The nobleman showered Grigori with praise, and a great feast was held in his honor. But the physician, and the mayor, and the rich neighbor were not pleased by this turn of events. They had all long benefited from the nobleman’s favor, and they did not like to see him turning to a new adviser.
They began to whisper in the nobleman’s ear, tales of bizarre doings in the mountains. They claimed Grigori played with dark magic and that he had used that very magic to heal the nobleman’s son. They brought forth witnesses who said they had seen Grigori talking to beasts and making corpses dance for his amusement. Though his son and his wife pleaded for mercy, the nobleman could not ignore such terrible charges and had Grigori taken to the wood and left there overnight to be devoured by beasts.
As dusk fell and the creatures of the wood began to howl, Grigori was afraid, but he whispered to his Saints for guidance. When he knelt to pray, he saw that, at his feet, were the bones of others who had been brought to the wood to face a death sentence. From those bones, he fashioned a lyre, and when the animals drew near, he played a sad and haunting tune that rose from his fingertips and up into the branches, the melody hanging in the air like mist. The wolves ceased their slavering and laid their heads upon their paws. The snakes hissed contentedly, lying still as if upon a sun-warmed rock. The bears curled up and dreamed of when they were cubs and all they knew was their mothers’ milk, the rush of the river, and the smell of wildflowers.
In the morning, the soldiers returned and when they found Grigori alive and well, the nobleman’s son declared, “You see? This must mean that he is holy.”
But the physician, and the mayor, and the rich neighbor all said it was yet another sign that Grigori trafficked in dark magic, and that if he was allowed to live, the nobleman and his family would most certainly be cursed.
Grigori was taken to the wood once more, and this time his hands were bound. Night fell, and the creatures of the wood howled, and unable to play his lyre, Grigori was torn apart by the very beasts who had slept so peacefully at his feet the night before.
He is known as the patron saint of doctors and musicians.
SANKT VALENTIN
Just days before her wedding was to take place, a young bride fell ill, and though she fought valiantly and was tended to with love and care and many prayers, she perished. These were the worst days of winter, and because the ground was too cold to give way to shovels or picks, no proper grave could be dug. The girl’s family was too poor to afford a mausoleum. So they dressed the girl in the silks that would have been her bridal gown and laid her down upon a slab in the icehouse, her hands folded over her breast, her fingers clutching a bouquet of leaves and winter berries. Each day, her family would sit awhile and visit with her, and the young man who should have been her groom came to weep over the body long into the night.
When the first thaw arrived, a grave was dug on hallowed ground and the girl was lowered into it, a plain headstone marking her place of rest.
But the next morning, when the girl’s mother went to visit her daughter’s grave, she found a snake curled upon the headstone, its scales gleaming black in the sun. The woman stood shaking, fresh flowers in her hands, too afraid to approach, until finally, tears on her cheeks, she gave up and returned home.
All spring, the grieving woman would visit the cemetery with a new bouquet in hand. The snake would lift its flat head at her approach and sometimes slither down the stone to the gently mounded dirt. But it never left the girl’s grave and so no one could come to pay their respects—not her mother, not her father, not the heartbroken young man who had loved her.
The woman went to the church and prayed to Sankt Valentin, the patron saint of snake charmers and the lonely, and that night, Sankt Valentin spoke to her.
“Go to the grave,” he said, “lie down on the ground beside the snake, and all will be revealed to you.”
The woman trembled. “I cannot!” she pleaded. “I am too afraid.”
But Sankt Valentin’s voice was steady. “You can choose faith or you can choose fear. But only one will bring what you long for.”
So the next day, the woman walked to the cemetery, and when she saw the snake lying in the new green grass that had sprung up over her daughter’s grave, she didn’t turn away, but still shaking, made herself lie down on the damp earth. The serpent lifted its head, its glittering eyes like mourning beads. Certain it was about to strike, the woman prepared to feel the snake’s bite and join her daughter in the next life.
But instead, the serpent spoke, its slender tongue tasting the air.
“Mama,” it said, “it is I, the spirit of your lost daughter, returned to tell you of my plight. I did not die of natural illness, but from poison, fed to me in what was meant to be medicine by the man who swore he loved me until I told
