MY WOUND IS STILL OOZING BLOOD AND WATER, AND so my mother has decided I should not travel to Wenlock Priory until the new year. Oliver is very cross about this, and when he came to sit with me in the hall, he kept tutting that it might be several months before we can arrange another visit, and that to light candles at the shrine of Saint Milburga and hear the monks sing would have illuminated this Advent-tide, and that our visit would have been a stepping-stone in my life.
This is exactly what I fear, and so I hid my own impatience to see the monks writing and illuminating their manuscripts.
I still don’t know what my father and mother and Sir William and Lady Alice talked about, and Serle doesn’t know either. Sian told me she heard Serle ask my mother, but my mother said it had absolutely nothing to do with him. I hope that is true.
I want to ask my father about my life. I want to ask him about Joan and whether he agrees with what she said at the manor court. And I want to ask him whether Will has carved little Luke’s tombstone yet. But this wound has taken away half my energy and half my appetite.
“Sir William fought foul, you know,” I told my father.
“Disgraceful!” said my father, and he stared angrily into the gloom on the far side of the hall.
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” snapped my father.
“I can’t use this arm,” I said. “Not for writing or anything.”
“I’ve talked to Oliver about that,” my father replied. “When you start your lessons again, for the time being you can write with your left hand.”
“You said it’s not natural.”
“It’s necessary,” said my father.
A messenger from Lord Stephen rode in this afternoon, but I don’t know what he and my father talked about either. Maybe the new crusade. Or the manor court.
Poor Lankin. At least Sir William didn’t cut off my right hand.