Harry Turtledove - Thessalonica

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 centuries 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.

Menas splashed about in the pool, as if he were bathing. That reminded George he ought to visit the city baths himself one day soon. They weren’t so busy as they had been before Thessalonica became a Christian town (or so the bath attendants said, whether to drum up business or from a genuine tradition handed down with their strigils), but they were open.

Bishop Eusebius started to send up yet another prayer to St. Demetrius. He had hardly begun when Menas gasped. It took a good deal to silence a bishop in the middle of a prayer, but that gasp did the job. It was as if all the power immanent in that place had sprung forth in a single awe-smitten inhalation of breath.

Menas stood up in the pool.

For a moment, George simply accepted that. Menas’ strength and agility seemed so natural, he took them for granted. Then memory caught up with vision. Half a man had gone into the pool, but a whole man came out, water dripping in sparkling streams from the hem of his tunic. His legs, which had been thin and wasted, were now as thick and solid as his arms.

“Thank you, St. Demetrius,” he said. “Bless you, St. Demetrius.” He turned to the men who had borne him in the litter for so many years. “Take that cursed thing back to my house and burn it. I’m never going to get into it again.” Nobles often traveled through the streets in litters, not least to show those who weren’t nobles how important they were. George, though, could understand why Menas was willing to forgo that particular kind of aggrandizement.

“Let us thank God for the miracle He has given us this day?” Eusebius said. George gladly thanked God for letting him witness a miracle. Miracles were by their very nature rare; had they happened every day, they would hardly have been miraculous.

“How will you celebrate this miracle?” someone called to Menas.

The burly noble mulled that over, but not for long. “I am going to celebrate it with my wife,” he declared, a reply that made George realize Menas’ legs had not been the only parts of him that did not work. A good many other people realized that at about the same time as the shoemaker. Their ribald whoops echoed through the glade that had been full of the sounds of prayer only moments before.

Eusebius looked furious. He raised his eyes to the heavens; perhaps hoping divine wrath would follow hard on the heels of divine mercy. If so, he was disappointed. The day remained bright and warm and clear, and no lightning bolt came smashing down on the people in the grove.

“He is going in unto his wife,” someone behind George said, “and the Scriptures do tell us it is better to marry than to burn.”

“Menas has been crippled a long time,” George observed, “so I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s burning now.”

With determined stride, the noble headed away from the spring. The procession back to Thessalonica was a lot less orderly and less united in purpose than the one that had led to the sacred spring. Some people still hymned God’s praise. Bishop Eusebius remained incandescently angry. The men who had carried Menas about for so many years looked worried, and George understood why: with the noble walking again, would he still have work for them?