Thessalonica

She looked up from the undyed leather boots she was making for Peter the miller, who lived down the street. Her eyes brightened when she saw the game George had brought home. She had a few years fewer than his thirty-five--he wasn’t sure how many, but then, he wasn’t sure whether he might not be thirty-four or thirty-six himself--and looked younger still: her hair was still dark, her skin unlined, and, despite three pregnancies, she had almost all of her teeth.

She said, “You did well there--probably better than if you’d stayed here.” Like him, she made such calculations almost as second nature. Their parents had arranged the marriage, of course, but it had proved good not just because of the properties and families it joined. They thought alike, which made them enjoy each other’s company.

“Shall we stew them with cabbage and leeks, Mother?” Sophia suggested. She was fifteen now--George was sure of that, because she’d been born in the year Maurice became Roman Emperor. Her face was long and thin like her mothers, but she had most of his nose in the middle of it. He worried that it looked better on him than on his daughter.

“That sounds all right to me,” Irene said. She looked at George. He nodded. She looked at Theodore. He pulled a sour face. He was a couple of years older than Sophia, and at the age where he pulled a sour face at anything his parents suggested. Irene chose to make the best of that she could: “I know you’re not fond of leeks. Will you put up with them tonight because everyone else in the family is?”

“I suppose so,” he mumbled; sometimes soft answers from George and Irene were harder for him to take than furious shouts would have been. George, though, was not long on furious shouts. He’d had a bellyful of them from his own father, and didn’t see that they’d done much good in making him behave.

Irene carried the hares and partridges upstairs; like a lot of artisan families, George’s lived over their shop. Before too long, a delicious smell floated down into the work area. No customers had come in since George showed up with the game, and it was getting dark outside, so he felt no hesitation about shutting the front door and letting down the bar. He didn’t expect anyone would need new boots or to have a sandal repaired so badly as to come to the shop with a torchbearer--and, in the unlikely event somebody did do that, he could always open the door again. He and the children went upstairs after his wife.

It was lighter up there than down below: safer to put windows in the second story of a building, because they were harder to break into there. Even so, Irene had lighted a couple of lamps. The smell of burning olive oil was part of” the characteristic odor of Thessalonica, along with woodsmoke, garbage, and manure. George paid no attention to the smell when he stayed in town, but it forcefully brought itself to his attention when he came back after some time away, as with his day of hunting.

Irene ladled the stew into earthenware bowls; Sophia carried them and horn spoons to the table. Irene brought in bread and honey to go with the stew. Before the family began to eat, they bowed their heads. George said grace, thanking Christ that they had enough to fill their bellies. When he was done, he glanced toward the heavens. Though all he saw were the beams of the roof, he knew God watched over him.

The blessing reminded him of what had gone on in the woods earlier that day. “I saw a satyr this afternoon,” he remarked after he’d taken his first bite, and then, in much the same tone of voice, “Good stew.”

Theodore gaped at him; Sophia made the sign of the cross. They and their mother all exclaimed--they knew George too well to let that calm, casual tone lull them. Irene, not surprisingly, was the first one to put words to her thoughts: “I hope it was from far away, and that the creature didn’t bother you.”

“It didn’t bother me.” George took another bite. Deliberately, he chewed. Deliberately, he swallowed. “I gave it some of my wine--not too much. I didn’t want it drunk.”

“You should have driven it away, Father.” Now Theodore crossed himself, to show what he meant. “Those nasty demons can’t stand against the sign of the true faith.”

“I know that.” George hid his smile. In going against what his father had done, Theodore had--no doubt altogether without intending to--become perfectly conventional. George ate some more stew, then went on, “As things worked out, I’m glad I didn’t.” He told of what the satyr had said about the Slavic wolf-demon and what that demon had done to the priest.

His wife, his son, and his daughter, all made the sign of the cross then, to turn aside the evil omen. For good measure, Theodore also pulled at the neck opening to his tunic and spat down it, an apotropaic gesture older than Christianity, and one a priest might have frowned to see.

“What are we going to do?” Sophia asked. “If these barbarians and their horrible demons come against Thessalonica, how shall we be saved?”