Thessalonica

Here came the bishop, behind a couple of muscular deacons swinging thuribles from which came the incense George often thought of as the odor of piety. Eusebius, his clever face more deeply lined than it had been when the siege began, took his place behind the altar. He raised his hands in a gesture of benediction that was at the same time a request for silence. When that silence proved slow in coming, the deacons stared out at the congregation so sternly, they soon obtained it.

“Kyrie eleison--Lord, have mercy,” Eusebius said. “Christe eleison--Christ, have mercy.” George echoed those prayers. So did everyone else in the basilica, the women in their gallery along with the men below. Eusebius said, “Servants of Christ, brethren, my friends: I have not bid you come to any ordinary divine liturgy. We are indeed here to beg God to have mercy on us in our struggle against the barbarians’ vicious onslaughts.”

In spite of the fiercely scowling deacons, a low murmur ran through the basilica from people who hadn’t heard why Eusebius wanted them there or had got a garbled account that needed correcting.

Eusebius went on, “We have reason to believe the Slavs and Avars are wickedly consorting with the demons who, in their pride, reckon themselves gods, and seek to inspire those demons, whose province is the infernal regions, to overthrow the fortifications of this great and God-guarded city--fortifications the aforementioned barbarians have proved unable to overcome--by causing the ground to tremble and shake in the horrors of an earthquake, thereby transforming Thessalonica in the wink of an eye from town to tomb.”

He brought out the sentence all in one breath, without the slightest hesitation. George admired that as much as he resigned himself to yet another dose of Eusebius’ mortuary rhetoric.

The bishop went on, “We pray Thee, God, all of us here, individually and collectively, to spare Thy city and thwart and bind the powers of the demons, in accordance with the greatness of Thine own power. Let us live as we have lived, secure in Thy bosom and that of the Roman Empire Thou lovest. Preserve the calm Thou hast ordained in the bowels of the earth.”

Theodore’s face assumed a look of intense concentration. Acting with the reflexive speed he’d acquired in combat on the walls of Thessalonica, George stepped on his son’s foot, hard enough to make Theodore grimace in pain. Whatever might have happened, didn’t.

After that, assuming a properly reverential attitude, one that might persuade God to pay some small attention to his prayer, wasn’t easy for George. He did his best, and had to hope it was good enough. He suspected the only prayer Theodore had offered up to the Lord was one for timely flatulence, and George had managed to keep that one from being granted.

Fortunately, Theodore hadn’t howled when George stepped on him. That meant the reverence of the rest of the congregation remained undisturbed all the way up to Eusebius’ final “Amen.” People filed out of the basilica of St. Demetrius chattering approvingly about what a moving prayer service it had been.

“And when they say ‘moving,’ “ George told his son, “they aren’t talking about their bowels.”

“Bishop Eusebius was,” Theodore retorted, whereupon George trod upon his toes again. This time, it didn’t help. Theodore dissolved into giggles, from which occasional mumbles of “bowels” and “earthfarts” emerged.

He and his father met Irene and Sophia across the street from the church. “I see you didn’t have to kill him-- quite,” Irene said to George, again proving she knew their son as well as he did.

“I didn’t do anything,” Theodore protested, a cry that would have resounded with greater sincerity had he not still been snickering from time to time.

“Yes, and it wasn’t for lack of effort that you didn’t, either,” George said, which singularly faded to abash his son.

Sophia gasped. George whirled, expecting some Slavic or Avar demigod to be menacing his daughter or someone else close by. Pointing, Sophia said, “Look--there’s Constantine. Isn’t he splendid?”

As far as George could see, the splendid one was still hulking, rather surly-looking, and pimple-besplotched. He knew Sophia was looking at the youth as much with her heart as with her eyes. Instead of examining Constantine (to his way of thinking, an unprofitable exercise), George nodded politely to Leo the potter. The father of Sophia’s object of affection nodded back. He studied Sophia and then, warily, Irene. The smile she gave Leo showed good teeth; George was sure he’d imagined fangs in her mouth. Almost sure.

“God will provide,” Irene said. Her husband wondered whether she was talking about Constantine or freedom from earthquakes. Probably both, he decided.

Several Avars on horseback stared in at Thessalonica. “They don’t look very happy, do they?” Dactylius said, sounding happy himself at the Avars’ appearance of unhappiness.