Thessalonica

“Don’t go away, folks,” Paul called. “In half an hour or so, the special duo of Lucius and Maria, who’ve sung in Sicily and Illyria, will give you old love songs and some new ones all their own. I’m sure you’ll want to stay and hear them--they’ll send you home in a happy mood.”

“Now I know when to leave,” John said, scooping his take into a leather pouch. “I’ve heard Lucius and Maria, by God. They’re funnier than I am. The only difference is, they don’t mean to be.”

George hadn’t heard them. He said, “If they’re that bad, how have they been able to perform in all those places?”

“Are you kidding?” John rolled his eyes. “They stink up a town once, they get ran out, and they bloody well have to go somewhere else--in a hurry. And so, before they come on, I’ll bloody well go somewhere else, too. Good night.”

But before he could escape, the barmaid whose intended insult he’d turned to his own purposes came up to the table. “That wasn’t very nice, what you did there,” she said, hands on hips.

John said, “The best stories come from what really happens. Anybody silly enough to tell me not to use one would probably marry a eunuch.”

She glared at him. “Is that all that matters? That I gave you a story you could use to make people laugh?”

“Of course not,” he answered, which, with John, was as likely as not to mean yes. He leered. “I told you beforehand, I had something else in mind.”

Confronted with a line like that, George would have poured, or maybe broken, a jar of wine over John’s head. Like anyone else, he judged other people by his own standard, and so was astonished when the barmaid said, “That’s right, you did,” in a purr that announced she suddenly had something else in mind, too. She and John left the tavern together.

Muttering to himself, George got another cup of wine from Paul (the barmaid having disappeared) and settled down to see whether Lucius and Maria were as bad as John had claimed. They weren’t. They were worse.

After a stint on the wall early the next morning, George went back to his shop to get some work done. He wasn’t working so much as he would have liked these days, not with the siege. People were still buying shoes; he’d sold several pairs to refugees who hadn’t bothered putting on any before fleeing the Slavs and Avars.

Having sewn the last strap onto a sandal, he looked into the box where he kept little bronze buckles. It was empty. When he made an exasperated noise, Theodore said, “I’m sorry, Father--I used the last ones in there a little while ago. Haven’t we got any more?”

“No, those were the last,” George answered. “I’ll have to walk down to Benjamin and buy some new ones.” He grumbled something inaudible even to himself: more time when he wouldn’t be able to get anything useful done.

Theodore must have figured out what that grumble meant. “You could send me, Father,” he said.

“I could… .” George considered. Not without a certain amount of regret, he shook his head. “No, I’d better not. He’d skin you alive on the price. He’ll skin me, too, but not so bad.”

“I’m not afraid of him,” Theodore said. “Just because he’s a Jew--”

“I’m not afraid of him because he’s a Jew,” George answered. “I’ve got the better of plenty of them. I’m afraid of him because he’s Benjamin.”

Like most of Thessalonica’s Jews, Benjamin lived and had his shop in the southwestern part of the city. The whole street echoed with the taps and clangs of hammers on metal: Jews dominated the bronze- and coppersmithing trades.

Benjamin looked up from his work when George walked into the shop. The bronzeworker was a few years older than George, lean and wiry and dark. “Ah, good morning, good morning,” he said in Greek. “I thought you would be one of the bishop’s men, and that order is not yet ready.”

George scratched his head. “If you don’t mind my asking, what would Bishop Eusebius want from you?”

“Arrowheads, of course,” the Jew answered, holding up a file with which he’d been sharpening one. “I’m supposed to deliver another five hundred day after tomorrow, but if they wanted them today, I couldn’t do it.”

“Arrowheads. I should have thought of that,” George said.

“Iron points are harder, of course, but when you’re in trouble you use everything you have,” Benjamin said, and George nodded. The bronzeworker gave him a tired smile of sorts. “You, though, I do not think you have come for arrowheads.”

“Well--no,” George said, and smiled back. “I’ve finally gone through that last batch of buckles you sold me, and I wanted to buy some more.”

“I have a few,” Benjamin said, “but not many. You’re lucky you came in today, George. After I finished this order I’m working on now, I would have melted them down for the next one.”

“I am lucky, then,” George said. He’d been dealing with Benjamin for a long time; the man did good work. Finding someone else who had buckles or could make them would have been an annoyance at least, and, with bronze going into arrowheads, might have been impossible. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”