Palaeographist Work ✮ < Deluxe >

“It hallucinates. But we’re working on that.”

Completed: nostrum. Next: the “et” ligature on fol. 47v. Compare with British Library Add. MS 35180. Hypothesis: Hasty Brother was left-handed. The cross-strokes pull right-to-left. Unusual. Check with Dr. M. in conservation—he owes me a favour. palaeographist

Then she turns off the light. Tomorrow, she will look at a single letter, a single stroke, a single hairline flick of a quill that has been waiting seven centuries for someone to care. And she will care. That is the job. That is the whole, strange, magnificent job. “It hallucinates

The fellow hesitates. “Not yet.”

She has spent six weeks on this single glyph. She has compared it to 1,200 digitized manuscripts from the Parker Library, the Vatican, and the BnF. She has consulted a specialist in Merovingian chancery hands (no luck) and a retired Jesuit epigraphist (“Could it be a Greek chi?”). She has lain awake at 3 a.m. staring at the ceiling of her college rooms, seeing the symbol burned into her retina like a migraine aura. Hypothesis: Hasty Brother was left-handed