“I want to tell you, George, you frightened me out of--” The guard noticed George hadn’t answered. He turned around to look for the man he’d admitted. “George?” His eyes got big. He crossed himself. “George? Where in the devil’s name did you go?” He scratched his head. “Were you ever here at all, or am I daydreaming--nightdreaming? I’ve got to get more sleep, that’s all there is to it.” He yawned.
“What’s going on there?” one of the other guards called from the main gate. Since the fellow who had admitted George didn’t know what was going on, his explanation was fumbling at best. While he stuttered and mumbled, George slipped past him, heading home.
He was glad he could do so still cloaked in invisibility. When the guard signed himself, he’d again feared the magic in Perseus’ cap would dissolve. He wondered why it hadn’t: perhaps because the guard had made the sign of the cross to protect himself, not to lash out at that which had startled him.
Thessalonica’s streets were dark and quiet and cold. George wished for a torch to light his way--and then, after a moment, he didn’t. No one could see him, but everyone would be able to see the torch. That just might cause talk in the city.
Here came a fellow swaggering along as if he owned the street. The stout bludgeon he carried in his right hand was doubtless intended to persuade anyone who might doubt his view of the situation. George reached up to make sure the cap was firmly on his head. This was a fellow Thessalonican he had no interest in knowing better.
Away from the main avenues, which formed a grid, Thessalonica’s streets wandered crazily. Without a torch, George got lost a couple of times and had to backtrack. If the Slavs and Avars broke into the city, he suspected some houses would go unplundered simply because the barbarians couldn’t find them.
Shouts told him he was getting close to home. They weren’t shouts from anyone who’d seen him. They were Claudia’s shouts, aimed at Dactylius. In the nocturnal stillness, they carried a long way. Anybody who cared to listen could get an earful of Claudia’s views of her husband’s shortcomings. Anyone who didn’t care to listen was liable to be awakened.
You could throw a rock or an old shoe at a cat. George had no idea how to make Claudia shut up.
Partly guided by her abuse, he found his own front door. He tried the latch. The door was barred. He knocked on it. The same problem applied here as it had at the postern gate: he wanted to wake his family, but not the neighbors. He knocked again, louder, and hoped he wasn’t being too loud.
After a while, he heard someone moving inside. Theodore’s sleepy voice came through the door: “Who’s there?”
“I am,” George said.
“Father?” Theodore undid the bar. Before his son opened the door, George remembered to snatch the cap off his head. He didn’t want Theodore thinking he was a ghost.
He took off the cap just in time. The little lamp Theodore held in his left hand seemed dazzlingly bright. In Theodore’s right hand was the longest, sharpest awl in the shop, in case George had turned out to be somebody else. Theodore dropped the awl with a clatter, set down the lamp, and embraced his father, bursting into tears as he did.
Somehow, George got into the shop and closed the door before Irene and Sophia dashed downstairs and added their embraces and tears to Theodore’s. “Thank God you’re safe,” Irene said, over and over. “Thank God you’re here to stay.”
“I’m not here to stay,” George said. His wife stiffened against him. He had to drag his words out one at a time: “I have to leave the city again, or else, I think, it will fall.”
“How can you leave the city?” Sophia demanded. “Stay here with us. You’ll. . . you’ll. . . Something bad will happen if you don’t.” She’d probably been trying to say something like, You’ll get killed if you don’t, but hadn’t been able to do it.
“I don’t think so.” As George spoke, he set Perseus’ cap on his head. His wife and children cried out in astonishment as he disappeared. He took off the cap and became visible once more. “You see? The Slavs won’t even know I’m anywhere around.” He knew he was making it sound easier than it would be, but he didn’t want his family worried.
Irene pointed to the cap. “Where did you get that? Who gave it to you? Who--or what?”
Quick as he could, he explained what it was and where he’d got it. Irene’s disapproval grew with every word he said. He tried to forestall her: “Could you get me something to eat, please? I’ve been tramping all over everywhere on not very much, believe me.” Bread and honey and olives and wine put new heart in him.
But no sooner had he taken the last swallow than Irene said, “Now--why did these pagans and these, these creatures send you into Thessalonica and expect you to come back out again?”
“They want me to bring Father Luke to them,” George said.
He’d thought that would startle his wife, and it did. “But they’re satyrs and centaurs and fairies and pagans,” Irene protested. “What do they think a man of God will do for them?”
“Help drive back the Slavs and Avars and their powers,” George said. “They aren’t strong enough to do it by themselves. We may not be strong enough to do it by ourselves. Together, God willing …”
“Would Father Luke go?” Sophia asked. “I can’t believe a priest of God would hobnob with these, these things.” She shivered.
“I think he will,” George answered. He explained the penance Eusebius had set on Father Luke for manipulating the Avars’ thunder gods. “I’m going to ask him, anyhow. He’s not so set in his ways as most of the other priests I know.”
“What if he won’t go, Father?” Theodore said. “Will you stay here then?”
“Yes, then I will stay,” George said. “If we come through the siege, I’ll have to go up into the hills afterwards and give the cap back to Gorgonius. But for now, I’ll stay.” He held up a hand. “But if I do go with Father Luke, don’t let anyone know I’ve come back into the city now. just say you hope I’m all right and you think you’ll see me again.”
“What I hope,” Irene said fiercely, “is that Father Luke tells you he wants nothing to do with this scheme, and hat it’s mad, pagan wickedness. And I hope you listen o him, too.”
“If he says that, I will listen to him,” George promised. If he says that, I’ll be back here in an hour or so, and we’ll go on about our business and hope for the best. I don’t know what else we can do.”
“We’ll wait up for you,” Irene said. Sophia and Theodore nodded.
“All right.” George would sooner have told them to go back to bed, but he knew they wouldn’t listen. He said, “In case I don’t come back here, remember, don’t let anyone know I was in the city. If people are gossiping up on the wall, the Slavs and Avars are liable to hear them and find some way to stop Father Luke and me.”
His son and daughter nodded again. At last, reluctantly, so did Irene. George embraced her, knowing he was using up a marriage’s worth of faith in a night, and going into debt besides. If it didn’t come out right--if it didn’t come out right, he doubted he’d be in any position to apologize.
He hugged Theodore again, and then Sophia. “Everything will be fine,” he said. Words had power. They were magical things. Saying that made it likelier to come true. After a last awkward nod, he set Perseus’ cap on his head. His wife and children exclaimed again, so he knew he’d vanished He opened the door and went back out into the night.
St. Elias’ church was only a few blocks away. Its doors stood open, as they always did. It was dim and dark inside, though, with but a handful of candles burning. George’s shadow flickered and swooped like an owl after mice as he walked down the aisle toward the altar, in front of which Father Luke stood praying. Probably still at his penance, George thought.
At the sound of George’s footsteps, the priest turned. Even in the semidarkness, Father Luke’s smile glowed. “George!” he exclaimed. “Thank God you’re safe!”
“Yes, I--” George stopped in confusion as he realized he was still wearing the cap. “You can see me?”
“Of course I can.” Now Father Luke gave him a quizzical look. “Shouldn’t I be able to?”
“This is hallowed ground,” George muttered, reminding himself He hoped that meant nothing more than that the magic in Perseus’ cap was overcome by a stronger power here, not gone for good. Only one way to find out. “Your Reverence, will you please not think I’m a crazy man if I ask you to step outside with me for a minute or two?”
“George, I could think you were a great many things,” the priest answered, “but I’m hard-pressed to imagine you crazy. I’ll come with you.”
George couldn’t feel anything different happen when he left the holy precinct. Father Luke, though, suddenly jerked in surprise. George let out a sigh of relief. He took off the cap. His reappearance startled Father Luke again. “You see, Your Reverence,” George said.
“Yes, I see,” Father Luke said. “Or rather, I didn’t see you for a little whole there. I suppose you’re going to tell me there’s a story attached to this, this--vanishing trick.”
“There certainly is,” George said, and proceeded to tell it. Only the faintest light leaked out of the church. Shrouded in darkness and shadow, Father Luke’s face was unreadable as the shoemaker went through the strange things that had happened to him since Menas slammed the postern gate in his face.
When he’d finished, Father Luke stood silent for a while, then said, “This village of Lete and others like it up in the hills, they sound as if they’re ripe for evangelizing one day soon.”
“That may be so, Your Reverence,” George said in some alarm, “but--”
The priest held up a hand and laughed quietly. “But one day soon isn’t quite yet,” he said. George nodded. Father Luke stood in thought for another little while, then said, “Well, let’s go.”
“Just like that?” George said in surprise.
“Just like that,” Father Luke agreed. “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
“Well, yes, but--” Only a couple of days before, George had been thinking about the difference between what he wanted and what life commonly handed him. Something else crossed his mind, too: “What will Bishop Eusebius do to you after you come back from consorting with pagan powers again?”
“I don’t know,” the priest answered. “Whatever it is, he will do it and I will accept it. If we save the city, he’ll be able to do it. If Thessalonica falls to the Slavs and Avars, what Bishop Eusebius might want to do to me becomes a bit less important, wouldn’t you say?”