Ribcage, pelvis and rose with insect design

They have let me into the charnel house at last, though Brother Anselm stands at my elbow as if I might pocket a finger bone. Yesterday we laid the old abbot's remains out on the long trestle to clean them for the new reliquary. I counted the ribs three times, twelve on the left and twelve on the right, because Anselm says a miscount is a discourtesy to the dead. The shoulder blade had cracked along its spine like slate left out in frost.

The locust came in the afternoon, blown through the open cloister door with the petals from the Gloire rose by the well. It landed on the pelvis, which we had set on the bench, and sat there as though someone had placed it by hand. Brother Tobiah wants it pinned for the herbal he is illustrating, so he has been sketching it in the scriptorium with a reed pen, hatching every vein of its wing until his fingers are black with ink. He says the bones and the insect belong together, the spine of one and the body of the other, both built to carry something up and away.

Last night I went back to the charnel house alone with a lamp. The locust was gone from the pelvis. Only its shed husk remained, clinging to the bone where the spine would meet it, papery and empty. Beyond the window the rose had dropped its last blooms over the wall, and the wind carried them into the dark like sparks.

Pray for me, sister, and do not tell Mother I went in alone.

Your loving brother, Edrich