“That was the entirety of the wish.”
The rain softened outside.
Somewhere deeper in the hall, a servant dropped something and immediately swore.
Aldwin exhaled slowly. “The abbot at Sheppey told me something before I left.”
“What?”
“He said men who come searching for heavenly manuscripts are almost always searching for something that cannot be found there.”
His gaze lowered to the tabletop. “He said manuscripts can tell you what has been. They cannot change it. Only the things done afterward change anything.”
“He sounds wise.”
“He was unbearably tedious.”
I laughed despite myself.
Aldwin stood. “There is a courier in the courtyard,” he said. “He arrived behind me by an hour.”
Something inside me immediately betrayed itself.
“A letter?”
He looked at me then with sudden exhaustion and something gentler underneath it.
“You should smile more often,” he said quietly. “You look less lonely when you do.”
Then he left me sitting speechless beside the accounts while rain whispered against the hall roof.
The letter waited on the desk in my chamber by the time I climbed the stairs.
Maud had placed it carefully atop a folded linen cloth as though Geoffrey’s handwriting itself required presentation.
I washed my hands first. Then sat and looked at the seal for a ridiculous amount of time before finally breaking it.
14 July, in the King’s encampment near St. Albans
To Harper, at Thames.
Your chicken has damaged my standing with three royal advisors and one bishop.
I attempted to read your letter with dignity. This failed almost immediately.
The bishop asked whether I had received military intelligence. I told him no, only news involving poultry and a privy. He looked at me as though I had become a danger to the realm.
You should know I have thought of your laugh more times than is reasonable for a man presently surrounded by politics and very poor wine.
The monastery where we are quartered smells of wet stone, lamp smoke, and too many exhausted men. This morning sunlight struck the eastern glass during Mass and turned the chapel gold for one brief moment.
I found myself wishing you had seen it. You would have liked the colors. I think often now of strange things.
The blue sleeves you wore at supper before I left. The expression you make before disagreeing with someone. I do not remember when this began.
Only that the court grows louder each day, and somehow my thoughts grow quieter whenever I write to you.
My father tells me I am meant to woo you properly.
