Script quote along the ribs

The roof of Carrow Keep came down in the February gale, and the chapel bell is lying in the nettles like a fallen pudding basin. I have been up here three weeks with Mr Haddow's measuring chains and a tin of cocoa, drawing every arch so that somebody in London can decide whether it is worth saving. He will not decide. He never does. But I am in no hurry to come down.

Yesterday I found a stone on the north wall with words cut into it, half hidden by ivy. The lettering was worn so smooth I had to trace it with a wet finger and guess at the gaps, but it reads: if you don't live for something, you'll die for nothing. I copied it into the back of the field book. Mrs Pryce at the inn says it was the old chaplain's saying, that he pressed the village men to ride with the Sheriff's quarrel, and that half of them went to Shrewsbury and never came home. She laughed when she told me, but she also made sure I was indoors before dark.

I think I have been living for the drawings, and that is a strange thing to confess to a brother who thinks I am wasting my hands. So I am going to finish the north elevation properly, with the rose window and the crack that runs through its heart, and then I will decide what else I am living for. Perhaps it will be you, arriving in June, complaining about the damp.

Write soon. Burn this if the Pryces ask.

Your loving sister, Nell