“So he will.” Khesphmois crossed himself; Argyros copied the gesture. The master carpenter went on, “Whether the Augustal prefect and his staff pay you any heed, though, is something else again.” Without waiting for an answer, he started down the stairway. After a final long look at the panorama of the city, Argyros followed.
That afternoon, back on the mainland once more, he peered out toward the half-erected pharos. Thinking of it like that reminded him of the bawdy pun he had unwittingly made earlier in the day. And thinking of that pun made him come half-erect.
He scowled and clenched his fists, trying to force his body back under the control of his will. His body, as bodies do, resisted. Oh, you’d make a fine monk, he told himself angrily, a wonderful monk; they’d canonize you after you died, under the name St. Basil Priapos. This was a fine way to remember Helen.
But he remembered her all too vividly, remembered the touch of her lips and the surge of her body against his. He caught himself wondering how Zois would be. That thought made him angrier than ever. Not only was it shameful lust, it betrayed the memory of his dead wife. He still wondered, though.
When he dreamed that night, as always he woke too soon.
“My dear sir, surely you are joking!” Mouamet Dekanos’ eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. “You want me to sit down and dicker with these, these laborers? Think of the ghastly precedent it would set! Ghastly!”
“I’ve thought of it,” Argyros admitted. “I don’t like it. I don’t like seeing the pharos still half-built, either. Nor does the Emperor. That problem is immediate. The precedent will just have to take care of itself.”
Dekanos stared at him as if he had just proposed converting the whole population of the Roman Empire to Persian sun worship by force. “Precedent, my dear sir, is part of the glue that holds the Empire together,” he said stiffly.
“So it is,” the magistrianos said. “The grain shipments from Alexandria to Constantinople are another part, and the Emperor has lost patience with having ships on their way back here go astray without need. In this case, he reckons that of greater importance than precedent.”
“So you say,” Dekanos retorted. “So you say.”
“Would you like me to meet with the Augustal prefect and ask his opinion of your attitude?”
The Alexandrian functionary’s face went dark with anger. “You’re bluffing.”
“Try me.” As a matter of fact, Argyros was. In an argument with someone from the distant, resented capital, he was sure the prefect would back his own aide. Had he been an intimate of the Master of Offices instead of merely one of his magistrianoi, though, not even the Augustal prefect could have afforded to ignore him. And George Lakhanodrakon’s letter made him seem to be one. He rose, took out the parchment and unrolled it, and flourished it in Dekanos’ face. “You do recall this, I hope.”
“Well, what if I do?” Dekanos was still scowling. “For that matter,” he went on angrily, “how will you be able to gather all these fractious guild leaders together and make them and their guild members abide by anything they might agree to? For all you know, they will say one thing to ease the pressure on them and then turn around and do just the opposite.”
When the official shifted the basis of the argument, Argyros knew he had his man. “If they did that, would they not have gone beyond the bounds even of what you Alexandrians tolerate in an anakhoresis!” he asked. “You could then use whatever force you had to with less fear of bringing the whole city to the point of insurrection.”
“Perhaps.” Dekanos pursed his lips. “Perhaps.”
“As for gathering the leaders of the guilds,” the magistrianos said persuasively, “leave that to me. I wouldn’t think of formally involving you with speaking to them until everything on the other side was in readiness.”
“Certainly not,” Dekanos said, mollified by Argyros’ apparent concern for proper procedure. “Hmm. Yes, I suppose you can go forward, then, provided you do it on those terms and provided you stress our unique clemency in treating with the artisans in this one special case.”
“Of course,” the magistrianos said, although he had no intention of stressing anything of the sort. He bowed his way out of Dekanos’ office and did not grin until his back was to the Alexandrian. Grinning still, he headed for Khesphmois’ shop in the district of Rhakotis.
He did not see the master carpenter when he walked through the beaded curtain. Only one of the journeymen was there, luckily one who spoke some Greek. The fellow said, “He not back till tomorrow. He helping build-how you say? — grandstand for parade. Busy all night, he say.” The man chuckled. “He terrible mad about that. I there, too, but have this cabinet to repair for rich man. He want it now, no matter what. Rich men like that.”
“Yes,” Argyros said, though he knew nothing of being rich from personal experience. He hesitated, then asked, “What does the parade celebrate?”
“Feast day for St. Arsenios.”
“Oh.” Argyros wondered what the saint, a man who had withdrawn from the world to live out his life as a monk in the Egyptian desert, would think of having his memory celebrated with a large, noisy parade. He shrugged. That was the Alexandrians’ problem. Khesphmois was his. “I’ll come back tomorrow afternoon, then. I do need to see your master.” He turned to go, thinking that as long as he was in this part of the city, Teus might direct him to some other master carpenters.
“Can I do anything to help you, man from Constantinople?”
Argyros had just put his hand in the entranceway to thrust aside the strings of beads. Now he jerked it back. Small spheres of glass and painted clay clicked off one another. “Truly I don’t know, my lady,” he said. His unspoken thought was, That depends on how much influence you have on your husband.
Zois might have picked it out of the air. “I know you did not come all this way simply to see me,” she said, her eyebrows and the comers of her mouth lifting slightly in a cynical smile. Eve might have worn that smile, Argyros thought, when God came to talk business with Adam, and later given Adam his comeuppance for the visit. He put aside his blasphemous maunderings; Zois was going on, “Still, perhaps we could discuss it over a cup of wine.”
The magistrianos’ eyes flicked to the journeyman carpenter, but the fellow did not look up from the work he had resumed. And no wonder: with her husband absent, Zois had not presumed to come out alone to speak with Argyros. A servant girl stood behind him, a pretty little thing who could not have been more than fifteen and who was, the magistrianos saw, about eight months pregnant.
He considered. “Thank you,” he said at last. “Maybe we could.”
“This way,” Zois said, then spoke in Coptic to the servant girl, who dipped her head and hurried off. “Don’t let fear of Lukra’s spying on us worry you,” Zois told the magistrianos as she led him back toward the rooms where she and Khesphmois lived. “She has no Greek. My husband did not take her on for that.” She smiled her ancient smile again.
Like the shop, the home behind it was of mud brick. The rooms were small and rather dark. The furniture was splendid, though, which surprised Argyros until he remembered Khesphmois’ trade.
Lukra came back a few minutes later with wine, dates candied in honey, and sheets of flat, chewy unleavened bread. Zois waited for the girl to pour the wine, then spoke again in Coptic. Lukra disappeared. “She will not be back,” Zois said, nodding to herself. She raised her cup to the magistrianos. “Health to you.”
“Health to you,” he echoed, drinking. The vintage was not one he knew, which meant it was most likely a local one not reckoned fine enough to export. It was not bad, though, and had a tartness that cut through the cloyingly sweet taste of the dates.
Zois ate, then wiped her hands and patted at her mouth with a square of embroidered linen. “Now,” she said when she was through, “what do you need from Khesphmois?”