Small lettering reading Belive my decision

You will not believe what the Queen did with my spelling. Three weeks ago I was copying the salt tax decree at the long table in the scriptorium, my ink gone thick in the cold, and I wrote the sentence she had dictated in a hurry: Belive my decision, and the realm shall follow. I did not notice the error until the seal was pressed. Master Hollis went grey and began to shake, and I was sure the gaolers would come for me before supper.

Instead the Queen read the parchment herself, turned it over twice, and laughed the way she laughs when nobody expects it. She said a decision is only as true as the people who take it on trust, and that they had better believe it in whatever letters they could manage. She had the proclamation copied out again, but would not let the first be burned. The first went up over the north gate in a frame of oak, and it is still there.

Last week the stonemason came to cut the words into the lintel, because the Queen wants them lasting. He asked me to check the lettering before he began. I stood under the arch with a lamp while he chalked the lines, and I found I could not correct a single letter. The B leans like a man leaning into wind. The I's sit a fraction short of the others. Every child who walks through the gate now reads it aloud, and I have stopped minding.

Write soon, and tell Mother the decision stands.

Yours in ink, Oswin