Chapter 178

The old pear on the kitchen-garden wall came into flower on the ninth of May, and Nana said that would do.

She had said it about nothing else: not the great hall, which the eldest had offered, nor the yard, which Rhys had measured for trestles twice. The pear was in flower and the beans were up and the garden got the sun from noon until the bell for supper, and there was a bench under the tree that had been sat on, once, by a man with a stick and a woman with her hand on his heart.

“Here,” said Nana, “and nobody in a crown, and I’m doing the food.”

***

I copied my vow the night before, in the archive, at the desk by the stove.

I had written it out four times over the winter and crossed out most of each, and burned the drafts myself, and felt nothing but relief. What was left was short. It had needed to be short. Everything I had to say to him I had already said, on the back of a sheet of cake paper, and in a mill, and in a room by a river; what was left