“Right now, yes,” George told him, and explained the magic the Slavs and Avars had worked against fire in Thessalonica.
Benjamin listened till he was through, then said, “If you need this fire, take it. I give it to you. God protects our fires. Hundreds of years ago, He made a flask of pure oil, enough for only one day, burn for eight until more could be brought. This was after we Jews had driven the Macedonians out of Jerusalem, you understand.”
George had never heard of the event that seemed near as yesterday to the Jew. That didn’t matter. What mattered was the fire. He’d always taken fire for granted, except when he worried about its getting out of control. Now he realized--he had been forcibly made to realize--how precious it was.
Bowing a little, Benjamin handed him the lamp. “Carry it back to your own home. Use it as you need it.” When he saw George’s hand going to his beltpouch, the Jew shook his head. “No need for that. If I give a starving man food, do I ask him for payment? Take it, I say.”
“God bless you,” George answered, to which the Jew bowed again.
Carrying the lamp as carefully as he had held Theodore when his firstborn was laid in his arms, George left the bronzeworker’s shop. The little flame burning at the end of the wick flickered in the breeze outside, but did not go out. Dactylius said, “I think that will keep burning till you get back to your home.”
“I think you’re right,” George said. “God wouldn’t have given it to us only to snatch it away again.” Dactylius nodded. George listened to himself in some surprise. Who was he, to expound on what God would or wouldn’t do? He pursed his lips thoughtfully. Whoever he was, he had fire when the rest of Thessalonica--save its Jews-- did without.
People saw he had fire, too, and came running up with candles and lamps and sometimes just twigs, to get some of their own from him. Remembering what Benjamin had said, he gave it to them and took nothing in return, even when they tried to pay him.
“You could be rich by the time you get back,” Dactylius said.
“Wouldn’t be worth it,” George answered. “And do you know what? If I took money, what do you bet the next little breeze would blow out the flame here? Maybe it would blow out all the flames.”
“Maybe it would.” Dactylius’ voice went soft with wonder.
From around a comer, someone with a big, deep voice shouted, “Fire! I need fire. I’ll pay five solidi to anybody with fire!”
“I have fire,” George called. “I’ll give it to you for nothing.”
“What?” The owner of the voice came trotting into sight. George stared with no small dismay at Menas. The noble looked ready to take fire by force if he could get it no other way: he had a candle in his left hand and a long-handled war hammer, its iron head chased with shining silver, a weapon intended more for show than for use, in his right. Seeing George, Menas looked as unhappy as the shoemaker. “You? You have fire? What are you doing with fire?” By the way he spoke, he didn’t think the shoemaker deserved to have fire even on an ordinary day.
“I have it, that’s all.” George thrust the lamp at the noble. “Take what you need. I don’t want your money.”
Menas’ gaze looked burning enough to start a fire by itself. “Think yourself above me, do you? Think you’re too good for me, eh?” People were staring at him and George. He went on, “Don’t want your hands to touch my filthy money, is that it?” The diatribe, George noticed, did not keep him from lighting the candle he clutched from the lamp’s flame.
George said, “I haven’t taken money from anyone else, either.”
“Likely tell,” Menas said. “Well, you can vaunt and preen and strut now, but the day will come when you’ll wish you hadn’t.” Off he went, the hammer stuffed into his belt so he could shield from the wind with his hand the fire he’d got.
Looking after him, George let out a long sigh. “I could save his life, and he’d curse me for doing it.”
“A man like that, he means trouble,” Dactylius said, as a good many others had before him.
“Really? I never would have noticed,” George said. The hurt look in Dactylius’ large brown eyes made him feel as if he’d kicked a puppy. Sighing again, he said, “I’m sorry. It’s not your fault I’ve fallen foul of him. As far as I can see, it’s not my fault, either, but it takes only one to start a quarrel.”
When they got to the jeweler’s house and shop, Dactylius ran inside. He came back with a lamp, pursued by Claudia’s raucous questions. Ignoring those, he started the lamp at the one George was carrying. Once the flame caught, he carried it inside. Claudia, for a wonder, fell silent.
George carried Benjamin’s lamp into his own workshop. His wife and children were all wearing two or three tunics, with woolen mantles or blankets draped over their shoulders. Instead of falling silent as Claudia had done, they all started talking at once. George had to try several times before he could tell them the whole story.
“That Jew came in handy,” Theodore said, speaking of Benjamin as he might have of an awl or a punch.
“Twice now, magic from outside the city hasn’t bitten on the Jews when it hit everyone else,” George observed. “I wonder if God is trying to tell us something.”
“Are you going to stop eating pork and have them do” --Theodore glanced at his mother and sister and chose his words carefully-- “what they do to a man?”
The mere thought of being circumcised made George wince and want to cover himself with his hands. “Not likely,” he said, to his son’s evident relief. He went on, “But I don’t think I’m going to sneer at them the way I sometimes have, either.”
“Never mind the Jews now, for heaven’s sake,” Irene said with brisk feminine pragmatism. “Let’s get the braziers lighted and put a little heat back into this place. And while we’re at it, let’s thank God for not letting the Slavs and Avars freeze us out of our homes, no matter how He chose to do that.”
“Amen,” George said with no hesitation at all.
“If you were the khagan of the Avars,” Paul said in musing tones, “and your wizards kept promising that you’d be able to get into Thessalonica and then not delivering, what would you do?”
“I wouldn’t be very happy,” George admitted, looking out from the wall toward the camp of the Slavs and Avars. “But then, I don’t even know whether the khagan is here right now. There’s a lot of fighting south of the Danube these days.”
“That’s not the point,” the taverner said. “You don’t have anybody who works for you, do you? Besides your family, I mean?--that’s different. If you have somebody who’s not doing the job you pay him to do, you fling him out the door and you get somebody else.”
“I don’t think the khagan would fling his wizards out the door,” George said. “He might see how well they do without their heads, though--barbarian princes are supposed to do things like that.” He paused to think for a moment. “Been a few Roman Emperors like that, too, haven’t there?”
“So they say.” Paul’s shrug expressed the limits of both his interest and his knowledge of the subject. “But he’ll do something new, because what he’s been trying hasn’t worked.”
Such conversations went on every hour of every day up on the wall, and in the taverns, and throughout Thessalonica--being besieged, the people of the city, and most of all the militiamen defending it, spent a lot of ingenuity wondering and arguing about what the besiegers would try next. Among so many speculations, some, by the nature of things, had to be correct.
George understood that--by his own nature, he understood it better than most (and he’d been right himself, once or twice). Understanding didn’t keep him from boasting afterwards when, less than an hour after he said, “Well, they’ve tried magic, and that hasn’t worked, and they’ve tried rams, and those haven’t worked, and they’ve tried tortoises, and those haven’t worked, either, so they’ll likely get around to using the catapults they made when they started the siege,” the Slavs and Avars did exactly as he’d foretold.