Thessalonica

The satyr made a noise like none he’d ever heard before. After a moment, he realized it was half moan, half giggle. “I watch priest go out to wolves,” the satyr said. “He not see me, or he” --once more, it indicated the sign of the cross without actually making it-- “and I have to run away. But he not see. He find wolf. He go up to it. He do that thing, thing make me run.”

“Yes?” George said when the satyr didn’t go on. “What happened then?”

Again, that strange mixture of mirth and terror burst from the satyr’s throat. It was an appalling sound, one that made the little hairs on George’s arms and at the back of his neck stand up as if he were a wolf himself. “Priest do that thing,” the satyr repeated. “He do it not at me, so I see safe. And wolf--eat him up.”

“Really?” George said. It was, he realized, a foolish response. He consoled himself with the thought that it was better than making the sign of the cross, which would have routed the satyr. It had been a long time--a lot longer than he’d been alive--since powers that could stand up against Christianity’s most potent symbol had come into this part of the world. He nodded slowly to himself, fitting puzzle pieces together like mosaic tesserae in the church of St. Demetrius. “They must belong to the Slavs.”

“Slavs.” The satyr spoke the word as if it had never heard of the people so named. “Who--what--are Slavs?”

George’s nose was long and beaky, admirably made for exasperated exhalations. “They and the Avars have only been raiding the Roman provinces south of the Danube for the past generation,” he said, his tone perfectly matching the irritated sniff.

“Ah, only one generation,” the satyr said in some relief. “No wonder I not know.”

“Only one . . .” George fell silent. He studied the satyr. He’d shot that only one generation as if from a catapult, propelled by sarcasm rather than twisted cords. The satyr, though, had taken him literally. And why not? he realized. What was a generation to a being essentially immortal? The satyr was speaking with him now. It might have spoken with St. Peter when he traveled through Greece not long after the Incarnation, had it so chosen and had the saint not driven it from his presence by overwhelming holiness. It might have spoken with Alexander the Great. George shivered. It might have spoken with Achilles before he sailed for Troy. No wonder it took mere generations lightly.

“This wolf thing eat up priest,” the satyr repeated. It ran a tongue as long and red as its phallus around its mouth, imitating a wolf licking its chops. “Then it look over to where I am. It not blind and stupid like priest--it see me. It think about eat me up, too. I see it think. Then it decide, I full. I see that, too. Wolf get up, go away.”

George wanted to say Kyrie eleison or Christe eleison, but didn’t, for fear the holy words would make the satyr flee. He looked at it with an emotion he’d never expected to feel toward its kind: sympathy. “You’re in a hard spot, aren’t you? If you come down to places like this, the priests and holy men will get you. If you stay where you have been staying, though, the wolves will do the same.”

“Not wolves only,” the satyr said. “Other things, new things, never-seen things. Frightening things.”

Frightening because they’re new or frightening because they’re frightening? George wondered. To an immortal that had grown used to the ways of its part of the world, change of any sort had to seem like the end of that world. What must the Olympians have thought when Christ overcame them? The satyr hadn’t been so strong as all that--but the other side of the coin was, lesser threats were dangerous to it.

“What I do?” it mourned now. “What I do?” Its eyes bored into George’s as if it was sure he had the answer.

He wished he did. But he was a Christian himself. Some--many--would have said he’d already shown too much tolerance for this creature of the old dispensation. As far as he was concerned, though, the Good Samaritan made a better model than the Pharisee who went out of his way not to help lest he be defiled. And, in purely pragmatic terms, what he’d learned was worth knowing, not only for his sake but for Thessalonica’s.

None of that did the satyr any good. It made another strange noise, this one full of despair, and started for the trees. “Wine sweet,” it said, as if suddenly remembering, and then it was gone.

George strode into Thessalonica through the northwestern gate close to St. Catherine’s church. He carried a couple of hares and a couple of partridges: not a great day’s hunting, but not bad, either. He and his family would eat well tonight, and tomorrow, too.

Calm washed out of Catherine’s as he walked past it. Unlike Demetrius, she was not a warrior saint: very much the reverse. She had been martyred in Alexandria after besting several pagans in debate; when her head was struck off for her temerity, milk flowed from the wound instead of blood.

Feeling her holy influence eased George s worries … for a little while. With such spiritual strength behind it-- to say nothing of the imperial soldiers and the popular militia to which he belonged--Thessalonica could surely stand up against anything the Slavs and Avars might do, whether with their soldiers or with their gods and demons.

Most men would have let the rationalization satisfy them. In spite of Catherine’s calm, George could not make himself forget the satyr had said a Slavic wolf had devoured a priest who tried to banish it. You should pray more, he told himself, and think less. He’d been telling himself the same thing for a good many years. He did pray, frequently and sincerely. He never had been able to make himself stop thinking, though.

He brought the game he had killed into the shoemaker’s shop where he hadn’t worked that day, having gone hunting instead. That did not mean the shop had stood idle. With his wife Irene, his daughter Sophia, and his son Theodore to help with the work, things got done whether he was there or not. He sometimes suspected things got done better when he wasn’t there. He’d never voiced that suspicion aloud, for fear Irene would confirm it.

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.