“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.”
“I have nothing against love matches,” George said. “A lot of times, they work out as well as the other sort. But I don’t see any reason a bride should pay a fancy price so she and the groom can end up doing what they’ve wanted to do anyhow.”
“If she brings a small portion, that makes your family and mine both look bad,” Leo said. “People will find out about it and gossip.” He sent Irene a glance filled with anything but delight unalloyed.
“I don’t gossip,” she said sweetly. “But I will say you have a point, since I know people who do.”
Leo got to his feet. “I thank you for the wine. Maybe you were right after all, and we shouldn’t talk this all the way through till we know Thessalonica is safe. After this, I don’t know as I want to talk with anybody else, either.
Good day to you both.” He edged out of the shop and fled.
No sooner had he gone than Sophia and Theodore hurried downstairs. Angrily, Sophia said, “Now look what you did! You scared him away. He won’t come back anymore, and my life is ruined. Ruined!” She burst into tears.
George and Irene, by contrast, burst into laughter. That made Sophia cry harder than ever. She glared at them from red, wet eyes. George said, “He will be back, little one--I promise. The only thing your mother and I did was show him the two of us weren’t fools.”
Sophia stared at him doubtfully. “Do you really think so?” She wanted to believe him, that was plain.
“No doubt about it,” Irene said. “He thought we’d dower you with everything we own, just for the sake of joining his snooty family. Now that he knows better, we should get on well enough.”
“He wants this match, too,” George added. “Otherwise, he would have waited till the siege was over before he started talking about it, the way we were going to do.”
“Oh,” Sophia said in a small voice. Her smile was like the sun coming out from behind rain clouds. “I hope you’re right.” It was evident she wanted the match at least as much as Constantine did. George resolved not to let Leo know that; it would make the dickering harder.
Theodore asked, “Mother, how did you know what bride portions Constantine’s mother and aunt brought with them?”
“From Claudia, of all people,” Irene answered. Before George could say anything worried, she went on, “It didn’t have anything to do with this match, either. I forget whether it was last year or the year before--last year, I guess, because it was after the plague--and Claudia was complaining about people who pretended they were finer than they really were, and she mentioned Helen and her dowry, and her sister-in-law, too. I thought it was in poor taste myself, poor Helen being dead and all, but I didn’t forget it, either. And when I turned out to need it, there it was.”
“Your mother,” George told Theodore, not joking at all, “never forgets anything.”
“Me?” Irene said. “Me? Who was it, about the time we got married, who could tell which team had won the chariot races at every running for the past fifty years before then, and which rider had the most wins for each team, and how this one bald driver hadn’t missed a running for fifteen years--”
George maintained a dignified silence. That was how he thought of it, at any rate. Its chief effect was making his wife and both his children laugh at him. Seeing that, he tried the opposite course: “That bald fellow had a brother who was a driver, too, and their father trained their horses, same as he’d been doing for twenty-three years before that, and …”