1.0c

M -

My hand trembles as I write this.

A peasant girl came to me today with a note, which she asked me to read to her. It was a small scrap, unsigned, containing instructions for a soothing poultice.

It was written in your hand.

I could hear nothing but my own breath. Dimly I recall asking her who had given her the note; her voice came to me as if from a distance. I was on my feet then, following her to the manservant who had desired the poultice for his master. Questioning him urgently, until - stammering with alarm, for what did a nun wish to know of such things? - he at last told me of the great alchemist of the north. Speaker of five tongues, friend of seven guilds, she had established a laboratory deep in Scandinavia, hidden from those who would use her arts to grasp for power. In her wisdom, she used her craft to conceal the path to her workshop: only the poor and the sick were permitted to know the way. Still, word of her abilities had traveled beyond her circle, as merchants and craftsmen bore her tinctures and salves to the wider world. Her name he did not know, but her manner he did: quick-tempered, dark-haired, eternally unafraid -

And here, M, I confounded the man, for I wept.

I wept for your absence; I wept for the years lost. And, in truth, some part of me wept for the life I knew I must leave behind.

For I must go. I must break the vows I made before God and set aside the veil. The life of the abbey is no longer mine, if it ever was. I was only half-alive before you came to me and called my name: and I will be only half-alive if I stay, knowing where you are.

Marketa.

I am coming.