Skull with lotus mandala and scrollwork

Master Ashby has finally let me near the drawing board. For six years I have swept the filings and polished the spoons, and this week he slid a sheet of waxed tracing paper across the bench and told me to ink the frame. The design is a skull, if you can credit it, sitting under a lotus the size of a dinner plate, with scrollwork spilling out either side like something left to grow in a window box. He calls it the Mourner's Plate. A widow from Frome ordered it in March and paid in advance, which is the only reason he has not burned it.

Something about the shading bothers me. He had me mix the purple from crushed mulberries and a pinch of verdigris, and he would not let me use plain black in the eye sockets, though I cannot see what the difference makes once the lamp is out. When I asked him, he only said the dead prefer a colour that has been living.

Last night the widow came to collect her pattern early, and she stood at the bench with her gloves folded in one hand and looked at the teeth for a long time. Then she asked me to leave the lotus half finished, so the petals open towards the door. I did not understand until she was gone that she meant the design should be left unclosed, the way a book is left face down on a chair.

I have kept the tracing paper. Come home at Michaelmas and I will show you the seam where the petals stop.

Love, Nell