Paint splash with heart on shoulder

The ultramarine went over the margin again last night, and this time it was my fault entirely. I had the jar balanced on the sill of the north window, the one that lets in the wind off the fens, and when the bell for vigils rang I reached for it too quickly. Brother Hugh says the blue will lift from the vellum if we pumice it gently, but he has been saying that since Lent and the stain is still there, spreading in the shape of a torn sail.

Here is the trouble. Abbot Walter came in with the morning light and looked at the page for a long while. He is not a man given to laughter, so when he said the splash of green and rose looked like a sunrise on a bad day, I thought I was to be sent to the kitchens. Instead he asked for the black oak-gall ink and told me to flick it across the colour the way Brother Osric flicks his pen when he is thinking. Then he took the smallest brush in the room and laid a white heart in the middle, no bigger than a fingernail.

I asked him what the heart was for. He said it was for the thing we are not permitted to paint, which is whatever happens after the mistake. I did not understand him until I saw the page this evening, with the lamp turned low and the colours bleeding into each other like wet wool. The margin no longer looks spoiled. It looks like something someone meant to keep.

Come at Michaelmas if the road allows. Bring the good gum arabic, and tell Mother I am eating.

Your brother, Anselm