The plump militiaman thrashed and almost fell off his stool. “Wuzzat?” he said thickly, before sliding back into deeper slumber.
“Isn’t he wonderful?” John said, more quietly now. He looked out at the people packing the tavern. “And aren’t you all wonderful? And don’t you wish you could be sure your name would never, ever show up in one of my stories? Best way I can think of is to make me too rich and happy ever to think of you in an unkind way.” He nudged with his foot a plain earthenware bowl up there on the platform with him.
Quite a few people made their way over to him and tossed coins into the bowl. George watched their faces as they went back to their seats or to the bar. Some looked pleased: they’d rewarded a man who’d entertained them. More, though, wore a tight, intricate expression, almost as if they’d made up their minds to have a tooth pulled to end continuous pain. They were the ones who feared John would mock them next.
“How does it feel to be a blackmailer?” George asked when money stopped rattling into the bowl and John carried it back to the table.
“Don’t know yet,” the comic answered. “Let me count the take first.” He dumped the bowl out onto the tabletop. Shuffling coins into stacks, his fingers were as quick and deft as a money changer’s. He let out a little happy grunt at spotting silver among the bronze. “Ah, isn’t that nice? Somebody gave me a miliaresion. And here’s another. Good, good--one would be lonely by itself.” In a couple of minutes, the reckoning was done. “Tonight,” John declared, “being a blackmailer feels pretty good.”
“Don’t go away, folks,” Paul called. “In half an hour or so, the special duo of Lucius and Maria, who’ve sung in Sicily and Illyria, will give you old love songs and some new ones all their own. I’m sure you’ll want to stay and hear them--they’ll send you home in a happy mood.”
“Now I know when to leave,” John said, scooping his take into a leather pouch. “I’ve heard Lucius and Maria, by God. They’re funnier than I am. The only difference is, they don’t mean to be.”
George hadn’t heard them. He said, “If they’re that bad, how have they been able to perform in all those places?”
“Are you kidding?” John rolled his eyes. “They stink up a town once, they get ran out, and they bloody well have to go somewhere else--in a hurry. And so, before they come on, I’ll bloody well go somewhere else, too. Good night.”
But before he could escape, the barmaid whose intended insult he’d turned to his own purposes came up to the table. “That wasn’t very nice, what you did there,” she said, hands on hips.
John said, “The best stories come from what really happens. Anybody silly enough to tell me not to use one would probably marry a eunuch.”
She glared at him. “Is that all that matters? That I gave you a story you could use to make people laugh?”
“Of course not,” he answered, which, with John, was as likely as not to mean yes. He leered. “I told you beforehand, I had something else in mind.”
Confronted with a line like that, George would have poured, or maybe broken, a jar of wine over John’s head. Like anyone else, he judged other people by his own standard, and so was astonished when the barmaid said, “That’s right, you did,” in a purr that announced she suddenly had something else in mind, too. She and John left the tavern together.
Muttering to himself, George got another cup of wine from Paul (the barmaid having disappeared) and settled down to see whether Lucius and Maria were as bad as John had claimed. They weren’t. They were worse.
After a stint on the wall early the next morning, George went back to his shop to get some work done. He wasn’t working so much as he would have liked these days, not with the siege. People were still buying shoes; he’d sold several pairs to refugees who hadn’t bothered putting on any before fleeing the Slavs and Avars.
Having sewn the last strap onto a sandal, he looked into the box where he kept little bronze buckles. It was empty. When he made an exasperated noise, Theodore said, “I’m sorry, Father--I used the last ones in there a little while ago. Haven’t we got any more?”
“No, those were the last,” George answered. “I’ll have to walk down to Benjamin and buy some new ones.” He grumbled something inaudible even to himself: more time when he wouldn’t be able to get anything useful done.
Theodore must have figured out what that grumble meant. “You could send me, Father,” he said.
“I could… .” George considered. Not without a certain amount of regret, he shook his head. “No, I’d better not. He’d skin you alive on the price. He’ll skin me, too, but not so bad.”
“I’m not afraid of him,” Theodore said. “Just because he’s a Jew--”
“I’m not afraid of him because he’s a Jew,” George answered. “I’ve got the better of plenty of them. I’m afraid of him because he’s Benjamin.”
Like most of Thessalonica’s Jews, Benjamin lived and had his shop in the southwestern part of the city. The whole street echoed with the taps and clangs of hammers on metaclass="underline" Jews dominated the bronze- and coppersmithing trades.
Benjamin looked up from his work when George walked into the shop. The bronzeworker was a few years older than George, lean and wiry and dark. “Ah, good morning, good morning,” he said in Greek. “I thought you would be one of the bishop’s men, and that order is not yet ready.”
George scratched his head. “If you don’t mind my asking, what would Bishop Eusebius want from you?”
“Arrowheads, of course,” the Jew answered, holding up a file with which he’d been sharpening one. “I’m supposed to deliver another five hundred day after tomorrow, but if they wanted them today, I couldn’t do it.”
“Arrowheads. I should have thought of that,” George said.
“Iron points are harder, of course, but when you’re in trouble you use everything you have,” Benjamin said, and George nodded. The bronzeworker gave him a tired smile of sorts. “You, though, I do not think you have come for arrowheads.”
“Well--no,” George said, and smiled back. “I’ve finally gone through that last batch of buckles you sold me, and I wanted to buy some more.”
“I have a few,” Benjamin said, “but not many. You’re lucky you came in today, George. After I finished this order I’m working on now, I would have melted them down for the next one.”
“I am lucky, then,” George said. He’d been dealing with Benjamin for a long time; the man did good work. Finding someone else who had buckles or could make them would have been an annoyance at least, and, with bronze going into arrowheads, might have been impossible. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
Benjamin showed him the couple of dozen buckles he’d made. They were, without a doubt, up to his usual standard of quality. The Jew coughed apologetically. “I am going to have to ask more for them. Otherwise, melting them down would pay me better.”
“How much more?” George asked warily. He didn’t think Benjamin was lying to him. He wished the bronzeworker were lying; that would have made the dicker easier.
“For most people, I would double the price,” the Jew said. “For you, half again as much. We’ve been doing business a long time, and you’ve always been fair with me.” He looked thoughtful. “And besides, don’t I remember that you did something brave when the city had trouble with the cisterns a while ago?”
“I did what needed doing. You don’t think about things till afterwards.” Praise made George nervous. He turned the subject, at least to some degree: “How did this part of the city come through the attack from the Slavs’ water god or whatever he was?”
“The Lord be praised, we had no trouble here,” Benjamin said. “The demon did not show itself at the cistern that serves us.”
Us Jews, he meant. George stared. “Not at all?” he asked.
“Not at all,” Benjamin said.