Thessalonica

“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?

But most people, like the shoemaker, were chiefly concerned about getting back to the city so they could return to work. “Come on,” he said, gathering up his family. “Miracles are all very well, but you can’t eat them.”

“No?” Sophia said. “What about the loaves and fishes?”

“And manna from heaven?” Theodore put in.