Ornate black line filigree design

The ink froze in the pot again last night, so I have been warming it against my chest like a hen with an egg. Brother Aldous says a scribe's hands are his first tools and his last sins, and mine are forever blue at the knuckles. The abbot has given me the great initial for the Advent psalter, a tall letter that must climb the whole height of the page, with a leaf at its crown and another at its foot, and everything between them knotted so tight that a finger could not pass.

Brother Aldous drew the first sketch himself and then wiped half of it away with his sleeve. He said the knot must look as if it grew there, not as if somebody had tied it. So I spent three days following the curl of an acanthus with a fine brush, one loop after another, until my eyes ached. Yesterday I found that the scrolls on the left and right meet at the waist of the letter, and if you tilt the page to the candle they become two fish turning in opposite directions.

I have not told anyone. The abbot would have me scrape them out, and Aldous would only shrug. So I have hidden a small spiral in the lowest curl, no larger than a barley grain, and inside it I have drawn the shape of our cottage roof above the orchard.

Please do not show Father this letter. He would only ask why I am drawing houses in God's book. Tell him the snow has closed the lane and that I eat well.

Your loving son, Tobias