Rose and banner lettering on a forearm

The frost came early to Hollin Vale this year, and the Queen's gardeners have been cursing at their kettles since Michaelmas. I walked the old wall garden this morning with a lantern, and the one red rose the Duke planted for his mother is still hanging on, a single bloom with yellow at its heart and a few leaves gone the colour of bottle glass. I cut it for the banner-makers at the palace. They want a line of words beneath it for the spring fair, and the herald has chosen the saying your grandfather liked, the one about the best of a thing being the part you cannot hold.

The scribe lettered it in black on a strip of linen while I watched, his brush dipping and his tongue between his teeth. He asked whether happiness should have a capital, and I said that in our kingdom nothing does, not even the king. Then he asked what the rose was for, and I had no answer that would fit on a banner.

Yesterday the Duke's steward came to the garden gate with a purse and asked for cuttings to be sent south to the Marrow Coast, where a ship called the Patience leaves on the new tide. I told him the cuttings would never take in salt air. He said they would not need to. The sailors take the bloom under their sleeves, he said, and the leaves go on the ribbon, and that is how the old kingdom keeps its promises.

So I am keeping one cutting back, in the jar on the sill where you used to leave your gloves. Come home before the thaw and bring the ink you promised. I'll show you the banner once it is dry, and you can tell me whether the words still read true when nobody is watching them.

Yours in frost and fidelity, Hesk