Thessalonica

He’d just picked up his awl and noted how smoothly the wooden handle fit against his palm and fingers when Irene said, “Will you come out back with me, please, dear? I want to know whether you think the fennel is ready for picking.”

George muttered under his breath. Irene knew far more about the herbs she grew back there than he did. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d asked his opinion about them. The last time he’d offered it unasked, she’d made a point of ignoring him. And he had more work to do in less time than he’d ever known before. He started to say as much. Before he did, though, he looked over at his wife. Without a word, he set the awl down on the bench and walked out with her to have a look at the fennel.

“Seems fine to me,” he said, pointing at the wispy, light green plants that stood almost as tall as he did.

Irene gave him the stare she reserved for times when she caught him being deliberately obtuse. “Of course it’s fine,” she said with an edge to her voice. “But I can’t very well talk about Sophia right there in front of her, can I?”

“Why not?” George asked. “You talk about me when I’m right there all the time.”

Irene’s left foot began tapping the muddy ground of the herb garden, a sure danger sign. “How much do you know about Constantine, the son of Leo the potter?” she asked.

“Say, as much as I know about any of the young men who live on this street,” George answered. “He doesn’t wear baggy tunics with puffy sleeves and cut his hair short the way the young toughs do, so I suppose he’s not so bad as some. Why do you want to . . ?”

His voice traded off. Looking back, he realized it should have traded off a couple of sentences sooner. Irene’s foot was tapping harder, which showed exactly how stupid he’d been. “Yes, that’s right,” she said, as if he’d asked the right question. “Sophia has noticed him. She’s done rather more than notice him. This morning, she told me she thought he was the sweetest thing God had made since the fruit in the Garden of Eden.”

“Oh.” George suppressed a strong urge to retch. “Oh, dear.” He’d never particularly noticed young Constantine. What he had noticed was a fellow huskier than most whose beard, which he did not shave very well, had some red patches in it that were startling when seen with the dark hair on top of his head. “Is she serious, or is it just.. . foolishness?” That wasn’t the word he wanted, but he couldn’t find a better one.

“She thinks she’s serious, so she might as well be,” Irene answered, a thought convoluted enough to have made Bishop Eusebius proud.

“Am I going to have to talk to Leo?” George asked, and then, as much to himself as to his wife, “Do I want to talk to Leo?” As he had asked it, he answered his own question: “Constantine’s not the worst match I can think of.”

“No, he’s not,” Irene agreed. “But he’s not the best, either. We have to think about this, and we have to see whether Sophia changes her mind again day after tomorrow, too. I remember there were boys who--” Now she was the one who broke off.

George waggled a finger at her. “Ha! I’m usually the one who makes mistakes like that.” With his wife still flustered, he went on, “Some of the boys who might have caught her eye, well, I think I’d be praying the Slavs and Avars would sack the city before the wedding.”

“God forbid.” Irene’s voice was serious, but her eyes danced. “As you said, it could be worse. I was wondering if Theodore had his eye on anyone in particular, but he hasn’t shown any signs of that. It won’t be long, I expect.”

“No, but for now he hasn’t.” George said nothing more. At Theodore’s age, he’d had his eye on every pretty girl who walked past the open door, but he’d left it to his parents to find him one with whom to make a life. His gaze flicked back to Irene. Would he have chosen her on his own? He didn’t know, but his mother and father had done well by him.

“I can guess what you’re thinking,” Irene said, and laughed a little. That laugh meant she wasn’t guessing: she knew he’d eyed all the girls when he was younger. She continued, “With Sophia, it’s not anything we have to worry about right away, I don’t think. But if she’s still serious come summer--”

“All right,” George said Summer seemed farther away than Jerusalem, farther away than Gaul, farther away than the island that was supposed to be beyond Gaul, the island whose name, for the moment, he’d entirely forgotten. He clicked his tongue between his teeth. That would bother him till he remembered, no matter how useless knowing the name of an immensely distant island now surely infested with barbarians was.

He grunted. Thessalonica was infested with barbarians. To think of them, he didn’t need to worry about. . . “Britain!” he said happily.

“What are you talking about?” Irene asked.

Before he had to come up with an answer, Sophia called, “How much can the two of you say about fennel, anyway?”