Harry Turtledove - Thessalonica

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 the 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!”