There was no end to the words. No end to what they meant, or the ways they had been used. Some words’ histories stretched so far back that our modern understanding of them was nothing more than an echo of the original, a distortion. I used to think it was the other way round, that the misshapen words of the past were clumsy drafts of what they would become; that the words formed on our tongues, in our time, were true and complete. But I was realising that, in fact, everything that comes after that first utterance is a corruption.

I had forgotten, already, the exact shape of Her ear, the particular blue of Her eyes. They got darker in the weeks I nursed Her; they may have got darker still. I woke every night to Her phantom cry and knew I would never hear a single word wrapped in the music of Her voice. She was perfect when I held Her. Unambiguous. The texture of Her skin, Her smell and the gentle sound of Her sucking could be nothing other than what they were. I had understood Her perfectly.

With every breaking dawn, I recreated the detail of Her. I would start with the translucent nails on Her tiny toes and work my way up through chubby limbs and creamy skin to golden lashes, barely there. But then I would struggle to recall some little thing, and I understood that as the days and months and years went on my memory of Her would fade.

Lie-child. That’s what the midwife had called her. But it wasn’t in “Leisureness to Lief.” I searched the pigeon-holes: five slips, pinned to a top-slip. It had been defined. A child born out of wedlock; a bastard. It had been excluded. A note had been written on the top-slip: Same as love-child—excise.

But was it? Did I love Bill? Did I miss him?

No. I’d just lain with him.

But I loved Her. I missed Her.

She couldn’t be defined by any of the words I found, and eventually I stopped looking.

I worked. I sat at my desk in the Scriptorium and filled the spaces of my mind with other words.