Rose tattoo on the back of a hand

The Abbot has taken the cuttings from the south wall and I am to tell you the news before the carter goes. The old Damask rose you planted the year before you left has put out one bud in November, which Brother Osric says is a sin against the calendar. It is no bigger than a wren's egg and the colour of a bruise going off. I have been sitting with it every morning after Lauds, because nobody else has the patience and because I cannot bring myself to pick it.

Yesterday the frost came down hard enough to skin the water butts. I found the stem bent over the wall and the two lower leaves gone black at the edges, so I tied it to a lath with strips torn from the hem of my spare habit, which Prior Gilbert will notice when the laundry comes back. The bud did not open. It only sulked tighter, the way you used to when your lessons were wrong.

Last night I drew it on the back of the almanac, on the page for the feast of Saint Lucy, since nobody reads that page anyway. I made the stem too straight and the leaves too neat. Then I went out with the lantern and looked at the real thing again and saw that it had been drawn in one long nervous line from the wall to the ground, with the petals mostly guessed at, the way you draw a thing you are afraid of losing.

I have decided it will open in the spring or it will not, and either way I will know which of us was the more stubborn. Write and tell me the coast is kinder than the cloister. Tell me the sea does not sulk.

Yours in the hard weather, Brother Tobias