Paisley floral sleeve on an arm

The snow has sealed the Hollin Gate road since Tuesday, so I am stuck at the Crown with four carters, a parson who snores in Latin, and a landlady who has taken my bolt of teal silk as payment for the room. I did not mind. It was the best cloth I owned, and she held it up to the fire and said it looked like the inside of a peacock's feather left out in the rain.

Last night, with the candles burning low, I sat by the hearth with my pattern book and tried to draw the design you asked for, the one for your sleeve. Every swirl wanted to curl back on itself, the way the paisley does, the seed-shaped leaf that is really a bud folding open. I drew the scrolling stem first, then dotted it with tiny pricks of ink so it would look like frost catching on a thread. The parson watched me over his cup and asked whether I was mapping the stars. I said no, only a garden that the winter had not been told about.

When the thaw comes, I will bring the sketch to the shop on Briggate and the dyer, Mr Abbott, will mix me the orange he promised, the one that burns like a banked fire. Tell your husband he may have the green, but only if he stops calling it sick-apple.

The snow is still falling. I have drawn the whole sleeve twice now, and both times the last curl ends in a dot, as if the pen wanted to stop and listen.

Your loving brother, Tom