Fine line script on the back of a hand

The ink arrived this morning in the grey tin you asked for, and I have already spoiled two sheets trying to match the old copybooks. Mr Abernethy says the fine nib was cut from a goose quill meant for ledgers, so do not expect miracles. Still, I wrote the line a hundred times the way the Keeper taught us: I must not tell lies, each letter kept thin as a hair, no shadow anywhere.

Yesterday the Keeper came down to the scriptorium with the registry under his arm and stopped at my desk. He did not read my copying. He held a sheet up to the window, tilted it, and said the letters were climbing uphill like ivy and I should write them plainer. I told him it was the lamp. He said the lamp had nothing to do with it, and then he went back upstairs without another word.

I have been thinking about that all evening. Ink that sits on the surface never quite forgives you, because it does not fade the way a smudge does; it simply waits. So I will tell you the true thing here, where no one can make it climb: the registry is not a list of the living. I have been copying the dead into it for three years, one neat line at a time, and the Keeper has been checking my hand to see whether I have noticed.

Burn this when you have read it. I will bring the good tin on Thursday, and we can practise the capitals together until they stand straight.