Green lizard tattoo on upper back

The abbot has finally given up on the lizard. For three weeks it has lain on the warm sill of the scriptorium, flattened against the stone with its legs splayed like a man asleep on a bench, and every morning Brother Tobias has shooed it off with his sleeve before the ink could dry. Yesterday he stopped shooing. He pulled a stool to the window, mixed a little verdigris with egg white on his palette, and watched the creature through the glass for most of the Office.

Tobias has no green left. The last of the malachite went into the Easter initial in March, and the merchant will not climb the mountain road until the thaw. So he has been painting the psalter's borders in brown and grey, and this morning he told me the psalms look as if they were written by a man in mourning. He said the lizard was the only green thing in the valley willing to hold still for him.

Brother Ambrose, who keeps the cellar and never speaks in chapter, came up with a jar of candied angelica and a question about the lizard's tail. He believes it can grow another, which is true, and he said so as though it were a sermon. Then the three of us sat in the warm light while the creature turned its head towards us, one bright eye, and considered us in return.

The abbot came up at vespers and stood a long time in the doorway without speaking. Tonight Tobias has painted a small green lizard into the margin of the Gospel of John, its tail curling down past the first word, so that the whole page seems to be sliding gently towards the lower corner. When I looked this evening the real lizard had gone to sleep on the sill, and the painted one was already dry.