32. A Letter from Truro
In which Fuzzypuffling is surprised...
@ChristmasStars picked up @FuzzyPuffling's letter from where it had spent the night propped against the clock. The teapot was on its second round, and @AngleofRepose had her notebook open at the page ruled into columns, with Truro still logged as film and letter to come.
Christmas Stars opened the envelope with the paperknife and drew out three folded sheets of handcrafted writing paper. She began to read aloud.
Dear all,
I visited Truro Cathedral and it is a truly remarkable building. The cathedral is enormous, which I had not properly understood until I was standing inside it, and it is mostly Victorian, which I knew. I took my time looking at all the glass, which you will forgive when I tell you what I found, and also what else I found, which I am putting in anyway.
The old parish church of St Mary’s was kept and built into the south side of the nave, so there is a mediaeval aisle enclosed in a Victorian building, and the windows from the original church are still there. That is where a beautiful window featuring Margaret Godolphin is located. Sadly, no mark there, but worth the journey on its own account.
Wandering over to the north nave aisle, I found the Joan of Arc window which is truly magnificent, and I found the mark! The circle with the three lines through it, struck into the lower part of the leading, on the outside face of the border, at the height where nobody looks. And I found it because I looked! I photographed it from every angle the light allowed and one that didn’t, and the film went into the post with this letter. Whether there is anything underneath it I cannot tell you, but I’m sure Glossy will enlarge it on the print and Angle will get out her magnifying glass and see what is there.
Now the other thing.
The Great East Window behind the altar has a small pane of plain blue glass in it, up among the painted figures, and it does not belong. I noticed it the way you notice a patched sleeve, and I asked a steward, and she told me the story with the pleasure of a woman who has told it a great many times, and this is it in its entirety. During the Second World War a young man discharged a gun, whether by accident or by high spirits, the account is not clear, and the shot went through the window and missed the figure beside it by a hand’s width. The hole was filled with a plain piece of blue glass, meant to be temporary, until a proper repair could be made. The proper repair was never made. The blue pane is still there, more than 80 years later, and in the middle of the morning the sun comes through it and lays a small blue oval on the floor of the aisle. The steward showed me where, and we stood either side of it like two women gazing into a pond.
I had gone in to look for a mark, and I came out having spent half an hour watching a patch of blue light move across a stone floor. Nobody in that cathedral wants the temporary repair replaced. I did ask. The steward looked at me as though I had suggested filling in the pond.
I do recommend you go and see it for yourselves, as it really is quite a wonderful sight. The film is enclosed. The letter is longer than it needed to be.
Very best wishes, Fuzzypuffling
Christmas Stars laid the sheets down. Angle was already writing. Truro, the Margrave’s mark, north nave aisle. She looked at the line, and at the darkroom door, which was shut, and added, film in the queue, and left the rest for the photographs.
“A hand’s width,” said Girdle. “From the figure.”
“That’s what it says,” said Christmas Stars.
Gosie had read the last page again over Christmas Stars’s shoulder, the part about the oval of light on the stone.
“I wouldn’t mind seeing that one day,” she said.
“Because of the mark?” said Girdle.
“Because of the blue.” Gosie set the page down. “It’s a plain bit of modern glass in the middle of all that painting, and it’s the thing the steward wanted to show her. I’ve spent three months learning what old glass does to light. I’d quite like to see what a mistake does to it, 80 years on. And to understand why it shines on the floor, when the rest of the glass doesn’t.”
“You’d have to go in the middle of the morning,” said Girdle.
“I would go in the middle of the morning.”
At that moment, Griffin, Gimbal and Graphic came rushing in through the door together, coats still on. Angle put down her pencil.
Griffin stood in the middle of the room and looked at the other two, and Gimbal nodded, and Graphic put her paw, just for a moment, against her pocket.
“We all found the same thing,” said Griffin.
https://myrtlelion.substack.com/p/32-a-letter-from-truro