Dragon and cherry blossoms on upper arm

The abbot has finally let me touch the great wall at the east gate, though only the outline. Brother Teodor says the colour comes later, when the frost has gone and the cherry on the terrace is in bloom, because pigment cannot be trusted in the cold. So for three weeks I have been tracing a dragon in black ink, with nothing but its shape to hold on to.

It is longer than anything I have drawn. It starts at the corner of the gatehouse, where the stone is cracked, and climbs the plaster in loops, its whiskers trailing like wet reeds. Teodor showed me how to let the fin-plumes run a little off the line, so they seem to be lifting in a wind that has not yet arrived. Where the dragon coils over the lintel I placed sprays of blossom, five petals each, and one loose petal drifting down toward the step. Pilgrims stop to look at it and then look at me, and I pretend I am not nervous.

Last night a boy from the village climbed the scaffold during vespers and drew a small serpent in the lower corner, with a face like a sulking goat. Teodor found it at dawn and laughed until he had to sit on the bucket. He said he would leave it, since a dragon with nobody to argue with it grows proud.

I will paint the eyes when the blossom opens. Come up at Easter and tell me whether the head should face the gate or look down the valley.

Your brother, Matthias