Black scrollwork ornament on the hip and thigh

The sea came into the chapel on Tuesday night and took the east wall's plaster with it, so I have been up the scaffold since dawn trying to put back what the water had. Father Anselm says the carvers who first worked this ceiling were dead before the island had a harbour, and I have no reason to doubt him. Their acanthus leaves still curl out from the cornice like something that wants to climb down and be sold at market. Nobody on Saltra knows their names. I only know that each scroll turns over on itself exactly three times before it gives up, and I have spent four days learning to count the turns in my sleep.

The trouble is the shadow. Where the old carver cut deep under the leaf, the lime has gone grey and soft, and every scroll I lay in fresh looks flat beside it. Yesterday I gave up and asked the boy who sweeps the nave to hold the lamp at the angle the sun reaches at noon. He thought I had gone mad. Then he saw the grey leaves catch the light and go black in the hollows, and he said nothing for a long while, which from him is a sort of praise.

Today the last scroll went in, low in the north corner, just above where the altar rail meets the wall. I pressed my thumb into the wet edge of it, the way the old man taught me in Lisbon, and it held. Tomorrow the lime will set hard as the rock under it.

I am staying on until the autumn boats so I can see the whole ceiling dry. Tell your mother the ferry was on time, which is more than I can say for the bread. I will write once the paint is on.

Yours in plaster and dust, Edith