Armand’s First Letter. Amelia’s First Letter.

12 December 1021, Veronica’s College, Edenford

My dearest cousin Armand,

I have so much to tell you!

But first I must wish you my best wishes for the holy season just past—a “thing of the most odd”, as Margaux might say, for of course as I write in early December the season has not yet begun. But it will be past when your Captain Grier hands you this letter, along with the packages we sent as a fitting remembrance of our Lord’s birth. I have sent two blankets, knit with my own two hands, for the new little one you and Amelie were due to receive any day when Captain Grier left Bois-de-Bas.

We remain in Edenford, as you can see. I have been working with a lecturer in ancient Cumbrian literature from Duke’s College, a young don named Peterson, to see what I can find regarding the Ancient of Brutus and the founding of Cumbria as it might apply to the Iturians. And I have made an amazing and disheartening discovery: Old Cumbrian is no more like modern Cumbrian than Old Provençese is like modern Provençese! I wish to study the history of wizardry as it applies to the Iturians and the ley lines, and I find myself becoming a student of ancient languages instead.

I had hoped for better than this; but Peterson is at the start of his career as a don, and so does not yet have the encyclopedic grasp of his subject that his older colleagues possess; but his older colleagues will not speak to a mere upstart woman, and particularly not to one trained in Provençe! And worse, while he can tutor me in Old Cumbrian and direct me to various sources, he must pursue his own research to cement his position at Duke’s, and so has little time to do research on my behalf.

And so I must learn Old Cumbrian. It is most disagreeable, but also most necessary: for the one concrete thing we have determined is that the words relating to the Iturians have undergone the same shift in Cumbrian as they did in Provençese. The modern word “ancient” is used starting from Middle Cumbrian to translate an Old Cumbrian word that would perhaps sound something like “Iturian” if it were written in modern script instead of Old Cumbrian runes—having taking into account shifts in the values of the vowels.

Oddly, there is a quite similar word—as spelled in runes, which I will not reproduce here—that in modern Cumbrian would have the force of the word “cretin”, or perhaps “d— fool.” It is as though the translators at some point were determined to blacken the name of the Iturians.

Why yes, I have been spending much time at night in the chapel here at Veronica’s College. It is not the same as my dear chapel at L’École, but it is a comfort nevertheless; and you may rejoice in this, for it is why your newborn has received two blankets rather than the one I had first intended.

In the meantime, my Maximilian has been working closely with Dr. Tillotson on a spell they have taken to calling “the Iturian Relay”: a spell that will allow the wizard to move a small object across the link between two nodes. If they succeed it will be a striking accomplishment, and it is the first step toward showing that our conjectures about the ley lines are correct.

Iċ wȳsċe þē ēow inc blīþre Crīstes mæssan! (As Dr. Peterson would say.)

Your increasingly linguistic cousin,

Amelia

Next letter.

____

Photo by Tim Wildsmith on Unsplash