Departures (19 page)

“No indeed, not on the whole,” Argyros said with what seemed to be agreement. “Still, his Imperial Majesty is disappointed that progress has been so slow these past two years. Surely in a land so populous as this, he feels, adequate supplies of labor are available for the completion of any such task.”

“Oh, aye, we have any number of convicted felons to grub rock in the quarries, and any number of strong-backed brainless oafs to haul it to the pharos.” Dekanos kept his voice under tight control—he was as wary of Argyros as the other way round—but his choice of words showed his anger. “Skilled workers, though, stone-carvers and concrete-spreaders and carpenters for scaffolding and all the rest, are not so easy to come by. We’ve had trouble with them.” He looked as if the admission pained him.

It puzzled the magistrianos. “But why? Surely they must obey an imperial order to provide their services.”

“My dear sir, I can see you do not know Alexandria.” Dekanos’ chuckle held scant amusement. “The guilds—”

“Constantinople also has guilds,” Argyros interrupted. He still felt confused. “Every city in the empire has its craftsmen’s associations.”

“No doubt, no doubt. But does Constantinople have
anakhoresis
!”

“ ‘Withdrawal’?” the magistrianos echoed. Now he was frankly floundering. “I’m sorry, but I don’t follow you.”

“The word means more than just ‘withdrawal’ in Egypt, I fear. The peasants in the farming villages along the Nile have always had the custom of simply running away—withdrawing—from their homes when taxes get too heavy or the flood fails. Usually they come back as things improve, though they may turn to banditry if the hard times last.”

“Peasants do that all over the empire, all over the world.” Argyros shrugged. “How is Egypt any different?”

“Because here,
anakhoresis
goes a good deal further than that. If, say, a man is executed and the locals feel the sentence was unjust, whole villagefuls of them may withdraw in protest. And if”—Dekanos was ahead of the magistrianos’ objection— “we try to punish the ringleaders or force the villagers back to their places, we’re apt to just incite an even bigger
anakhoresis
. A couple of times the whole Nile valley has been paralyzed, from the Delta all the way down to the First Cataract.”

Argyros understood the horror that came into the Alexandrian’s voice at the prospect. In Constantinople, officials feared riots the same way, because one once had grown till it had almost cast Justinian the Great from his throne. Every province, the magistrianos supposed, had special problems to give its rulers sleepless nights.

All the same, something did not add up here. “The peasants are not restless now, though, or you would not have said you had plenty of unskilled labor available,” Argyros said slowly.

“Very good,” Dekanos said, plainly pleased the magistrianos had stayed with him. “You are right, sir. Very good. But here in Alexandria, you see, the guilds have also learned to play the game of
anakhoresis
. Let something not go to their liking, and they walk away from their jobs.”

“And that—”

“—is what has happened with the pharos, yes.”

“May the Virgin preserve us all.” Argyros felt his head begin to ache.

“There’s more.” Mouamet Dekanos seemed to take morbid pleasure in going on with his bad news. “As I say, this is Alexandria; we’ve dealt with guild
anakhoreseis
before—or with one guild’s withdrawing, anyway. But
all
the guilds pulled out of working on the pharos at the same time, and none will go back till they
all
agree they’re happy. And this is Alexandria, where no one wants to agree with anyone about anything.”

“Well,” the magistrianos said, doing his best to hold on to reason, “they must all have been happy once upon a time or no work ever would have been done. What made them want to, uh, withdraw in the first place?”

“Good question,” Dekanos said. “I wish I had a good answer for you.”

“So do I.”

Most of the letters on the signs above shops in Alexandria’s western district looked Greek, but most of the words they spelled out were nonsense to Argyros. He knew no Coptic; as well as confusing his eyes, the purring, hissing speech filled his ears, for the quarter known as Rhakotis had for centuries been the haunt of native Egyptians.

The locals eyed him suspiciously. His inches and relatively light skin said he was not one of them. But those same inches and the sword on his belt warned he was no one to trifle with. Hard looks were as far as the natives went.

He stopped into a cobbler’s shop that advertised itself not only in Coptic but in intelligible if badly spelled Greek. As he’d hoped, the man inside had a smattering of that language. “Can you tell me how to find the street where the carpenters work?” the magistrianos asked. He jingled coins in his hand.

The cobbler did not hold out an open palm, though. “Why you want to know?” he growled.

“The leaders of their guild will have shops there, surely. I need to speak with them,” Argyros said. The fellow, he noticed, had not denied knowing; he did not want to get his wind up. When the cobbler still said nothing, Argyros gave a mild prod. “If I intended anything more, would I not come with a squadron of soldiers who know
exactly
where the guildsmen work?”

The cobbler grinned at that. His teeth were very white against his dark brown skin. “Suppose you might,” he admitted. He gave directions, so quickly that Argyros made him slow down
and repeat them several times. Alexandria’s grid of streets helped strangers find their way around, but only so much.

The magistrianos had a good ear for instructions. After only a couple of wrong turns, he found himself on a street loud with the pounding of hammers and fragrant from sawdust. Again he looked for a shop with a bilingual sign. When he found one, he stepped in and waited for the carpenter to look up from the chair he was repairing. The carpenter said something in Coptic, and then, after a second look at Argyros, tried Greek: “What can I do for you today, sir?”

“You can start by telling me why the carpenters’ guild has withdrawn from work on the pharos.”

The carpenter’s face, which had been open and interested a moment before, froze. “That’s not for me to say, sir,” he answered slowly. “You need to talk to one of the chiefs.”

“Excellent,” Argyros said, making the man blink. “Suppose you take me to one.”

Outmaneuvered, the carpenter set down his mallet. He turned his head and shouted. After a few seconds a stripling who looked just like him came out of a back room. A rapid colloquy in Coptic followed. The carpenter turned back to Argyros. “My son will watch the shop while we are gone. Come.”

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 corner 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 stern 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 exaggerration 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 turn 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.”