First Letter

Dear Journal,

It has been a week, and Bertrand and I are settled as well as we shall ever be in this benighted place. The farm house has been swept out as best we could, given the state of the broom I found in a corner of the kitchen. We have food, but of the plainest; fuel for the kitchen hearth; and no other supplies but what we brought with us.—and most of those are intended to support my research, not our comfort. It is fortunate that the weather is warm, for we have little bedding, and that little we must use to make pallets on the floor. We might as well be in prison.

Trout was here today with another load of food. He did not stay long, and though he took the list of needed supplies I handed him—lamps and whirtleberry oil, bedding, and other gear—he made no promise to bring us any of it.

Truly, I do not understand Trout's game. In theory, I am here to perfect my designs for sky-chairs, sleds, wagons for use by His Cumbrian Majesty's forces against Le Maréchal in his hiding place. I know this to be a lie, and Trout's lack of interest in my progress confirmed it weeks ago. But he wants me for some reason, and having got me out her to "continue my work" one would think he would at least provide the materials I would need: seasoned wood, and so forth.

Yet he has provided none. It is as though Trout has accomplished his entire purpose simply by getting me out of town and out of communication (as he thinks) and no longer cares in the slightest what I might think of it. Does he think it would be so hard for Bertrand and I just to walk back to Mont-Havre? I assure you, Journal, we kept careful note of every turning, and we are near enough to the city that we need not fear les grand-blaireaux. I assume he is trusting my good behavior to his threat to take away my mastery in the guild.

No matter. I have sent arrows to Jack and to Marc in Bois-de-Bas as to my whereabouts and the conditions here; and in the meantime Bertrand and I have set up four trials around and about the Farm. Each consists of a hardened rod with weights suspended from each end, adjacent to a lifting block calibrated to lift ten pounds of weight. The first rod supports twenty pounds, the second ten, the third five, and the fourth none. If my thinking is correct, the first will last the longest: the physical strain on the rod will produce effort due to the hardening of the rod, which can then feed the greedy lifting block indefinitely. If I am right, it explains some of my failures. My early chairs and sleds were hardened altogether, except for the lifting blocks, which would reduce the physical strain on the hardened elements due to the flexing of chair or sled, and so reduce the effort produced.

I wish I had access to one of the Provençese sky sloops we left on L'Isle de Grand-Blaireaux. I investigated closely where the lifting members were, but paid little attention to the hardened elements, except to note that there were fewer of them than I expected. I am now guessing that the sloop was designed so that the lifting elements lift the hardened elements, and that the remainder of the sloop hangs from these, thus keeping the hardened elements under constraint strain. The question is, how much strain is required to keep the lifting elements properly fed, as it were, without cannibalizing the hardened elements.

I have set up a fifth trial in another place, consisting of a hardened rod and a quiescent lifting block, just to determine whether such a system will degrade over time.

The five are located as far from each other as I can manage; and since I have nothing to build shelters with as we did on Marc's farm, we placed them just over the edge of the fields into the woods, where the trees will protect them from summer storms.

And now we wait, and ponder, and blackguard Trout to each other. The man could at least have left us a deck of cards!

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photo credit: Tambako the Jaguar Raccoon on the log via photopin (license)