He sounded resentful, and kept looking back at the mallet on the floor. Then he saw the magistrianos’ hand resting on the hilt of his sword. Shaking his head, he led Argyros out into the street.
Argyros glanced up at the sign again. “Your name is Teus?” he asked. The carpenter nodded.”And who is the man to whom you’re taking me?”
“He is called Khesphmois,” Teus said. He kept his mouth shut the rest of the way to Khesphmois’ shop.
KHESPHMOIS-MASTER CARPENTER, the sign above the establishment declared in Greek and, Argyros supposed, Coptic. The look of the place did not contradict the sign’s claim. It was three times the size of Teus’ shop, and on a busier comer to boot. People bustled in and out, and the racket of several men working carried out to the street.
Teus led Argyros through the beaded entrance curtain that did something, at least, to keep flies outside. A carpenter looked up from the dowel he was filing, smiled and nodded at Teus. The fellow did not seem to be Khesphmois himself, for Teus’ sentence had the master carpenter’s name in it and sounded like a question.
The other man’s reply had to mean something like “I’ll bring him.” He got up and hurried off. When he came back from behind a pile of boards a moment later, he had with him another man, one with only a few more years than Argyros’ thirty or so. The magistrianos was expecting a graybeard, but this vigorous fellow had to be Khesphmois.
So he was. Teus bowed to him, at the same time dropping a hand to his own knee, an Egyptian greeting Argyros had already seen a dozen times in the streets of Rhakotis. When Khesphmois had returned the salute, Teus spoke for a couple of minutes in Coptic, pointing at the magistrianos as he did so.
Khesphmois’ round, clean-shaven face went surprisingly stem as Teus drew to a close. Like Teus-like all the carpenters in the shop-he wore only sandals and a white linen skirt that reached from his waist to just above his knees, but he also clothed himself in dignity. In good Greek, he asked Argyros, “Who are you, a stranger, to question the long-established right of our guild to withdraw from a labor we have found onerous past any hope of toleration?”
“I am Basil Argyros, magistrianos in the service of his imperial majesty, the Basileus Nikephoros III, from Constantinople,” Argyros replied. Khesphmois’ shop went suddenly quiet as everyone within earshot stopped work to stare. Into that sudden silence, the magistrianos went on. “I might add that in Constantinople guilds have no right of anakhoresis, long-established or otherwise. Seeking as he does to restore what is an ornament to your city and its commerce, the Emperor does not look with favor on your refusal to cooperate in that work. He has sent me here”-a slight exaggeration but, one that would not be wasted on the carpenters-”to do what I can to move it forward once more.”
The carpenters spoke to-before long, yelled at-one another in Coptic. Argyros wished he could follow what they were saying. Whatever it was, it got hotter by the second. Finally Khesphmois, who had been less noisy than most, raised his hand in an almost imperial gesture of command. Quiet slowly returned.
The master carpenter told Argyros, “This is not Constantinople, sir, and you would do well to remember it. So would the Emperor. You may tell him so, if you have his ear.” Khesphmois spoke in dry tones, seemingly used to officials who boasted of their lofty connections. Argyros felt his ears grow hot. Khesphmois continued. “Perhaps you should pick another guild to try to frighten. The carpenters stand firm.” Teus and those of Khesphmois’ men who knew Greek snarled agreement.
“You misunderstand me-” Argyros began to protest.
“And you misunderstand us,” Khesphmois broke in. “Now go, or it will be the worst for you. Get out!” Just because he hadn’t shouted before, Argyros had judged that he did not care to. That was a mistake.
The magistrianos kept his hand away from his sword this time. Too many men had too many potential weapons close by. “The prefect will hear of your intransigence,” he warned. “He may try to root it out by force.”
“He has known of it for a long time,” Khesphmois retorted. “And if he uses force, there will be anakhoresis by every guild in Alexandria. We will stop the city. He knows that, too. So-” He jerked a thumb toward the curtain of beads.
Furious and frustrated, Argyros turned to go. He was reaching out to shove the beads aside when someone behind him called, “Wait!” He spun around, startled. It was a woman’s voice.
“Zois,” Khesphmois said, naming her and at the same time letting the magistrianos know from the mixture of patience and annoyance in his voice that she was his wife. He had used that same tone with Helen, and she with him, many times. As always, sorrow stabbed him when he thought of her.
“Don’t ‘Zois’ me,” the woman snapped; her Greek was as good as her husband’s. “You are making a mistake if you turn this man from Constantinople into an enemy.”
“I don’t think so,” Khesphmois said, also in Greek. Maybe only a couple of his men spoke it, Argyros thought, and he wanted to keep the family spat as private as he could. He was sure that was a forlorn hope, but grateful because it let him follow the talk.
“I know you don’t. That’s why I came out,” Zois said. She was a few years younger than her husband, slim where he would soon be portly, and quite short. Her high cheekbones were the best feature of her swarthy face, those and her eyes, which were very large and dark. Her chin was delicate, but the wide mouth above it was at the moment thin and firmly set.
The magistrianos waited for Khesphmois to send his wife away for interfering in men’s business. As he would learn, though, Egyptians were easier about such things than was usual at Constantinople. And even in the capital, men who exercised all the control over wives legally theirs were most of them unhappily wed.
“Can you afford to be wrong?” Zois demanded. Her hand went to the silk collar of her blue linen tunic. Only someone well off could have afforded the ornament. “If you are wrong, we will lose everything, and not just us but all the carpenters and all the other guilds. If someone comes all the way from Constantinople to see to this business, he will not just up and leave.”
“Your lady wife”- Argyros gave her his best bow- “is right. I am not especially wise, but I am especially stubborn. I should also tell you I am not a good man to sink in a canal, in case the thought crossed your mind. Magistrianoi look after their own.”
“No,” Khesphmois said absently; that he was still more intent on arguing with Zois made Argyros believe him. To her, his hands on hips in irritation, the master carpenter went on, “What would you have me do, then? Call off the anakhoresis now?”
“Of course not,” she answered at once. “But why not show him the reasons for it? He is from far away; what can he know of how things are here in Alexandria? When he sees, when he hears, maybe he will have the influence in the capital to make the prefect and his henchmen easier on us. What have you to lose by trying?”
“Maybe, maybe, maybe,” Khesphmois mocked. “Maybe I will run into a crocodile and spend the next hundred years basking on a sandbank, too, but I don’t lose any sleep over it.” Still, for his wife’s last question he had no good answer, and so, scowling, he growled to Argyros, “Come along, then, if you must. I’ll take you to the pharos, and we’ll find out if you have eyes in your head to see with.”
Teus and a couple of other carpenters started to protest, but Khesphmois shouted them down in a Coptic that sounded pungent. “Thank you,” the magistrianos said to him, and got only another scowl for an answer. The magistrianos turned to Zois and bowed again. “And thank you, my lady.” He spoke as formally as if to a Constantinopolitan noblewoman, as much in the hope of vexing Khesphmois as for any other reason.