The two locals spoke together in rapid Coptic. Khesphmois switched to Greek: “Twice as much, and not a single copper follis less.”
Dekanos clapped a hand to his forehead, cried, “You made a mistake, Argyros! You summoned men from the thieves’ guild to meet with me.” To the guildsmen he said, “If you hope to gain anything from this meeting, you must show reason. I might, perhaps, under the special circumstances the magistrianos described, seek authorization for a raise of, ah, say, one part in twelve, but surely could not gain approval for any more than that.”
“One part in twelve is no raise at all. Look at the wealth around you!” Khesphmois exclaimed, waving his hand at the chamber in which they sat. Far from being overawed, the master carpenter was clever enough to use that splendor as a weapon for his cause. Argyros was impressed; Dekanos was plainly discomfited.
“You are willing, then, illustrious sir, to raise our pay?” Hergeus asked.
“As I said, under these special circumstances-” Dekanos began.
The concrete-spreaders’ leader cut him off with a wave of the hand. “You said before that you wouldn’t give us any raise at all. If a woman says she won’t and then does after you give her ten nomismata, she’s just as much a whore as if she did it for a follis. The only difference is her price, and that you can dicker over. That’s what we’re down to now, illustrious sir: dickering over the price. And I stand with Khesphmois-one part in twelve is no raise at all.”
Mouamet Dekanos glowered at Hergeus. “Your tongue is altogether too free.” The official glowered at Argyros, too, presumably for putting him in a position where he had to listen to blunt talk from a social inferior. Argyros hardly noticed. Every mention of whores brought his mind back to the girl he had bedded, and seemed calculated only to lacerate his conscience.
Reality returned when Dekanos began drumming his fingers on the table. “Who’s best to declare what a fair raise would be?” the magistrianos said quickly to cover his lapse. “Neither side here trusts the other. Why not let, hmm, the patriarch of Alexandria arbitrate the dispute.”
He had been thinking out loud, nothing more, but the words seemed a happy inspiration the moment they were out of his mouth. He smiled, waiting for Dekanos and the guildsmen to acclaim his Solomonic wisdom.
Instead, they all stared at him. “Er, which patriarch of Alexandria?” Dekanos and Khesphmois asked at the same time, the first time they had been more than physically together since they had sat down at the same table.
“Which patriarch?” The magistrianos scratched his head.
“For politeness’ sake I will assume all three of these gentlemen are of orthodox faith,” Dekanos said, “and also because assuming otherwise would bring down on me one more trouble than I need right now. Surely, however, many of their followers adhere to the dogmas”-he did not, Argyros noticed, say “heresy-”of the Monophysites, and thus would not trust the Orthodox patriarch to be disinterested. And I certainly cannot grant official recognition to the monophysites’, ah, leader.” Dekanos did not say patriarch, either, not in the same breath with monophysites.
Argyros felt his face grow hot. He gave an embarrassed nod. The monophysites-those who believed Christ to have had only one nature, the divine, after the Incarnation-had been strong in Egypt for nine hundred years, ecumenical councils to the contrary notwithstanding. Of course they would have a shadow ecclesiastical organization of their own, and of course Dekanos could not formally treat with it. Doing so would imply that orthodoxy was not the only possible truth. No official of the Roman Empire could ever admit that; Argyros was reluctant to think it even as a condition contrary to fact.
“This is all so much moonshine,” Miysis rumbled. The stonecutter got to his feet and stomped toward the door, adding over his shoulder, “I already said once it’s not the money, and I meant it. My lads’ll find other things to do, thank you very much, illustrious sir.” He walked out.
“Damnation.” Mouamet Dekanos glared after him, then slowly turned back to the other two guild leaders. “Do you gentlemen feel the same way? If you do, you’re welcome to leave now, and we’ll let the city garrison try to return you to obedience.”
“You’d not do that,” Khesphmois exclaimed. “Calling out the soldiers would-”
“-Set all Alexandria aflame,” Dekanos finished for him. “I know. But what good are soldiers if they cannot be used? The Emperor wants this pharos built. If I have to choose between offending the Alexandrian guilds and offending the Basileus of the Romans, I know what my choice will be.”
If he was bluffing, he was a dab hand at hiding it. Argyros would not have cared to find out, and he had far more experience with officials’ ploys than did either Khesphmois or Hergeus. The two guildsmen exchanged appalled glances. They had been confident Dekanos would not try to coerce them back to work. If they were wrong…
“I think we might talk further,” Hergeus said quickly, “especially since your Illustriousness has shown himself willing to move on the matter of wages.”
“Not any too willing.” Having gained an advantage, Dekanos looked ready to hold on to it.
Khesphmois saw that clearly. “If it pleases the illustrious sir,” he suggested, “we would agree to leaving the matter of how large our raise should be in the hands of the magistrianos here. He represents the Emperor, who as you say is eager to have the lighthouse restored. If it weren’t for him, we wouldn’t be talking at all. I expect he’d be fairer than any local man I can think of.”
Argyros wondered if Khesphmois would have said that if he knew how badly the magistrianos had wanted to go to bed with his wife. Still, the master carpenter had a point. “I will make this settlement,” Argyros said, “if all of you swear by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, by the Virgin, and by your great Alexandrian saints Athanasios, Cyril, and Pyrrhos to abide by the terms I set down.” He was pleased with himself for thinking to add the Alexandrian saints to the oath; monophysites revered them along with the orthodox.
“I will swear that oath for myself and on behalf of my guild,” Khesphmois said at once, and did so. When he was through, Hergeus echoed him.
Their eyes swung to Dekanos. He let them stew for a while, then said gruffly, “Oh, very well. Time to have this cursed anakhoresis settled.” He swore the oath.
“Thank you, gentlemen, for your trust in me. I hope I can deserve it,” Argyros said. He was stalling; events had piled up faster than he was quite ready for. After some thought, he went on, “As for the matter of pay, justice, I am sure, lies between the demands of the two sides. Therefore let pay for work on the pharos henceforth be half again the usual rate, for all guilds.”
“Let it be so,” Dekanos said promptly. The nods from Hergeus and Khesphmois were reluctant; the master carpenter’s expression showed him unhappy with the choice he’d made.
Argyros raised a hand. “I am not finished. As we have all agreed, work on the pharos is uncommonly dangerous. Therefore, if a guildsman should die of an accident while doing that work, let the city government of Alexandria rather than his guild pay for his funeral.”
This time Khesphmois and Hergeus quickly agreed, while Mouamet Dekanos sent the magistrianos a sour stare. Argyros bore up under it. Unlike Dekanos, he had looked down from the top of the pharos; he could imagine with gut-wrenching clarity what the results of even the smallest slip would be.
And if a worker did slip, he would bring disaster not just upon himself but also on his family. Argyros thought of the troubles Helen would have had bringing up Sergios as a widow had he rather than his wife and son perished in the smallpox epidemic. He said, “Finally, if a married worker should die of an accident while working on the pharos, let the city government of Alexandria settle on his widow and children (if any) a sum equal to, ah, six months’ pay, for he will have died in service to the city and it is unjust to leave his family destitute on account of that service.”
“No!” Dekanos said. “You go too far, much too far.”
“Remember
the oath you swore!” Khesphmois shouted at him, while Hergeus added, “Will you turn a profit on dead men’s blood?”
Argyros sat silent, waiting Dekanos out. Finally the official said, “As I have sworn an oath, I must abide by it. But, sir, I shall also send a letter to the Master of Offices setting forth in detail the manner in which you have overstepped your authority. In detail.”
“My authority, illustrious sir, is to get work started on the pharos once more. When you write to George Lakhanodrakon, do please remember to mention that I have done so.” The magistrianos turned to Khesphmois and Hergeus. “Your guilds will end the anakhoresis on the terms I have set forth?”
“Yes,” they said together. Khesphmois muttered something in Coptic to Hergeus. Then, catching Argyros’ eye, he translated: “I said I’d told him you could be trusted.” The magistrianos dipped his head. Pleased by the compliment, he even forgot for a moment what he’d wanted to do with Zois.
Two weeks later, not another stone had gone into place on the pharos. Argyros stood in front of a half-built church. Miysis, mallet and chisel in hand, stared down at him from the top of a large limestone block. “I told you no before, and I still mean no,” the stonecutter said.
“But why?” Argyros said, craning his neck. “The carpenters and cement-spreaders have agreed to end the anakhoresis, and agreed gladly. Half again regular pay and compensation to widows and orphans is nothing to sneeze at.”
Miysis spat, though not, the magistrianos had to admit, in his direction. “The carpenters and cement-spreaders are fools, if you ask me. What good does pay and a half do a dead man, or even blood money for his family? Me, I’m plenty happy to work a safer job for less money, and my lads think the same. We stay withdrawn.”
As if to show that was his last word on the subject, he started chiseling away at the limestone block again. Chips flew. One landed in Argyros’ hair. He stepped back, thinking dark thoughts. When he walked off, Miysis lifted the mallet in an ironic farewell salute.
The magistrianos, head down, walked north between the Museion’s three exedra and the Sema of Alexander the Great without glancing at either the lecture halls to the left or the marble tomb to the right. Only when he almost bumped into one of the men lined up to see Alexander’s remains in their coffin of glass did he take a couple of grudging steps to one side.
“Miserable muttonhead,” he mumbled, “happy to work his cursed safer job while the pharos goes to perdition.” He stopped dead in his tracks, smacked fist into palm. “Happy, is he? Let’s just see how happy he’ll be!”
Then, instead of glumly walking, Argyros was trotting, sometimes running, toward the Augustal prefect’s palace. He arrived panting and drenched in sweat but triumphant. Mouamet Dekanos raised an eyebrow when the magistrianos burst past lesser functionaries into his office. “What’s all this in aid of?” he asked.
“I know how to end the anakhoresis. At last I know.”
“This I will believe when I see it, and not before I see it,” Dekanos said. “You came close, I grant you that, but how do you propose to move the stonecutters to the pharos if they are content with lesser pay for other work?”
Argyros grinned a carnivore grin. “How content will they be with no pay for no work?”
“I don’t follow,” Dekanos said.
“Suppose an edict were to go out in the Augustal prefect’s name, suspending all construction in stone in Alexandria for, say, the next three months? Don’t you think the stonecutters would start to get a trifle hungry by then? Hungry enough, even, to think about going back to work on the pharos?”
Dekanos’ eyes went wide. “They might. They just might. And since they weren’t party to the agreements with the other guilds, we wouldn’t even have to pay them extra.”
The magistrianos had thought about that, too, in the third of an hour it had taken him to get to the prefect’s palace. He would enjoy revenge for Miysis’ insolence. Still, he said, “No, I think not. The contrast between those who do work on the pharos and have extra silver to jingle in their pouches and those who do not and have none-”
“A distinct point,” Dekanos said. “Very well, let it be as you say. Some wealthy men will scream when their houses stand a while half-built-”
“The Emperor of the Romans is screaming now because his pharos has stood too long half-built.”
“A distinct point,” Dekanos repeated. He shouted for scribes.
Not even a journeyman carpenter was working at Khesphmois’ shop when Argyros pushed his way through the curtain of beads. Only a servant lounged in the open courtyard. As far as the magistrianos could see, the fellow’s main job was to make sure no one came in and made off with the partly made or partly repaired furniture there.
The servant scrambled to his feet when Argyros came in. He bowed and said something in Coptic. The magistrianos spread his hands. “What you want?” the servant asked in broken Greek.
“Is your master at home?” Argyros asked, speaking slowly and clearly-and also loudly. “I wish to pay my respects to him.”
“Him not here,” the servant said after Argyros had repeated himself a couple of times. “Him, everyone at-how you say? — pharos. Work there all time. You want, you come sabbath day after prayers. Maybe here then.”
“I won’t be here then,” Argyros said. “My ship sails for Constantinople day after tomorrow.”
He saw the servant had not understood him and, sighing, began casting about in his mind for simpler words. He was just starting over when he heard a familiar voice from the living quarters behind the shop: “Is that you, Basil Argyros of Constantinople?”
“Yes, Zois, it is.”
She came out a moment later. “It’s good to see you again. Would you care for some wine and fruit?” Nodding, the magistrianos stepped toward her. The servant started to come, too. Zois stopped him with a couple of sentences of crackling Coptic. To Argyros, she explained, “I told Nekhebu that Khesphmois wants him out here keeping an eye on the furniture, not inside keeping an eye on me. I can take care of myself; the furniture can’t.”
“I’m sure you can, my lady.” Argyros let her lead him into the chamber where they had talked before.
This time she brought out the wine and dates herself. “Lukra had her brat last week, and she’s still down with a touch of fever,” she said. “I expect she will get over it.” Her voice was enigmatic; Argyros could not tell whether she wanted the serving girl to recover.
He said, “I came to thank Khesphmois for all he did to help end the anakhoresis. Since I’m lucky enough to see you, let me thank you also for helping to turn him in that direction. I’m grateful.”
She sipped her wine, nibbled daintily on a candied date, the pink tip of her tongue flicking out for a moment as it toyed with the fruit. “Did I hear you say you were leaving Alexandria day after tomorrow?”
“Yes. It’s time for me to go. The pharos is a-building again, and so I have no need to stay any longer.”
“Ah,” she said, which might have meant anything or nothing. After a pause that stretched, she went on, “In that case, you can thank me properly.”
“Properly?” Somehow, Argyros thought, Zois’ eyes suddenly seemed twice as large as they had just before. She leaned back in her chair. He admired the fine curve of her neck. Then he was kneeling beside that chair, bending to kiss the smooth, warm flesh of her throat. Even if he was wrong, said the calculating part of him that never quite slept, Khesphmois had already returned to the pharos.
But he was not wrong. Zois’ breath sighed out; her hands clasped the back of his head. “The bedroom?” Argyros whispered sometime later.
“No. Lukra’s chamber is next to it, and she might overhear.” For all her sighs, Zois still seemed very much in control of herself. “We will have to manage here.”
The room had neither couch nor, of course, bed, but not all postures required them. Manage they did, with Zois on her knees and using her chair to support the upper part of her body. She was almost
as exciting as Argyros had imagined; in this imperfect world, he thought before all thought fled, one could hardly hope for more.
She gasped with him at the end, but he was still coming back to himself when she turned to look over her shoulder at him and say, “Pull up your breeches.” As he did so, she swiftly repaired her own dishevelment. Then she waved him back to his own chair, remarking, “Khesphmois must not know what we’ve done, I do, which is what matters.”
“So you were only using me to pay back Khesphmois?” he asked, more than a trifle nettled. Here he had thought he was desired for his sake, but instead found himself merely an instrument to Zois. This, he realized uncomfortably, had to be how a seduced woman felt.
Zois’ reply reinforced his discomfort. “We all use one another, do we not?” She softened that a moment later, adding with a smile, “I will say I enjoyed this use more than some-more than most, even.”
Something, that, but not enough. How many was most?
Argyros did not want to know. He got to his feet. “I’d best head back to my lodging,” he said. “I still have some packing to do.”
“For a ship that sails in two days?” Zois’ smile was knowing. “Go, then, if you think you must. As I said, though, I did enjoy it. And I will give Khesphmois your thanks. I’d not be so rude as to forget that.”
“I’m so glad,” Argyros muttered. Zois giggled at his ostentatiously held aplomb, which only made him cling to it more tightly. The bow he gave her was as punctilious as if he’d offered it to the Master of Offices’ wife. She giggled again. He left, hastily.
On the way back to his room-he really had no better place to go-he reflected on the changes he had made since coming to Alexandria. From celibate to fornicator to adulterer, all in the space of a few weeks, he thought, filled with self-reproach. Then he remembered that he would eagerly have become an adulterer before, had he thought Zois willing. Now he knew just how willing she was, and found something other than delight in the knowledge.
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