Thessalonica

“What can I do?” Suddenly, despite building catastrophe, Father Luke smiled. For a moment, George thought he saw in that smile the sun he’d hoped the priest would be able to restore. Father Luke said, “I could not make those powers quit this place against their will: they were too strong for that. Suppose instead, though, I give them everything they want?”

Through drumming rain, through rumblings and thunderings above, Dactylius hissed to George: “He’s gone mad.”

“I don’t think so,” George answered, though he had not the slightest idea what the priest intended.

As Father Luke had before, he stared up into the sobbing sky. As he had before, he chose words from the Book of Genesis, but words of different import, perhaps inspired by Dactylius: “ ‘On the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. .. . And the waters prevailed, and increased greatly on the earth . . . And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high mountains that were under the whole heaven were covered.’”

“What’s he doing?” Dactylius said fretfully. “Is he trying to drown us all?”

“No, I don’t think so,” George said. “The rain’s no worse than it was.” Before saying anything more, he paused and looked out from the wall. Something had changed. He was sure of that, but had trouble identifying what it was. And then, all at once, he laughed with glad surprise and bowed to Father Luke. “You did it, Your Reverence!”

“Did what?” Dactylius squawked. And then, a beat behind the other two, he understood. He too bowed before the priest.

“God gets the credit, not I,” Father Luke said. It was too wet for George to be sure his eyes twinkled, but he thought so. It was too wet all around Thessalonica, not just in the narrow circle to which the rain and lightning and thunder and rumbling had been confined. Now, like any proper storm, this one spread over the whole land.

“Give them what they want,” George said musingly.

“They must have been angry, penned up in such a narrow space.” Father Luke’s voice was amiable. Rainwater splashed off the tonsured crown of his head. “Now they can do as they like, where they like.”

“And if the Slavs and Avars don’t care for it--what a pity.” George laughed out loud. Even standing here soaking wet in the chilly rain, being alive felt monstrous good. He vastly admired cleverness, and what could be more clever than turning the Avars’ powers against the priest who had loosed them in the first place?

That, Father Luke had done. The storm of arrows that had joined the rainstorm to assail the militiamen on the walls of Thessalonica now died away: archery with wet bowstrings was as impossible for the Slavs as for the Romans. If the barbarians had planned anything more than sweeping the walls bare of defenders who could not shoot back, the sudden extension of the rain made them think again.

George peered out toward the Avar wizard who had summoned the thirteen thunder spirits and their lesser nimbler cousins to torment Thessalonica. He could see even less now than before, what with the rain extending all the way from him to the wizard. Was that angrily dancing figure the Avar, or just a Slav irked at having his sport spoiled? The shoemaker could not be certain.

Lightning crashed out of the heavens, striking near the dancer, whoever he was. The thunder that followed almost at once made George clap his hands to his ears. He felt as if he were standing inside God’s biggest bass drum. “Lord, have mercy!” he gasped.

“He has had mercy on us,” Father Luke said. “Without His help, our city would have fallen. But that wasn’t what you meant, was it?”

“Not exactly,” George said, his head still ringing.

“I hope the Lord had no mercy at all on that cursed Avar,” Dactylius exclaimed. “I hope that lightning bolt burned him to ashes, and I hope the ashes wash into the sea and are gone forever. That’s what I hope.” He stuck out his chin, daring the other two to disagree with him.

“I hope the Avars leave off attacking us and accept our faith,” Father Luke said. George snorted--that was a pretty sentiment, but how likely was it? Father Luke’s eyes twinkled again. After a moment, he went on, “That failing, Dactylius’ hope sounds good enough for me.”

“Do you think the lightning did cook the Avar priest?” George asked.

“What I hope and what I think are, I fear, two different things,” the priest replied. “Those are the powers with which he is intimately familiar; I think he will be able to bring them back under his control.”

George sighed. That made more sense than he wished it did. And Father Luke proved a good prophet, as George himself had, not long before. The rain soon eased off; the thunder stopped. A brisk breeze sprang up and blew away the storm clouds. “Here comes the sun,” George said happily. The sunshine was watery, but it was sunshine.