Thessalonica

II

Sophia came running back from the market square with turnips in her hands and excitement on her face. “Come quick, everybody,” she called as she hurried into the shop. “There’s going to be a procession out to the monastery of St. Demetrius--you know, the one with the healing spring.”

George looked up from the fancy boots he had almost finished ornamenting. “What kind of procession?” he asked.

“Remember Menas the nobleman?” Sophia said. “The one who hasn’t been able to use his legs since his horse threw him a few years ago?”

“Yes, I remember Menas,” George said. Beside him, Irene nodded, too. He went on, “He’s lucky he’s rich, to have bearers put him in a litter and take him wherever he wants to go. We’ve all seen him in church.” Irene nodded again. This time, so did both their children. “A poor man,” he finished, “a poor man would probably have to stay in his bed the rest of his days, and those wouldn’t be long, either.”

“Will you let me tell you?” Sophia burst out. She pretended to throw a turnip at him. Now he nodded.

She said, “St. Demetrius sent him a dream, he said, that if he goes out to the monastery and bathes in the spring, he’ll be able to walk again.”

Irene crossed herself. “May it be so,” she said.

“Aye, may it be so,” George agreed. His spirit was not quite so broadly generous as his wife’s, though, so he could not help wondering why God and the saint had chosen to give that dream to Menas rather than to some poor and wretched paralytic whose state, as he’d suggested to his daughter, was liable to be far worse than that of the nobleman.

His shoulders went up and down. When God needed a shoemaker to advise Him on how to run the world, no doubt He would inquire. In the meantime, He would do as He pleased, not as pleased George.

Theodore said, “If St. Demetrius promised a miracle, that would be something worth seeing, wouldn’t it, Father?”

“You see a miracle whenever you take bread and wine and communion,” George said. “What I see is a young scamp who wants some time off from work.” He put down his awl. “I wouldn’t mind a little time off myself. Let’s go -”

Theodore whooped. Sophia set the turnips on the counter. “What shall we do if a customer comes in while we’re away?” Irene asked, resisting even after her husband had given up.

“What shall we do? We’ll miss him, that’s what,” George said, which, while literally true, earned him a glare from Irene. He went on, “A lot of the people who might come in, you know, will be parading along with Menas, too.”

“I suppose so.” Irene weighed it like a judge considering evidence, and in the end gave a nod George would have described as judicious. “Yes, I suppose so.” The decision made, she brightened. “That will be exciting, won’t it, if the saint does work a miracle for us?”

“Yes, it will,” George said. That was also true. If it left him imperfectly satisfied with the way the world was arranged, he had no one to blame but himself. Maybe God had some special reason in mind for restoring to Menas the use of his legs.

And maybe Menas would bathe in the spring without having the use of his legs restored. Till the event, you couldn’t tell. Satan might have sent the dream, deceiving the nobleman to weaken not only his faith but also that of everyone who watched him bathe. Or he might have had the dream all on his own, imagining he saw St. Demetrius because he so badly wanted to walk again. Once more, no way to know till the moment.

“Come on,” Sophia said. “They’re not going to wait for the likes of us before they start. If we don’t hurry now, we’ll have to hurry to catch up or we won’t be able to see a thing.”

She and Theodore waited for no more discussion from their obviously stodgy parents; they headed out the door. George and Irene looked at each other, started to laugh, and followed. George closed the door after them.

They were far from the only people hurrying toward the market square. Seeing that, the shoemaker caught his wife’s eyes and gave her his best I-told-you-so look. She did her best job of pretending she hadn’t seen it, which left the match a standoff.

“Oh, good!” Sophia exclaimed when they got to the square. “He hasn’t left yet.” Sure enough, there in the middle of the crowd sat Menas’ Utter, the poles above the seat where he reclined supporting a brightly dyed canopy that kept the sun off his noble head. Also there, gorgeous in his vestments, stood Bishop Eusebius. If this was a true miracle, he intended to wring from it every grain of advantage he could.

Not everyone in the market square had come to join the procession. Some people remained intent on doing the business of an ordinary market day. And others, detecting out-of-the-ordinary opportunities to turn a profit, appeared in the square when they ordinarily would not have. There stood Paul the taverner, for instance, with a jar of wine and a dipper, selling drinks for a couple of folleis apiece. He was doing a brisk business.

George waved to him, calling, “I thought you were talking about joining the militia. Where have you been?”

“I’ll get there, never fear,” Paul said. “I’m a busy man; you can’t expect me to do everything at once.”

“Have it your way,” George answered. Maybe the taverner would come, maybe he wouldn’t. George hoped he would. He liked Paul, and anyone who could run a tavern and keep it from being a place where men went at each other with knives a couple of times a day--which Paul’s emphatically was not--had the makings of a pretty fair underofficer in him. Besides, if Paul joined his company, he might offer his fellow militiamen discounts on his stock in trade. George liked that idea, quite a lot.

“Look!” Sophia said. “They’re starting. We got here just in time.” The sniff following that comment spoke volumes on her opinion of parents who had almost made her late for such a spectacle.

The canopy shielding the limp-limbed Menas from the sun rose several feet as his bearers lifted the litter in which he lay. Eusebius preceded it on the way out toward Cassander’s Gate, by which the soldiers had left a few days before. The bishop sang the Trisagion--the Thrice-holy--hymn: “Holy one, holy mighty one, holy immortal one, have mercy on us!”

Many voices swelled the hymn as the procession passed under the arch of Galerius and out through the gate. George sang as loudly as anyone, and not much less musically than most. A God Who would not have mercy on poor but sincere music sent up to glorify His name would have been a hard and unmerciful God indeed.

For a wonder, no one in the crowd added the Monophysite clause-- “Who was crucified for us”--to the Trisagion. That probably would have led to cries of heresy and touched off a brawl if not a lynching, and would hardly have been an auspicious way to advance toward a hoped-for miracle.

Singing still, the bishop and Menas in his litter led the procession toward the monastery of St. Demetrius. The monastery stood near the top of Cedrenus Hill, north of the Via Egnatia. It looked as much like a small fortress as a place of contemplation and worship, having been built in the days when the Goths rather than the Slavs were sniffing around Thessalonica. Those strong stone walls might come in handy again.

The track up to the monastery was steep and winding and full of rocks. Someone complained blasphemously about breaking a strap to his sandal. George dared hope the fellow would come in before long to have the damage repaired.

Then such notions left him as the procession drew near the spring, which bubbled forth from a cleft in the rock of the hillside. The setting, in the middle of a wooded glade, with the monastery’s walls visible through the trees off to one side, did not seem appropriate for any but prayerful thoughts.

Something was carved into the stone not far from the origin of the spring. George, curious as usual, pushed his way through the crowd so he could read the inscription, which was written in square, old-fashioned Greek letters:

GLORY TO THE SHRINE AND TO ASCLEPIUS, WHO CURED MY ILLNESS HERE: I, GAIUS THYNES, WRITE THIS IN THE SECOND CONSULSHIP OF THE EMPEROR TRAJAN.

He whistled softly. This had been a healing place for a long time. He didn’t know exactly how long Trajan had been dead, but he knew it had been hundreds of years. Back then, Asclepius had ruled the spring. Sometime in the centuries since, St. Demetrius had taken it from him. But the saint had kept it as a place of healing.

Menas’ bearers undid the side curtains that kept the curious from staring into the rich paralytic’s litter. Two of them bent, reached inside, and brought out their employer, who kept one arm around each of their necks. Menas had a tough, fleshy face, arms as big and strong as a stonemason’s, and a broad, powerful chest. His legs, though, were pale and shriveled and useless.

Bishop Eusebius anointed his forehead with purified oil, sketching a cross there that gleamed in the sun. The bishop raised his hands in prayer, declaiming, “Myrrh-exuding great martyr Demetrius, heal your servant Menas in the name of God--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.”

“Amen,” George said, along with everybody else. Here in the glade by the hillside spring, he no longer doubted Menas had had a true dream. Why St. Demetrius had chosen to aid the noble rather than some other cripple remained beyond the shoemaker’s understanding, but the saint seemed to have done just that. The very air felt pregnant with possibility.

“Put me in, boys,” Menas said to the bearers, his gruff voice matching his appearance. But then he spoke in tones of wonder: “It’s almost like being baptized again, isn’t it?”

“In no way,” Eusebius answered. “Baptism seals your soul, where the spring, even if God is kind, will heal only your body.”

Menas bowed his head, outwardly accepting the bishop’s correction. George, though, could still see his eyes. Eusebius might speak slightingly of the body, but Eusebius was not imprisoned in his. “Put me in,” Menas said again, even more urgently than before.

Grunting a little under his weight, the bearers obeyed, placing him in the little pool the spring formed before its water flowed on down the hill. Eusebius called once more on St. Demetrius.

Like everyone else, George sensed the moment when the healing began. Maybe the bishop’s prayer had brought it on. George, though, was more inclined to feel it happened of its own accord, or rather that St. Demetrius would have interceded whether Eusebius had been there to pray or not. Power thrummed in the air, in the ground, and most of all, no doubt, in the water in which Menas lay and which poured over him out of the cleft in the rock. George breathed deeply, as if hoping he could suck some of that power into himself and bring it down out of this place and into his day-to-day life in Thessalonica.

Menas splashed about in the pool, as if he were bathing. That reminded George he ought to visit the city baths himself one day soon. They weren’t so busy as they had been before Thessalonica became a Christian town (or so the bath attendants said, whether to drum up business or from a genuine tradition handed down with their strigils), but they were open.

Bishop Eusebius started to send up yet another prayer to St. Demetrius. He had hardly begun when Menas gasped. It took a good deal to silence a bishop in the middle of a prayer, but that gasp did the job. It was as if all the power immanent in that place had sprung forth in a single awe-smitten inhalation of breath.

Menas stood up in the pool.

For a moment, George simply accepted that. Menas’ strength and agility seemed so natural, he took them for granted. Then memory caught up with vision. Half a man had gone into the pool, but a whole man came out, water dripping in sparkling streams from the hem of his tunic. His legs, which had been thin and wasted, were now as thick and solid as his arms.

“Thank you, St. Demetrius,” he said. “Bless you, St. Demetrius.” He turned to the men who had borne him in the litter for so many years. “Take that cursed thing back to my house and burn it. I’m never going to get into it again.” Nobles often traveled through the streets in litters, not least to show those who weren’t nobles how important they were. George, though, could understand why Menas was willing to forgo that particular kind of aggrandizement.

“Let us thank God for the miracle He has given us this day?” Eusebius said. George gladly thanked God for letting him witness a miracle. Miracles were by their very nature rare; had they happened every day, they would hardly have been miraculous.

“How will you celebrate this miracle?” someone called to Menas.

The burly noble mulled that over, but not for long. “I am going to celebrate it with my wife,” he declared, a reply that made George realize Menas’ legs had not been the only parts of him that did not work. A good many other people realized that at about the same time as the shoemaker. Their ribald whoops echoed through the glade that had been full of the sounds of prayer only moments before.

Eusebius looked furious. He raised his eyes to the heavens; perhaps hoping divine wrath would follow hard on the heels of divine mercy. If so, he was disappointed. The day remained bright and warm and clear, and no lightning bolt came smashing down on the people in the grove.

“He is going in unto his wife,” someone behind George said, “and the Scriptures do tell us it is better to marry than to burn.”

“Menas has been crippled a long time,” George observed, “so I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s burning now.”

With determined stride, the noble headed away from the spring. The procession back to Thessalonica was a lot less orderly and less united in purpose than the one that had led to the sacred spring. Some people still hymned God’s praise. Bishop Eusebius remained incandescently angry. The men who had carried Menas about for so many years looked worried, and George understood why: with the noble walking again, would he still have work for them?

But most people, like the shoemaker, were chiefly concerned about getting back to the city so they could return to work. “Come on,” he said, gathering up his family. “Miracles are all very well, but you can’t eat them.”

“No?” Sophia said. “What about the loaves and fishes?”

“And manna from heaven?” Theodore put in.

“All I know about them is that they didn’t happen in Thessalonica,” George returned. “And this wasn’t our miracle: it was Menas’. The only way it can do us any good is for him to want to buy shoes from our shop.”

Irene sighed. “That would take another miracle, I fear.”

Songs rang out in the city when word of the miracle came. Paul did a brisk business selling wine to the people returning from the monastery of St. Demetrius. Several other taverners came out to try to do the same. George hoped Paul, who had been thoughtful enough to get there ahead of everyone else, reaped the reward for his cleverness.

After the cool freshness of the glade around the sacred spring, after the power that had manifested itself there at the spring, going back into the cramped, dark shoemaker’s shop, stinking of leather, made George sigh. Then he shook his head. “If I wanted to work outdoors all the time, I would have to be a farmer or a woodsman.” He enjoyed the woods and the fields--but not that much. “Talking with sheep or partridges is not my idea of spending time in good company.”

“And what is your idea of good company?” Theodore asked with a glint of mischief in his eye. “Half-drunk militiamen?”’

“Better than sons who don’t show their fathers proper respect,” George shot back, which won him a giggle from Irene and, better yet, sudden silence from Theodore. That was rare enough to come close to being a miracle in and of itself.

But George did not bask in the warm glow of victory for long. Picking up his tools was anything but delightful. All at once, no matter how skillfully he punched a pattern into leather, he had trouble believing any of it mattered. What was the point? Why did he bother?

And then, when he was feeling at his lowest, the rich man who had ordered the boots came into the shop. “Those are splendid,” Germanus exclaimed. “Much better than I thought they’d be.” Not only did he put them on and wear them out of the shop, he paid George a couple of miliaresia more than the price on which they had agreed.

George stared after him, the weight of the money sweet in his palm. “Do you know,” he said slowly, looking down at the coins, “in its own little way, that may be a miracle as wondrous as the one God worked for Menas through St. Demetrius.” Neither his wife nor his children argued with him.

On the practice field near the hippodrome, John put down his spear and pointed up the street. “May I be sent to eternal damnation if that isn’t Paul!” he exclaimed in delight.

George’s opinion was that the profane tavern performer risked eternal damnation whenever he opened his mouth. That, however, did not seem a helpful comment, the more so as John was all too likely to agree with it. The shoemaker contented himself by saying, “It does look like him, doesn’t it?”

Dactylius, whose trade had left him a trifle shortsighted, peered in the general direction from which the taverner was coming. “Yes, that is Paul, isn’t it?” he said, a good deal later than he should have.

Rufus set hands on hips and awaited the new arrival. “So you think you can be a soldier, do you?” he growled.

“I don’t see why not,” the taverner answered. “If you can do the job, it can’t be too hard.”

The veteran’s smile was fierce and predatory. “God will punish you for that--and if He doesn’t, I will.” His sword slid out of its scabbard with a sound like a snake’s hiss. “Let’s see what you can do.”

In the practice that followed, Rufus could have killed Paul a dozen times over. Everyone saw as much. But Paul refused to let it worry him, and, after Rufus finally resheathed his sword, the taverner did well not only with the bow but also with the spear.

Rufus rubbed his chin, considering. At last, he said, “As long as you keep them away from you, you may live. If they get close, run for your life like you’ve got Satan on your tail. How does that sound?”

“See what kind of wine you get served the next time you stick your nose into my tavern,” Paul said, which made Rufus let out a carefully rationed grunt of laughter.

John greeted the new volunteer with a sour expression. “You were supposed to be funnier than that,” he said.

Paul’s face glistened with sweat. He looked down his nose at the other militiaman. “People were saying the same thing about you the last time you came and did your routine in my place.”

“Shall we get back to drill?” Dactylius asked, eager as usual to spread oil on troubled waters. “We all need to get better. Has anyone heard anything about what the city garrison is doing?”

“Not a word,” George said, and everyone around him nodded. He didn’t let it worry him; he hadn’t expected news so soon. He wondered whether any word would get back to Thessalonica before the soldiers came home to tell the tale themselves. With so much disorder south of the Danube, maybe not.

Rufus came striding over. He was an old man, yes, but a tough old man, a frightening old man. When he transfixed Dactylius with a glare, it was as if he’d shoved a spear into him. “Here’s something for you to think about,” he rumbled. “Suppose you’re a scout in the woods. You make a noise or some fool thing, and about twenty different Slavs all start running right toward where you’re at. What do you do then?”

“Run!” Dactylius exclaimed, turning pale at the prospect.

George snorted, then tried to pretend he hadn’t. The little jeweler had given an utterly honest answer. If it wasn’t the one Rufus was looking for, though, Dactylius was going to be in trouble. George wasn’t the only one laughing, either, and some of the others didn’t try to hide it.

Rufus turned that fearsome gaze on them. “ ‘Run’ is the right answer,” he said. “You’re outnumbered like that, what else can you do? But what should you do while you’re running?”

“Pray to God for a miracle like the one He gave Menas,” Dactylius said.

“Pray to God you don’t shit yourself while you’re running,” John said.

“One case of long odds, one case of a big mouth,” Rufus remarked. He turned to George, as he often did when he wanted a question answered in a particular way. “What should you do while you’re running?”

“If you can, you should probably lead the Slavs back toward the main body of your force, so you won’t be so outnumbered when they catch up to you.”

“That’s the right idea,” Rufus said approvingly. “Don’t just run. Think while you’re doing it. Your wits are as good a weapon as your sword.” He glowered at John. “That’s true for most people, anyhow.” The tavern funny man blew him a kiss, as if he’d paid him a compliment. The look Rufus sent up toward God was as grim as the ones he gave the militiamen.

Dactylius said, “But what if you don’t want the enemy to know where your main mass of troops is? What do you do then?”

For once, Rufus’ sour features uncurdled. “That’s a good question,” he said, in tones implying a good question was the last thing he’d expected. He turned to George again. “What are some of the things you might do?”

George thought before he spoke. The answer here was less obvious than the other for which Rufus had asked him. At last, he said, “One thing you might do is try to make the enemy think you have a lot of soldiers close by, even if you don’t.”

“That’s right.” Rufus’ big, gray head went up and down, up and down. “A friend of mine saved himself from the Goths--or was it the Franks?--back in Italy, doing that very thing. You got to think fast when you’re fighting, on account of you don’t usually get the chance to think slow. Now let’s get back to work, so you don’t have to think about fighting at all. The more you think in hand-to-hand, the worse off you’re going to be.”

John looked around at his fellow militiamen. His gaze finally fell oil Sabbatius. “We’re in good shape there, by the Mother of God. Some of us have trouble thinking even when we’re not in hand-to-hand.”

Sabbatius’ pudgy face reddened. “Are you practicing your jokes on me? You’re not as funny as you think you are, I’ll tell you that.” He would have sounded more impressively angry, though, had he seemed more certain John was really insulting him. In truth, Sabbatius wasn’t so bright as he might have been.

Despite that, George said, “Enough.” He was looking at John as he went on, “The idea is, we’re all supposed to be on the same side. If you make people hate you, they won’t help you when we really have to fight.”

John’s eyes widened. In spite of everything, he didn’t look to have realized that the militia might have to fight. He lobbed insults as automatically as he breathed. To underscore the point, George threw back his head and did his best to imitate the fearsome howl of a Slavic wolf-demon.

Before John could say anything, insulting or otherwise, Rufus nodded again. “George has it right,” he declared. “I remember in Italy, when one part of the army didn’t get along with the rest. You couldn’t trust them at your back, so you were more afraid of them than of the Goths. Works the same way here. If you get in trouble, you have to know your chums are going to come and pull you out of it. If you can’t be sure of that, you might as well give up and go home before you ever start.”

George nodded. That made sense. Rufus commonly made sense, though he had such a rough tongue that you sometimes wished he’d keep quiet more often. If you could stand to listen to him, though, it usually repaid the effort.

Sabbatius did his best to look sly. It put George in mind of a public woman trying to look chaste, but that he kept to himself. Turning to Paul, Sabbatius said, “You see? You’d better keep us in wine if you expect us to take care of you.”

“No, that’s not what Rufus meant,” Dactylius said earnestly. “We don’t help each other from hope of reward. We help each other because that’s what we need to do when we go fight.”

“Most of you lugs understand what I’m talking about,” Rufus said. “The ones who don’t…” His shoulders moved up and down in a shrug. “All we can hope is that God will have mercy on them when they see Him, on account of we already know they’re going to see Him pretty fornicating quick.”

That comment left the militiamen--perhaps even including Sabbatius--thoughtful when they returned to their exercises.

Mosquitoes buzzed in the night. Crickets chirped. Somewhere not far outside the walls of Thessalonica, an owl hooted. Since it was nighttime, George knew the pagan Greeks would have taken that for a good sign, a sign Athena was nearby. Even he, good and believing Christian though he was, got nervous on the rare times when he heard an owl calling by daylight.

He looked out from the wall, west toward the woods and toward the monastery of St. Matrona, which was a little fortress in its own right. It was far enough from the city that it disappeared from view, or nearly so, at night or during the misty days so common by the sea.

Beside George, Sabbatius whistled while he walked. The shoemaker glanced over at his companion in some annoyance, though Sabbatius was only another dim shape in the darkness. “Can’t you put a stopper in that?” George said. “If there are barbarians lurking in the bushes, they’ll know just where we are.”

“So what?” Sabbatius answered cheerfully. “You can’t shoot a bow for anything during the night, and I like to whistle.”

“I’d like it more if you did it less often, or if you did it better,” George told him, that seeming likelier to have good results than something like, If you don’t quit making noises like a starling with its tail caught in a door, I’m going to sew your lips shut.

He might as well have said exactly what he meant, for Sabbatius grumbled, “You’re as bad as John,” and subsided into hurt silence. Since it was silence, George had no trouble putting up with the hurt that informed it. When he didn’t apologize, that only hurt Sabbatius more.

Somewhere out in the woods, a wolf howled. Sabbatius gasped and tried to yank out his sword and nock an arrow at the same time, thereby succeeding none too well at either task.

“I think that’s only a wolf, not one of the Slavs’ demons,” George said. “Hearing it doesn’t make your blood turn to water.”

“No, eh?” Sabbatius was breathing hard; the howl had given him a good fright. “Well, I think it was one.”

“All right,” George said. “I might be wrong.” He didn’t feel like arguing about it. For one thing, he had no way to prove he was right. For another, arguing with Sabbatius wasn’t usually interesting enough to be entertaining. He yawned. The two of them had the middle watch this time. Eventually, he would be able to go home and go back to bed. At the moment, eventually felt a long way away

Sabbatius, in a touchy mood, decided to be offended because George wouldn’t passionately insist he was correct. “You must not think you know much,” he said loftily.

Next time, by the Virgin, I’ll bring needle and thread and I will sew his lips shut. One thing he did know, though, was not to quarrel with a fool. “We are supposed to be on the same side,” he reminded Sabbatius.

“Well, yes,” his comrade said, with the air of a man making a great concession, “but--” He stopped suddenly with a wordless exclamation of dismay, flailing his hands around his head. “Gah! A bat! It almost flew into my face.”

“They eat bugs, I think.” George scratched a mosquito bite. “I’m in favor of anything that eats bugs.”

“This one looked like it wanted to eat me,” Sabbatius returned. “Didn’t you see its glittering eyes?”

“I didn’t see it at all.” That was true, but it had the effect of offending Sabbatius all over again, as if George had called him a liar. George had done nothing of the sort, but trying to convince Sabbatius of that would have been more trouble than it was worth. He sighed and kept quiet.

And then, suddenly, the bat was fluttering in front of him. He’d never paid bats much attention; they skimmed through the night, when he mostly stayed indoors. He was sure, though, he’d never seen one like this. Sabbatius might not have been bright, but he knew what he’d seen: the bat’s eyes did glitter, red as blood.

Its teeth glittered, too, as if it wanted to sink them into something larger and more flavorful than a moth or a mosquito. Of itself, George’s hand shaped the sign of the cross. The bat’s eyes no longer glittered; just for a moment, they glowed, as if torches had been kindled behind them. Then the creature flew away: or, for all George knew, it simply disappeared. At any rate, it no longer flapped its wings in front of his face.

He turned to Sabbatius. “You were right. That was a large bat.”

“What? You mean you did see it, too?” Now Sabbatius sounded amazed.

“I don’t know whether it was the same one you saw, but I saw a bat, yes.” When George changed his mind or found he’d made a mistake, he said so, straight out. He never had quite figured out why that caused so much surprise and even consternation among his fellow human beings, but it did, more often than not.

“It was a nasty sort of thing, wasn’t it?” Sabbatius said.

Soberly, he said, “I’ve had visitors I liked better--even my mother-in-law, come to think of it.” That was a slander upon Irene’s mother; before Helena had died of the plague in the epidemic a couple of years earlier, she had been as pleasant a woman as anyone could want to know.

“You can be a funny fellow, George--you know that?”

Sabbatius said. “And you’re not mean when you’re funny, the way John is.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” the shoemaker replied. “My mother-in-law, God rest her soul, would have thought you were wrong.” He let a judicious pause stretch. “But Irene would be angry if I called her a bat.”

“Heh, heh--if you called her a bat. Heh, heh.” Sabbatius’ shoulders shook with laughter. “That’s good. I wish I’d thought of that, so I could have said it for myself.”

Very likely, Sabbatius would be saying it, at any chance he got. People who hadn’t heard it before might be impressed. For those who had heard it, it would soon be one more cliche in Sabbatius’ arsenal. George sometimes wondered how--or if--his companion thought when he didn’t have a maxim handy.

The shoemaker strode along the wall, looking out into the darkness beyond the city with fresh intensity. Looking availed him little. For all he knew, a vast army of large bats with glittering red eyes and glittering white teeth flapped and flew out there, just beyond where his eyes could reach.

All at once, he turned and strode to the opposite side of the walkway atop the wall, the side that let him see down into Thessalonica. In the middle of the night, though, the city was nearly as dark as the rough and overgrown country beyond it.

“What are you doing?” Sabbatius asked. “It’s almost like you think the bats are spying on us, or something.”

George hadn’t thought that. No. George hadn’t fully realized he thought that. But once Sabbatius said it, he knew it was true. He wished the satyr he’d met had mentioned these bats along with the wolves. Then he would have had a better idea of whether he was shying at shadows. With the notion firmly planted in his mind, he was going to worry till he found out about them one way or the other.

He shook his head. No again. If he found out about the bats one way, he would stop worrying. If he found out about them the other, he’d worry more than ever.

He kept on staring into Thessalonica, though he knew it was likely to be futile. With so few lights burning, he wasn’t likely to spot a bat if one was there to be spotted, and even less likely to recognize it for what it was.

No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than something flew in front of a torch burning outside a little church in the heart of the city. It was gone almost before he’d seen it. And even if it had been there, it might well have been a nightjar, swooping after insects drawn to the light of the torch.

So he told himself, again and again. He wished he would have had an easier time making himself believe it.

When Rufus and Dactylius--as odd a pair in their way as George and Sabbatius were in theirs--came up to take the before-sunrise shift on the wall, George told them of what he and his partner had seen. “I don’t know what it means,” he said, “but you ought to know about it.”

“If the sign of the cross will make the creatures run-- uh, fly--away, we should be all right,” Dactylius said.

Rufus drew his sword from its scabbard. “This has the shape of the cross, too,” he said, holding up the weapon. “If we can’t drive off the cursed things, we can always kill them.”

He lived in a simple world: not the same sort of simple world as did Sabbatius, for he clearly saw more facets to it than did the rather stupid militiaman, but simple in the sense that he firmly believed every problem possessed in uncomplicated, direct, and usually obvious solution. George wished he could believe something as satisfying is that.

“Anything else?” Rufus asked. George and Sabbatius shook their heads. The veteran went on, “Well, I expect a hero like Dactylius and me’ll be able to keep any giant bats from flying off with the city till the sun comes up. Why don’t you boys go on home and get some sleep?”

That was uncomplicated, direct, and obvious. So far is George could see, it overlooked no hidden difficulties.

Some problems were simple. George descended from the wall and headed back to the dwelling above his shop. He kept looking for bats all the way there, though. That he saw none relieved him only a little.

George peered back toward Thessalonica, though hills hid it from view. He liked living in the city, but he also liked escaping from it from time to time. With luck, he’d bring back some game for Irene to throw in the pot or some mushrooms to make a stew more interesting. Without luck … He shook his head. Here he was in the fresh air, away from city stinks. If that wasn’t luck, what was?

He looked around. Somewhere not far from here, he had met the satyr that had started him worrying about the Slavs and Avars and their gods and demons. He hoped he would meet the creature again, or another of its land. Bishop Eusebius--any priest--would have set a penance on him for entertaining that kind of hope.

His broad shoulders went up and down in a shrug. For one thing, he hoped he might learn more from the satyr than he had at their previous meeting. And, for another, he was curious. He tried not to admit that even to himself, but he had never been much good at such mental games.

So long as he stayed on the road--the track, really-- he was unlikely to meet up with the satyr or any other supernatural creature. Almost all the men who used the road these days were Christians. They carried the power of their faith with them, making areas they frequented uncomfortable for lesser powers. Not only that, rabbits were easier to find off the beaten track.

And so George plunged into the woods. He had a bow and an arrow in his hands, a full quiver on his back, and a knife at his belt. If brigands wanted him, they would have a busy time of it before they finally pulled him down.

He moved as smoothly and quietly as he could. He was no great scout, to slip among the trees with neither animals nor men having the slightest notion he was anywhere nearby. He knew that--and if he hadn’t known it, Rufus would have got the idea across to him in no uncertain terms. But he seldom came home empty-handed when he went out hunting, so he supposed plenty were worse at the game than he, too.

Something behind a bush moved. George nocked the arrow he carried, then settled into immobility. Out from behind the bush came … a mouse. George let out a silent sigh. If he hit the little animal with an arrow, there wouldn’t be enough left to take home. I should have brought along a cat, he thought, smiling at the conceit.

In a leather sack on his belt he had some cheese, some bread, a little flask of olive oil in which to dip the bread, and a fine, fat onion. He also had a wineskin on his belt. He knew he could drink water instead, but that didn’t mean he wanted to. Besides, the sweet scent of wine might help lure a satyr his way, as it had before.

When shadows and his belly both said it was more or less noon, he sat down on a log to eat the food Irene had packed for him. The mouse was the nearest thing to game he’d seen all day. If he didn’t come across something--or even that patch of mushrooms he’d thought about before--by evening, his wife would have some pungent things to say to him when he got back to town. He shrugged! That had happened before. It was sure as need be to happen again.

He had bread in one hand and the little flask of oil in the other when a hedgehog, perhaps disturbed by his sitting on the log, came out and scurried over to a nearby drift of leaves, in which it took refuge. He knew people who ate hedgehogs when they caught them. He didn’t get up and go after this one. He wasn’t any of those people.

He tore off a piece of the loaf Irene had baked, put oil on it, and had just taken a bite when a couple of men came out of the woods. They froze when they saw him. He froze when he saw them, too--all but his eyes, which flicked this way and that till he’d made exact note of where he’d set down his bow.

One of the newcomers had a bow of his own. The other carried several javelins. Those might have been good for hunting deer--or for hunting men. Both of them wore long wool tunics with fierce beasts embroidered in bright colors at the chest and shoulders. George had never seen tunics like those before. After a moment, he realized the strangers were Slavs.

But for the tunics, they didn’t look outstandingly peculiar. True, they wore beards, but some Roman rustics wore beards, too. They were stocky and fair-skinned, with light brown hair shiny with grease of some sort. One of them had light eyes, the other dark. They wore, he noted, excellent boots.

They seemed as nonplused to encounter George as he was on meeting them. He didn’t want to fight unless he had to. Holding up the bread, he called in Latin, “Come and share. I have enough.” He didn’t, not to satisfy three men, but a little hunger was supposed to be good for the soul.

The Slavs didn’t come forward. They didn’t go back, either. He called to them again, this time in Greek. They spoke back and forth to each other in a coughing, guttural language George had never heard before.

At last, when he was wondering whether he ought to grab for the bow, they did approach him. Both of them held right hands up, palms out. Either they meant peace or they were trying to lull him into thinking so.

One of them took out bread of his own, a lumpy looking, dark brown loaf nowhere near so fine as the one Irene had given George. The Slav tore off a chunk and handed it to the shoemaker. In return, George offered him some of his own loaf. The Slav took a bite and looked pleased.

George held out the little flask of olive oil. The Slav took it, sniffed, made a face, and passed the flask to his comrade. That fellow also looked disgusted. The two of them spoke emphatically in their own language. George didn’t understand a word of it, but odds were it meant something like, How can you stand to eat that stuff?

As far as he was concerned, bread by itself was boring. That went double for what the Slav had given him: it was dense and chewy and, he guessed, made from a mix of barley and wheat. It would, no doubt, keep a man alive for a long time, although after a while he might not want to go on living on such rations.

Then the Slav with the dark hair took out a flask of his own. It proved to hold not olive oil but honey. With honey, the bread definitely became more palatable. George shared out his cheese. The Slavs approved of that. They gave him some sun-dried pears and plums in return.

He untied the rawhide cord around the neck of the wineskin and handed the skin to the blue-eyed Slav. The fellow swigged, his larynx working. He passed the skin to his darker friend, who also drank. Courteously, though, he made sure he did not empty the skin before returning it to George.

After everyone had finished eating, the Slavs tried talking with him some more. The effort was vigorous but useless. They spoke their own guttural language and fragments of another that sounded even stranger--maybe it was the Avars’ tongue. Whatever it was, it made no sense to George. He gave them Latin and Greek, the only two languages he knew. As he’d already concluded, they didn’t understand those.

By signs, he showed them what he’d been doing out in the woods. They laughed at his impression of a hopping rabbit. He laughed, too, as he bounded about, but he was careful not to let them get between him and his bow. When he was done bounding, he did his best with gestures and questioning looks to ask why they were here.

They looked at each other and talked for a couple of minutes in their own incomprehensible language before trying to reply. When they did, their gestures were anything but clear. Maybe that was because they weren’t very good at sign language. On the other hand, maybe it was because they didn’t want him to understand why they had suddenly appeared only a few miles outside of Thessalonica.

Maybe they were hunting for animals; from the way they leapt and crept and shaded their eyes with their hands, that was possible. And maybe they were hunting for Thessalonica itself; that was as plausible an interpretation. They didn’t ask George where it was. Had they done so, he might have told them; it wasn’t as if a city that size was hard to find.

Face to face with two veritable Slavs, he decided to learn what he could from them, even if they had not a word in common. Pointing to them to get their attention, he threw back his head and imitated as best he could the howls he had heard from the woods, the howls he believed to have come from the throats of the Slavic wolf-demons the satyr had described.

He hadn’t known he owned such a gift for mimicry. The wailing cry that burst from his throat was almost as frightening as those he had heard on the walls of Thessalonica. He did not judge that merely by his own reaction to the noise he made. The woods around him grew suddenly still, as they might have at a real wolf s-- or a real wolf-demon’s--howl.

And the two Slavs, after starting when he first began that cry, nodded and grinned to show they recognized it and to show they understood he meant a spirit of their folk rather than a mere fleshly beast of prey. They spoke several incomprehensible sentences. Once more, though he followed not a single word, he assigned meaning to the whole: something like, Yes, those are ours. Pretty impressive, aren’t they?

He wished he really could have talked with the barbarians, so he might have learned more and brought it back to Thessalonica. That he was thinking of getting back to his home city again was a sign he didn’t believe the Slavs intended to try murdering him. But he still stayed wary enough to remember exactly where his bow was.

Then one of the Slavs clumsily made the sign of the cross. George didn’t think for a moment that meant the fellow was a Christian. And, indeed, the barbarian followed the gesture by pointing and saying something that was plainly a question. That’s the god you follow, isn’t it?

“Yes, I’m a Christian,” George said, first in Latin and then in Greek, the two sentences sounding very much alike. He crossed himself, slowly and reverently, showing the Slav how it should be done. Having done so, he looked up into the heavens but not at the sun, not wanting to give the barbarians the mistaken notion that it was his god.

They asked him something else. He couldn’t figure out what it was. The one with brown eyes pointed roughly in the direction of Thessalonica and made the sign of the cross once more. He crossed himself over and over again, then raised an interrogative eyebrow at George.

“Oh, I see what you mean,” the shoemaker said. “Yes, everyone in Thessalonica is a Christian.” He nodded vigorously. About then, he realized he wasn’t being fair to the Jews in the city, but people were hardly ever fair to the Jews, so he felt no great urgency about redressing the balance now.

The blue-eyed Slav crossed himself, then strutted around looking fierce and dangerous, then looked another question at George. What the question was supposed to be puzzled him. He scratched his head.

A moment later, he had the answer. “Yes, God is a strong god. God is the strongest god. God is the only true god.” The words meant nothing to the two Slavs. George crossed himself, then flexed his biceps, then nodded back at the barbarians.

He wished the Lord would give him a miracle like the one He had granted to Menas. No miracle came, though. Or perhaps one did: the Slavs understood him, not the least of concerns when he and the barbarians had no words in common. George glanced heavenward again. Art Thou so subtle, Lord? he asked silently, and got no answer.

He did get what was, if not miraculous, at the least a display of God’s loving kindness: having shared with him food and drink and such conversation as could be carried on with hands and bodies and faces, the two Slavs picked up their weapons and, instead of trying to use those weapons against him, waved, nodded, and went back into the woods.

“Hail and farewell,” George called after them in Latin. When they had disappeared among the oaks and beeches, he allowed himself the luxury of a long sigh of relief. Meeting them had been far more dangerous than encountering the satyr. As beasts, long hunted, grew leery of men, so the satyr rightly feared the superior power of the Christian God. But the wild Slavs were unfamiliar with His might, and so it held no terror for them.

George shook his head. “No time for philosophy now,” he said out loud. “Whatever else it’s good for, it doesn’t fill your belly.” He got to his feet, set an arrow in his bowstring, and went on looking for rabbits. He made sure he walked in a direction different from the one the Slavs had chosen, lest they think he was following them and decided they’d made a mistake by not picking a fight with him in the clearing.

Maybe God, having worked a small, subtle miracle (if He had worked a small, subtle miracle and it hadn’t been skill at pantomime or blind luck) for George, was keeping a closer eye on him than He had before. Or maybe George was keeping a closer eye on the terrain around him than he had before. Or maybe the shoemaker had simply wandered into a country more richly stocked with rabbits than that through which he’d been going during the morning.

Whatever the reason, in the space of a couple of hours he’d killed five, and would have had a couple more if he’d been a better archer. He recovered one of the shafts with which he’d missed; the other hit a rock and splintered, and he couldn’t find the iron point no matter how hard he looked.

He wondered if he ought to hunt more while his luck was so good, but decided against it: he was not the sort of man much given to pushing anything to extremes. Moderation was not the only thing that made him decide to head back to Thessalonica. Also in his mind--in quite a prominent place there--was that, having encountered two Slavs in these woods, he might come on more, and one happy outcome was no guarantee of a second.

Even the gate guards were militiamen these days, though not from his company. He showed them the rabbits. They congratulated him. He said not a word about the two easy kills he’d missed.

He didn’t say anything to Irene about the kills he’d missed, either. As best he could, he downplayed his confrontation with the two Slavs. He knew perfectly well his best was not good enough, and that he would hear about it later from her. For the moment, in front of the children, she matched his restraint.

Theodore was excited by the meeting. “You should have fought them, Father.” He made cut-and-thrust motions with an awl, as if it were a sword.

“Rufus would laugh at you,” George said. “I’d laugh at you myself, if I weren’t worn out. When one man goes out looking for two to take on, it’s most often because he’s drunk his wits away.”

His son let out a loud sniff. It was, George thought, no wonder they recruited soldiers from among lads of about his son’s age: they were strong, aggressive, and, most of all, stupid. If their superiors ordered them to rush out and get themselves killed, they’d do it, and thank the officers for the privilege.

Sophia said, “Somebody besides us should know the Slavs have come so close to the city.”

“Yes, I think you’re right,” George answered with a sigh. He touched the rabbits he’d set down on the counter. “I wanted to bring these home first of all, so your mother could start dealing with them. But as soon as I’d taken care of that, I figured the best thing I could do was pay a visit to Bishop Eusebius.”

Getting to see the prelate of Thessalonica would not have been easy for an ordinary shoemaker at any time. Getting in to see him when he was not only prelate but also de facto prefect of the city would have been doubly difficult. But when George went to the basilica of St. Demetrius, he knew the magic words that got him past the lesser priests and scribes. Those lesser worthies hustled him past the silver-domed ciborium topping the saint’s tomb, past the basilica’s brilliant wall and ceiling mosaics, and straight into the little office adjoining the church wherein the bishop labored when not performing the divine liturgy.

In that office, Eusebius looked more like a bureaucrat than a prelate. The desk behind which he sat was piled high with papyri; ink smudged the fingers of his right hand. He was scribbling a note when George came in, and set down his reed pen with every sign of relief.

“What’s this I hear?” he asked in a Greek so educated and archaic, George had trouble following it. “Is it accurately reported to me that you met two of the revolting barbarians in the woods earlier today?”

“Yes, Your Excellency, I did.” George stuck with his Latin, the tongue in which he felt most at home. Eusebius understood him and motioned for him to go on. The bishop probably thought him on the uncultured side. That didn’t bother him. By Eusebius’ standards, he was on the uncultured side. He described the meeting with the Slavs and his attempt to explain Christianity, or at least its potency, to them.

“Well done,” the bishop said, making the sign of the cross. “En touto nika.” As if making a great concession, he turned that Greek into Latin: “In hoc signo vinces.” Then he returned to his own preferred language. “Very well. You shared your food with the barbarians. What, beyond their mere presence, prompted you to report all this to me? You understand, their presence is of some concern in and of itself with the garrison gone, which is why I had you admitted to my presence, but--”

“I’ve come to bring this to your notice for two reasons, Your Excellency,” George said. “One is that the Slavs, as best they could without using words, made it plain to me that they were looking not just for supper but for Thessalonica.”

Bishop Eusebius’ attention had wandered. Now it snapped back to the shoemaker. “That is not good,” he said. “With the war that has gone on between us Romans on the one hand and the Slavs and Avars on the other, I do not want to hear reports that the barbarians are seeking our God-guarded city.” He held up a beringed, elegantly manicured hand. “Do not mistake me. By that I do not mean I am ungrateful for your having brought this word to me, only that I wish you had no need to do so.”

“I understand,” George assured him. He studied the bishop with an odd mixture of distaste and admiration. The word that came to mind for Eusebius was slick, slick as fine olive oil or an icy pavement. Slickness could be wonderfully useful or unexpectedly dangerous, depending on circumstances. George gave a mental shrug, thinking, As if I have the power to pass judgment on those placed over me. Aloud, he went on, “The other reason I thought I ought to bring them to your notice is because they admitted the wolf-demons that have been howling outside the walls belong to them.”

“Did they?” Eusebius said softly. Yes, George had his attention now. “What did they say of them? Tell me everything you remember.” George got the distinct impression that, if Eusebius was dissatisfied with his report, he would go after more detail with lash and rack and heated pincers.

“They didn’t say anything, Your Excellency, since we couldn’t talk with each other,” the shoemaker replied. He detailed the exchange, then added, “I’ve heard, Your Excellency, that these demons can attack a priest even after he’s made the sign of the cross. Is that so?”

Eusebius’ eyes went hooded, unfathomable. George knew what that meant: the bishop was figuring out whether to He to him and, if so, what sort of he to tell. But, at last,

Eusebius answered, “Yes it is, as a matter of fact, though I’ll thank you for not spreading it broadcast through the city. I also remind you that evil is no less evil for being powerful, only more deadly.”

“I understand that,” George said--did Eusebius take him for a lackwit? Well, maybe Eusebius did.

“You did not hear of the vicious power of these demons from the Slavs you encountered today?” Eusebius asked He answered his own question: “No, of course you did not, for by your own statement you and they had no words in common.” His gaze sharpened. “Where, then, did you hear this about them?”

George abruptly wished he’d kept his mouth shut. He didn’t know whether lying to the bishop or telling him the truth was the worse choice. Eusebius had told him the truth, or at least he thought the bishop had. He decided to return the favor: “A satyr told me, the last time I was out hunting in the woods.”

Eusebius hadn’t been looking for that. His eyebrows climbed up toward his hairline, and he let out a hiss that made George wonder if he were part viper on his mother’s side. Then he crossed himself, as if the shoemaker were himself a relic of a creed outworn. When George failed either to vanish or to turn into some loathsome demon, the bishop regained control of himself. “That is a--bold admission to make,” he said, picking his words with obvious care.

“Why?” George asked stolidly. “Without the satyr, you wouldn’t have had this news, and I think it’s important, don’t you?”

“On that we do not disagree,” Eusebius said. “On a good many other matters, I suspect such a statement would be as false as any from Ananias’ lips.”

“Maybe,” George said, stolid still. “But I didn’t come here to tell you about anything else.”

Underneath that impassive shell, he was troubled. Once a bishop started worrying about--and worrying at--your theology, he generally didn’t let go till he’d made you sorry you ever crossed his path. And Eusebius, being more aggressively pious than a lot of his fellows, had a worse name for that than most.

The inspiration--if not divine, certainly convenient-- struck George. “Because you’re prefect now, Your Excellency, or pretty much prefect, anyway, I was sure you wouldn’t want any danger to come to Thessalonica.”

“Of course not,” Eusebius said at once. “Protecting the city is the most important thing I can do, the garrison being gone and the secular leaders away petitioning the Emperor Maurice.” Sure enough, George had managed to distract him, to make him think of Thessalonica rather than satyrs.

“How can we fight demons that defeat even holy priests?” the shoemaker asked, wanting to keep Eusebius’ mind away from him and on the bigger picture. That’s only proper, George thought, remembering the mosaics that made the basilica of St. Demetrius so splendid. If you look at one tessera, you don’t see anything in particular. But if you look at what all the tiles do when they’re working together. . .

He’d also chosen the right question to ask Eusebius. The bishop said, “We can--we shall--we must--do two things. First, we must reconsecrate ourselves and bring our lives into closer accord with God’s will, so that other powers will be less able to get a grip on us. And, second, we must make certain the walls of Thessalonica remain strong and the militia alert. For have you not seen how such sorceries seek to weaken not just the spiritual but also the material defenses set against them and those who make them?”

“Yes, I have seen that, Your Excellency,” George answered, surprised now in his turn: he hadn’t figured Eusebius would reckon material defenses as important is he obviously did.

The bishop said, “What else have you learned of the powers the Slavs, in their ignorance, prefer to the holy truth of God?”

He did not ask where George had learned whatever else he’d learned. The shoemaker took that as a tacit promise not to raise the issue of satyrs anymore. He didn’t mention his source again, either, replying, “I hear they have other powers nearly as strong as the wolves. I cannot really speak about that because of what I’ve seen with my own eyes, though when I was on sentry-go one night, I did see a bat, or maybe two bats, that weren’t like any natural bats I’ve spied before.”

“Are you certain of this?” Eusebius asked.

“No, Your Excellency,” George said at once. “Plenty of people must know more about bats than I do, but I can’t think of anyone who knows less. Who pays attention to bats?”

“Who, indeed?” the bishop said. “Well, God willing, perhaps we shall yet be able to keep Thessalonica from being interred in a blood-filled, barbarous sarcophagus. If this be so, you, George, shall have played no small part in the preservation of the city, thanks to this information you have brought me. I am grateful, and no doubt God is grateful as well.” He started fiddling with his pen, a sure sign he’d given George all the time he’d intended.

George rose and, after bowing to Eusebius, made his way out of the prelate’s office. As he strode up its central aisle, he paid more attention to the basilica of St. Demetrius than he was in the habit of doing. Just being inside the church dedicated to the martial saint made him feel stronger and braver than he did anywhere else in the city: more like a real soldier than a militiaman.

After walking past the ciborium and then out of the basilica, he turned back toward it and sketched a salute of the same sort as he might have given to Rufus. If St. Demetrius could extend his influence over all of Thessalonica, if he could make everyone feel stronger than without his intercession . . . that might help, if the two Slavs George had encountered outside the city were, as he feared, the harbingers of more.

But, as George walked north and mostly west back toward his shop, his home, his family, and away from the shrine, the feeling faded, until he was only himself again, and oddly diminished on account of that. He forced his shoulders to straighten and his stride to lengthen. Even without the saint s beneficent influence close by, he remained himself.

“Blood-filled, barbarous sarcophagus,” he muttered under his breath, which made a woman walking in the other direction give him a strange look and move a little farther away from him. He didn’t blame her; he would have moved away from anyone mumbling about a blood-filled sarcophagus, too.

It s Eusebius’ fault, he thought. The bishop pulled out funereal images at any excuse or none. George glanced toward the walls of Thessalonica. Surely, they would not be the walls of a stone coffin to enclose the corpse of the city.

He shook his head. “He’s got me doing it,” he said, which made someone else give him a sidelong glance.

Irene rounded on him when he walked in the door. “I thought you weren’t coming back,” she said indignantly. “I thought Eusebius wouldn’t let you come back. You told him about the satyr, didn’t you?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “I knew you were going to tell him about the satyr. Why did you go and tell him about the satyr?”

“It was either that or tell him lies,” George answered. “Would you rather I told a holy man lies?”

“Of course I would,” Irene answered with the same certainty and lack of hesitation George used when imparting what was, with luck, wisdom to Theodore or, more rarely, Sophia. How could you be so foolish as to think otherwise? Her tone demanded.

George usually accepted such rebukes from her, because he knew he usually deserved them when he got them. Today, though, he balked. “I went to tell the bishop about the Slavs and about their demons,” he said. “It was only natural for him to ask how I knew what I knew. When he did ask me that, I didn’t see what choice I had but to tell him the truth, so he could know how seriously to take the news I was giving him.”

Irene muttered something under her breath. George thought it was “Men!” but felt disinclined to inquire more closely. As with theology, some of the more subtle points of marriage were better taken on faith than examined under the piercing lamp of reason. In any case, Irene had a good deal to say that wasn’t under her breath: “If he had taken you seriously, George, he might have felt he had to do something like ask questions about how you came to be talking with a satyr, not chasing it off with the sign of the cross.” The look in her eye said she still wondered the same thing; she was more pious than he. She went on, “Would you really have liked, say, a couple of years’ penance for doing that?”

“No, I wouldn’t have liked that,” he admitted. “But I didn’t think he would do anything to me, because the news was more important than how I got it.” Before she could interrupt, he held up a hand. “And I was right. Remember that--I was right.” He felt no small sense of pride; in an argument with Irene, he seldom got to say that.

As things turned out, it did him no good even when he did get to say it. “It was a foolish chance to take,” Irene retorted. “What you gained by doing it wasn’t worth the risk.”

“I thought it was,” George said, but that took the argument out of the realm of fact and back into opinion. He tried a slightly different tack: “It’s done now, and it worked out all right.” Irene thought that over, then grudgingly nodded. That meant the argument was over, too, which suited George fine.