She said, “Listen, Somerville! There was a Morgen, there is a Morgen, there will be a Morgen. ‘There will be’ is the ruler. Say that I died by fire but that I live again pardoned!”
He regarded her. A mist came over his eyes, the odd, grimacing face worked. Up went a hand to cover it, then dropped. “Ah, Morgen Fay, I, too, perchance, must do some dying! I had to come to find you, but you are safe and safe enough, for all my finding!”
She said, “Aye, Rob, do I not know that of you? Tell me, have you heard aught of Ailsa?”
No, he had not. But he told them this and that of Middle Forest and Wander vale. Thomas Bettany? He was well and was wedding young Cecily Danewood. Middle Forest, Castle, Saint Leofric, Silver Cross and Westforest. Montjoy, having made one pilgrimage, was now, they said, gone another.
The wold rolled afar, sun shone, wind breathed. Blue sky had cloud mountains. Blue sea, pearl mountains, and that invisible that held and was both, and rising with both surpassed. The wind sang, the fragrance ran.
Richard Englefield told of his life. Boyhood and the goldsmith, France and Italy, the tall houses, the seeking, the priest, Silver Cross. “Now thine, Somerville!”
Awhile ago Somerville would have thought this impossible, but now, quietly reminiscently, he spread out for himself and for them Somerville’s life, dark and light. And then there spoke Morgen Fay. The clean wind, the dry light, went about the hill.
“And all was changing all the time, changing and waking and learning, through earth and air and water and fire! And now it begins to know that it wakes and learns—and that is all, Rob—and now are we all born again.”
“Born again,” said Somerville? “Is that possible?”