Lacemakers

Book of Hours

31 Book฀of฀Hours Christ, the pelican, bends to blood, vermilion, finest strokes on lead white. I turn from candlelight to a whisker of moon at the casement. The light fades early now in snow that swirls and sifts the clerestory. Around me, pigments, stoppered and bottled—orpiment, ochre, azarium, mussel shells of milled silver— in the ring of my lit taper. Illuminate. Dominus illuminatio mea. I fill the “D” with ivy, helix, dipping goose quill to dragon’s blood. I’d like to believe that these, my marks, will last, beyond mildew and the gentle feeding of silverfish. Last autumn I found the body of a calf in the river wash, flank torn clean, her five ribs an exquisite, white cage. Beautiful and dreadful. Across the scriptorium, Thomas snuffs his candle and rises in the sluggish cold. Near me, at the edge of light, a sheet of bleached vellum awaits transfiguration, a prayer for lauds. I will give it a kneeling Saint Michael with silver spear and slain dragon. For the spray work, calyx, cusp, and sheaf. But tonight my eyes grow dim, fingers stiff with wintry indignity. 32 Outside—wind, the sea against the cliffs, and through it all the bell for compline. In the ring of shivering light things are near and nearly transparent: my hands, the vials of color, fish glue and ox gall. The scraped calfskin with blood-caked pegs. I extinguish my candle and stand to follow the bright stain of the bell through the dark, carrying the dead calf— that smell of its skin in the folds of my own. ...