Congratulations to Chlöe Kübra (Review Fuse user ckubra), her story, “The Jailer’s Daughter,” is the winner of our Valentine’s Day contest.

This was a very close contest. Reading the entries, we laughed, we cried, we bit our fingernails in suspense, and we wondered how some people completely missed the reminder on the upload page to adhere to the clean content policy.

Thanks to all who participated and thanks for making it really hard to decide by writing so well. Also, thanks to Chlöe for allowing us to post her story here on the blog. Here it is for all to enjoy:

The Jailer’s Daughter

Valentine knew that she didn’t love him. It was the particular way the jailer’s daughter moved tentatively around him to place down his meals. In her curt greetings, he heard the irritations of her service. Her sunken cheeks betrayed years of exhaustive labour, entering the rooms of criminals and giving them their only company. Still, having the futile task of feeding the stuff of graves was something for which Valentine did not think her suited.

Nonetheless, she came in every day, skirts swaying just above her ankles. It was the first part of her Valentine saw, for he lay in the corner of his cell, his bed made of sheaves of wheat. He would hear the lock on the door slot out of place in a heavy thud and soon enough, she would appear, ankles, the long tunic of a lower-class Roman, slender waist, arms outstretched with the usual offering of plain pottage. Her face was plain; thin, unmoving lips beneath a nose slightly hooked that rose between lifeless eyes.

Barely a greeting and then she was gone. He would watch her tender fingers carry in his meal, watch while her ankles stretched upwards to place it on an inlet in the wall next to him. Her eyes were always steady; she would never let them lose their balance, pupils caught calmly in the centre of the deep brown iris. Her expressionless face was an open canvas for the accursed priest. Valentine wondered whether she knew what he had been accused of, if she ever asked her father what it was each man new to the Mulvian jail had done so evilly to deserve execution. He wondered whether she had commented on Valentine’s quiet, willing resolve while other men were dragged kicking and screaming to their cells.

It was in the Porta del Poplo that they found him, marrying two young lovers. The boy, only seventeen, was to be sent to Gaul as reinforcement. The Emperor had outlawed marriage, dictating single men made better soldiers. At a time when the Roman Empire had expanded beyond expected limits, Claudius needed soldiers in excess. Despite Roman law, Valentine had continued to conduct these marital vows in private. He could not stand aside to the grand union of marriage.   Was she married? The priest could not be certain. She was not young, but past marital age. Her father would have made an effort to make links with a good family no doubt; she had the beauty to fetch a high price. She would have made a good wife; a silent provider, submissive, perhaps. Yes, Valentine imagined the lucky soldier who would come back to her arms, his scarred and war-broken body willingly subject to her warm embrace and smooth limbs –

Valentine gathered the crucifix in his robes and let his mind relax. The cell was stifling, isolated from the outside; there was no barred window through which he could look out of. The soldiers told him that the Emperor Claudius was suspicious the priest may attempt to conduct marriages through the bars to young hopefuls outside. Valentine was left quite alone with his thoughts, and recently he had begun to fear them more than the knowledge of his own death.

The weeks had turned to months and though Valentine had attempted to mark time with the burning of candles, this too had been lost in the depths of time. As each candle weakened and died, so Valentine’s love for the jailer’s daughter began to grow into obsession. As she walked, each shifting in her robe revealed a new, soft shape. Her feet were bound in cloth that betrayed the curve of her narrow ankles and feminine heels. The priest imagined her returning to her home after a day of work, slipping out of those shoes, dipping her bare feet in clean water, her robes loosened, water cooling her fragile figure, then scrubbing away the filth of the prisons; slowly, silent.

Valentine turned in his bed, removing a stalk of wheat from the neck of his robe. Dreams of the jailer’s daughter had plagued him for a long time, but these particular dreams were ones the priest shook to think himself subject to. All those years devoted to joining two people in pure love, defying government to obey the laws of the divine; what was that to Valentine now but false pretense; a painted mask over a grotesque face. He had found solace in that mask, believed it for all those years but now, in solitary confinement with only his thoughts the mask strained and the monster emerged. What was the sanctification of souls, he disgusted himself in realizing the basic instinct of his own emotions. No refuge in books, no one in whose conversation he could escape. Valentine had found himself and he was lost.

The Tiber rolled against the shores of the town, hushing its locals with every wave. During the day its sound would be lost to the busy carts rolling along the Mulvian Bridge, weighed down with spelt on their way to Rome. The Bridge was his only messenger, his only reference to society. At night, Valentine would be lulled to sleep with the sure, steady sound of the Tiber’s tides. Tonight, he had no solace in its secure rhythm. The tortured priest hopelessly tried to keep his emotions in check, but each glance towards her turned his thoughts to desire. With each shift in her robe he imagined what it would be like to touch that yielding, warm flesh –

Valentine squeezed the crucifix in his hands. This was his punishment, to realize the fragility of the human mind. Death was his consolation now. Prayers were nothing, but still he prayed for the soldiers’ clubs and the hangman’s noose to finish his desperate misery.

The day must be nigh, he thought. To keep himself from his dangerous mind, he began to save the wax from his candles, to spread it flat against the cold floor and let it cool into a slate of sorts. It became habit, waiting for the wax to dribble down, just enough so the wick wouldn’t be caught in it and douse the flame. Whether the jailer’s daughter didn’t notice or didn’t mind, Valentine wasn’t sure, her eyes never strayed from the windowsill and then back to the door. Five candles later and he had managed to make a modestly sized canvas on the floor of his cell. He ran a hand over the hardened wax. A thin film remained on his index finger, tightening the skin. Retrieving a bone stylus from his robes, he pressed down on the wax and made an impression, curving the stylus, from abstract shapes, eventually constricting to series of letters. Valentine did not know what he would say, but he always knew the subject of his unformed words.

“The fourteenth.” Said the dutiful soldier who stood in front of Valentine.

“The day before the Lupercalia?” the priest allowed himself a chuckle at the irony. He would be executed before the Romans’ official holiday for purification and the coming of spring. He habitually dusted down his robe. This jail would certainly be cleaning out its cobwebs. There was Valentine, a dirty fingerprint on the Roman calendar, ready to be dabbed off. He could see his body swinging from the force of the rope around his neck as the spring wheat tickled his ankles. The celebrations would continue as normal the next day; he would be cut down with the rest of the harvest. The wheat would be strewn through the houses of the elite to mark the sanctification of the household.

Armour clanked uneasily in front of Valentine and he gathered his thoughts. The foot soldier informed him that he would be buried further north on the side of the Via Flaminia. That meant they would have to cross the Mulvian Bridge. He nodded, and noticing a sorrowful expression in the soldier’s eyes, forgave him for his sins.

“You are not to be judged.” Said Valentine, groaning inwardly. The hypocrisy of his response repulsed him.

The correct words still eluded him. He could not reach his subject; a mist had developed which he could not clear. Still he wrote, pressing the stylus down, valleys of wax without coherent meaning. Valentine had lost all count of the days; the fourteenth was just a number. At least the wax impressions kept him occupied; Valentine now valued each action towards the jailer’s daughter as a failure to keep his evil temptation in check. He scratched his newly created letters and reheated the curling wax, smoothing it out once again. Most of the words were endlessly changing, endlessly morphing into new expressions and new confessions, but three words he was sure of, three words remained when all else had been removed.

The fourteenth came and the wheat was harvested. The jailer’s daughter made her way across the Mulvian Bridge, as she had done every morning, to feed those men who had sinned.

He left it for her there, stuck fast on the floor next to where he had slept. A lengthily note declaring himself, saving himself from his believed sins, all scribbled and scratched away, leaving three words. From your Valentine.