Monday, Monday... Story time again...

Hello.
February, the shortest month, and halfway through, Valentine's Day.  With that in mind, today's story has a topical theme...

Valentine and Asterius

‘We’ve got ourselves a new guest, Asterius.  Take him this.’ Darius, her father, put the heel of a loaf and a strip of dried fish on a wooden platter and thrust it into her hands. ‘I’ll  give you water, too. He’s in the one at the end.’

‘What’s he like, why’s he here?’ she asked, her empty blue eyes bright with curiosity as Darius filled a wooden beaker with water and balanced it on the platter.

‘He won’t hurt you, but don’t get too close.’  Her father’s eyes crinkled at the edges, his way of smiling.  She couldn’t see, of course, not any more, but she could hear it in his voice. She hadn’t always been sightless. ‘Tell him – mind this, now – tell him the food will do him good.’

‘The food will do him good,’ she repeated in a sing song voice.

‘He’s the only one you’re to talk to,’ Darius said, a stern note creeping into his voice as she trotted off.  ‘They’re all a bad lot we’ve got now, except for him. Sooner we get rid of them, the better…’ 

He sighed.  Of course they were a bad lot.  It was a prison, wasn’t it?

Down a flight of cold stone steps, her bare feet making but a whisper as she went, Asterius carried the platter, her shoulder brushing against the wall to help her find her way. Past three doors on the left, and at the end of the corridor she reached another door set in the stone.

Setting down the platter – she needed both her small hands to move the huge bolts on the door  – she shot the bolts back with a resounding, echoing clank and clunk and shoved against the thick oak planking until it creaked open far enough for her to ease herself in.  Pressing her back against the cold wall of the cell, she listened intently for the clank of chains that would suggest the prisoner was looking at her. But there was nothing, no sound to guide her, so she remembered where in the cell the chains fastened to the wall, and turned her face in that direction.

 ‘Asterius, am I,’ she said, because even if he was a prisoner, still, her father had told her to always be polite.  ‘My father sent me with food for you…’

‘Food, you say?’

You could tell a lot about someone from the voice; this voice was well-spoken, wary. Automatically she turned towards the corner where she’d heard it.

‘He says - my father – that it – the food – will do you good…’

She backed out of the room and found the platter, pushing it across the floor towards him.

‘Can you reach?’

‘Thank you, Asterius, I have it. I’m called Valentinus. Please thank you father,’ he went on, and she heard something like a smile in his voice, ‘for the fish, and the bread.’

She nodded, but made no move to go.  ‘I’m to wait for the dish, and the cup,’ she told him.

 ‘Then please, get comfortable, he told her.  ‘If you can.’  He broke the bread in two.  ‘Would you like some?’ he asked.

‘No, thank you,’ she replied, lowering herself to sit cross legged on the ground. ‘It’s just for you.’

She couldn’t see what he was doing, of course, and so was unaware that he folded his hands and closed his eyes, his lips moving silently for a moment before he began to eat slowly, sipping at the water in between bites.

‘What did you do?’ Asterius blurted out, too full of curiosity to keep silent.

He paused in his meal and looked at her; it was obvious that she was blind; her open, blank blue eyes were bright and glinting with interest as they danced to their own rhythm in her small face. She couldn’t be more than about fifteen, her dark her long and tied only loosely back from her face, a smudge of ash or cinder on her chin and her clothes tidy, but grubby. He found he wanted to talk to her.

‘Ah, yes.  What did I do?’ He took a bite of fish and chewed at it.  ‘Well, I disobeyed the Emperor…’

She gasped.  ‘Why would you do that?’

‘I know,’ he replied.  ‘I did it because to obey His Imperial Majesty Claudius II would have been to disobey someone far, far more important…’

‘But there isn’t anyone more important than…’ She thought for a moment, her young brow creasing with effort. Oh. Maybe there was someone more important than the Emperor. ‘You mean his Imperial Mother?’

The prisoner laughed.

‘No, not his mother! You see, I’m a priest…’ He could confess it freely, the meal of bread and fish and the message Asterius had delivered from the jailer had been a sign that he was amongst sympathisers, ‘and Claudius has just decreed that young men cannot marry…’

‘But why does he mind it?’

‘He thinks he’ll get better soldiers from men who don’t have wives and children to worry about.’

‘But that’s silly! Wouldn’t they fight harder, so they can get back home to them safely?’

  ‘You would think so. But the Emperor doesn’t, and when he found out I was still performing marriages…’

‘What will happen to you?’ she asked. 

He fell silent, taking his time and chewing, chewing remainder of the fish. When he didn’t answer, Asterius flushed, and dropped her head to the ground.  Yes; she was a jailor’s daughter, she knew the sort of thing that was going to happen to him.

‘It’s not fair!’ she blurted out, and, forgetting she was meant to stay for the platter and cup, pushed herself up off the floor and fled from the room.

She repeated it again to Darius.  ‘It’s not fair!’

‘Don’t go in again, if it upsets you,’ he told her. 

But she did.

The night was long in passing.

It was cold in the cell, and the straw made but a thin mattress. The iron shackle on his ankle was cold and the chain clanked. One of the men in a nearby cell spent several hours of the night moaning and weeping and swearing. Valentinus crossed himself and prayed for the man, for himself, and then added prayers for the jailor, who was not an unkind keeper, and his sightless daughter, with her bright, enquiring, empty eyes.  He dozed at last, waking chilled and aching and stiff in the grey morning, hearing the far-off clank and shunt of bolts being drawn and doors opening. He pushed himself up off the floor and tried to ease the soreness out of his back.

Finally, the bolts on his own cell were drawn and he looked at the door expectantly.

It was Asterius, bringing more food and dragging a little, three legged stool into the cell so she could sit and talk to him instead of standing.

‘Tell me,’ she asked.  ‘Tell me why you kept on making people married when you knew…’

‘Ah…’ Valentinus thought for a moment before speaking. ‘Well, my cousin Julia was about to marry her soldier when the decree came.  But, you see, so sure had she been that they would marry, that he’d talked her into not waiting until they actually were married… so she’d already fallen into sin.  Not to marry would have made her sin far, far worse…’

He took a bite of the bread she’d set down for him.

‘So you did it to help her?’

‘To help her? To save her, really.  News spread, of course, and soon another couple came to me…’  He smiled and sighed at the same time.  ‘And then another…’

And more and more had come to him, and however hard he had pressed upon them the need for secrecy yet, still, somehow word had got out and they’d come for him, dragged him from his quiet home and before the Emperor, dragged him down to the jail with the threat of death over his head.  Not that he minded, not for himself. He had done all he could to be a good follower of his god, and he was sure of his future reward. It was just that the longer he lived, the more folk he could bring to the true way, the more folk he could save from sin.

‘And for that, you’re going to die? That’s not… it’s…’

‘That’s how it is,’ he said, and she clattered back the stool and fled the cell, her arm grazing the doorframe as she left.

But of course, she went back.

‘What is it, about this god of yours?’ she asked, and he began to tell her, a little every day. After three days, he told her a miracle story, about how the lame had been made to walk… and stopped abruptly.  He had been about to speak of how the blind had been made to see, also, but it would have been cruel to tell her. Instead, he chose a different topic.

            ‘Tell me, Asterius, how did your sight leave you? Do you know?’

            ‘Oh, that’s one of my favourite of Father’s stories,’ she said with an oddly happy smile on her face.  ‘You see, my mother died when I was born and Father raised me. When I was little, he says, I was the prettiest child ever, perfect, and the priestesses came from the temple.  They all agreed a little girl as pretty as I was had to be sent to serve the Goddess. My father didn’t want to part with me, but they said that was silly, and the Goddess wanted me because I was so perfect. That night…’ Asterius lowered her voice dramatically, ‘that night, there was an outbreak of the sickness. Many little children died.  I was spared, but it left me with eyes all empty.  When the priestesses came back, I was no longer perfect and they didn’t want me. So, while it’s sad that I can’t see, my father says it’s proof that I wasn’t meant for the Goddess and it’s a good thing because I was able to stay with him. That’s a miracle, isn’t it, like the ones you told me your God makes?’ she ended brightly, happily.

Valentinus smiled.  The jailor was a good man, good enough to not abuse his prisoners, good enough to make up a story to save his daughter pain. He didn’t doubt there had been illness that had taken Asterius’ sight, but the rest? He wasn’t so sure.

The next day, she had chosen to sit beside him, her shoulder companionably close to his, and she asked him again about his beliefs in her light, curious voice.

He was part way through a story when, unusually, she interrupted him.

‘Valentinus, you know that story about the man who was lame?’

‘Yes, Asterius? What of it?’

‘Do you think he felt, well, a bit odd at first? After he was healed?’

‘What do you mean?’

And she turned and looked at him.

For a moment, they just stared at each other. But as a smile grew on his face, so, also, on hers. Her bright eyes had stopped their odd dancing movements and now were focussed, direct.

‘What do you see?’ he asked.

‘I hardly know! I… there is sun shining on the floor from a place high up in the wall.  There is dust dancing…’ She thrust out her arms in front of her.  ‘These are my hands!’ She turned her head towards him.  ‘And this is you? Valentinus?’

He nodded, his heart full of praise for the miracle.  ‘This is me.’

The days began to run past them, now that Asterius could see again. Valentinus asked for pen and ink and hide, and sketched and wrote and drew for Asterius to explain his stories, and each day, she drew closer, and each time, Valentinus felt fonder of her bright, inquisitive glance and the days made weeks of themselves and it seemed as if the whole world had forgotten about him, the whole world except for his god and his jailor and his jailor’s daughter.

It was inevitable, of course, that they should fall in love, because who else was there for them to fall in love with? and in their delight in each other and in the miracle of Asterius’ regained sight, they almost forgot where they were.

But one morning, Asterius danced down the passage to the cells and found the one at the end empty. The blanket was folded neatly against the wall, the writing materials stacked carefully beside it, but Valentinus was gone.

‘Asterius.’

The voice was her father’s, and he put his big hand on her shoulder gently while she stood and stared and stared and stared at the empty place where Valentinus had been.

‘They came last night for him. Claudius offered him a pardon, if he would but give up his faith…’

‘He wouldn’t do that,’ Asterius said in a low voice. ‘Not for anything, he wouldn’t do that…’

‘He didn’t.  He left you this…’

Into her hand, Darius pressed a letter; she looked at it as blankly as if she were blind again, her eyes moving restlessly over the words until she came to the ending: ‘Do not forget,’ he had written, ‘your Valentine.’