Celtic knot butterfly tattoo

The rain has got into the chapel again, so I am writing this in the gatehouse with my boots on the hearth. You will laugh, but the butterfly stone is finally giving up its shape. Under the lichen on the north lintel, the knotwork runs in loops that never close, and at each end a spiral curls out like a fern unrolling. Yesterday I cleared the last of the moss with a soft brush and water, and the two wings came up together, one a mirror of the other, with antennae that are only spirals too.

Mrs Greaves from the village says the old masons carved it for a girl who wanted to leave the valley and could not. I told her that is the story the parish tells about every ruin in the county. But when I traced the interlace with my finger, I found the cut goes under itself at every crossing, one over and one under, never the same twice, so that no one could lift a single thread out without the whole thing loosening. That seemed to me less a prison than a promise.

I have stopped chipping at the green stain on the stone. It is only copper from the old roof flashing, a colour the rain has painted in over the centuries, and I think I will leave it. The grey shadows in the carving are where the stone is deepest, and the light finds them at four o'clock when the sun comes low through the arrow slit.

Send the hand chisels when the carrier comes, and tell your mother the lamb is safe. I will be home before the thaw, or the butterfly will be, one of us at least.

Yours, Ellis