Crescent moon and stars on an ankle

The brothers have finally let me take the night watch at the lighthouse steps, which means I am alone with the sea and a stub of tallow for three hours at a stretch. Brother Anselm says the moon here is a liar, always showing a different face to the one the almanac promised. Last Tuesday it was a thin paring over Carreg Las, barely enough to see the boat by, and I swore I counted three stars sitting beside it like tenants who had come to see what the fuss was about.

I told Anselm and he laughed and said that was a sign I needed sleep. He may be right. But I went down to the cellar afterwards to fetch the oil and found the old star chart pinned behind the barrels, the one drawn by Brother Osric before the great storm. Osric had marked the crescent in red ink and written a single word beside it in Latin that the damp has eaten away. Beneath it he had drawn three small stars, each with four points, the way a child draws them, and I think he meant them as a promise that the light would be kept.

So I have kept it. Tonight I trimmed the wick twice and wrote this by the lamp while the tide came in under the steps. When you visit at midsummer, bring the good ink from the apothecary in Pwllheli, because I want to paint the thing properly on the underside of the lamp shelf before the abbot asks why I am spending candles on pictures. Tell Mam the moon is still there, though it has been hiding.