Within a few days of welcoming Aram into their home, the Macbays had assigned him a central role in the function of the church. He was to lay the groundwork for worship: to mop the sanctuary, distribute the hymnals, stock the tea cabinet in the basement, adjust the height of the pulpit based on who was set to deliver that week’s sermon. Today, Sunday, he raised it to his own six feet. The Macbays had heard word of the suffering inflicted on those confined at Dungavel, and though that may have dismayed them before, with Aram temporarily in their family, their care had a stronger tenor. The problem of detention, to them, had a new immediacy, and so they had invited him to share his experiences with the congregation. He had said yes, hoping the words might feel better on the outside.
It was seven in the morning now, and worship began weekly at nine thirty. He had always found the best remedy for tension to be exhaustion, especially as an outcome of labour, so he set to work early. He retrieved an old, hand-crafted broom from Minister Macbay’s office. He had learned from Mrs Macbay that, in Celtic custom, brooms held firm import – once, to sweep was not simply to clean, but to demarcate the borders of a home, to set a boundary between domestic and wild. When families lived together on dirt floors, they needed to sweep them several times a day, to keep the space looking liveable. The importance of that act was not lost on Aram, who had survived in a stone castle, who had squatted just recently in an abandoned hut.
So Aram set about his duties. He was amazed by the range of debris that had ended up on the ground, shards of flame shells, even loch lettuce. The old broom was nearly threadbare, its horsehairs gone hard and unruly. He had to reach around corners, under pews, with both care and force. He found the best way to offset the broom’s resistance, and he managed, ultimately, to present the room as a sanctuary again. Looking down the aisle between the pews, he admired its absence of herbs, dust, dead insects.
He sat in the front pew and looked up at the pulpit, settled imposingly in the middle of the raised stage. Behind the podium, the pipes of an organ radiated upwards in a sacred kind of starburst. On either side, the walls were adorned with scenes hand-stitched on felt banners, one of the nativity and the other of Jesus crucified, long, bloodied nails hammered through both of his hands. Aram looked from one to the other, the baby brought into the world without sin, then turned into man, persecuted, treated as a heretic. That arc, Aram knew. That arc, many knew, to some degree. So Aram had found the small mirror in which other congregants might see themselves, even given they had never been incarcerated. He was clear then on what he would say later that morning, after Minister Macbay had warmed the pulpit and called him forth, to cast his own sacred starburst.
*
An hour or so later, as Aram was placing a hymnal in the back of each pew, he heard a child’s voice calling into the sanctuary. At first, he thought he was imagining the sound, having studied the felted nativity scene for too long. But when the voice came again, it was distinctly real. Hello? the boy said.
Aram turned. All the tension he had banished from his body with the broom returned then, tenfold. A young child was there, green-eyed, pigeon-toed, but he was not alone. He was holding the hands of two women. One was unfamiliar to Aram, but the other was unmistakable, as known as breath.
Euna? he asked, though it was not a question. He had simply lost all language beyond her name.
She was there, not phantom but true flesh. She wore a long-sleeved gauze dress, despite December. No gloves, no jacket, just a guitar on her back. One earring was pearl, the other misplaced. She was, of course, lovelier than she had been at eighteen. The bones beneath her face had sharpened slightly, just enough to make her seem settled in her skin. She stood tall, cocksure.
You’re here, she said. She let go of the child’s hand and hurried toward Aram.
In the castle, time had often come unfastened. It had moved in loops, moments appearing again and again; or sometimes drifting so they seemed interminable, untethered to any clock. But that morning Euna managed to unfasten it in an entirely new way. Suddenly, events made no sense to him. He was a lonely young boy at sea, grabbing brown crabs for his mother, and he was an elderly man, burying a casket in the Pullhair boneyard, and he was a forebear a thousand years before, a hero saving his beloved from a town dank with plague. Time was not floating, nor repeating. It was everywhere.
Euna had at some point, in the swimming of time, arrived by Aram’s side. He slid down the pew to make room, and she sat down beside him. She turned her body toward his and put her hands, her soft, hard musician’s hands, on his face. To be touched like that…
You look wonderful, she said.
Good, he told her. And what he meant was, Good, because I feel as if the whole world’s history just landed on my head.
I didn’t expect to see you, she said. She moved her hands to her lap.
Aram gestured to a stained-glass window above them, the Lord rendered in red and gold. He must have brought us together, he said.
Euna scoffed at this, not hostilely, but noticeably, at least to Aram. She said, This is my first time coming home.
The way that word lingered on Euna’s tongue. Aram wished time would come unspooled again so he could stay there, living in the echo of Euna’s home. But it had gone linear, and he was aware of her, there, waiting for him to speak. He tried to say so many things at once they dammed his mouth; from that logjam came only silence.
Behind them he could hear the other two talking. The child was asking, Who is that? and the woman was replying, not unkindly, Someone your mother used to know.
He leaned in close to Euna. He did not want her to hear the others’ conversation, in case she placed any words like used to. As he neared her, he noticed the gooseflesh on the back of her neck, her high arms. You must be cold, he said.
She told him she was fine. She sloughed off her guitar strap, a length of velvet with bronze stitching, and rested the instrument on the pew beside her. It made a mild sound as she set it down, the strings softly ringing. Relieved of her guitar, she moved into Aram’s body. He cloaked her shoulders with his arm. At first he could feel her faintly shivering, and then she settled into his warmth, his fisherman’s sweater.
After a few minutes sitting like this – it was so easy, not talking, it was so much simpler just to touch – the other woman came to interrupt them, the little boy in tow. They sat on the pew in front of Aram and Euna’s, sideways, so they were looking directly at them.
Hello, the woman said, extending her hand toward Aram. I’m Muireall.
He shook her offered hand. I’m Aram, he said. You may have heard about me.
Muireall squinted for a moment, making a show of thinking. Not ringing a bell, she said. He hoped desperately that she was teasing him.
Euna laughed. That’ll take you down a peg, she said to Aram.
The boy started to squirm. He clambered onto his knees, facing Euna. And this is Lachlan Iain, Muireall said. The boy was maybe four years old, redheaded, with cool gold skin. As soon as he heard his name, he dropped his head below the pew. He peeked out above the wood backrest as if a loch creature, lurking.
He’s shy, Euna said.
Glad to have you here, Lachlan Iain, Aram said. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you for a long time.
The boy showed his face up to the tip of his nose.
By the way, Euna said, she was messing with you. Of course she knows who you are, bloody amadan. Having learned that word in the castle, Aram knew Euna was calling him an idiot.
Actually, Muireall added, I have a few things to say to you. And they’re not all child-friendly.
This, he had expected. Actually, he was thrilled to know Euna’s dearest friends were angry with him. Anger was alive. And so, sensitive, submissive. Excellent, he said, not at the anger, but at the image of them on the tour bus, saying Aram. Whenever the time is right, I’m all ears.
Muireall squinted again. She made her suspicion plain. Now the boy, his mouth still behind the pew, repeated, Bloody amadan.
Looks like someone inherited your dirty mouth, Aram said.
This gave them all pause. They knew the boy had not inherited anything from Euna, at least not directly. Unspoken, this shared knowledge settled as silt over their conversation. Are you here for the service? Aram asked.
Euna looked panicked. Is it Sunday?
Aram nodded. I’m actually preaching shortly. Would you stay and listen, Euna? It might explain a few things.
Muireall spat into her hands and started to pat down Lachlan Iain’s hair, shaping a clean centre parting. When his hair was perfectly arranged, fit for any church service, Muireall reached into a leather duffel bag she had been carrying over her shoulder. In it was a tasselled, hooded tunic, a silk work of art. She offered the garment to Euna, who luxuriated in its folds, looking royal.
Thank you for the invite, Euna said. But I don’t think it’s a good idea.
Please, Aram said. Don’t go away.
Euna straightened out of Aram’s hold. She tucked in the corners of her lips, which she did when she was considering something deeply. Knowing Euna, she thought she was unreadable, but he saw her more attentively than he did any other part of this world. He remembered her tells.
Lachlan Iain said, Màthair, you promised.
Muireall said, Hush, honey. Give her a moment.
You said I don’t have to go to church. You said I was a Hammer.
Aram was intrigued. This was the light spilling from under his old lover’s door, a hint at the intimate. What’s that? he asked the child.
Lachlan Iain began to sing an unusual refrain. A chrostag! Today I was so mad at my màthair! A chrostag! Muireall turned the boy around so he was seated tidily on his behind. It’s okay, little one, she said. She rubbed his back to calm him.
Aram wanted to hear more from Lachlan Iain, but he did not want to agitate either woman by egging the boy on, so he kept quiet. He placed one hand finely on Euna’s knee and stroked the peak of the bone, waiting patiently while she considered his invitation. He had waited so many years, there was no need to rush her now.
At length, Euna said, We’ll sit at the back.
Aram’s joy was sudden and forceful. He said, without knowing he was going to say it, I missed you.
She looked as if she wanted to respond. Instead, in silence, she strapped the guitar to her back. Bumping his knees, she rushed into the aisle, Muireall and Lachlan Iain following closely behind. Sure enough, they all settled in the final pew, the boy between the two women. Euna pulled the tunic hood well over her intricately braided hair, far enough to cover her identity. Aram wished she would come out of hiding. But then, it was because of him that she had to confine herself, to curtain her beautiful eyes, even on the occasion of her homecoming.
*
Half an hour later, Aram stood at the church entrance with Minister Macbay, welcoming a gentle trickle of congregants. He tried not to think of Euna, of the little family unit in the final pew. Moths were flitting in his stomach. He was nervous because he did not feel inspired, and he believed a preacher could only speak from a place of divine vision. Some days stirred the holiness in him. But now his sense of sàimh, of ascendance, was gone – by being there, red-blooded and human, Euna had grounded him. He could not raise himself to the floating place, parcel of sense and essence, where words moved through him by a greater spirit’s hand. Around Euna, the world was made of matter, and that was a world Aram could not leave, not even for the length of a sermon.
Good morning, Aram, said a woman with blue-tinged hair, one of the oldest villagers.
Well, good morning, he said. He was flattered that someone knew his name. Welcome to worship.
Thank you, the woman said. And will you be speaking to us today?
Yes, ma’am, he said.
The elderly woman took both of Aram’s hands into hers, which were frosted, unbending. She looked up at him through cataracts, a creamy film over her pale eyes. It occurred to him then that he was not the only one to ever live. This woman had walked the earth for a mythically long time, had almost certainly lost someone she treasured, maybe not a Euna, but someone. I don’t hear too well, she said. But if you feel it, I will, too.
Aram cupped his hands around hers, trying to offer some relief, to release her fingers from their tight fate. Though the fingers remained rigid, he did feel an energy move between him and the elderly woman, a gentle alleluia. He was no longer so afraid. He believed in unassuming saints. The congregation having mostly arrived by then, Minister Macbay invited Aram to follow him onto the raised stage. Minister Macbay was meant to deliver his sermon before Aram’s, but he changed the order. He must have noticed the moment between the elderly woman and Aram, the confidence it had revealed in him. After the prelude, the processional, and the opening hymn – ‘Nations that long in darkness walked’ – Minister Macbay offered a short reading from Job, 19:26–27.
26And after my skin has been destroyed,
yet in my flesh I will see God;
27I myself will see him
with my own eyes – I, and not another.
How my heart yearns with me.
He could not have known that Aram had pored over those verses in the castle. Watching the minister from a folding chair near the crucifixion mural, Aram felt wounds open that he thought had closed for good. His loneliness was vast and swift, and it brought him to a place of great vulnerability, which on a day like today would have to double for that inspired, floating state. Minister Macbay introduced Aram to the congregation. I bet you’ve noticed this handsome fellow around town, he said. He is our friend Aram, our son, really, and he will share a few words about his life that we may do well to hear.
Aram walked to the pulpit. Minister Macbay enfolded him in his enormous form before sitting in the seat Aram had vacated. Aram stood, straight-backed, before the congregation. He was relieved to see Euna, Lachlan Iain, and Muireall, still in the final pew. He noticed Aileen on the other side, wedged between Carson and Mrs Macbay, who was also the organist and director of the church choir. Mrs Macbay beamed her reassurance at Aram. Even in this town, where it seemed any moment a shrub could reveal itself to be a sleeping sheep, or a lovely old farmhouse a site of confinement and cruelty, he could always trust her sincerity.
I want to talk to you today, he said, about the maidenhair tree. He tried to project, hoping the elderly woman whose hands he had held would somehow be able to hear him, or at least feel the vibrations of his voice.
Mrs Macbay did not lose her smile, though his statement may have seemed random. He continued, It’s sometimes known as Ginkgo, from a misspelling of the Japanese words for silver apricot. A beautiful species called Ginkgo gardneri grew here in the Paleocene of Scotland, sixty million years ago.
Someone had brought a cough into the sanctuary. Was it the owner of the guest house, or maybe the herbalist rumoured to live in a home of uncaged rabbits? Someone, anyway, was coughing, and for a moment Aram was thrown. He could see the villagers in front of him losing their concentration. He began again, more assertively, raising his words as high as the roof beams.
I learned about this unusual tree, he said, while I was in prison. At that, everyone returned their focus to him. A man in the front row waved his hand as if to encourage Aram to continue on this route, rather than with the maidenhair.
Aram said, And you might be interested to learn that there is only one living Ginkgo species, biloba. The others have gone extinct because of their unusually slow rate of evolution. The maidenhair tree evolved in an era before flowering plants, but when those came along, they adapted better to disturbed environments and gradually replaced the many types of Ginkgo.
There is a reason I mention this particular tree, here in Pullhair, in your beautiful church, he said. The room was quiet. The cougher had stopped coughing. The waver had stopped waving.
It was very kind of Minister Macbay to invite me to speak, he said. But now I’m here, I don’t know what more to say. He looked from face to face. He wanted to share more of his thoughts on evolution, about the dangers of stagnation, really, but in that moment he realized he was still speaking to them from a distance. And no one wanted to have their ways dressed down by a guest, a non-member – he had seen how poorly that worked on his visit to Gainntir.
Aram was ready to get off the stage, or at least stop talking. He feared the judgement not of God but of the congregation. But he might never have Euna’s attention again, so he could not be silent until he had addressed her. He said, While on the inside, I had one special visitor. He hesitated, wanting to name Euna, but not wanting to out her to the villagers. If I could do one thing differently, it would be to tell her how much it meant to me that she came. I know she walked away from her haven.
He was quiet for a full moment. He wanted to gesture the choir in, to hide him as Euna’s hood hid her, but he did not. He stood exposed in the silence. At last, Mrs Macbay stood and faced the five-boy choir. She lifted her hands in the air, and the boys breathed in together, then began to sing ‘Angels we have heard on high’. He was grateful for their voices, blanketing his talk, as wildflowers used to blanket the ground in this part of the Outer Hebrides. There were holes in their song, too, patches unreached by the flowers, but those were barely perceptible among such cream and bloom.
He glanced at the family in the final row while the boys forged ahead with their song. Euna was still invisible beneath the tunic, while beside her, Muireall had a slight and calming smile on her face. Lachlan Iain was standing on the pew, drumming his torso in a style Aram related to his own father, playing the bodhrán.
When the song was finished, Mrs Macbay sat down and motioned for the choir to do the same. Again, Minister Macbay and Aram switched positions, the minister behind the pulpit and Aram in his seat on the side of the stage. As they passed one another, Minister Macbay looked at Aram with eyes so blue they seemed stolen from a man of the Minch. He whispered, You did well, son.
The rest of the service passed in a blur, the benediction, the lighting of the Christ candle, the Communion. Before Aram knew it, they were all joining together in their final hymn, ‘There is a happy land’. He remembered this same song from when the congregation was more full-bodied, its sounds wider. But today its strength was in its starkness. How gorgeous it was to pick out individual voices warbling, Come to that happy land, come, come away;/Why will you doubting stand, why still delay?
After, Minister Macbay invited everyone to the basement for fellowship. Aram considered bolting right then, but he was too great with gratitude toward Minister Macbay and indeed toward the whole congregation, who had listened to his attempt to communicate, to offer a sermon. So he went to the basement with everyone else. Everyone, that is, except Euna, who had evidently ducked out of the building after the service.
He first saw Lachlan Iain, stack of oatcakes in hand, and Muireall. They were meeting Carson and the three Macbays, and the exchange seemed simple and harmonious. Of course it was not Lachlan Iain’s first time meeting Aileen, but either he had been young enough then to avoid forming memories of her, or he had already learned the fine art of affectation. Aram hoped it was the former.
Minister Macbay knelt and kissed the boy on both of his freckled cheeks. And who is this handsome child? he asked.
His mother used to live here years ago, Aileen said. Euna and I were quite close for a while.
And where is Euna today? Mrs Macbay asked.
She’ll join us later, Muireall said. She just wanted to take a spin around her old hometown.
Funny, Minister Macbay said. I don’t remember her at all. I thought I knew everyone in Pullhair.
Mrs Macbay knelt by the child. It’s wonderful to meet you, she said. And then, looking up at Muireall, We’re praying Aileen gives us a grandchild of our own one of these days.
Muireall smiled her same consoling smile, while Carson left to collect a plateful of black cookies. Aram took that as his opportunity to enter the conversation. He came into the circle, hand extended, and even Lachlan Iain shook it.
Beautiful words, Muireall said.
Thank you, he said. Sincerely.
We’re happy to have you here, Minister Macbay told Aram. Breathing new life into the congregation.
Muireall leaned in and spoke to him, semi-privately, of course knowing their exchange was audible to the others. He was relieved when she told him Euna had gone onto the heath – despite the strange weather, he preferred the air out there to that of this basement, gummy, dense.
Minister Macbay asked, Do you know this Euna, son?
I do, Aram said. I did.
The minister said, winking, We’ll save you some shortbread.
Aram nodded and said his goodbyes as politely as he could. In his flight from the basement, he took the stairs two at a time. He hurried through the side door onto the heath. A fine mist had started to settle on the heather and low sedges, forming a sheer film, as if gossamer. Aram climbed over small hills, looking for her, into a stone enclave, looking for her. Euna had in that short time gone a long distance. Then he saw it, a small teardrop in the grass, her pearl earring. Whether it was the missing one or the one he had seen, hours earlier, clinging to her ear, he could not know. He stopped to pick it up, tiny and wet, delicate. He brushed the damp dirt away, polishing the treasure with his thumb.
No more than a hundred metres from him, on turf somehow both dead and overgrown, he saw Euna lying on her stomach. The tunic was tented over her head, skin only showing on her fingers, adorned with runic rings, and her ankles, poking out from under her gauzy dress. She gave the impression she was lifeless. Aram cantered to her. The ground was cold, a punishment even through his soles. From up close, he could see the velvet tunic lifting, ever so gently, when she breathed.
He lay down flat beside her, near enough that he was touching her least finger with his. He felt a rounded shape pushing into his spine and reached under his back to recoup an apple, bruised though whole in his back arch. He was, after fellowship, too full to eat the fruit, but he remembered an old method of divination his mother had taught him – he twisted the stem in his hand, reciting the alphabet, until it gave way. E. He did not put stock in that kind of prophecy, and yet.
Euna rolled over at the sound of the stem separating from the fruit. Her cheekbones caught what light leaked through the grey sky. What are you doing? she asked.
Just an old game my mother taught me.
I know it, Euna said. She was flushed now. Cool, reticent Euna, icon of control, betrayed by her own face.
Have you played? he asked, moving his least finger on top of hers.
A few times, she said. After you and I met. I was locked in the goatshed most days. Grace would bring me apples.
Aram did not want to open any wounds that Euna had taken care to heal. So, sensing it had been a place of pain, he tiptoed away from the goatshed. What did you do with the apples? he asked.
You’ll think it’s silly, she said. But there are a hundred ways to read the future with an apple. This was before I got your postcard, of course.
This was teenage Euna talking. For a precious moment, her feelings were plain as primary colours, and for once she allowed him to see them. I think that’s lovely, he said. I’m flattered.
At that, Euna hardened. Her flush had gone deep, the blood now so near to the surface. I wasn’t trying to flatter you, she said.
He reached over and carefully clipped the pearl earring he had found onto her lobe. It was the absent piece. Now she had a set.
Her interest in him was indistinct.
Her lips were blue from cold.
Their son was in the holy house, an acre away.
There were many sound reasons for him not to kiss her, and only one reason for it – his one generative reason, overriding all else, as if a sea change. When he told others that God gave him reason to wake up in the morning, was this not what he meant? Was he not talking about love, or more precisely, agape?
He pressed his red to her blue. All his thoughts stopped and for a spell he lived through her lips. They were a portal to a world in which grass still grew greenly, and gannets still flew overhead, in the right season. One hand on his chest and the other in his hair, Euna bonded him to her body, the land.
The mist around them had turned to snow, burned grass to fresh meadow. All the days of deprivation, not only his, but his mother’s, his father’s, his beloved Euna’s, seemed to have converged in this vital end. All this time he had carried a flame for her, she had kept hers fuelled, too.
Aram, he heard. He thought at first the voice was coming from Euna. But no, it sounded furious, and Euna was anything but furious right now, her gaze gentle as the mist. How could you do this? the voice asked. Then he saw Aileen, full of a separate kind of flame, hustling up the tall hill.
We cooked for you, she was yelling. We gave you your own bedroom. You disgusting dìol-déirce.
Euna scampered away from Aram and curled into a stone, the tunic over her head again. Aram sat up, attempting to face the harm he had done head on, though he was at the same time dreaming of the warm portal. Aileen had tears in her eyes. Snow on her lashes enhanced their shine. She went over to stone-small Euna and removed her hood. Why are you acting as if you don’t know me? she asked. Even in Aram’s state of enchantment, in which all edges seemed so smooth and conforming, in which the hills could well have dissolved into level meadow, her tone was hard with sadness.
Euna looked at Aileen and then away from her, at her own runic rings, the bare and tapered ends of her legs.
The camper van, the library, Aileen said. She crouched in the bell heather beside Euna, thumbing the filigreed hem of her tunic. The way we slept every night.
I shouldn’t have come home, Euna said, vacantly, from the same lips Aram had just been kissing.
Aram wondered about the legitimacy of Aileen’s interest in Euna. He wondered if, in part, this performance was for his benefit. He was troubled by the thought – surely Aileen was not so mercenary. Maybe this thought was his way of safeguarding his love for Euna, by making sure it was unusual, a sentiment unshared by any others.
Aileen said, Aram, you aren’t supposed to touch her any more.
Aram was still planted on the ground he had been sharing with Euna. He peered down into the frosted clover and saw her body’s imprints, the troughs of her thighs, the stabs of her elbows. He said to Aileen, I didn’t realize you had made rules.
At that word, Euna looked up with a start, returning her full attention to the conversation. She seemed unsettled. Having glimpsed Gainntir, its ugly, strangling rigidity, he was not surprised by her response. He wished he had thought of its impact before he used the term. Aileen said to him, Kindly keep quiet. You’ve hurt her enough.
Aram chafed the scruff under his chin. He was exasperated. He wanted to place all his focus on Euna, on darning the holes between them, and instead he had to contend with Aileen, turned bitterly backward, lording the past over him. Are you going to be like this forever? he asked Aileen.
You expect to be forgiven so soon, Aileen said.
So soon? he asked. I’ve done a lot of time.
Aileen peered from side to side, the way a trapped animal sometimes does, in search of an escape route. Euna offered one instead. She started to whimper from the cold. She was so self-contained it was possible, sometimes, to neglect even her essential needs. But the fact was, she had been out on the heath, nearly bare against the rudiments of winter, for the better part of an hour. Her skin had been drinking all that cold, and now her cheeks were going greyish, her lips scaling as if belonging to a fish.
We need to get her home, Aram said. I’ll carry her.
You’d like that, I’m sure, Aileen said.
Aram felt his anger mounting at this tiny, petty child posing as an adult woman. He saw himself slapping her, her falling to her knees, subservient in the wild grass. He pictured the blush on her face, the chastised look in her wide, suddenly powerless eyes. But he held back, and without much work. He had learned along the way to control himself. He had not known this until Aileen had tested his bounds.
We both want the same thing, Aram said to her, as gently as he could. We both want Euna to be safe. Please, let me carry her.
Euna swallowed with some effort, forcing her trachea down its iced column. Yes, she said. Yes.
Fine, Aileen said. Take her.
Thank you, Aileen. I know that wasn’t easy to say.
Hurry up, she said.
Aram stripped his fisherman’s sweater and drew it down over the high neckline of Euna’s tunic. To see her nuzzle into its folds, pull the sleeves to cover her slight, trembling wrists, filled him with affection and, in some muted way, hope. He knelt beside her and asked permission to lift her. She granted it, and he scooped her into his arms, now covered only with a long-sleeved jersey.
You know, Aileen said to him, this doesn’t make you some hero.
I know, he said. Believe me, I know.
This tempered Aileen a small bit. She nodded to him, then trotted off toward the church. Clearly, the stress was affecting her deeply. When Aram climbed from his knees to his feet, it was with great, prayerful attention, as if ready for the final, most vital hymn.