“I don’t want to knock on the wrong door,” the shoemaker muttered. “I really don’t want to knock on the wrong door.”
At last, he found what he thought was the right door. He tried it, gently, so as not to disturb anyone inside. It was barred. He muttered again. He’d known it would be, but had hoped that, just this once, life would make things easy for him. No such luck. He rapped loudly on the door, as if he had every right in the world to go straight in. When nothing happened, he rapped again, even louder.
A tiny window with a metal grate was set into the timbers of the door. After a little while, a small part of a face, dimly lit by a lamp or taper, appeared on the other side of the window. “Who disturbs Menas’ rest at this ungodly hour?” asked a voice presumably connected to the face.
“I am an angel,” George announced. He stood very close to the door, so the servant inside could tell where his voice was coming from--and could note that he was hearing it without being able to see anyone speaking. “I am come to test both you and your master. Open at once, or you will share his fate.”
In a way, this was the weak part of his plan, and he knew it. If Menas’ servant liked the rich noble and was loyal to him, he would leave the door closed, and George wouldn’t be able to get in. The only thing invisibility would be good for then was to keep anyone from seeing how foolish he looked.
Coming to Menas’ home, though, he’d pinned his hopes on the idea that no one who knew Menas and had to work for him was likely to like him. And so it proved. The door flew open. The servant said, “If you want Menas, you can bloody well have him!”
“You have passed your test,” George said, and squeezed past the fellow, careful not to touch him as he did so.
Lamps set in wall niches lighted the halls of Menas’ home; George wished he could have afforded to use oil so prodigally. There were a lot of corridors, too--he wandered for a bit before finding the one that led to Menas’ bedchamber The noble’s own snores guided the shoemaker down the corridor to the proper room.
There, dim shadows, lay Menas and his wife. She snored, too. George took a deep breath, then shouted at the top of his lungs: “Injustice!”
Both shapes sat up in bed and looked around wildly. Menas started to cry out. George whacked him with the flat of his blade. The rich noble tried to reach down under the bed, where he likely kept a sword of his own. George stepped on his hand.
About then, Menas realized that, while he could hear and feel whoever was in the chamber with him, he couldn’t see anyone but his wife. “Injustice!” George shouted again. Menas’ wife opened her mouth to scream. George yelled once more: “Silence!”
Menas’ wife didn’t scream. The noble did: “Ho! My men! Help! To me! A murder! To me!”
George whacked him again. He howled. Down the hall, George heard the servants stirring. That was liable to be trouble. If they came after him, they could trap him in these narrow halls without having to see him. Then, if he wanted to escape, he’d have to cut his way through them, which he hadn’t intended to do.
But the servants did not come to Menas’ rescue. Instead one after another, they ran outside, into the chilly night. Maybe the doorman had told them what sort of visitor the household had. Maybe they weren’t interested in rescuing Menas any which way. George wouldn’t have been.
He laughed, unpleasantly. “You see what the wages of injustice are,” he boomed, trying to sound as impressive-- and as much unlike George the shoemaker--as he could.
“Who--who--who are you?” Menas, now, Menas sounded like an owl.
His wife had a different question: “What are you?”
“I am an angel,” George declared, as he had for the servant. Menas’ wife crossed herself. George had already seen--and was very glad--that that did not destroy the power in Perseus’ cap. He went on, speaking to Menas: “Wretch, God did not give you back your legs so that you could use your regained bodily vigor to wrong those who have done you no harm. The grave awaits such wickedness, the grave and eternal torment.”
He didn’t sound like himself. After a moment, he realized he did sound like Bishop Eusebius. That was all right, he supposed; angels could reasonably sound like churchmen. Churchmen certainly thought they sounded like angels.
“But--I’ve never done anything like that.” This was not the angry, blustering Menas George had come to know and loathe. This was a frightened Menas. But it was also an utterly bewildered Menas. With no small shock, George realized the noble had no idea he’d done anything wrong or reprehensible.
Hesitantly, Menas’ wife spoke up: “Maybe, dear, maybe the angel means that shoemaker who was persecuting you.”
George felt like kissing her, though that wouldn’t have done his impersonation any good. If he’d had to mention himself, Menas was liable to have put two and two together.
On the other hand, maybe he wouldn’t have. Menas seemed to have trouble putting one and one together. “That Gregory or George or whatever his name was?” he exclaimed. “Not likely! He deserved whatever happened to him, the way he spread lies about me through the city.”
He never knew how close he came to having his big belly ripped open by a sword he never saw. “Fool!” George shouted. “Arrogant idiot!” He whacked Menas with the flat of the blade again. The temptation to let it turn in his hand, to slash instead of whacking, was as strong in his mouth as the maddening taste of wine in a centaur’s. Menas cringed. Fighting down the urge to murder, George went on, “Being a liar and a cheat yourself, you reckon all men possessed of a like mean-spiritedness.” He knew he was stealing that phrase from Father Luke, but did not think the priest would mind. “The shoemaker told you the truth: he did not slander you.”
Menas hadn’t even bothered to remember his name. That infuriated him more than almost anything else.
“Really?” The rich noble sounded astonished. “Everyone said he did.”
“And you believed gossips and liars, not the man himself,” George said scornfully. “Know you not what rumor and gossip are worth?” He still thought Menas hadn’t listened very well to what “everybody” said, too, but kept quiet about that, not wanting to escape trouble by putting John into it.
“What must he do to be saved?” Menas’ wife asked the question, perhaps because she thought her husband wouldn’t.
Stirred by that, Menas spoke up, in a petulant voice: “I suppose you’re going to tell me I have to pay him ten pounds of gold, or something outrageous like that.” He stuck out his chin and looked stubborn.
Did he suspect George was George, and not an angel at all? Or had he been visited by a veritable angel before, and made to pay compensation for whatever he’d done to prompt the visit? George wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He answered, “Leave the man at peace and trouble him no more. That will suffice. Obey me not, and the grave and the pangs of hell await you.”
“I’ll obey,” Menas said quickly. “I will.” Now he sounded perfectly tractable. George wondered why. It occurred to him that, if Menas were an angel (an unlikely thought), he would have demanded money in exchange for good behavior. George’s not doing so must have struck the noble as particularly holy, even downright angelic.
He didn’t mind Menas’ thinking him holy. He didn’t want Menas thinking him soft. He walloped the noble with the flat of the blade again, and shouted, “Obey!”
By then, Menas’ head was probably ringing like a gong. George hoped he hadn’t broken that head, although his own heart wouldn’t have broken if it turned out he had.
Deciding the wisest thing he could do was not overstay his welcome, he left the bedchamber then. For good measure, he slammed the door shut behind him, which made Menas’ wife scream. George didn’t mind that; if she was impressed with him as an angel, she would help hold her husband to the straight and narrow.