More than a week passed by and hopes of finding genuine sorrow were fading. One night when the moon was nothing more than a splinter in the sky a young lady crossed his path. She wore heavy mourning: a severely plain black dress under a black bodice, and a veil. Digger pulled back into the shadow of an empty stall but the woman spotted his attempt to conceal himself.

"What you watchin me for? Me eyes might sting with sorrow but I ain't blind. I've seen you," she said with a curled lip; "the last couple a nights stalkin round."

"Forgive me if I've frightened you, madam, but I'm drawn to your grief-"

"What?! What kinda sick talk... "

"I come to you because of your great and unquestionable love for him."

"Who?"

"Your son, good lady." He felt her sorrow flow through his veins and revitalise him as he drew near.

Her gaze flashed up and down the deserted courtyard, and she realised she stood alone with him.

"I ain't interested in any potions. Scat! Leave me to grieve."

"But it's your grief I wish to remedy." He saw the red swollen eyes behind the veil widen with interest. "Was it a pit burial?"

She nodded and hardly believed she actually listened, answered. The man was just another fast talking quack making promises he couldn't keep for pennies she didn't have.

"And does your son rest near an oak?" Again she nodded. "Good, it is the tree of life. Tell me your name."

"'Elen," she whispered, her voice cracking. "I'm all alone. Even me 'usband..." She snivelled. "'E's passed."

"Come with me, Helen."

And the young widow strolled with him down the cobbled street to his lodgings where they would talk in private....

A sprinkling of bones lay over the moss-grown piles of earth. Gaping mausoleums with iron bars wrapped round their perimeters stood like caverns into the underworld. Dark skies hinted at a grey dawn morning. Beneath an ivy-ringed oak tree, Digger broke the earth with his miraculous spade.

"Two things I ask ... nothing more: You will leave the city and not return, and never tell a living soul about your son."

"Anythin you say. Just bring back my baby." The young widow lurched forward and almost kicked one of the four spice pouches into the hole. Her hands jumped to her face as she suppressed a yearning to bawl her eyes out. "Me breast still gives milk, sir. It ain't ever stopped." She chuckled between sobs. "And I reckon 'e'll be 'ungry... "

"And cold. You have something warm for him?"

"I'm everythin 'e needs. 'Urry, sir, before we're sprung." She tried crouching and leaning this way and that to see through the tremendous flurry of shovelling and flying dirt, but all was a blur. "Why you doin this, anyway?"

"I can't sleep." He winked but she hardly found it amusing.

"How'd you find me?"

He shrugged. "Some people just ... come my way, and sometimes I can help them."

"'Ow noble."

"Oh Marcus! My sweet little Marcus." She rewrapped the young thing in a warm blanket and hugged him to her chest to feed. She rocked her son and hummed bits and pieces of every nursery rhyme she knew.

The digger slumped to his knee, his hands and teeth clenching with the onset of an excruciating pain. "You must leave."

"Me 'usband's in the ground yonder, and there's an oak near 'is grave. Raise Marcus's father."

Digger looked at her dumbfounded.

"Reunite me family."

His eyes flickered. "I- I cannot."

"Can't what?"

"Rai- Raise your husband. It doesn't work. Please! You must leave." He collapsed on his side, tearing at his scalp.

"What's never worked, gravedigga?"

"Raising anyone but a dearly beloved child. The spade grows dull and the handle slips from my... Arrrrh! It slides from my grip- Arrrrh, good God! Leave me now, lest I go up in flames!"

"Don't you wanna see Marcus with both parents — not just one. Ain't that a noble cause, gravedigga?"

"It is, it is! But there's nothing more I can do for you." He rolled face down panting in the soft soil, his breath roaring hot.

With wide staring eyes, she gazed off at the tombstones and monuments gradually taking shape in the morning grey. A roaming fog reached out in smoky wisps across the churchyard.

"Gravedigga ... I'm much obliged for Marcus."

He watched through burning eyes as she wandered aimlessly away.

Several days passed and Helen stood queued at a bakehouse, the bundle of life in her arms kicking and gurgling.

"Helen!"

She turned to see an old friend, Mavis Sooter, who lived a few rows away.

"Oh Helen, my sweet child. I heard about poor little Marcus! My heart still breaks. Poor thing. So young to be robbed of life."

"Oh my lord! What- What a wretch I am. Look, Marcus is just fine." Mavis stood there shaking and shaking her head.

And Helen giggled at her little Marcus, who babbled happily away....

He woke to the sound of heavy knocking. He felt the ground shudder and saw dust particles shoot out from the cracks in the door. The thumping got louder till the crooked doorframe groaned under the pressure.

"Hold your fist." Digger climbed to his feet and robed himself. "What's all the fuss?" He unlatched the door and inched it open, the shine of the moon lighting his silvery eyes.

"Sir! Oh God!" Helen hopped around as if walking on hot coals. "You have to help me! Oh Christ Lord! Look. Look!"

"'Elp 'im, sir!" Tears streaked her dusty cheeks as she tried pushing the bundle into his arms. "Bury 'im, sir, and raise 'im again."

"He's gone for ever. Put him to rest. I cannot bring him back. One, or both, of the things I asked of you has not been performed."

Helen pulled back the turnover collar of her bodice and pressed her son's face to her bosom. "Marcus ... Marcus!"

Within the hour Digger had packed his belongings and prepared to leave the city to find genuine sorrow elsewhere. He heard another rapping at the door and opened it. He welcomed Helen's return like a stake through the heart.

"Please, sir digga, bring 'im back." She now had the dishevelled look of a madwoman with her hair frizzled and standing on end as if a hurricane had groomed it.

"Give your boy a proper burial, Helen. He can never again be raised."

"Just try. Try! I'm dead without 'im."

Helen looked off to the side. "See! Did you 'ear that? A witch, a devil!" She backed away. "Curse on you, gravedigga!"

He heard a gasping sound as if someone struggled to breathe. Adjusting his dark blue coif, the magistrate emerged from a neighbour's door-porch, his jowls quivering with delight.

"My, my, what an interesting confession. Guards!"

"He must be burned at the stake, your highness, both he and his magic rod," claimed the magistrate, his voice barely heard above the chatter.

The king and his court had set aside the usual rich attire of garish robes and outlandishly tall wigs, replaced with black gowns, dark tunics, and unadorned hats. The king himself sat slumped in his throne in a robe of black damask.

The magistrate raised the digger's spade in the air. "Sire! I am from the north and we are known for calling a spade a spade. But I must confess, sometimes a spade is not a spade, nor is it a shovel." A few young ladies sniggered behind their feather fans. He rested the spade on the white marble floor. "This ... is the devil's spear. It may not look like a trident, but I assure you the accused wields it in the dark of night, prodding the dead out of their graves. This creature claims to give life, not take it. But he gives it back to the dead!"

Gasping and swooning. Feather fans quickened across the pretty faces of courtiers.

"I have numerous witnesses, your highness, all prepared to testify to this man's ... to this fiend's blackery."

The king nodded. "Have my surgeons examine the witnesses and bring them before me one at a time. I will hear more of this man's graveyard duties."

Each witness underwent a thorough inspection because it was forbidden of anyone showing symptoms of the plague to come into the view of the king. After the examinations the magistrate summoned them one after the other. Neighbours and church sextons testified to Digger's "ungodly hours" and to his "secretive" disposition. Most damning was the young widow's claim that Digger had indeed raised her son only to let it wither and perish as if the very eyes of Satan had glanced on it. Talk of devils and resurrections caused quite a stir, and the king raised his jewelled hand for silence.

"Are you a plague healer?" Digger shook his head no, and the magistrate slapped him across the back of the head.

"Address your king!"

"I am not a plague healer, your worship."

"A grave robber ... body-snatcher? You enjoy digging holes in the dark of night and disturbing good Christians from their eternal rest?"

"I work with Jews, gentiles, atheists. It does not concern me... "

The magistrate raised his hand to belt Digger.

"Be still." And to the accused, the king said, "Have you come to teach? Do you bring the New Word of God? Should I have one of may ladies wipe your feet with her hair?"

The court erupted in laughter and scorn, but Digger did not shrink from his accusers.

The king's eyes narrowed. "What's the carving on the spade: a bird, an eagle of some sort? And why is it red... "

"Just like his hair, your highness." The magistrate smirked as if this fact alone would condemn the man.

"The carving is of a phoenix," Digger said.

"Ah, from the cooling ash life rises anew ... So you claim to raise the dead?"

He made no answer.

"Who — or what — gives you this gift? Satan? God?"

"I don't know. It just is."

"Then you confess to it?"

"I have brought the cherished back from the grave, yes."

"Only children, I'm told?" The king's eyebrows rose questioningly. "You don't plead your innocence so the court's verdict is mere formality. You are to be detained for sentencing. Take him to the dungeon."

Guards dragged Digger away, and the spade remained on the marble floor where a group of alchemists gathered around....

With his head hung low, Digger listened to footsteps echoing down the tunnel, which led to his tiny cell in the crypt beneath the castle. Cockroaches and centipedes crawled off into wet crevices as a key clinked inside the lock. Digger lifted his eyes.

"Leave us," said the king to the prison guard.

The king rested his torch on a wall sconce and stepped into the dark cell. He hummed to himself as he fingered some moss on the curved rock wall.

"You know, gravedigger, the court and its officials are most upset. There's talk of impaling you on your own shovel. Bit overzealous, I thought." The king flicked his finger. "Some want a straight up beheading, others that you are hung, drawn and quartered. The magistrate of course demands a witch burning. I personally find burning people alive distasteful. I prefer to give second chances." He looked away from Digger, and softly said, "Raise my son and I'll set you free. Give me your terms."

Digger's eyelids grew heavy at the thought, and his chin dropped. He knew the king would be unable to meet the conditions for Nathaniel's rebirth. He could not abdicate the throne and flee the land with the crown prince.

"If that is your command."

The king patted Digger on the back. "Now you must leave while the guards are relieved of duty. I'll show you a secret pathway to get you beyond the castle grounds."

The king took him down a dark tunnel, through a little known passageway, and outside the walls.

"Raise Nathaniel, the son of the throne. He is dearer to the land than ten thousand of its children. Show the king your power over death, and he in turn will show you his...."

The magistrate unbuttoned his royal blue tunic and then fanned himself with a silk kerchief.

"Quite the view, your highness." The magistrate stood with the king and his retinue on a high up balcony overlooking the iron gates of the castle. A crowd of peasants gathered outside the walls around a roaring bonfire. The king's eyes aimed down at the flames, his flinty features stone cold.

"To think the court still swoons from that man's final vulgar act," came a woman's voice from the courtiers.

"The audacity of demons," whispered the magistrate to a nobleman wearing a deep purple tunic. "To think that beast would escape, exhume the crown prince, carry him all the way back to the castle gardens, and lay him dead at the king's feet. What a bloody abomination," he scoffed.

The crowd cheered and applauded as the demon gravedigger, shackled to his spade on a wood pyre, went up in smoke and flame.

"How on earth he escaped the dungeon?" the magistrate said with a shake of his head. The king's jaws clicked in suppressed rage.

The crowd burst into more applause as the flames once and for all consumed the gravedigger and his spade. A cloud of red smoke spiralled up from the pyre to a chorus of ooohs and ahs, and the magistrate breathed an exaggerated sigh.

"Well that ends that. Bloody vermin. Just like all those plagued peasants out there. They should be six feet under, the lot of them."

The gentleman wearing the purple tunic suddenly brought a hanky up to his mouth and rushed away. A clique of fashionable young ladies squealed and hurried indoors. The king's eyes flashed towards the magistrate.

"Guards!"

"Guards!"

The magistrate looked from person to person but all fled the balcony. "Sire...?"

A troop of guards and a sergeant arrived and all flinched upon seeing the magistrate, who started to feel a warmness growing on his upper lip, which he dabbed with the tip of his finger. His eyes sprung wide at the sight of blood slipping from his nose ... that manifest sign of death by plague.

The king flicked his chin and the sergeant's men heaved the magistrate over the balcony to his quick and timely death.

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