Horse with flowing mane on a shoulder blade

The bay mare has finally let me near her head. It took the whole of Lent, and two bad frosts, but this morning she turned her neck to me across the paddock wall and let me take the rope from the brother's hand without the usual dance. Brother Ambrose says a man should not write such things down until they are finished, but I have never been good at waiting for things to finish.

You will remember that she came to us as a foal bought against the abbey's debts, all legs and temper. The old abbot said she had the look of the Scots ponies, shaggy in the winter coat, and her mane has grown wild since autumn, lifting off the crest whenever the wind comes down off the fell. In the chapel light it looks almost like smoke. Ambrose says the bells frighten her, so we ring the Angelus from the far end of the cloister now.

I set aside the last of the good oats and walked her down to the spring at dusk. She drinks slowly, one ear always back toward the gate, and then she lifts her head and looks past the orchard towards the south road, as if someone on it owes her a debt. I have not told her that the road is empty, nor that the abbey's ledgers are to be sold at Michaelmas, and the mare goes with them.

So I have decided to ride her to Carlisle myself before the sale. Do not scold me. Write to me there, care of the carrier, and tell me whether you still have our father's old bridle.

Your loving brother, Edmund