Thessalonica

by Harry Turtledove

  The moon, full or near enough, rose in the southeast, in Capricorn, with the bright silver lamp of Jupiter not far away. Even after night fell, there was enough fight to see where to put your feet, and to see shapes moving out beyond the wall. There was, in fact, enough light to see shapes moving out beyond the wall whether they were really there or not.

  “I wish we could carry torches,” Dactylius said.

  “That would be fine,” George said. “If there are any Slavs out there sneaking up on us, they’d know where to aim when they started shooting.”

  “Urk,” Dactylius said: a sound that made no word in either Latin or Greek, but one full of meaning nonetheless. “I hadn’t thought so far. If to see I am more easily seen, I’ll do without the torch, and gladly.”

  “Good fellow.” George liked Dactylius, though he wondered what had prompted the jeweler to join the militia: a less warlike man would have been hard to imagine.

  Mosquitoes buzzed as the two militiamen patrolled their stretch of wall. One of the bugs bit George behind his left knee. He said something pungent he’d learned from Rufus. Dactylius laughed. Then a mosquito bit him, and he said something even more sulfurous. He laughed again, this time self-consciously. “You wouldn’t let Claudia know I talk like that among my fellow warriors, would you?”

  “Perish the thought,” George said. Maybe Dactylius was a militiaman because Rufus left him feeling less henpecked than Claudia did.

  Something moved, out beyond the ditch. George saw it. So did Dactylius. “What is it?” he hissed.

  “It’s a man,” George said. That was better than naming it a demon or a pagan god, but not much. His hand closed over the hilt of his sword. The leather grip comforted him, even if it wasn’t shoe leather. Besidehim, Dactylius started to say something but stopped, perhaps because his tongue was cleaving to the roof of his mouth. George didn’t say anything. He knew better than to try. If he opened his mouth with his heart pounding the way it was, all of Thessalonica would hear the noise.

  He went to the edge of the wall and peered down into the night. Sure enough, that was a man. What was he doing down there, away from the monastery to the west of the city? Spying out the land, was the first answer that leaped into the shoemaker’s agile mind.

  Then the man came out from the shadows of some bushes into moonlight. That moonlight gleamed off his tonsure. He looked up toward the wall with complete uninterest and began to sing, loudly and off-key, in Greek.

  “Christ have mercy!” George exclaimed, his voice an explosive whisper. “It’s a drunk monk, that’s all.”

  “You’re--you’re right.” Dactylius spoke in tones of wonder, as if he’d seen a revelation straight out of the Apocalypse of St. John.

  The monk wandered away. He’d developed a list from the wine he’d taken on, as a ship would list after taking on water. Anger washed through George, sweeping away fear. After a moment, the anger flowed away, too, replaced by a more characteristic sour satisfaction. “I don’t even have to think up things I’d like to do to the bastard for giving me such a start,” he said to Dactylius.

  “Why not?” the jeweler asked. “I was thinking of things like that.”

  George’s smile was broad, almost beatific. “Because before long that fellow’s going to have to go back to his monastery, and the abbot there will take care of everything we could dream up, and more besides.”

  “Oh, my,” Dactylius said, almost as if he’d had another vision, but this one of the pleasant sort.

  They paced back and forth along the wall for most of another hour. Nothing happened. That suited George fine. He would have been delighted to go home after his turn was up, slide into bed next to Irene, and, if he woke her up, say Nothing happened. She would be happy and relieved. He was already happy and relieved, the monk having turned out to be a monk.

  He wondered when he would be relieved in a different sense of the word. The moon was a good way up in the sky. Hours were hard enough to gauge during the day, let alone by night, but he thought the men who would replace him and Dactylius should be climbing to the top of the wall soon.

  He promised himself he wouldn’t tell them about the monk.

  A moment later, he too forgot about the poor sot From out of the blackness of the woods to the north and west of Thessalonica came a long, cold, fierce, hungry howl. All the adjectives formed in George’s mind as the howl echoed and reechoed in his ears. None of them described it He’d heard wolves before; when winter came down hard, they often drew near the city to see what--or whom--they could take. He did not believe for an instant that this sound had anything to do with any wolves he’d heard during hard winters, though.

  Beside him, Dactylius jumped and crossed himself. George did not blame the excitable little jeweler in the least. “That’s not a wolf,” Dactylius said, as if someone had declared it was. He seemed to realize as much; after a brief pause, he went on, “But what else could it be?”

  “It was a wolf--of sorts.” George spoke with an odd certainty, as if his mouth had adjusted to the horrid hunger of that sound faster than his wits had. After a moment, his wits caught up. “It must have been one of those wolf-demons the satyr was telling me about when I went hunting a few days ago.”

  “Christ have mercy,” Dactylius exclaimed. Such an oath would have been plenty to drive away any of the old pagan Greek spirits who heard it. For a moment, George hoped it had had the same effect on the Slavic demon. But then the wolf howled again, and was joined a moment later by another. The two howling together were more than twice as bad as one howling alone. They made George feel as if he, up on the walls of Thessalonica, were on an island of faith and piety in the middle of a dark sea . . and that the sea was rising, threatening to wash over him and his little island as if they did not exist and were of no account.

  “Devils!” Dactylius whispered.

  George did not argue with him. George knew he could not argue with him. Those were devils out there. Instead, he said, “Devils don’t prevail against God. That’s what the Scriptures say.”

  He did a better job of reassuring his friend than he did for himself. He believed he’d told the truth, but it was a long-term kind of truth. How many Christians had been martyred for the faith before it prevailed in the Roman Empire? If God chose for His own reasons to give Thessalonica over to the foe who knew Him not, He would do that. George could only hope that was not what He had in mind.

  No, that wasn’t the only thing he could do. He could also do everything in his power to keep the barbarians out of the city. God might offer the way, but men had to provide the means.

  “St. Demetrius!”

  At first, George thought that was only in his own mind, seeking intercession with the divine. Then he realized the call had come from someone else. “St. Nicholas!” he answered.

  “Thought you were asleep up here,” Sabbatius said, advancing to take his turn on sentry-go. “Did you hear the wolf a few minutes ago?”

  George looked at the tubby newcomer. “I thought it was your stomach growling,” he said. But he could not stay jocular long. “Yes, we heard it.”

  He and Dactylius descended from the wall and lighted torches at one burning down there by the base so they could find their way home. They carried their weapons home with them, too, which was enough to repel any thieves who might have skulked through the streets of Thessalonica in the darkness.

  Irene had thoughtfully left a lamp burning downstairs. George carried it up to the bedroom. He tried to slide into bed as quietly as he could, but woke her. “Those horrible wolves,” she said drowsily. “I didn’t dream them, did I?”

  “No,” he answered, truthful before he -wondered whether a lie might have served better. Irene nodded and went back to sleep. Some time later, George wished his own rest would have come so easily.

  II

  Sophia came running back from the market square with turnips in her hands and excitement on her face. “Come quick, everybody,” she called as she hurried into th
e shop. “There’s going to be a procession out to the monastery of St. Demetrius--you know, the one with the healing spring.”

  George looked up from the fancy boots he had almost finished ornamenting. “What kind of procession?” he asked.

  “Remember Menas the nobleman?” Sophia said. “The one who hasn’t been able to use his legs since his horse threw him a few years ago?”

  “Yes, I remember Menas,” George said. Beside him, Irene nodded, too. He went on, “He’s lucky he’s rich, to have bearers put him in a litter and take him wherever he wants to go. We’ve all seen him in church.” Irene nodded again. This time, so did both their children. “A poor man,” he finished, “a poor man would probably have to stay in his bed the rest of his days, and those wouldn’t be long, either.”

  “Will you let me tell you?” Sophia burst out. She pretended to throw a turnip at him. Now he nodded.

  She said, “St. Demetrius sent him a dream, he said, that if he goes out to the monastery and bathes in the spring, he’ll be able to walk again.”

  Irene crossed herself. “May it be so,” she said.

  “Aye, may it be so,” George agreed. His spirit was not quite so broadly generous as his wife’s, though, so he could not help wondering why God and the saint had chosen to give that dream to Menas rather than to some poor and wretched paralytic whose state, as he’d suggested to his daughter, was liable to be far worse than that of the nobleman.

  His shoulders went up and down. When God needed a shoemaker to advise Him on how to run the world, no doubt He would inquire. In the meantime, He would do as He pleased, not as pleased George.

  Theodore said, “If St. Demetrius promised a miracle, that would be something worth seeing, wouldn’t it, Father?”

  “You see a miracle whenever you take bread and wine and communion,” George said. “What I see is a young scamp who wants some time off from work.” He put down his awl. “I wouldn’t mind a little time off myself. Let’s go -”

  Theodore whooped. Sophia set the turnips on the counter. “What shall we do if a customer comes in while we’re away?” Irene asked, resisting even after her husband had given up.

  “What shall we do? We’ll miss him, that’s what,” George said, which, while literally true, earned him a glare from Irene. He went on, “A lot of the people who might come in, you know, will be parading along with Menas, too.”

  “I suppose so.” Irene weighed it like a judge considering evidence, and in the end gave a nod George would have described as judicious. “Yes, I suppose so.” The decision made, she brightened. “That will be exciting, won’t it, if the saint does work a miracle for us?”

  “Yes, it will,” George said. That was also true. If it left him imperfectly satisfied with the way the world was arranged, he had no one to blame but himself. Maybe God had some special reason in mind for restoring to Menas the use of his legs.

  And maybe Menas would bathe in the spring without having the use of his legs restored. Till the event, you couldn’t tell. Satan might have sent the dream, deceiving the nobleman to weaken not only his faith but also that of everyone who watched him bathe. Or he might have had the dream all on his own, imagining he saw St. Demetrius because he so badly wanted to walk again. Once more, no way to know till the moment.

  “Come on,” Sophia said. “They’re not going to wait for the likes of us before they start. If we don’t hurry now, we’ll have to hurry to catch up or we won’t be able to see a thing.”

  She and Theodore waited for no more discussion from their obviously stodgy parents; they headed out the door. George and Irene looked at each other, started to laugh, and followed. George closed the door after them.

  They were far from the only people hurrying toward the market square. Seeing that, the shoemaker caught his wife’s eyes and gave her his best I-told-you-so look. She did her best job of pretending she hadn’t seen it, which left the match a standoff.

  “Oh, good!” Sophia exclaimed when they got to the square. “He hasn’t left yet.” Sure enough, there in the middle of the crowd sat Menas’ Utter, the poles above the seat where he reclined supporting a brightly dyed canopy that kept the sun off his noble head. Also there, gorgeous in his vestments, stood Bishop Eusebius. If this was a true miracle, he intended to wring from it every grain of advantage he could.

  Not everyone in the market square had come to join the procession. Some people remained intent on doing the business of an ordinary market day. And others, detecting out-of-the-ordinary opportunities to turn a profit, appeared in the square when they ordinarily would not have. There stood Paul the taverner, for instance, with a jar of wine and a dipper, selling drinks for a couple of folleis apiece. He was doing a brisk business.

  George waved to him, calling, “I thought you were talking about joining the militia. Where have you been?”

  “I’ll get there, never fear,” Paul said. “I’m a busy man; you can’t expect me to do everything at once.”

  “Have it your way,” George answered. Maybe the taverner would come, maybe he wouldn’t. George hoped he would. He liked Paul, and anyone who could run a tavern and keep it from being a place where men went at each other with knives a couple of times a day--which Paul’s emphatically was not--had the makings of a pretty fair underofficer in him. Besides, if Paul joined his company, he might offer his fellow militiamen discounts on his stock in trade. George liked that idea, quite a lot.

  “Look!” Sophia said. “They’re starting. We got here just in time.” The sniff following that comment spoke volumes on her opinion of parents who had almost made her late for such a spectacle.

  The canopy shielding the limp-limbed Menas from the sun rose several feet as his bearers lifted the litter in which he lay. Eusebius preceded it on the way out toward Cassander’s Gate, by which the soldiers had left a few days before. The bishop sang the Trisagion--the Thrice-holy--hymn: “Holy one, holy mighty one, holy immortal one, have mercy on us!”

  Many voices swelled the hymn as the procession passed under the arch of Galerius and out through the gate. George sang as loudly as anyone, and not much less musically than most. A God Who would not have mercy on poor but sincere music sent up to glorify His name would have been a hard and unmerciful God indeed.

  For a wonder, no one in the crowd added the Monophysite clause-- “Who was crucified for us”--to the Trisagion. That probably would have led to cries of heresy and touched off a brawl if not a lynching, and would hardly have been an auspicious way to advance toward a hoped-for miracle.

  Singing still, the bishop and Menas in his litter led the procession toward the monastery of St. Demetrius. The monastery stood near the top of Cedrenus Hill, north of the Via Egnatia. It looked as much like a small fortress as a place of contemplation and worship, having been built in the days when the Goths rather than the Slavs were sniffing around Thessalonica. Those strong stone walls might come in handy again.

  The track up to the monastery was steep and winding and full of rocks. Someone complained blasphemously about breaking a strap to his sandal. George dared hope the fellow would come in before long to have the damage repaired.

  Then such notions left him as the procession drew near the spring, which bubbled forth from a cleft in the rock of the hillside. The setting, in the middle of a wooded glade, with the monastery’s walls visible through the trees off to one side, did not seem appropriate for any but prayerful thoughts.

  Something was carved into the stone not far from the origin of the spring. George, curious as usual, pushed his way through the crowd so he could read the inscription, which was written in square, old-fashioned Greek letters:

  GLORY TO THE SHRINE AND TO ASCLEPIUS, WHO CURED MY ILLNESS HERE: I, GAIUS THYNES, WRITE THIS IN THE SECOND CONSULSHIP OF THE EMPEROR TRAJAN.

  He whistled softly. This had been a healing place for a long time. He didn’t know exactly how long Trajan had been dead, but he knew it had been hundreds of years. Back then, Asclepius had ruled the spring. Sometime in the centuri
es since, St. Demetrius had taken it from him. But the saint had kept it as a place of healing.

  Menas’ bearers undid the side curtains that kept the curious from staring into the rich paralytic’s litter. Two of them bent, reached inside, and brought out their employer, who kept one arm around each of their necks. Menas had a tough, fleshy face, arms as big and strong as a stonemason’s, and a broad, powerful chest. His legs, though, were pale and shriveled and useless.

  Bishop Eusebius anointed his forehead with purified oil, sketching a cross there that gleamed in the sun. The bishop raised his hands in prayer, declaiming, “Myrrh-exuding great martyr Demetrius, heal your servant Menas in the name of God--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.”

  “Amen,” George said, along with everybody else. Here in the glade by the hillside spring, he no longer doubted Menas had had a true dream. Why St. Demetrius had chosen to aid the noble rather than some other cripple remained beyond the shoemaker’s understanding, but the saint seemed to have done just that. The very air felt pregnant with possibility.

  “Put me in, boys,” Menas said to the bearers, his gruff voice matching his appearance. But then he spoke in tones of wonder: “It’s almost like being baptized again, isn’t it?”

  “In no way,” Eusebius answered. “Baptism seals your soul, where the spring, even if God is kind, will heal only your body.”

  Menas bowed his head, outwardly accepting the bishop’s correction. George, though, could still see his eyes. Eusebius might speak slightingly of the body, but Eusebius was not imprisoned in his. “Put me in,” Menas said again, even more urgently than before.

  Grunting a little under his weight, the bearers obeyed, placing him in the little pool the spring formed before its water flowed on down the hill. Eusebius called once more on St. Demetrius.

  Like everyone else, George sensed the moment when the healing began. Maybe the bishop’s prayer had brought it on. George, though, was more inclined to feel it happened of its own accord, or rather that St. Demetrius would have interceded whether Eusebius had been there to pray or not. Power thrummed in the air, in the ground, and most of all, no doubt, in the water in which Menas lay and which poured over him out of the cleft in the rock. George breathed deeply, as if hoping he could suck some of that power into himself and bring it down out of this place and into his day-to-day life in Thessalonica.