Skull under a lace veil on upper arm

The wind has finally dropped over Scarrow Keep, so I can write without the candle guttering every other line. You will not believe what Mr Pell asked of me this week. The old chapel roof came down in the February gales, and the men clearing the nave found a vault under the altar. On a shelf of loose stone lay Lady Ysolde's bones, the ones we were all told had gone out with the tide at Sennen. Her husband wants her dressed again before the stones are reset.

He brought me a bolt of black silk net and a pattern drawn on the back of an old rent ledger, and he asked for the veil to be worked with the rose-and-thorn border Mother taught us. I sat three nights on the bench under the broken arch, where the moon comes through the window and lights the stitches. My fingers ache. The bobbins clack like a clock that has lost its hour.

Last night I laid the finished veil over the skull in the vault. Mr Pell held the lantern and did not speak. The lace shadowed the cheekbones and left the teeth bright, so she seemed to be smiling through a curtain of frost. He said she looked exactly as she had on her wedding morning, and I did not tell him that a skull never looks like anything but itself.

I am coming home at Michaelmas. Keep my chair warm and do not let the cat sleep on the pattern book.

Your loving sister, Nell