“Do you think the Slavs will come down as far as Thessalonica?” Irene asked.

“Farther west, bands of them have pushed deeper into Greece than we are,” he replied: Irene was not the sort of woman to be fobbed off with vague reassurances, especially when those were likely to be false. “So yes, they could come to Thessalonica. Taking the city is another question. God surely guards us here.”

“Yes, surely,” Irene agreed, but less confidently than he would have expected from her. She was worried, too, then.

She lay on her left side, facing him; he lay on his right. He set a hand on her hip, partly to reassure her, partly as a sort of silent question. He’d learned early in their marriage not to take her when she didn’t feel like being taken; the anger and arguments following that lasted for days, and were far more trouble than brief pleasure was worth. She, on the other hand, had learned not to deny him unless she was emphatically uninterested. For the most part, the compromise--about which they’d never said a word, not out loud--worked well.

If she’d flopped down onto her belly, he would have rolled over, too, and gone to sleep. Instead, she moved toward him, sliding across the linen of the mattress cover. He held her for a while, then peeled her out of her tunic and took off his own. Her body was warm, familiar, friendly in his arms. They seldom surprised each other in bed these days, but they made each other happy. As far as George was concerned, that counted for more.

Afterwards, he and Irene both used the chamber pot again, then redonned their tunics. The night was warm enough to sleep without those, but neither of them felt like startling their children in the morning. George fell asleep almost at once.