, he looked around for Ampelus and for the woman who’d been hanging out her wash. He didn’t see either one of them. The laundry she’d hung out was still draped in the tree. George wondered what that meant. She and Ampelus couldn’t still be at it… could they? He supposed satyrs wouldn’t be satyrs if anything along those lines were impossible for them.

When he got into the woods, he moved as quietly and cautiously as he could. He’d come to take for granted the protection Perseus’ cap gave him. Now that he was without it once more, he knew how vulnerable to his foes he was. If a band of roving Slavs found him, he was in trouble. If a Slavic wolf-demon found him, he was in bigger trouble.

Perhaps because he was so cautious, he had another good day hunting. He got a couple of rabbits, and also got a squirrel he caught on the ground before it could scramble up into a tree. If he found a place where he thought it safe to build a fire, he’d eat well. If he didn’t, he’d bring the meat home to Irene, who could do tasty things with it beyond toasting chunks of it on a stick over the fire or baking it in clay.

He was, he supposed, somewhere a little more than halfway to Thessalonica when he came across the Slav. Each of them stepped into the same small clearing at the same time. George’s sword was in his hand. The Slav carried a heavy javelin or light spear. If he threw it and hit George, he’d win the fight straightaway. If he threw it and missed, all he had left with which to defend himself was a short dagger.

He didn’t throw the spear. Instead, he darted back in among the trees. So did George. The shoemaker began a cautious sidle to his right, hoping--praying--the Slav was alone. He’d gone more than halfway round to the other side of the clearing before he called to mind the expression on the barbarian’s face at seeing him. The Slav had been at least as horrified as he was. That argued the fellow was alone, too, and hoping George wasn’t part of a band of Romans.

When George got to the point from which the Slav had emerged, he stepped into the clearing and looked around. At almost the same moment, the barbarian poked his head out from the spot George had occupied. They stared at each other again, then both went back into the forest once more.

This time, George kept on heading south. He paused every little while, listening to make sure the Slav wasn’t stalking him. He never heard anything, and the barbarian didn’t leap out at him from behind with a savage shout. After he’d gone a few furlongs, he had a sudden mental picture of the Slav nervously traveling north, pausing every little while to make sure the fearsome Roman wasn’t on his trail.

George laughed. He knew he wasn’t particularly fearsome. If the Slav didn’t know that, he wasn’t about to tell him. Even so, George walked a bit more confidently after that.

He got back to Thessalonica a few minutes after sunset, with the last of the evening twilight still staining the sky. “You have a good day out there?” a militiaman at the Litaean Gate asked.

“Pretty good.” George patted the wallet so the guard could see how nicely fat it was. Nodding, the fellow waved him into the city.

A few minutes later, he was back on his own street. People waved to him there, too. He was something of a hero to his neighbors, not for anything he’d actually done while he was trapped outside the city--he had said very little about that, thinking the fewer who knew, the better-- but simply because he’d come back after being given up for lost. Even Claudia called, “God loves you, George,” as he walked by. George wondered how much God had had to do with it, and how much the pagan powers had accomplished. He didn’t argue with Claudia, though. Arguing with Claudia was a losing proposition.

Constantine, Leo’s son, nodded warily to George as they passed on the street. George nodded back. He remembered giving that same sort of wary nod to Irene’s father, back in the days when they were courting and their families were dickering. He supposed that meant Constantine was likely to end up his son-in-law. He sighed. He still thought Sophia might have done better. But then, Irene’s father had thought the same thing about him.

He walked into his shop. Sophia and Theodore let out squeals inconsistent with the adult dignity they usually affected. He hugged them both. Irene came downstairs.

He hugged her, too, and showed her the carcasses of the animals he’d caught on the way to and from Lete.

She ignored them. “That thing you had” --she would not dignify Perseus’ cap by its proper name-- “it’s gone?”

“Yes, it’s gone,” George said.

“You went to and from that place” --Irene would not dignify Lete by its proper name, either--“safely?”

George decided on the instant that she did not need to know about the Slav he’d met in the woods. “Yes,” he answered.

He thought he’d spoken without hesitation. Irene’s face told him he was wrong. But she didn’t press the point, saying instead, “And now that you’re back, you’ll stay here with your own family for a while?”

By a while, he knew she meant something like, the next thirty or forty years. Nevertheless, he said “Yes” again.

This time, he really must have spoken without hesitation. His wife smiled and said “Good” and kissed him. Right then, staying in Thessalonica struck him as a pretty good idea after all.

As if Rufus were making a command decision in the middle of a battle, he grabbed three of the rickety little tables in Paul’s tavern and pulled them into a line. “There,” he declared. “Now we can all sit together.”

Along with Dactylius, Sabbatius, and John, George slid stools over behind the tables. John kept his at one end of the new formation. “I’ll be going on in a while,” he said. “This way, none of you can trip me as I head up to the stage.”

“That’s true,” Rufus said. “We’ll just beat on you when you come back.” He spoke as if he might have been joking--but he might not have been, too.

Paul stepped out from behind the bar and walked over to his fellow militiamen. “First cup’s free tonight, boys,” he said, as he’d been doing since the Slavs and Avars abandoned the siege. George wondered how long such generosity would last. Not much longer, if he knew Paul.

John sipped the wine and made a sour face. “If it weren’t free, it’d be cheap, I can tell you that,” he said.

That’s good, John.” George made as if to applaud. “Go ahead--bite the hand that feeds you.”

“Good to see you back, George,” Paul said. You always pay your scot, you drink enough so you don’t just fill up a stool, and you don’t get rowdy and tear the place apart. And you don’t soak your tongue in vinegar before you come in, either.” He gave John a hard look.

The tavern comic, who had seen a lifetime of them, did not seem unduly damaged. “Behold perfection,” he said with a mocking bow to George.

“Well, I like the wine,” Sabbatius said. That, however, was a recommendation not even Paul could view with pride. Sabbatius liked the wine because it was wine, not because it was good wine. As if to prove as much, he held out his cup. “Fill me up again. I don’t care with what.”

“Sawdust might be good,” John said musingly. “Or maybe rocks.”

Sabbatius folded his right hand into a fist. “Here’s one rock.” He closed his left hand, too. “And here’s another one. How would you like to meet up with the two of them?”

“Any time,” John jeered. “Any time you’re awake, anyhow.”

Sabbatius started to surge up off his stool. Rufus grabbed him by the shoulders and slammed him down. Too early to start brawling--didn’t you hear Paul?” Sabbatius was bigger and stronger than the veteran, and less than half as old. He obeyed him without question anyhow. That was what made Rufus a man to lead men.

“Don’t start on your friends,” George advised John, “or after a while you’ll go around wondering why you haven’t got any.”

“I don’t wonder,” John said. “I know.” He held out his cup to Paul for a refill, too. When the taverner gave it to him, he gulped it down.

Dactylius said, “If you know your jokes annoy people, why do you keep making them?” The little jeweler plainly did not aim to be annoying; as usual, he sounded serious and sincere.

John’s eye glinted. With one more cup of wine in him, he would have wondered aloud why Dactylius stayed with Claudia if he knew she was a harridan. George could see that. He shifted so he could kick John in the ankle if he began to ask the question. Rather to his surprise, John kept quiet. Maybe he’d listened to George. George wasn’t used to having people listen to him, but understood why: he spent most of his time talking to his children.

The tavern filled up fast. Since the Slavs and Avars broke off the siege, the people of Thessalonica had been in a mood to have a good time. Sooner than he might otherwise have done, Paul called, “And now, to make you laugh, to take your troubles away, and maybe to give you new ones, here’s John.”

“Ha!” John said as he got to his feet and hurried to the platform with a sort of boneless lope. “He knows me too well.” He paused and looked out over the crowd, then shook his head. “You’re a bloody poor lot if you’ve come here for a good time. You should all be home with your wives.” He paused again, as if contemplating what he’d just said. “Well, that explains that.”

“What does he mean?” asked Sabbatius, who was not only unwed but already drunk. Without waiting for an answer, he laughed anyhow, a loud, empty bray.

“Here we are, all safe and sound” John said thoughtfully. “There were times when I wouldn’t have believed it, not during the siege I wouldn’t.” He pointed to the table from which he’d come. “There are the valiant militiamen who defended the wall near here. Would you think they could keep out a pack of howling barbarians?”

“Thank you, John,” George and Dactylius called out together, one in Latin, the other in Greek. They grinned at each other.

“Hey, I’m a militiaman, too,” John said. “Would you think I could keep out a pack of howling barbarians?”

“If they understood what you were calling ‘em, yes,” somebody said loudly.

John didn’t annihilate him, as he did most critics. The remark fit too well with the way his routine was heading. “Maybe,” he said. “It all worked out, thanks be to God. You even see rich people over on this side of town, and you didn’t hardly do that during the siege, did you? No. Most of them stayed over on the east side, where they could duck into the citadel in a hurry if they needed to.”

George listened with wary attention. After the putatively angelic visit, Menas had left him alone. If John started poking fun at him--for he was one of the rich men who had been on the western wall of Thessalonica--George knew he was liable to get blamed for whatever the comic said. That might mean the immunity he’d won would unravel.

But John chose a different tack, saying, “During the siege, those rich people hardly even knew they were living in the same city with us. Somebody told one of them that there was an assault going on, and he said, “Well, no need to panic. It’s only the Litaean Gate the Slavs and Avars are attacking.”

“Why is that funny?” Sabbatius demanded. He hadn’t fallen asleep yet, as he usually did sooner than this.

Patiently, George explained: “Because the rich fool thinks that what happens over at the Litaean Gate couldn’t matter to his part of the city.”

“Oh.” After a bit, Sabbatius let out that braying laugh again.

By explaining, George had missed some of John’s routine. The comic was saying, “--and the fellow’s son promised to come back from the sally with a Slav’s head. ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ the fellow answered. ‘I don’t care if you come back without a head.’”

Somebody threw a roll at him. He caught it and ate it. “That’s one way to get something to eat around this place,” he said pointedly, and stared over toward Paul.

After a moment, the taverner had a barmaid bring over a plate of olives. John made as if to grab the girl instead of the plate, and stared out at his audience in mock indignation after she escaped. “How did she know what I wanted to eat?” he said. The barmaid threw a roll at him. He caught that one, too.

“We all had a hard time,” he said. “No two ways around that. What I want to know is, why didn’t the barbarians have the decency to besiege us in the summertime, when we wouldn’t have had to stay up on the wall in such miserable weather? I know one fellow” --he pointed to Sabbatius, who had started to snore by then-- “who stood out in the rain so long, he jumped in the river to get dry.”

“Christ!” Rufus said. “They were telling that joke in Italy when I was a lad.”

“They were telling that joke in Italy when Caesar was a lad,” George said, and couldn’t resist adding, “and he’s only a little younger than you.”

“God will punish you for that,” Rufus growled, convincingly angry, “and if He doesn’t, I will.” They laughed together, as old friends will. Why not? The siege was over.

George laughed at John’s jokes, too: at some more than others, as is the way of such things. What pleased him best about the comic’s routine was that John did not mention Menas even once. Maybe, however late in life, he’d learned the beginnings of discretion. Or maybe, and perhaps more likely, events of the past few weeks had given him so much new material that, for the time being, he didn’t need to bait the rich noble.

John ran a hand through his hair and said, “I suppose you’re wondering why I don’t have so much up here these days.” His hair was cut a little shorter than it had been before George got locked out of Thessalonica, but only a little. He went on, “I have to tell you, it’s Rufus’ fault.”

“Just because you have to tell it, that doesn’t make it so,” Rufus exclaimed.

John ignored him. “There at the end of the siege, he was throwing us up onto the wall with anybody who was still healthy, not just with men from our own company.” Because George had been out of the city, he didn’t know whether that was so or not. John continued, “Me, one night I was up there doing a shift with old bald Basil and with Victor the barber. Sometimes, when nothing much is happening, you’ll doze up there instead of tramping back and forth all the damn time.”

“You’d better not!” Another exclamation from Rufus, this one in an altogether different tone of voice.

John kept right on ignoring him, saying, “So that’s what I did, and Basil, too. I told Victor to wake me in an hour’s time, and then I’d do the same for him. I fell asleep, good and hard. So did Basil. Well, Victor got bored while we were snoring away. He got out his little razor and shaved my head for a joke. When he finally shook me, I thought it was colder than it should have been, and I rubbed my head and found out I didn’t have any hair left. “What a fool you are,’ I told Victor. You’ve gone and woke Baldy there instead of me.’”

“Here,” somebody called. “I’ll give you a miliaresion not to tell that one again.”

John leered at him. “And how much will you give me not to tell the next one on you?” He looked over the crowd and held out his bowl. “Or on you? Or on you there, with the ugly tunic. Yes, you. You know who I mean.”

He was grinning when he came back to the table, the bowl nicely heavy with money. “Not a bad take,” he said. “Not a bad take at all.” He started separating the coins with his usual quick dexterity, then looked up from his work. “Where are you going, George?”

“Home,” the shoemaker answered with a yawn. “I’m not like Sabbatius” --who was still snoring away-- “I don’t sleep in taverns.”

“And besides,” Dactylius put in, “you don’t want to wake up bald, the way John says he did.”

“Everybody thinks he can do my job,” John muttered darkly. Then he brightened. “Ha! Justus really did give me silver. Now you can go home, George.”

“I don’t take orders from you,” George said. “I take orders from Rufus.”

“Go home, George,” Rufus said. laughing, George did.

George said, “Dear, I think we really have to dicker with Leo now.”

Irene let out a sigh. “I wish we didn’t. Constantine’s not a bad lad, mind you, but I think we can do better for Sophia.”

“I don’t think Sophia wants better. She wants Constantine, and I think she’s going to get him no matter what we say about it.” George told how the two of them had been kissing when he came back into Thessalonica after the Slavs and Avars gave up the siege.

“And what did you do about that?” his wife asked.

“I coughed. They jumped apart,” George answered. “They were embarrassed. But they’ll do it again whenever they find the chance. You don’t take one kiss like that without wanting another. If they find the chance, they’ll do more than kiss.”

He expected Irene to be affronted at the way he’d impugned Sophia’s care about guarding her virtue. Instead his wife sighed and laughed a laugh half wry, half genuinely amused. “All right, we’d better talk with Leo,” she said.

“You pick the oddest times to be sensible,” George remarked. Irene, luckily for him, was already intent on the dickering that lay ahead, and so paid less attention to him than she might have done.

Rain pattered down outside. Some of it turned to ice when it struck the ground. George didn’t mind. He was under a roof that didn’t leak too badly, a couple of braziers spread heat, and woodcutters could go out into the forest again, even if they did go with armed guards to make sure no lurking Slavs picked them off. Some of the woodcutters wanted armed guards against the centaurs and satyrs. George knew that was foolish for any number of reasons, but said nothing. He was not a man to whom people listened on such matters.

“The one thing we have to do,” Irene said, her mind running ahead on its own road, “is make certain Sophia doesn’t do anything out of the way”--a euphemism George hadn’t heard before, but clear enough-- “till the dickering is done. When I tell her it would hurt the bargain we’re striking, she’ll understand that.” She looked sidelong at her husband. “My mother told me the same thing about you.”

“Did she?” George said. “You never mentioned that before.”

“A time for everything, and everything in its season,” Irene answered: not quite the language of the Holy Scriptures, but close. She grew brisk again. “Now--how do we approach Leo without making it too obvious we’re approaching him?”

“Why don’t you go buy a pot from him?” George said. “If you like, you can break one over my head, so the story will get round that we need a new one.”

“I usually get them from old grouchy Antonius, but that will do, I think.” Irene gave him a kiss for coming up with a good idea. Musingly, she went on, “I don’t think I have to break one on you. Maybe I don’t even want people to think I did that. I’m not Claudia, after all.”

George kissed her this time. “And a good thing, too, says I.”

Irene came back with a fine new pot--George was ready to admit (though he never would have done so to Leo’s face) it was better than any they already had. She also came back with a triumphant smile lighting her features. “I didn’t even have to start the dickering,” she told her husband. “Leo did that, as soon as I walked through the door. Constantine must be giving him some heat.”

“That’s very good,” George said equably. “Do we have a bargain? Do we have a bride-price set? Do we have a day for the wedding?”

“Of course not,” Irene said. “There’s no hurry to these things--well, not too much of a hurry, anyhow, provided Sophia and Constantine don’t give us a reason for one. But we have a bargain that there will be a bargain, if you know what I mean.”

“All right. Nice to have that settled, or on the way to being settled.” George paused, then said, “Come to think of it, we may be doing some more bargaining one of these days before too long.” He told how, coming back into Thessalonica, he’d found not only Sophia kissing Constantine but also Theodore kissing Lucretia.

“Lucretia?” Irene said in some dismay. “She’s so heavy.” Her eyes glinted dangerously. “And why didn’t you see fit to mention this until now? I might have been caught unawares, you know.”

“It slipped my mind,” George answered with a shrug. “We have had rather a lot of things going on lately, you know. And I don’t have any idea how much she means to Theodore--if she means anything. He hasn’t talked about her, you’ll notice. Maybe that just means he’s shy about it, I admit. But maybe it means--”

Irene finished that for him: “Maybe it means the whole town was going crazy because the Slavs and Avars were leaving, and he decided to see what he could get. Yes. That sounds like a man.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” George said, not about to let his half of the human race be slandered so. “Who came out of this shop and kissed me a lot harder than either of our children was kissing right then?”

“Hmm,” Irene said, and George thought he’d won the exchange. But then she said “Ha!” and pointed at him, and he knew he hadn’t. She said, “I kissed you, my husband, not the first man I saw on the street.” She drew herself up in triumph.

“Well, so you did,” George admitted But he had a finger to wag at her, too: “Theodore’s not married, so that isn’t fair.”

“Hmm,” Irene said again. This time, she didn’t go, “Ha!” She seemed content to leave it a draw. So was George. They both started laughing at about the same time, most likely because they both realized leaving such things as draws was the best way to get through life together and stay friends doing it.

George was coming back from Benjamin the Jew’s with a sack full of jingling bronze buckles--Benjamin had gone back to his regular line of work once the siege ended-- when he ran into Father Luke. That was literally true; each was hurrying around a corner. They both said, “Oof!” Father Luke, who was the lighter of the two, staggered back a couple of paces.

“I crave your pardon, Your Reverence,” George said, steadying him.

“No harm done,” the priest said with a smile. Most people in Thessalonica, by then, had lost some of their siege-induced gauntness. Grain and livestock had come in from several towns to the east, easing hunger. Father Luke’s skin, though, seemed more tightly drawn over his cheekbones than ever. He looked as if a strong wind would blow him away.

“Are you all right?” George asked. He’d gone to St. Elias’ for the divine liturgy each Sabbath after the deliverance of the city, but hadn’t had a chance to talk with the priest since then.

Father Luke nodded. “Yes, I’m very well, thank you.™

“You don’t mind my saying so, Your Reverence, you don’t look very well,” George said bluntly.

“The well-being of the flesh and that of the spirit are not always one and the same,” the priest replied. If he wasn’t contented, his voice didn’t know it.

“If you haven’t got any flesh left--” George began.

Father Luke cut him off. “If I haven’t got any flesh left,” he said, “my spirit will have been translated into a world better than this one, as I pray it shall be one day in any case.” He set a hand on George’s shoulder. “You needn’t worry about me. Bishop Eusebius is not so angry as to require me to give up the ghost, I assure you.”

“You couldn’t prove it by looking at you,” George said. “In a high wind, you’d be gone, near as I can tell. Look-- there’s a place.” He pointed to Paul’s tavern. “Why don’t you let me buy you some bread and sausage and a mug of wine? You’ll be better off for it--and happier, by the look of you.”

“I’ll break bread with you, if you like,” the priest answered, “but I am forbidden flesh, and likewise I am forbidden strong drink.”

“Drinking water all the time’s not healthy!” George exclaimed. Father Luke shrugged. “You are the most exasperating man!” the shoemaker burst out, and Father Luke shrugged again. George rubbed his chin. “Suppose I get you some bread, and some cheese to go with it?”

Now Father Luke looked thoughtful. “I was forbidden meat and wine, but I was not ordered to subsist on bread and water alone. Now, this may well have been an oversight on the bishop’s part, but he cannot in justice claim I have violated the terms of his penance if I start eating cheese before Lent.” With that, he started toward the tavern, leaving George to hurry to catch up.

George almost ran into someone else who was hurrying around a comer: a big, burly fellow with an expression that warned anyone in his way to get out of it. He recoiled from George, however, as much as George recoded from him. They gave each other a wide, silent berth as they went their separate ways.

“That was Menas, wasn’t it?” Father Luke asked when George came up to him. “He left you alone.”

“Yes, he did,” the shoemaker agreed. “I hope he goes right on doing it, too.”

“I’ve prayed he would.” Father Luke’s eyes twinkled. “Whatever the agency of his change, I am glad to see he has made it.” The priest did not ask what George had done with Perseus’ cap before going back up to Lete with it. What he did not know, he did not have to notice in his official capacity.

George got him bread and honey and cheese and onions and olives and mushrooms fried in olive oil. “There you go, Your Reverence,” he said. “No flesh, no wine, but food that’ll put some meat on your ribs.”

Looking at what was set before him, Father Luke murmured, The most holy bishop would not approve.” Then, louder, he went on, “But you won’t see me turn it down, either.” He ate every little thing on the platter, down to the last fried mushroom. When he was done, he still looked hungry. But, when George waved for the barmaid to bring him more food, he shook his head. “I’ve already committed gluttony. Don’t make me compound the sin.”

“Eating a meal that keeps you from starving a digit at a time is not gluttony,” George declared, as if daring the priest to argue with him.

All Father Luke said, though, was, “Eating two such meals in the space of half an hour surely is.”

When the priest seemed mildest and most gentle, he was hardest to move. George had seen that a good many times already. If Father Luke didn’t yield, the shoemaker would have to, and he did: “All right, Your Reverence. I was only trying to help you through the worst of it.”

“I understand that, and I’m grateful,” Father Luke answered. “But this is not the worst of it. This is only the aftermath. The worst of it was galloping down through the hills on centaurback, fearing at every bound we would be too late.”

Compared to that, George supposed going hungry for a while wasn’t the end of the world. He’d come too close to seeing the end of the world himself, or of that part of the world that mattered most to him. “I think the worst of it for me--just for myself, mind you, not for Thessalonica--was when Menas slammed the postern gate in my face.”

“Even Menas has a place in God’s plan,” Father Luke said serenely.

George’s hackles rose. “I’ll tell you where I’d like to place Menas,” he growled. “If you dropped him off the highest part of the wall into a really ripe midden heap, he might go deep enough to suit me. Yes, sir, he just might.”

Father Luke held up a hand. “The two of you are quits. I have seen it is so, and I am glad it is so. Very well, then: let it be so. And let us speak of happier matters: do I hear rightly that your lovely daughter is to marry the son of Leo the potter? I know you were asking me about Constantine not so long ago, and I regret having been unable to tell you more. I gather you and your clever wife finally judged the young man adequate?”

“Adequate. Yes.” George knew he should have spoken with more warmth, more enthusiasm. He couldn’t do it. What father ever truly believes any young man this side of a prince--and sometimes that side of a prince, too--adequate to marry his precious daughter?

Maybe, somewhere not far away, Dalmatius the oil-seller was at that moment wondering if Theodore could possibly be adequate for Lucretia. If so, he was a fool, and shamefully ignorant of Theodore’s myriad sterling qualities. Anyone who knew Theodore would think the same. Theodore, after all, was George’s son.

“I pray they will be happy together, and enjoy many prosperous and fruitful years,” Father Luke said.

“Well, Your Reverence, if anything can make that likelier, I expect your prayers will do the job,” George answered. Father Luke dipped his head, acknowledging the compliment.

“More bread? More olives? More cheese?” the barmaid asked. “Some wine? Neither one of you is drinking any wine.” What are you doing here if you’re not drinking wine? she seemed to be saying.

George shook his head. Father Luke set a hand on the shoemaker’s arm. “Because I may not,” he said, “does not mean you should not.”

“One cup,” George said, and the barmaid went off to pour it. Father Luke beamed, pleased to have been taken at his word. George had long since found that taking the priest at anything less than his word was a mistake.

When the woman brought back the wine, Father Luke asked, “May I propose a toast? If you consider that rude because I am not drinking, by all means say so. George made haste to wave for him to go on. Smiling, the priest said, “Drink to Nephele and Crotus and the rest of the centaurs for me, then. They went without wine rather longer than Bishop Eusebius has enjoined such abstinence for me.” Half to himself, he murmured, “Abstinence,” again, and then, very quietly, “Nephele.” If the thoughts going through his mind at that moment were ecclesiastical, George would have been amazed.

“I’m glad to drink to that one,” the shoemaker said, and did. “If it hadn’t been for the centaurs--and for you to persuade them to get roaring drunk--we’d all be worse off than we are now.” He raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Didn’t the bishop tell you not to have anything more to do with them, though?”

“That he did.” Father Luke grinned. “He did not, however, forbid me to drink their health, at least vicariously.” The grin got wider. George recognized it: it was the one Theodore had given him when, as a small boy, he’d found a way around some instruction of George’s. Laughing, George finished the wine.

But he didn’t laugh long. After a little while, he said, “I’m afraid we’re not rid of the Slavs and Avars for good.”

That sobered Father Luke, too. “If the Emperor Maurice can drive the barbarians back beyond the Danube--which I pray he succeeds in doing--then we may be free of them for a long time to come,” he said. “If he is less fortunate on the battlefield--”

“Heaven forbid!” George exclaimed. “What I wouldn’t have given to see our garrison of regulars come galloping to the rescue, there at the end of the siege.”

“And I,” the priest agreed. “But they served the Roman Empire elsewhere, as was God’s will. And so we, and Thessalonica, made do with centaurs. Centaurs fit into the divine plan, too.”

“They would tell you otherwise, if they could speak the name of God,” George said.

“I know they would.” Father Luke was unruffled. “They are undying, and wise, and lovely.” Was he thinking of Nephele again? Before George could nerve himself to ask, the priest went on, “But they are also faded, defeated by the new dispensation, and in any case only creatures of local power seeking to judge the one universal and almighty God. They may no more comprehend Him in fullness than may you or I.”

“They would tell you otherwise there, too,” George said.

“I know,” Father Luke repeated, unruffled still. “If you like, I’ll say my say all over again, so we can have the argument at yet another remove.”

“No, thanks.” George tried another tack: “If we’d been late coming down from the hills, the gods of the Slavs might have overthrown Thessalonica before we could do anything to the wizards who brought them forth.”

“So they might have,” Father Luke said. “But we were in good time, if barely in good time, the reason being that God did not allow us to be late.”

“You’ve got all the answers,” George said, chuckling.

The priest shook his head. “No. Only one.” He rose from the table and clasped George’s hand. “I was heading back toward St. Elias’ when you waylaid me and dragged me in here. If you can stay a bit longer, drink another cup of wine for me.” Off he went, a man who knew where he was going and why.

“Do you want that cup of wine or not?” the barmaid asked when George sat for a minute or two without calling for it.

He stared at her. She stared back, altogether unembarrassed about eavesdropping. “Yes, I’ll take it,” he said at last. She brought it over to him and hovered till he set coins on the tabletop. By the way she scooped them up, she might have suspected they were counterfeit. Thus encouraged, George gulped down the wine and left.

It had started to snow while he was in the tavern. Snowflakes danced in the air. A thin layer of white lay over everything, not yet streaked with soot, not yet trampled into slush. George stood outside the doorway for a moment: the falling snow was beautiful.

It was also cold. He wrapped his tunic more tightly around himself and hurried off toward his own home and shop. The snow crunched under his boots. Every time he exhaled, he breathed out fog.

As he walked along, shivering, he thought about what Father Luke had said. Crotus and Nephele thought differently: he’d said as much himself. The Avar priest had thought differently, too, till the centaurs put paid to him. Who had the right of it?

“Menas, a part of God’s plan?” George snorted. The notion was absurd on the face of it.

He walked a few steps farther. Then, despite snow, despite cold, he stopped. Was it absurd? Or was the pattern of events larger and more complex than George had perceived till this moment? Had God cured Menas’ paralysis so that the rich noble, having become George’s enemy, could, by shutting him out of the city, force him up into the hills to meet the centaurs, to gain Perseus’ cap, to bring Father Luke up into the hills to get the centaurs drunk so they would have the spirit to attack the Slavs and Avars besieging Thessalonica and help save it?

He looked up into the gray sky. Was that God’s will he saw, or only his own imagination running away with him after a couple of cups of wine? Either way, how was he supposed to tell?

A snowflake landed on the tip of his nose. He brushed it off and started walking again. He was only a couple of blocks from home.