Departures

Argyros laughed at himself. Before he married Helen, he had never imagined himself irresistible to women. Thinking Zois had found him so was bracing. It made him proud. He knew what pride went before. Even as he had that thought, he felt himself falling.

“You are a kind man,” Zois said. “As I told you, I will do my best to make sure my husband lends his influence to meeting with the prefect’s men and trying to end the anakhoresis. And now, would you care for another date?” She held out the platter to him.

“No, thank you.” When the magistrianos got up this time, he did not approach the master carpenter’s wife. “I’m glad I can count on you, but now I do have other business to attend to.” He let her show him out.

As the beads clicked behind him, he wondered what the other business was. For the life of him, he could not think of any. Maybe escaping his own embarrassment counted.

He walked north to the street of Kanopos, Alexandria’s main east-west thoroughfare, the one on which Saint Athanasios’ church fronted. With nothing better to do, he thought he would imitate many of the locals and lie down in his room during the midday heat.

Someone plucked at the sleeve of his tunic. He whirled, one hand dropping to the hilt of his sword-like any large city, Alexandria was full of light-fingered rogues. But this was no rogue-it was a girl two or three years older than Zois’ maidservant. Under the paint on her face, she might have been pretty were she less thin. “Go to bed with me?” she said. Argyros would bet it was most of the Greek she knew. No, she had a bit more, a price: “Twenty folleis.”

A big copper coin for an embrace… The magistrianos had rejected such advances before without having to think twice. Now, his blood already heated from what he had thought-no, hoped, he admitted to himself-he heard himself say, “Where?”

The girl’s face lit up. She was pretty, he saw, at least when she smiled. She led him to a tiny chamber that opened onto an alley a couple of blocks from the street of Kanopos. With the door shut, the cubicle was hot, stuffy, and nearly night-dark. Argyros knew the much-used straw pallet would have bugs, but the girl was pulling her shift off over her head, lying down and waiting for him to join her. He did.

Afterward, he saw her scorn even in the gloom. After so long without a woman, he had spent himself almost at once. But that long denial was not to be relieved with a single round. “You pay twice,” she warned, but then she was moving with him, urging him on. Harlots had their wiles, he knew, but he thought he pleased her the second time. He knew he pleased himself.

He knew he pleased her when he gave her a silver miliaresion, much more than she had asked of him. Maybe, for a while, she would be a little less scrawny.

His conscience troubled him as he finished the interrupted walk to his room. Such a sordid way to end his mourning for his wife: a skinny whore in a squalid crib. But he had not stopped mourning Helen, nor would he ever. He had only proved what he already knew-that wish as he might, he was not fit by nature for the single life.

And knowing that, would it have been better, he asked himself, to have returned to the sensual world with an act of adultery as well as one of fornication? He thought of Zois, of how attractive he had found her, and was not sure of the answer.

With an expression of barely concealed dislike, Mouamet Dekanos watched the guildsmen file into the meeting chamber. Argyros, who was sitting at one side of the table (he had left Dekanos the head) gave him credit for trying to conceal it.

The guildsmen were not even trying. They glowered impartially at both men waiting for them. They also frankly gaped at the magnificence of the hall in which they were received. Even in their finest clothes, they looked out of place, or rather looked like what they were-workmen in a palace.

“Illustrious sirs,” Khesphmois said, nervously dipping his head to Argyros and Dekanos. As he slid into a chair, he went on. “These men with me are Hergeus son of Thotsytmis of the concrete spreaders’ guild, and Miysis son of Seias of the guild of stonecutters.”

“Yes, thank you, Khesphmois,” Dekanos said. “Of course, I have had dealings with all you gentlemen”-he spit out the word as if it tasted bad-”before, but your comrades will be new to Argyros. He is here all the way from Constantinople itself to help us settle our differences.”

“Illustrious sir,” Hergeus and Miysis murmured as they took their seats. Like the other Alexandrians Argyros had met, they made a good show of looking unimpressed at the mention of the capital.