‘When did this happen?’ Gil asked.
‘Why just the now. No an hour since. The Douglas’s men’s gone out to find him, but I’m glad Simmie got you first, sir, for Maister Millar was wanting you. Come in and sit a wee bit till they’re done singing.’
‘Did you see it?’ said Alys as they followed her into the empty kitchen. The fire was burning and the charcoal in the range was lit; behind them Simmie picked up his chopping-knife and resumed his endless task of chopping roots for the stew.
‘Is Humphrey really alive?’ Gil asked.
‘Oh, maister! Oh, it was the most …’ She paused, lost for words. ‘My mistress knelt wi him all last night,’ she explained. ‘She was praying and mourning him the whole night. Then she came into the kitchen for a bit the morn, and sat as if her tongue was locked.’
‘I saw her then,’ Gil agreed.
The girl nodded. ‘We got her to eat and drink a little, Nannie and me, while his brother was wi him, and she sat a bit longer after that. Then she suddenly rose up about an hour ago and said, He needs me, and went out to the garden. And Nannie and me followed her,’ she continued, her narrative gaining pace, ‘and saw her go into Maister Humphrey’s lodging, and then she screamed out, and came to the door, and called us ower, and said, He’s breathing. And we couldny credit it, but we went in, and there he was. He’d got colour in his face, and his breath going regular, and his hands warm, just as natural as could be. My mistress is wi him now, feeding him a wee bit bread and milk.’
‘Dieu soît bénit!’ said Alys, and crossed herself. Gil stared at the maidservant, as unable as she had been to credit the tale.
‘Has he woken?’ he asked.
‘Oh, aye. He’s no said much, but he kens us all, he’s named us, even Simmie and me. But maister,’ she continued, ‘the rarest thing of all, he’s cured of his madness. He’s as clear in his head as you or me, maister.’
‘I recall nothing,’ said Humphrey.
Denial of injury, Gil thought, is the price of forgiveness.
The first, immediate service of thanksgiving was over, and Humphrey himself was washed and fed and seated in invalid state by the hearth in the bedehouse hall, the brothers round him, Gil and Alys standing by the window. Mistress Mudie, unable to let go of her chick, stood by his side fussing with his rug or his garments.
‘Nothing?’ said Millar. ‘Have you no notion what happened?’
‘I have no notion,’ said Humphrey earnestly, ‘save that my dear Sissie here tells me I was found hanging in my own lodging. The last I recall was going to my rest after dinner. I suppose that was yesterday.’
‘His speech is greatly altered,’ said Alys to Gil, who nodded. The whole man was so altered he was hardly recognizable, his bearing and expression confident and pleasant. There was something more, Gil thought, which he could not place.
‘And the day?’ said Cubby. ‘What happened the now, laddie?’
‘I woke,’ he said simply. ‘I woke from the most beautiful dream I have ever had.’
‘So is Mistress Mudie’s,’ added Alys in the same undertone. Gil realized that this was true; the little stout woman had not uttered a word for at least a quarter-hour.
‘Well, and what hast thou dreamt?’ asked Maister Veitch, with a sardonic lift of one eyebrow. Gil recognized a line from the Skinners’ Play, but Humphrey’s face lit up.
‘Oh, my brothers, such a dream,’ he said. ‘I dreamed I was lying in my own bed, in the darkest night that ever was, so dark that I was afraid. Then a single beam of light shone, and I rose and followed it, and looked out of my lodging into the garden, as we’ve all done many times.’ Elderly heads nodded. Mistress Mudie bent and pulled the rug higher across his knees, a glow in her eyes. ‘I saw the garden full of flowers, and filled with a great light, and three beautiful young men dancing in the midst of it.’
‘Young men?’ said Anselm doubtfully. ‘He never said there was young men here.’
‘Wheesht,’ said Duncan.
‘They were dancing in a reel-of-three,’ Humphrey continued, ‘naked and shining as newborn babes, and each of them had the face of my friend Andrew Stevenson, who was drowned when he and I went fishing. Then I wept for my guilt in Andrew’s death, but one of the three came forward and drew me out into the light, and kissed me on the brow and the cheek and the mouth. And I woke, and kent that I was forgiven.’
That was it, thought Gil. That same inner calm that he had seen in Dorothea radiated from Humphrey’s thin square face.
‘Now I understand,’ said Anselm, and pushed his spectacles straight.
‘But who were the young men?’ said Barty who seemed to have heard this without difficulty.
Anselm retorted, with unaccustomed vigour, ‘Don’t be a fool, Barty. Who else would it be but the Blessed Trinity? He tellt me that,’ he added.
‘You have received a most particular grace, Humphrey,’ pronounced Duncan in Latin.
‘Have I not!’ agreed Humphrey.
‘No just forgiven,’ said Maister Veitch, ‘but cured. You ken you’ve been mad these ten year and more, laddie?’
‘Is it a miracle?’ asked Alys.
They had escaped from the bedehouse, where the brothers were settling down to discuss the event in full theological detail, while Millar composed a letter to the Archbishop. Sir James had returned just as they left, but Gil had managed to avoid him; he had no wish to analyse the situation for his godfather’s benefit. They had returned to Rottenrow, collected the dog, and were now out on the Stablegreen as Dorothea had first suggested.
‘I’ve heard of it happening,’ said Gil, ‘that a hanged felon survives, though it’s rare. But the dream, or vision, or whatever it was, is outside my knowledge. That does seem like something beyond the ordinary frame of things.’
‘It seems like a singular grace,’ Alys said. ‘The man is so altered. And not only Humphrey himself, Gil, did you notice how much Mistress Mudie is changed too? I suppose if it was her prayers brought it about, she must feel …’ Her voice trailed off.
They wandered along the path from Rottenrow, hand in hand in silence for a little. The short November day was nearly over. It had stopped raining for now, but the grasses were dripping and the wet bare branches of the hazel-scrub gleamed in the low light. Socrates galloped ahead, hunting for interesting scents. Gil was simply enjoying being in Alys’s company with no other intrusions, and when she finally spoke again she echoed this:
‘How long since we had time like this, Gil? Just the two of us?’
‘Days,’ he said.
‘A mistake,’ she admitted. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Why should it be your fault?’
‘I’ve been too busy,’ she said. ‘I see it now. I left the house today when Dorothea brought me the news, and …’ She paused, considering her words. ‘Your sister’s concerns — Tib’s, I mean — are a more important matter than the feast. I am sure my household can manage without me. And if they can manage without me for this, they can manage for other reasons, and I should have left them before.’
‘Is that what Dorothea meant, just before Simmie came for me?’
‘No,’ she said quietly after a moment, then halted, looking round. ‘Is that the back of the bedehouse? Where was the cart that Tib saw?’
‘Here,’ he said, accepting the change of subject, and stepped off the path into the long wet grass to look for the marks of the handcart’s legs. She picked up her skirts and followed him, peering at the two little indentations, and then looked up and down along the wall.
‘And the linen scarf?’ she asked.
‘That was yonder.’ He nodded at the clump of hazels. ‘I suppose he heard Tib following him, saw her lantern perhaps, and drew away from the gate, and saw the trees as a place to hide. He must have been nearly as alarmed as she was, when she simply stood here waiting for Michael to open the gate. I could wring her neck,’ he added. ‘She was always the spoilt one, but this is outside of enough.’
‘She is very much in love,’ said Alys. ‘That affects one’s judgement.’