“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.

“I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t know that.” George lied without hesitation. If he threw John to this wolf--no, this bear, a better description for Menas--how was he supposed to live with himself afterwards?

“Of course you don’t--it’s yours. Who else would have wanted to tarnish God’s miracle by calling me a coward?”

“I’ve never wanted to tarnish any of God’s miracles,” George replied with absolute conviction.

Menas would hear none of it. He shook his fist at the shoemaker. “Not a true word comes out of your mouth. Tell me you didn’t say to my face that God’s curing me didn’t mean anything in particular, and that He cared more about the city than about any of the people in it.”

“That’s not what I said, sir,” George told him, aware as he spoke that he had no hope of being believed. The noble had closed his mind, locked the door, arid thrown away the key.

“You mocked me then and you’ve made vicious jokes about me ever since,” Menas declared, heedless not only of George’s denials but also of having mentioned only one joke bare moments before.

George stood up. If he could not convince Menas he had done him no harm, maybe he could convince him he might do harm if provoked. “Sir, I tell you again I did not do those things, but I also tell you you’re starting to make me sorry I didn’t.”

“You’re not sorry,” Menas said. “You don’t know what sorry is. But I tell you this, shoemaker--you’re going to find out.” He turned on his heel and stamped up the street, waves of indignation rising from his back as heat rose from a blacksmith’s forge.

Theodore and Sophia both stared at George. “He’s an important fellow, Father,” Sophia said worriedly. “I wish he weren’t angry at you.”

“I wish he weren’t, too,” George answered steadily.

“That’s not your joke,” Irene said. “I know who tells jokes like that.” To his relief, she did not upbraid him for protecting John.

“Do you know who told that joke?” Theodore asked. George nodded. His son burst out, “Then why didn’t you tell Menas?”

“Because a man who betrays his friends has no friends left after a while--and doesn’t deserve any, either,” George said. “And because, if Menas weren’t angry at me for this, he’d be angry at me for something else. He’s decided he’s going to be angry at me, and he’s the kind of man who doesn’t change his mind about things like that.”

“It’s one thing if a tanner or a butcher is angry at you,” Sophia said. “All they can do is insult you in the street, or something like that. But if Menas is angry at you, he could . . .” She paused, trying to think of the worst thing she could. After a moment, she went on, “He could set lawyers on you.”

“Heaven forbid!” Irene exclaimed. George would have said the same thing if his wife hadn’t beaten him to it. He didn’t have a lot of money; the next rich shoemaker of whom he heard would be the first. Not only would he find it hard to fend off the attacks of lawyers trained in Berytus or Constantinople (and find it all the harder because judges would surely be prejudiced in favor of the lawyers’ wealthy, prominent client), he would also be tied up in court for so long, he wouldn’t be able to tend to what business he had. Serving on the militia gave him that kind of trouble, but half the men--better than half the men--in Thessalonica had it now. If Menas decided to persecute him by prosecuting him, that wouldn’t be so.

“We’ll just have to see what happens, that’s all,” he said. “Maybe--” He stopped.

“Maybe some Slav will shoot him in the face with an arrow,” Theodore said. “Shooting him in the heart wouldn’t do--I’m sure it’s too hard for an arrow to hurt.”

“Theodore …” George’s voice carried a warning for a couple of reasons. Theodore hadn’t bothered keeping his voice down. If word of what he’d said got to Menas, the noble would have another reason for hating George. And the shoemaker did not feel comfortable about wishing anyone dead. He’d had the thought his son had spoken aloud, but he’d stopped before he said it. Words, he told himself, were what gave thought power.

Theodore said, “Sometimes I think you’re too kind-hearted for your own good.”

George walked over and swatted him in the backside. He leaped into the air with a yelp. “There,” George said. “Think again.” Theodore did his best to look indignant, but couldn’t help laughing--especially when his sister and mother were laughing already.

But Irene quickly turned serious again. “What are we going to do?” she asked.

“I know what I’m going to do,” George said: “I’m going to finish this sandal I was working on. As for the rest, I won’t worry about it till it happens--if it happens.” He hoped he convinced Irene with that if. He wished he could convince himself.

VI

Standing up on top of the wall, George shivered. The day was bright, but cold enough to make him wish for trousers. “We ought to be warmer here than down below,” John said. “We’re closer to the sun, aren’t we?”

“Close enough to bake your wits, anyhow,” Rufus said. John grinned at him, unperturbed. George wished John would stop making jokes. He didn’t think he’d get either of his wishes, but made them anyhow.

He hadn’t told John of the trouble from his joke about Menas--what point? It wouldn’t have abashed the tavern comic, and might have given him ideas for new vile jokes . . . although John, being John, never seemed to have any trouble coming up with those ideas.

Rufus pointed out toward the Slavs. “They look like trying anything?”

“Not today,” John said. “Quiet as the basilica halfway through one of Eusebius’ sermons, except the Slavs are too far away for you to hear them snoring.”

“Oh, John,” George murmured, as he sometimes did when John went too far in the middle of his routine. John took no notice; John seldom took notice of anything. George spoke to Rufus: “I’m not sure he’s right. They were stirring about when we first came up onto the wall, though they haven’t done much the past couple of hours.”

“Maybe they were stirring so quick because they’ve got dysentery going through their camp.” John mimed a man dashing for the latrine. He didn’t need to say anything to be funny; sometimes, as now, he was funnier when he let his body do the talking for him.

Rufus laughed; you couldn’t watch John trying to hurry and at the same time trying to clench every part of himself without laughing. But the veteran said, “Dysentery’s no joke. I’ve been in camps where it came calling. Sometimes more soldiers die of a flux of the bowels than from swords and spears and arrows and what have you.”

George waited for John to crack wise about soldiering’s being a shitty job, but his friend disdained the easy laugh. If he was casting about for one more worthy of his talents, he never got the chance to use it. Instead, he spoke in a voice so flat and unemphatic, it commanded immediate attention and belief: “You were right, George. The Slavs are up to something.”

“They sure are,” Rufus said, both brown eye and blue going wide. His voice rose to a formidable shout: “Sound the alarm! The Slavs are attacking the city!”

The first horns on the wall might have rung out before he shouted, but they might not have, too. Afterwards, George never was sure. He was sure a whole ungodly lot of Slavs were rushing at the wall. Some of them carried picks, others sledgehammers, and still others the big shields he’d noted at the edges of their encampments.

He was slow adding up what all that meant, not least because another host of Slavs, these keeping their distance from Thessalonica, filled the air with arrows. George ducked behind the battlement to snatch an arrow out of his own quiver, stood up quickly to shoot it, and then ducked down once more.