“I tell you why.” Ithys leaped in the air from sheer high spirits. “Find woman in village--Lete. Give her all my loving. All my loving, I give to her.” He leaped again, like a happy billy goat.
That instantly raised the satyrs’ spirits, and their phalluses, though the centaurs stayed glum. “Tell me, tell me,” Stusippus exclaimed.
“I want to tell you,” Ithys said. “Yesterday, I see--”
“Tell me what you see,” Stusippus broke in.
“I try. I try. I tell the word” --logos, in Greek, could mean almost anything connected with speech and thought-- “if you not interrupting. You wait. Otherwise, I looking through you.” Ithys stood on its dignity, which was even more absurd than a dog standing on its hind legs. “First, I just see a face--”
“Then what?” This time Stusippus and Ampelus interrupted together.
“I get you, I think. I wave to her.” What Ithys waved was not a hand. “She want me.” The satyr preened. “I see her standing there. She set down her washering. She leaving home, her home. She not want to do it in road, but come out into trees. ‘Love me,’ I say. ‘Do. Please please me.’ She no ask me why. She hold me tight. We do and do and do.” Ithys panted at the memory. Ampelus and Stusippus panted, too. “Not a second time, not a third, not a fourth, not a fifth,” Ithys boasted. “She never say, ‘You can’t do that,’ like women sometimes do. When she finally have to go, ‘Any time at all,’ she say. She say, ‘I need you.’ I’ll be back, yes, yes, yes.”
Ampelus and Stusippus both sighed, jealousy and admiration perfectly mixed. “Nice someone happy,” Ampelus said. Stusippus nodded.
“Why all so gloomish here?” Ithys asked. “All you need is love.” The word the satyr used was related to love, anyhow.
“Need something different,” Ampelus answered, and went on to explain what George was doing in the camp and how the shoemaker and the satyrs and centaurs had tried and failed to reach Thessalonica.
Ithys stayed cheerful. “You not know lovely Lete well, no. You come in, I show you this, too. Maybe even show you maid.” The second part of the offer raised the satyrs’. . . interest. The first part made the centaurs pay attention at last.
“What meanest thou?” Nephele demanded.
The satyr talked for some time. If not explicit, it was interesting. Finally, it said, “You come with me. I show.” It started off, presumably toward the village. George, Crotus and Nephele, and the two other satyrs followed.
Lete, as far as George was concerned, might as well have been called Lethe, or Forgetfulness. Till he walked down its narrow, muddy, twisting main street, he would not have believed any such hamlet still existed in the Roman Empire in these modern, enlightened times.
He had known paganism still survived in the hills above Thessalonica. He had always taken that to mean, though, that in some of those isolated villages pagans still lived side by side with their Christian neighbors.
But he might well have been the first Christian ever to set foot in Lete. That he walked into the village with Ithys and Ampelus and Stusippus, with Crotus and Nephele, argued that he was. Had Christians dwelt in Lete, their crosses and relics and icons would have forced the satyrs and centaurs to stay away.
The villagers stared at the centaurs, but only in surprise, not in superstitious dread. They took the satyrs utterly for granted, nodding and waving to them and calling greetings to Ithys, who was evidently a frequent visitor. Oh, a couple of matrons hustled young daughters presumably maidens off the streets when Ampelus and Ithys strolled by fondling themselves, but that was the sort of motherly precaution Irene would have taken with Sophia had they dwelt here rather than down in the city.
George got a much more careful scrutiny than satyrs or centaurs. The people of Lete were familiar with his companions. He was a stranger, and therefore an object of suspicion till proved otherwise.
He wondered what Bishop Eusebius would have made of a place like this. The short answer, he thought, was hash.
He understood why the good and holy bishop of Thessalonica left Lete alone. The good and holy bishop undoubtedly hadn’t the slightest idea the village existed. Ithys, leading the way, had found it without trouble, but George doubted whether he himself could have come back unaided. Folds in the hills hid a good many villages, but none so well as this one.
“What can they have here?” he asked Crotus.
“Means for your ingress into Thessalonica, an we be fortunate and the cockproud satyr speak sooth,” the male centaur answered.
That was more of a response than any George had dragged out of the creature till now. “What sort of means?” he demanded.
“I know not, not with certainty,” Crotus said. “I had not thought such means yet lay under the sun.”
“If you don’t know what and you don’t know whether, what in” --he almost said God’s holy name, which would have forced his companions to flight-- “do you know?”
“I know we have hitherto failed, which doth vex me, as it doth you, in no small measure,” Crotus said.
George walked along fuming. The male made no more sense than if it had suddenly started speaking Slavic. Seeing his anger and confusion, Ampelus said, “All sorts old things here: old things, strong things. Strong things, but not strong enough out there.”
That didn’t make any sense, either. And then, after a moment, it did, or maybe it did. Christianity was too strong for the old paganism of Greece. As the old faith and old powers fell back, naturally they would bring their talismans with them. Could winged slippers fly without a god in them? Or maybe the satyr meant something else altogether. George would find out.
In the midst of strangeness, one thing was familiar: the grapevine painted outside a budding near the center of the village. George said, “Shall we go in and have some wine?”
Ampelus and the other satyrs nodded. As their heads happily bobbed up and down, so did their phalluses. But Crotus and Nephele drew back in something like horror. “This is why we come not into villages,” Nephele said. “Did you not hear, foolish mortal, that wine doth madden and enrage us?”
That deep voice coming from such a lushly female form never failed to disconcert George. At the moment, his own embarrassment disconcerted him more. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I forgot.”
“Fortunate it is that the folk of Lete have memories better trained to retention,” Crotus said. “They know better than to serve us of the drink that inflameth us-- and that, by its sweet savor, tempteth us to inflammation.” The male’s left forehoof took a quarter of a step toward the tavern. When it noticed, it stood very still indeed. “I want wine,” Ampelus said.
“Wait,” George told the satyr. Pouting, it obeyed. George spoke to satyrs and centaurs both: “Who here is best able to tell us how we can use whatever is in this village against the Slavs and Avars?”
“The taverner,” Ampelus exclaimed.
Crotus and Nephele both loomed over the satyr. “Enough of this japery and nonsense,” the male centaur rambled,
“It is Gorgonius the carpenter,” Ithys said. “He has this--thing.”
“I pray he hath a tongue that scoffeth not,” Nephele said. “Lead on.”
Ithys led. George followed, not without a regretful glance at the wineshop as they passed it. He also came with a certain amount of relief that Menas had locked him and not Sabbatius out of Thessalonica. Sabbatius would have headed for the wineshop regardless of what that might do to the centaurs.
Along with the pleasant smells of new-cut wood and sawdust, Gorgonius’ establishment smelled of leather, an odor with which George was intimately familiar-- and which made him wish he were back in his own city. The carpenter was repairing the webbing of a bedframe when George and his companions came in. “Good day, friend,” Ithys said.
“Good day, good day,” Gorgonius answered, with a broad smile that grew broader when he saw the centaurs. “A good day indeed!” he exclaimed. “Welcome, welcome, thrice welcome. Your kind but seldom honors us.”
“Wine,” Crotus said. “We fear it.”
“Aye, aye.” Gorgonius nodded. He was near or past his threescore and ten; his hair and beard were the silvery white that seems to shine even indoors, and his voice sounded a little mushy because he had only a few teeth left in his head. But his eyes were still sharp, and nothing was wrong with his wits. “Satyrs and centaurs together, eh? Centaurs here in Lete at all, eh? Something is curious, sure as sure. And who’s this fellow you have with you?”
“George cometh out of Thessalonica,” Nephele said, sounding portentous in lieu of identifying him as a Christian, which the centaur could not do.
“Is that so?” Gorgonius said. “Is that so? Isn’t that interesting? What are you doing here, George out of Thessalonica?”
“Trying to stay alive.” George did his best to put things in order, from most immediately urgent to long-term goals. “Trying to keep the Slavs and Avars from sacking my city and murdering my family. Trying to drive them away from here for good.”
“That won’t be bad if you can do it,” the old carpenter said, nodding. “These new people and their new powers, I don’t fancy ‘em a bit. Not a bit. They change things around till they aren’t the way they used to be. So how do you propose to go about it?”
“I know a priest, a man who believes as I do.” George picked his words with care, trying to convey to Gorgonius what he meant without naming names that would drive off Ampelus and Ithys and Stusippus, Crotus and Nephele. “Put his power together with the powers that still live in these hills” --he pointed to centaurs and satyrs-- “and we ought to be able to beat the barbarians.”
“A priest, eh? One of your land of priests?” Gorgonius might not have been a Christian, might hardly have seen any Christians, but he had a good notion of how Christian priests, most Christian priests, thought. “Wouldn’t he sooner exorcise our friends here--isn’t that what they call it?--than work alongside ‘em?”
“I don’t think so,” George answered. “He’s--different from most priests.” And he’s doing penance because of it, the shoemaker thought. He didn’t mention that to Gorgonius.
“Well, maybe so, maybe so. It would surprise me, but maybe so.” Gorgonius pointed down toward Thessalonica. “What are you doing here in Lete instead of there?”
“I can’t get back to the city,” George said. “The Slavs and Avars and their powers are between here and there. The band of centaurs and satyrs tried to get me through yesterday during the day, and Ampelus and I tried to sneak through last night. Didn’t work, either way.”
“Wolves,” Ampelus added.
“Ah, those. Yes, I’ve seen those. Nasty things, aren’t they?” Absentmindedly, Gorgonius began stropping a knife on one of the leather straps that would support the mattress. “Well, well. What am I supposed to be able to do to help you?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” George answered. “Ithys thought coming to you was a good idea. All I can do is hope it was right.”
The carpenter didn’t say anything to that. He silently studied George for a while, then turned his gaze on Ithys. The satyr said, “You are Gorgonius. You know of what clan you spring, and why you have that name. I knew the man who founded your clan. You in the later days of your life look like him in the later days of his. I say this to you before.”
“Yes, and every time you’ve said it, I’ve told you what daft nonsense it is,” Gorgonius said. “He was a hero. I make tables. He killed monsters and rescued maidens. I got a cat out of a tree once, if that counts for anything, and I stepped on a cockroach the other day.”
“The satyr hath reason,” Nephele said. “Your foresire had wit and wisdom and knew both how to give and how to receive good counsel, than which few things are rarer among mankind.”
“Wait a minute,” George said. Everyone, aging carpenter and ageless immortal creatures alike, looked at him. “Wait just a minute.” Everyone did indeed seem willing enough to wait. Hesitantly, wondering whether he’d heard what he thought he’d heard and whether he ought to believe it if he had, he pointed to Gorgonius. He didn’t speak to the carpenter, though, but to Ithys and to Nephele. “You’re saying he’s from Perseus’ family.”
“Aye, in good sooth, we are,” Nephele said. “We knew Perseus. Perseus was our friend. Doth surprise you this, mayfly man?”
“A bit,” George said, trying not to show how much more than a bit it surprised him. He remembered thinking, when he’d first met Ampelus, how the satyr had been up in these hills when Paul was writing to the Thessalonicans, and for hundreds of years before that. He hadn’t realized how many hundreds of years, though. He didn’t know how long ago Perseus had lived, but it was back before the Trojan War, which was, by definition, antiquity immeasurable--except that Ithys and Nephele measured it.
“We have reckoned his descendants, even unto the hundred and fifteenth generation,” Nephele said, measuring antiquity most precisely indeed.
“That and a few folleis will get you some wine--well, not you, but the man here,” said Gorgonius, who seemed unimpressed with his illustrious ancestor. “But now I understand why Ithys brought you to me, George.”
George made the sort of intuitive leap that had given him a reputation for cleverness in Thessalonica--among those who cared whether a shoemaker was clever, at any rate. He stabbed out a finger at Gorgonius. “You’ve got Medusa’s head stowed away here somewhere, don’t you, so we can turn the Slavs and Avars to stone with it.”
“Are you out of your bloody mind?” Gorgonius exclaimed. “If the family had kept that horrible thing, they’d have been turned to stone themselves, some of ‘em, anyhow, and I wouldn’t be standing here talking with you. The whole village would be stone, too, and we could fortify it with our cousins and uncles. Daft!” He shook his head.
“Oh,” George said in a very small voice. When a clever man was stupid, he was stupid in a way a man who was stupid all the time could never hope to match, for the clever man’s stupidity, drawing as it did on so much more knowledge, had a breadth and depth to it the run-of-the-mill fool found impossible to duplicate.
Gorgonius took pity on him. ““What I do have, pal,” he said, “is the cap Perseus wore when he got up close to Medusa and her sisters.”
For a moment, that cap meant nothing more to George than that it was the pagan equivalent of, say, a saint’s shinbone in a reliquary in a church. But a saint’s shinbone might work miracles, and so might this cap. “The Gorgons couldn’t see Perseus when he came up to them,” George said.
“That’s right,” Gorgonius said encouragingly, as if George might not be an idiot after all. “Very good.”
“Does it still work?” the shoemaker asked. “Perseus wore it a long time ago.”
“It works.” Gorgonius’ leer rivaled anything Ampelus could produce. “I’ve seen more pretty girls, and more of ‘em, than you’ll ever dream about, pal, even if you live in that big city. Oh, it works, all right.”
Nephele let out a noise half giggle, half horsy snort. The satyrs’ interest in the conversation, which had been small, visibly swelled. George was all at once convinced Gorgonius was telling the truth. He didn’t know whether to be awed or appalled that Gorgonius had figured out a use for the cap so far removed from that originally intended for it.
After a moment, though, he doubted the old carpenter was the one who had only just begun that use. A lot of men’s lives lay between Perseus and Gorgonius. Surely one of the carpenter’s multiple great-grandsires had had that same inspiration. Probably a good many of them had had it.
Gorgonius walked out of the room in which they’d been talking. Instead of having his living quarters above his shop, as George did, Gorgonius lived behind his workroom: Lete was less crowded than Thessalonica and, so far as George could recall, had no buildings taller than one story.
When Gorgonius didn’t come back right away, Crotus rumbled, “Whither is the fellow gone, and for what purpose?”
“An I be not much mistaken, h
e hath not gone, or rather, he is returned among us,” Nephele answered.
Gorgonius said, “See what a clever lady you are.” His voice came from a point halfway between George and Nephele. His voice was there, but he wasn’t--not so far as the eye could tell, at any rate.
Then he lifted a nondescript leather cap from his head and abruptly became visible once more. “You see,” he said, and George did see. Then he put the cap on again, and George saw no more. He was tempted to cross himself, to learn whether the power of the holy sign was stronger than that of the cap which had befooled Medusa and her sisters in ancient days and, evidently, other, more attractive females since.
He held his hand still. The holy sign might destroy all the power the cap contained. It would surely rout the centaurs and satyrs, who had done so much to help him.
“Come back to our eyes, Gorgonius,” Nephele said. “Come back, that we may all take counsel together, each judging the probity of the others by examining their countenances.”
“All right.” Between speaking one word and the next, Gorgonius reappeared. “You’re saying you want me to let this fellow” --he pointed to George-- “borrow my cap here. Who’s to say I’ll ever see it again?”
“You can’t see it now, half the time,” George pointed out.
“That’s true,” the carpenter said. “Aye, that’s true.” He smiled at George, who thought he’d won a point. But even if he had, a point was not the game. Gorgonius said, “Why should I risk something that’s been in the family for so long, to help a stack of people who have no use for it, don’t believe it’s any good, and would destroy it if they could?”
He sent the question toward Nephele, but the female, Crotus, and the satyrs looked with one accord at George. “Why?” he said. “I can give you only one answer: whatever you think of the folk of Thessalonica, having the Slavs and Avars sack the city would be worse--for us and for you, too.”
“In the old days,” Gorgonius said meditatively, “I could have gone down into Thessalonica, and so could they.” He nodded toward the centaurs and satyrs. “Oh, Crotus and Nephele might not have wanted to, on account of the wine, but they could have. Now, though, one of those priests’d be on me like a fox on a rabbit. And my friends, they can’t go at all, not with all the saints and such who’ve been through there one time or another. Is that better than not having any Thessalonica at all? I wonder, George. I do wonder.”
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