Thessalonica

If that inconsistency bothered Eusebius, he gave no sign of it, continuing, “What God has done in days gone by, He can surely do again, for, as we have seen with our own eyes, my children, the age of miracles is not yet past. And so let us with full hearts and reverent spirits offer up a prayer to God our Lord that He have mercy upon us now as He did upon the Israelites in days gone by and smite the Slavs and Avars with plagues and pestilences such that they are compelled to withdraw from the environs of this God-protected city, and such that they suffer from the aforesaid sickness as they deserve for the suffering they have inflicted upon us. Let us pray that they are requited as justice demands.”

That was a prayer to conjure with, literally and figuratively. George shivered again. He could think of no one who could hope to come through safe based only on justice, with no mercy thrown onto the scales to temper the verdict. How much more would that be true of the

Slavs and Avars than of people at least acquainted with the Christian faith?

Someone stepped on his foot. He looked around. There stood Menas, who, by the smug expression on his fleshy face, hadn’t done it by accident. George sent up a prayer of his own, for some undoubted divine justice to come to the nobleman who had taken a dislike to him.

Bishop Eusebius looked up through the beams of the roof to the heavens beyond. “We pray, O Lord our God, that Thou savest Thy city of Thessalonica and Thy Christian people in it” --not a word about the Jews in it, George noted, despite Eusebius’ citations of the Lord’s aid to the Israelites in days gone by-- “by smiting the Slavs and Avars with loathsome plagues and diseases, showing forth Thy power in that way and making the barbarians whom Thou hast accursed withdraw in terror and disorder. Amen.”

“Amen,” the worshipers in the basilica said solemnly, Menas and George for once agreeing. George hadn’t been willing to pray for Menas’ getting an arrow in the face when Theodore suggested it. He wondered if he really ought to be praying for dysentery or the bubonic plague to visit the Slavs and Avars in their camps. How was one different from the other?

The only answer he could come up with was that, when he prayed for something dreadful to happen to Menas, he would be praying for his own personal advantage. When he prayed for the Slavs and Avars to take ill, he was praying for the well-being of all the Christians (and even the unmentioned Jews) in Thessalonica. He hoped that was enough of a difference.

A moment later, he remembered that Menas was himself not only a Christian, but one whom God had directly aided through a miracle. A prayer for some misfortune to land on him was much less likely to be acceptable than one for the discomfiture of the pagans beyond the wall.

That made George feel better, but only for a Little while. Out beyond the wall, the gods of the Slavic wizards and Avar priests would find their prayers the more acceptable. How did that leave George on the moral high ground?

He wasn’t sure it did. The powers and gods the Slavs and Avars reverenced were both true for them and powerful as he had seen. His chief hope was that God would prove more powerful. That took things out of the realm of morals altogether, and into the realm of brute force.

Brute force mattered. Anyone who had ever walloped a child for doing wrong knew as much. But… George cast a speculative eye Menas’ way. Maybe he should have asked God to let the nasty noble stop an arrow with his face. God only knew what Menas had asked Him to do to George.

The Slavs, George reminded himself. The Avars. Once they abandoned the siege, life would return to normal. Then he could worry about Menas and his ilk. Till then, the survival of the city had to rank ahead of his own.

Another reason to pray for the plague to visit the barbarians, he thought, and did so.

“The divine liturgy is over. Go in peace,” Eusebius said. As George and Theodore filed out of the church, the shoemaker reflected that that farewell offered a strange contrast to the catastrophe the bishop and the congregation had called down on the heads of the warriors besieging Thessalonica.

As soon as they were outside, Menas said, “Do you know what I was praying for, shoemaker?”

“Something unpleasant for me, I don’t doubt,” George answered, and the noble smiled unpleasantly to show he was right. Shrugging, George said, “If I were you, sir, I’d spend more time praying camels fit through the eye of needles. If they don’t, you’ll have trouble fitting through the doors to the kingdom of heaven. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to meet my wife and daughter.”

He felt Menas’ eyes boring into his back as he walked away. Theodore set a hand on his arm. “That’s telling him, Father! That’s telling the big-bellied toad he can’t mess around with you.”