Hands holding playing cards on upper arm

The roof of Carrow Keep went in the winter your uncle lost the east meadow, and we have played cards in the chapel ever since, where the stone still holds a little warmth from the hearth fires we light for the dogs. You will laugh, but Fenwick has taken to dealing with his gloves off so the cards do not stick to the damp. Last night he held his hand face down for a full minute before he showed it, and I swear the ink on the Queen of Cups was blurring under his thumb as if it had been wept on.

Tell Mother the blue deck is missing. I have looked under the altar cloth, in the poor box, and behind the loose stone where you used to hide your sweets. What remains is the old painted pack with the gilt backs, the one with the fretwork pattern like frost on a window. Eight cards short of a full set, but Fenwick says a game is only a game if someone is willing to lose to it, and he has never once been short of willing.

The Countess came up the valley road on Thursday in a coach with no horses, or so Mrs Pell swears, and she sat across from me and laid down a single card face up. It showed a woman I did not know, though she had your chin. Then she closed her fingers over the fan and told me the castle would stand until someone who had lost everything finally won one hand back.

I am writing because I think it might be me. Come home before the frost takes the last of the roof.