Nesta snatched up the parchment. It was a new sheet, one of several that had arrived this morning from the abbey along with some inks. When Marcus took Genith to the town, he had not forgotten to send for it as he had promised.

Satisfied with Genith’s letter, Nesta knelt beside her chest to finish her own packing. Garments had already been tucked in the sack, but now there were harder choices to make.

She examined the few personal items that she had brought from Scotland. The box of inks and brushes and quills would have to come, but that left little room for anything else. She should stuff in a few veils and one decent headdress, so she would not look too much a peasant when she met people of good blood. The ancient gold armlet and her father’s ring, all that remained of her family’s status, would both be necessary.

She tucked the items into the sack, and it bulged like a sausage. Regretfully, she reached among the objects that would not fit, and lifted a stack of parchments. The notion of leaving them behind pained her.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor, she plucked at the yarn that bound them and read the top one. It was the first she had received from her father after going to Scotland. How excited she had been when it came, tucked in the bag of a jongleur headed for Argyle. She had gladly paid the coin her father had promised as a reward, and savored the words over and over until she knew them by heart.

That first letter had been gentle and endearing, but also critical of her decision to accept her marriage. She hadn’t cared about that, but only that contact with her father had not been lost forever.

She had found a way to write back, and so other letters had come, full of his lyrical sentences full of grand dreams. She could tell from his references that not all of his missives completed their journeys, but several scrolls had found their way to her every year.

She pulled the final one from the bottom of the stack. After she went to the convent the tone of the letters had changed, and the dreams had become plans. She had understood what lay within the cryptic messages, but this last one had been quite explicit.

No merchant or jongleur had been entrusted with this letter. One of her father’s men had journeyed from Wales to place it in her hands. Her father had been ill when he sent it, and died before it reached her.

His last words. His dying command. That he had never seen her response with her promises did not make any difference.