Love script tattoo on a finger

The customs man came up the Marrow road yesterday with a list of forbidden goods and a face like wet slate. Letters are on it now, sealed or otherwise, so I am writing this on the back of the tally you left me in March, where nobody bothers to look. Mind the sum on the front. I have not forgotten your arithmetic, even if you have forgotten mine.

You asked how I manage the hand without the ink running. The trick is the thin cursive the scriveners taught at Calloway, loops that lean into one another like reeds in a current. I practised it for a month on scraps until my wrist ached. Then I tried it on my own little finger, because I wanted to know whether it would hold through washing and cold water and the rope on the ferry. It has. The word has faded only a shade since the spring, and it still catches the lamp when I reach for the tiller.

Now the thing you came back for. I cannot post you a finger, though your father would have tried. Instead I have copied the word onto the enclosed strip of vellum, the same hand, the same slope, folded twice so the creases do not show. Wear it where a ring would sit and nobody will think twice. Anyone who unfolds it will only see a clerk's exercise, a single word repeated in a schoolboy's careful pen.

Keep it dry, and keep it close. The river is high and the bridge at Sallow has been shut since Tuesday, so I will meet you at the ferry steps on the first clear night. Bring the tally back. I want to see whether you have carried the one.

Yours, as ever, Tam