Thessalonica

“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.