Armand’s First Letter. Amelia’s First Letter.
14 March 1022, 22 Merton Street, Edenford
My dearest cousin Armand,
Edenford is filled with glorious architecture. The colleges look like abbeys and monasteries, their libraries like temples to learning and scholarship, the Cadwallian Library like a cathedral close. I walked past the parish church of St. Roger on my way to the Cadwallian for weeks before discerning that it was in fact a church, and not simply another college building. Every bit of it is is a delight to the eyes.
But I am finding my joy in quite another place—on a back street, in a humble brick structure with tiny round windows rather than majestic expanses of stained glass, and a discreet cross over the doorway instead of a majestic spire. It is the only sanctuary of the Old Religion in all Edenford, and possibly in all of Edenfordshire. Its name is St. Isidore. It is suffered to be here for the use of visiting scholars from abroad, and for a very few students; and now for me.
I have written as if my struggles with my powers and my temper were at an end; as if I have so mastered myself that I may glide through my days with an absolute serenity. I do strive to conduct myself so, outwardly; but within I am frequently a consuming fire. Not even my Maximilian is immune from my inward displeasure—a displeasure I must force down, and express in only the calmest and most placid of ways, lest the burning within become the burning without.
I could not have done it at L’École without the solace of the chapel; and I cannot do it here without the solace of St. Isidore’s—though my visits take place by daylight rather than in the dark of night. I am daily surrounded by irritation and outrage, from Dr. Peterson’s clumsy advances to the supercilious and condescending air of the clerks at the Cadwallian to my little Jane’s cries and shrieks to my beloved Maximilian’s less pleasant habits.
I am learning to take these things in stride—and in truth, few of them are truly blameworthy. I married my Maximilian knowing that I was marrying his faults as well as his virtues; little Jane is a child with a child’s ways; and to the Cadwallian clerks I am both a woman and an outsider, a fellow of no college. It is their charge to protect the library’s holdings; they would have little more respect for me if I were a don.
Dr. Peterson is a separate case; but him I may gratefully leave to Maximilian’s correction.
The fire wants to rise, Armand; it is only in the Presence that it subsides and is at peace. And, I have discovered, I can find it nowhere else here but at St. Isidore’s. I have visited St. Roger’s, and the chapel at Veronica’s College; and I have found no more solace in those places than in the libraries or quadrangles. I feel no Presence, but only absence.
I wrote you last month that we were compelled to leave our rooms in college, and gave you the reasons, all of them valid reasons; but what truly compelled us was not the will of Dr. Tillotson’s colleagues, but the distance from our rooms to the humble sanctuary of St. Isidore.
I rise early and attend Mass before I begin my work for the day; I often spend an hour there in the afternoon, or longer if the day has been particularly troublesome. It helps, Armand. It brings me balance, and peace, and gives me joy and strength; and this is a very good thing, for incinerating a lecturer in Ancient Cumbrian Literature is not at all the done thing, and would bring shame to my family.
As well as putting an end to my research.
Do pray for me, Armand, I beg of you.
Your morose and dispirited cousin,
Amelia
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Zymurgia House 