Ornate wing and eye design drawing

The plate for the Ashdown reliquary is finished, though I confess the wings gave me more trouble than any gilding I have done this year. You asked for an eye at the centre, and I have cut one, but the bishop's clerk came up from the cathedral this morning and stood over it for a long while before he asked whose eye it was. I told him it was the eye of Saint Brannoc, as the cartouche says. He laughed and said the saint never had eyes that looked so tired.

The feathers I worked from your drawings, each barb cut no wider than a hair, and at the lower edge I set the curling claw you wanted, though it hooks more like a hand reaching for the rim than a talon. I could not make it lie flat. Each time I scraped it back with the burnisher, it crept a little further onto the border, and by the third morning the scrollwork around it had shifted to make room.

Last night I stayed late with the lamp. The disc of the eye caught the light when I breathed on it, and I could swear the pupil had moved a fraction toward the window. I have wrapped the plate in oiled cloth and locked it in the cabinet with the good chisels. Please do not send the boy to fetch it before you come yourself.

I have put the lamp out and not looked back at the cabinet since, though I can feel it looking at the door.