Thessalonica

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 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.