Gold metallic arrows and band on upper arm

The scaffolding came down on Tuesday, and the last gilder packed his brushes without a word, which I suppose is how men leave a job they are proud of. I am writing from the window seat in the gatehouse, where the wind comes through the broken lead and lifts the corners of my notebook. You asked whether the chapel roof would ever catch the light again. It does, a little, in the late afternoons, when the sun drops behind the ash trees and finds the arrows.

There are rows of them along the rafters, small gold points no bigger than a fingernail, all pointing upward in a neat march toward the ceiling boss. Below them runs a band of interlocking key pattern that the mason's apprentice must have cut in one long afternoon, because the repeat never once drifts. I spent a week on my back under those beams with a torch in my teeth, and I still could not say whether the arrows were meant as decoration or as directions.

Then I found Ailsa's ledger, tucked under a loose stone in the vestry. Her last entry reads, Arrows lead up to the bell. Keep the leaf thin, the sun will do the rest. I climbed the stair to the bell chamber on Monday and found nothing but pigeon feathers and a pair of rusted hinges. Yet when I looked back down through the louvres, every arrow was lined up with the same sliver of sky.

I left one point unburnished on purpose, so the light would have something to argue with. Come up in the autumn and see it for yourself. Bring a flask, the stair is worse than it looks.

Yours in dust, Eleanor