The Confession of Brother Haluin (20 page)

An
elderly man gathering firewood in a stand of old trees straightened his bent
back to answer their greeting, and peered at them curiously from within his
sacking hood.

“Not
half a mile on, Brothers, you’ll see to your right the pale of a nunnery.
They’re still building, it’s mostly timber yet, but the church and the cloister
are in stone, you can’t miss it. There’s but two or three holdings in the
hamlet, but the sisters take in travelers. You’ll get a bed there.” And he
added, eyeing their black habits: “They’re of your own persuasion, it’s a
Benedictine house.”

“I
knew of none in these parts,” said Cadfael. “What is this house called?”

“It’s
like the hamlet, called Farewell. It’s no more than three years old. Bishop de
Clinton set it up. You’ll be made welcome there.”

They
thanked him, and left him to bind up and hoist his great bundle of wood, and
make off for home in the opposite direction, while they went on, encouraged,
towards the west.

“I
remember,” said Haluin, “hearing something of this place, or at least of the
bishop’s plans for a new foundation somewhere here, close to his cathedral. But
I never heard the name Farewell until—do you recall?—Cenred spoke of it, that
night we first came to Vivers. The only Benedictine house in these parts, he
said, when he asked where we were from. We’re fortunate, it’s well we came this
way.”

By
this time, with the twilight closing in, he was beginning to flag, in spite of
the easy pace they had set. They were both glad when the path brought them to a
small open green flanked by three or four cottages, and they saw beyond these
the long pale fence of the new abbey, and the roof of the church above it. The
track led them to a modest timber gatehouse. Both the stout gate and the grille
set in it were closed, but a pull at the bell sent a succession of echoes
flying away into distance within, and after a few moments brought light, flying
footsteps skipping towards them from within the gate.

The
grille slid open, and revealed a round, rosy youthful face beaming through at
them. Wide blue eyes surveyed their habits and tonsures, and recognized
kindred.

“Good
even, Brothers,” said a high, girlish voice, joyously self-important. “You’re
late on the road tonight. Can we offer you a roof and a rest?”

“We
were about to ask it,” said Cadfael heartily. “Can you lodge us overnight?”

“And
longer if you need,” she said cheerfully. “Men of the Order will always be
welcome here. We’re off the beaten track, and not yet well known, and with the
place still building we offer less comfort, I daresay, than some older houses,
but we have room for such guests as you. Wait till I unbar the doors.”

She
was about it already, they heard the bolt shot back and the latch of the wicket
lifted, and then the door opened wide in exuberant welcome, and the portress
waved them in.

She
could not, Cadfael thought, be more than seventeen, and new in her novitiate,
one of those superfluous daughters of poorly endowed small nobility for whom
there was little to spare by way of dowry, and little prospect of an
advantageous marriage. She was small and softly rounded, plain of face but
fresh and wholesome as new bread, and blessedly she glowed with enthusiasm in
her new life, with no apparent regret for the world she had left behind. The
satisfaction of trusted office became her, and so did the white wimple and
black cowl framing her bright and candid face.

“Have
you traveled far?” she asked, viewing Haluin’s labored gait with wide-eyed
concern.

“From
Vivers,” said Haluin, quick in reassurance, “It is not so far, and we have
taken it gently.”

“And
have you very far still to go?”

“To
Shrewsbury,” said Cadfael, “where we belong to the abbey of Saint Peter and
Saint Paul.”

“It’s
a long way,” she said, shaking her head over them. “You’ll be needing your
rest. Will you wait here in the lodge for me, till I tell Sister Ursula she has
guests? Sister Ursula is our hospitaler. The lord bishop asked for two
experienced elder sisters to come to us from Polesworth for a season, to
instruct the novices. We are all so new, and there’s so much to learn, besides
all the work we have to do in the building and the garden. And they sent us
Sister Ursula and Sister Benedicta. Sit and warm yourselves but a few minutes, and
I’ll be back.” And she was off, with her light, dancing step, as blithe in her
cloistered calling as any of her secular sisters could have been in approaching
a more worldly marriage.

“She
is truly happy,” said Brother Haluin, wondering and pleased. “No, it is not a
second-best. So I have found it in the end, but she from the beginning. The
sisters from Polesworth must be women of wisdom and grace, if this is their
work.

Sister
Ursula the hospitaler was a tall, thin woman perhaps fifty years old, with a
lined, experienced face at once serene, resigned, and even mildly amused, as if
she had seen and come to terms with all the vagaries of human behavior, and
nothing could now surprise or disconcert her. If the other borrowed
instructress measures up to this one, Cadfael thought, these green girls of
Farewell have been fortunate.

“You’re
warmly welcome,” said Sister Ursula, sailing briskly into the lodge with the
young portress beaming at her elbow. “The lady abbess will be happy to receive
you in the morning, but you must be most in need now of food and rest and a
bed, all the more if you have such a long journey before you. Come with me,
there’s a chamber prepared for chance comers always, and our own brothers are
all the more welcome.”

She
led them out from the lodge into a narrow outer court, where the church lay
before them, a modest building of stone, with the traces of the continuing
work, ashlar and timber, cords and scaffolding boards, stacked neatly under its
walls, in token that nothing here was finished. But in only three years they
had raised the church and the entire frame of the cloister, but for the south
range, where only the lower floor which housed the refectory was completed.

“The
bishop has provided us the labor and a generous endowment,” said Sister Ursula,
“but we shall be building for some years yet. Meantime we live simply. We want
for nothing that’s needful, and hanker after nothing beyond our needs. I
suppose when all these timber housings are replaced in stone my work here will
be done, and I should be returning to Polesworth, where I took my vows years
ago, but I don’t know but I’d rather stay here, if I’m offered a choice.
There’s something about bringing a new foundation to birth, you feel towards it
as towards a child of your own body.”

The
enclave fence, doubtless, would eventually be replaced by a stone wall, the
wooden buildings that lined it, infirmary, domestic offices, guest hall and
storehouses, gradually rebuilt one by one. But already the glimpse they had
into the cloister in passing showed that the garth had been grassed, and a
shallow stone basin in the center held water to attract the birds.

“By
next year,” said Sister Ursula, “we shall have flowers. Sister Benedicta, our
best gardener at Polesworth, came here with me, the garth is her preserve.
Things grow for her, birds come to her hand. That gift I never had.”

“And
has Polesworth also provided you your abbess?” asked Cadfael.

“No,
Bishop de Clinton brought Mother Patrice from Coventry. We two must go back to
our own house when we’re no longer needed here, unless, as I say, they let us
remain for life. We should need the bishop’s dispensation, but who knows, he
may see fit to grant it.”

Beyond
the cloister a small private court opened, and the guest hall stood on the
further side of it, close to the pale fence. The small room that awaited the
first travelers was dim and full of the warmth and fragrance of wood, furnished
simply with two beds and a little table, with a crucifix on the wall and a
prayer desk below it.

“Use
it as your domain,” said Sister Ursula cheerfully, “and I’ll have supper
brought to you here. You come too late for Vespers, but if you please to join
us at Compline later, you’ll hear the bell. Use our church for prayer as you
wish. It is but young yet, the more good souls it harbors under its roof, the
better. And now, if you have all you need, I’ll leave you to your rest.”

In
the blessed virginal quiet of this new abbey of Farewell, Brother Haluin fell
rapturously asleep as soon as he returned from Compline, and slept like a child
all through the night and deep into the dawn of a soft, clear morning, free of
any touch of frost. He awoke to find Cadfael already up, and preparing to go
and recite the morning office and offer his private prayers in the church.

“Has
the bell sounded for Prime?” asked Haluin, rising in haste.

“No,
nor will for half an hour yet, by the light. We can have the church to
ourselves for a while, if you’re so minded.”

“A
good thought,” said Haluin, and went with him gladly, out into the small court,
and across it to the south door into the cloister. The turf in the garth was
moist and green, the bleached pallor of winter vanished overnight. The shy
mists of buds that had barely showed a few days ago along the branches of the
trees now had a positive color, grown into a tender green veil. It wanted only
a few more such mild days and a glimpse of the sun, and suddenly it would be
spring. In the clear shallow water in the stone bowl small birds were
fluttering and shrilling, aware of change. Brother Haluin approached the little
church of Farewell through evidences of hope. Certainly this first church would
be enlarged or replaced later, when the abbey’s immediate building needs were met,
its endowment assured, and its prestige established. Yet this first edifice,
small and plain as it was, would always be remembered with affection, and its
supplanting a matter of regret to those, like Sister Ursula and Sister
Benedicta, who had been present and served at its birth.

They
said the office together in the dim, stony quietness, kneeling before the small
spark of the altar lamp, and made their private prayers in silence afterward.
The light softened and brightened over them, the first veiled ray of the rising
sun stole through the pales of the enclave and touched the upper stones of the
eastern wall into pale rose, and still Brother Haluin kneeled, his crutches
laid beside him.

Cadfael
was the first to rise. It could not be long now to Prime, and it might be an
inconvenient distraction to new young sisters to have two men in evidence at
their morning service, even two monks of the same order. He crossed to the
south door, and stood there looking out into the garth, waiting until Haluin
should need his help to rise.

There
was one of the sisters standing beside the stone bowl in the center, very
slender and erect and composed, feeding the birds. She crumbled bread on the
broad rim of the bowl, and held fragments of it out on her open palm, and the
flurry and vibration of hovering wings span fearlessly about her. The black
habit became her slenderness, and her bearing had a youthful grace that stabbed
piercingly into Cadfael’s memory. The poise of the head on its long neck and
straight shoulders, the narrow waist and elegant, long hand offering alms to
the birds, these he had surely seen before, in another place, by another and
deceptive light. Now she stood in open air, with the soft morning light upon
her, and he could not believe that he was mistaken.

Helisende
was here at Farewell, Helisende in a nun’s habit. The bride had fled her
unbearable dilemma to take the veil rather than marry anyone but her
unfortunate lover Roscelin. True, she could not have taken any vows as yet, but
the sisters might well see fit, in her stressful circumstances, to give her the
instant protection of the habit, even before she entered on her novitiate.

She
had quick hearing, or perhaps she had been expecting and listening for a light
footstep in the western range of the cloister, where the sisters’ dortoir lay.
For plainly she caught the sound of someone approaching from that direction,
and turned to meet the newcomer, smiling. The very movement, measured and
tranquil, in itself cast doubt on the youth he had seen in her but a moment
earlier, and showed him fully a face he had never seen before.

Not
a young, unpracticed girl, but a serene, worn, mature woman. The revelation in
the hall at Vivers came about full circle, from illusion to reality, from the
girl to the woman, as then it had spun headily backward from the woman to the
girl. Not Helisende, not even very like Helisende, but for the tall white ivory
brow, and the sweet and plaintive oval shape of the face, and wide-set, candid,
gallant, and vulnerable eyes. In figure and bearing, yes, the very same. If she
had turned her back again, she would again have become the image of her
daughter.

For
who else could this be but the widowed mother who had taken the veil at
Polesworth rather than be harried into a second marriage? Who else but Sister
Benedicta, sent here to the bishop’s new foundation to help to establish a
secure tradition and a blessed example for the fledgling nuns of Farewell?
Sister Benedicta who could charm flowers to grow and birds to come to her hand?
Helisende must have known of her move, if the rest of the household at Vivers
had not. Helisende had known where to look for refuge in her need. Where should
she go but to her mother?