Black tribal spiral design with dots

The abbot's exemplar lay open on the lectern, a sheet older than the foundation. Its border was a run of solid black curls and tapering flames that climbed the margin like smoke up a chimney, with two round dots set in the blank space beside them, inked so dark the vellum had nearly split. Nobody in the house could copy it. Edric had tried for three winters and produced only blots that looked like drowned eels.

The flood came in the second week of Lent, the Ouse rising over the causeway in a single night. By morning the cloister garth was a lake and the lower dormitory smelled of wet wool and fear. We carried the books up the stair in our arms. I went back for the exemplar alone, with soot from the kitchen hearth and a goose feather, and on the whitewash of the upper wall I drew the border as tall as a man: spiral after spiral, flames flicking up the plaster, the two dots placed where the lamps hung.

When the water dropped a finger a day, Edric came up the stair, saw the wall and sat down on the step without speaking. Then he laughed until he coughed, and said God had a sense of humour and an ugly hand with a brush. We never copied the page. The soot never quite came off, so each winter, when the damp rose through the lime, the spirals came back up through the plaster like something waking, and I stirred my ink and did not mind.