“In a manner of speaking,” George said.

“Well, I won’t,” John promised. And then, an instant later, he backtracked: “I don’t think I will, anyhow. But if something comes to me while I’m up there in front of a bunch of people, who knows what I’ll do?”

“No one,” George said sadly. “Not a single, solitary soul. Not even you. You’d be better off if you did.”

“Maybe,” John said. “But if I knew ahead of time everything I’d do when I got up on a platform, and if I did just what I’d thought beforehand I was going to do … I wouldn’t be me. Like you say, I might be better off. But I might not be able to perform at all.”

George thought about that. He’d made shoes all his life, learning the trade from his father. But if, for some reason, he couldn’t make shoes anymore, he was sure he’d be happy enough as a potter or a miller instead, once he’d learned one of those businesses. If, however, a man had in his makeup something that had to come out if he was to be happy, he couldn’t very well go through life denying it was there.

“I will try,” John said, which, as a pledge, left something to be desired.

“Do the best you can.” George sounded weary, even to himself. “The damage is probably done by now, any which way.”

A man whom George needed a moment to recognize was in the shop when he came back from the wall: a burly fellow of about his own age, with rather heavy features pitted by scars from either a light case of smallpox or a bad set of pimples as a youth. The latter, George thought, and that let him figure out who the visitor was a moment before Irene said, “Dear, of course you know Leo the potter.”

“Yes, of course,” George said, and clasped Leo’s hand. The potter had a firm grip, and very smooth skin on his palm from using it to shape clay: a great contrast to the scars and punctures that marked a shoemaker’s hands. “A pleasure to see you. Will you drink some wine with me?”

“Your lady already gave me a cup,” Leo answered, holding it up. “I got here myself not two minutes ago, matter of fact.” Irene poured a cup for her husband, who took it with a word of thanks. He looked around for Sophia and Theodore, both of whom seemed to have vanished. But no: shadows at the top of the stairway said they were lingering as discreetly as they could, no doubt with hands cupped to their ears to hear the better.

As much to annoy them as for any other reason, George stretched small talk longer than he might have done. But small talk was also a way of getting acquainted with Leo, whom he did not know well. After a while, casually, George said, “You’re Constantine’s father, aren’t you?” Had Leo still had his youthful pimples, he and Constantine might have been two brothers, not father and son. George stretched a point: “Fine-looking boy.”

Irene frowned at him. He nodded, very slightly, to let her know he’d seen. Had he been buying a donkey, he wouldn’t have praised anything about the animal till it was his. A marriage dicker, though, was a different sort of business--or so he thought.

“He’s a good lad, if I do say so my own self,” Leo answered, “and, since he’s not here, there’s nobody but me to say it for him. Helen--my wife, you know--she didn’t come through the plague a couple of years ago.” Absentmindedly, he scratched himself. “I hate fleas.”

“They are a nuisance,” George agreed. “Yes, the plague was a hard time for all of us. This siege is another hard time. I hadn’t intended speaking to you till it was over and done, and things were back to normal again.”

“Yes, I can see that,” Leo said. “But I drew a different lesson from the plague, and that is, don’t wait. Things may never be--what was that word you used?--normal, that’s it, normal again. No telling what’ll happen tomorrow, I say, so we’d better arrange today the best we can. And on account of that, I didn’t figure I ought to wait before I came to see you.”

George hesitated before replying. As far as he was concerned, Leo’s lesson was absolutely the wrong one. Festina lente ran through his mind: make haste slowly. But the fact that Leo did draw lessons, even mistaken lessons, from what went on around him bumped the potter up a notch in George’s estimation. Most people, he was convinced, went through life without a clue it might hold patterns they could use.

Irene said, “Your brother is a potter, too, isn’t he?”

“Zeno? That’s right, though his shop is over by the other side of St. Demetrius’ church.” Leo smiled at Irene. “Either you have a right fine memory, or you’ve been asking questions about me.”

“Everyone in this family has a very good memory,” Irene said primly. That was on the whole true, even if Theodore sometimes showed a maddening inability to remember what George had told him to do five minutes earlier.

“That’s nice,” Leo said, willing to pretend to believe Irene hadn’t been investigating his family. He’d also been doing some investigating, for he went on, “I’m sorry God didn’t give either of you sibs who lived.”

“I had an older brother,” George said. “I don’t even remember him; he died when I was a baby.”

“I had an older sister and a younger brother.” Irene’s eyes were sad as she looked into the past. “God’s will.” She grew brisk once more. “But you didn’t come here to talk about old sorrows, but the chance for new joys.”

“The chance, yes.” Leo scratched his nose. “You do keep a clean shop, George, I’ll say that for you. Hardly any stink of leather in the air.”

Though George bristled, he made a point of not letting Leo notice. Making and repairing shoes was a perfectly respectable trade, but not one of high class. By implying as much, Leo was making a bid for a bigger dowry to accompany Sophia if she married Constantine: it was astonishing how a fatter bride portion could balance social stigma in the scales.

But George in turn remarked, “You and your son are lucky fellows, not to be melted to tallow standing in front of your kilns day after day.” He had no intention of conceding that potters stood any higher on the social scale than did shoemakers.

Leo grunted. “Well, when we talk about Sophia’s dowry, what are we talking about? Twenty solidi, something like that?”

George stared at him, admiring the effrontery of such a forthright thief. “You’re going to lose this girl if you go on that way” he said. “We aren’t nobility, and neither are you.”

Sulkily, Leo said, “How much, then? It would have to be a pretty price, I’ll tell you. Constantine has his admirers, yes he does.”

Irene said, “When you married Helen, Leo, her bride portion was what? Two solidi and a little silver, wasn’t it?”

“How did you know that?” Leo turned red as the fire under one of his kilns. George wondered the same thing, although his wife’s skill at ferreting out such tidbits roused respect in him, not the horror Leo obviously felt. By that horror, George judged Irene had the straight goods.

“Never mind how I know,” she said crisply. “That hasn’t got anything to do with anything. What matters is, it’s true. Are you so much richer than your father that you think people want to beggar themselves to join your family? And I hear Zeno s wife brought a smaller dowry than yours.”

“Did she?” Leo exclaimed. “She puts on airs she doesn’t deserve, then.” Now he sounded indignant. He also sounded as if he hadn’t known what his sister-in-law’s bride portion had been. George wondered from whom Irene had pried that little nugget.

“If you’re going to be unreasonable about these things, there’s no point in us even talking,” George said. “In fact, I probably wouldn’t even be talking with you now if I didn’t know how sweet Constantine was on Sophia.” He didn’t know that, but had a feeling it was so from the way the youth had glanced back at him when they passed on the street.

And, for a wonder, his shot proved as effective as Irene’s had been. Leo turned red again, this time from annoyance rather than embarrassment. He said, “I told him not to show that on the sleeve of his tunic.”