Aelfric was alone here, working by the sputtering light of a goose-fat lamp. This inky womb was her favourite place, she thought, in all the world. The nib of her pen scratching softly at smooth vellum, Aelfric laboured over her copy of the fourth stanza of the Menologium of the Blessed Isolde: The Comet comes/in the month of October. In homage a king bows/at hermit’s feet. Not an island, an island/not a shield, a shield. Nine hundred and seven/the months of the fourth Year ... Her pen was cut from a goose quill. The ink, which the monks called encaustum, came from an oak tree gall. You crushed the gall in vinegar, thickened it with gum, and added salts for colour. The ink was thick and caustic and bit into the surface of the vellum - and so you had to take great care with your lettering, for a mistake when made could not be unmade (though it could be disguised as embellishment, as Aelfric had quickly learned). The vellum on which she wrote was the skin of a calf, soaked in urine to remove the hair and fat, then scraped clean, stretched on a frame and smoothed with a stone.
