Dunstan has a new letter to copy

Dunstan looked up only briefly as the man carried the letter in and handed it to his father. He was no longer so very curious when a letter arrived, for he knew that he would soon be copying its contents into one of the two great books of correspondence.

It was one of his favorite hours of the day, that after-​​dinner time when his father went up to play with the younger children – or else nap on the floor while Cynewulf clambered over him – and Dunstan went into his father’s study to copy. The study too was one of his favorite places, especially when it was given over to him alone. In the after-​​dinner time, as the sun went swinging across the southern sky, it shone in through the green glass of the window and made the entire room shimmer with a dim light that made Dunstan feel as if he were below the surface of the sea – or so he thought, for he had never had the courage to open his eyes underwater.

His father had had two books made, one with a red cover and one with a blue, and in place of his Latin lessons Dunstan now spent that after-​​dinner hour copying letters into them. First he would open the blue book and copy any letters that had arrived that day, along with any letters that had been written, before they were sent. He always hoped that they would be few, for his favorite time was afterwards, when he opened the red book and began copying old correspondence.

The first letter in the blue book was dated the first of January, 1078, and the first in the red book was from December thirty-​​first of the preceding year, for he copied the old letters in the opposite order. These old letters were often a revelation to him. As he worked backwards, he was learning the history of his family, and there were many things that he had once understood in part, as a child understands, but that were now revealed clearly to him.

He had already spent long hours reading through his father’s journals, wherein were to be found not only the minutiae of moons and crops and the keeping of a household, but also little poems, cunning doodles in the margins, and words of love for his family. But the books of letters were something different – they showed his father not as a man of thoughts and feelings, but as a man of action, with his eyes opened upon the world outside. It was teaching Dunstan a new respect for him that was beginning to border on idolatry.

Dunstan’s only sorrow as he worked was the knowledge that this copying the letters of a great man was not meant to prepare him for a life of copying the letters of great men, but for a life of being a great man – and Dunstan knew that there would never be letters enough.

His interest in this new letter was only awakened when he saw how his father reacted to its contents. Dunstan put down his book and watched him. The letter was small, the parchment was palimpsest, and the address, which was all Dunstan could see, was a dark scrawl. The King might be so sloppy for a simple request, as for the loan of a span of oxen and a plow, but his father would not hide his face in his hand for the loan – or even the loss – of a span of oxen and a plow. And he had already had the news from Bertie about the death of Bertie’s baby brother, so unless it was something about Bertie’s mother, too…

“I had feared something like this,” his father muttered.

“What, Father?” he asked. He had heard, but he hoped his father would explain.

“What? Oh – nothing…” He creased the letter and rose. “I shall have to miss dinner. You will give my apologies to your mother.” He handed him the letter and said, “Please copy this onto its own page, in the event I should wish to excise it. Tell no one, for now.”

“Yes, Father.”

His father kissed his hair and then went out. Dunstan waited until the sound of his boots and the closing of the door at the end of the corrdior had died away before unfolding the letter.

So it was true, what the people were whispering about the Squire having a woman out at his little house by the lake – only now she had vanished, and her unborn baby with her.