The Confession of Brother Haluin (22 page)

The
sun was already high when he rode out at the gate, a pale sun growing brighter
and clearer as the air of the day warmed into palpable spring. The fatal snow
at Vivers would be the last snow of the winter, appropriately completing
Haluin’s pilgrimage, as the first snow had begun it.

The
filigree green gauze of buds along the branches of bush and tree had burst into
the tender plumage of young leaves. The moist grass shimmered, and gave off a
faint, fragrant steam as the sun reached it. So much beauty, and behind him as
he rode lay a great mercy, a just deliverance, and the renewal of hope. And
before him a solitary soul to be saved or lost.

He
did not take the road to Vivers. It was not there he had urgent business,
though he might well return that way. Once he halted to look back, and the long
line of the abbey fence had disappeared in the folds of land, and the hamlet
with it. Haluin would be waiting and wondering, groping his way through a
confused dream, beset with questions to which he could have no answer, torn
between belief and disbelief, fearful joy and recollected anguish, until the
abbess should send to summon him to the meeting which would make all things
plain at last.

Cadfael
rode on slowly until he should encounter someone from whom he could ask
directions. A woman leading sheep and lambs out to pasture at the edge of the
village stopped willingly to point him to the most direct road. He need not go
near Vivers, and that was well, for he had no wish to meet Cenred or his men as
yet. He had nothing at this moment to tell them, and indeed it was not he who
must tell what finally had to be told.

Once
on the track his informant had indicated, he rode fast and purposefully, until
he dismounted at the gate of the manor of Elford.

It
was the young portress who tapped at the door and entered Brother Haluin’s
haunted solitude, later in the morning, when the sun had shed its veil, and the
grass of the garth was drying. He looked round as she came in, expecting
Cadfael, and gazed at her with eyes still wide and blank with wonder.

“I
am sent by the lady abbess,” said the girl, with solicitous gentleness, since
it seemed he might be almost beyond understanding, “to bid you to her parlor.
If you will come with me, I’ll show, you the way.”

Obediently
he reached for his crutches. “Brother Cadfael went forth and has not returned,”
he said slowly, looking about him like a man awaking from sleep. “Is this
bidding to him also? Should I not wait for him?”

“There
is no need,” she said. “Brother Cadfael has already spoken with Mother Patrice,
and has an errand he says he must do now. You should wait for his return here,
and be easy. Will you come?”

Haluin
thrust himself to his feet and went with her, across the rear court to the
abbess’s lodging, confiding like a child though half his mind was still absent.
The little portress tempered her flying steps to his labored gait, bringing him
with considerate gentleness to the door of the parlor, and turning upon him on
the threshold a bright, encouraging smile.

“Go
in, you are expected.”

She
held the door open for him, since he had need of both hands for his crutches.
He limped across the threshold into the wood-scented, dimly lit room, and
halted just within to make his reverence to the mother superior, only to stand
motionless and quivering as his eyes adjusted to the subdued light. For the
woman who stood waiting for him, braced and still and wonderfully smiling in
the center of the room, her hands extended instinctively to aid his approach,
was not the abbess, but Bertrade de Clary.

Chapter Twelve

THE
GROOM WHO CAME UNHURRIEDLY ACROSS THE COURTYARD to greet the visitor and
inquire his business was neither Lothair nor Luc, but a lanky lad not yet
twenty, with a shock of dark hair. At his back the courtyard seemed emptied of
its usual lively activity, only a few maids and manservants going back and
forth about their work in a casual fashion, as if all constraints were
slackened. By the look of things, the master of the house and most of his men
were still out and about on the hunt for any word that might lead to the
murderer of Edgytha.

“If
you’re wanting the lord Audemar,” said the boy at once, “you’re out of luck.
He’s still away to Vivers about this woman who was killed a couple of nights
back. But his steward’s here. If you want lodging you’d best see him.”

“I
thank you,” said Cadfael, surrendering his bridle, “but it’s not the lord
Audemar I’ve come to see. My errand is to his mother. I know where her dower
apartments are. If you’ll see to the horse I’ll go myself and ask her woman to
inquire if the lady will be good enough to see me.”

“As
you please, then. You were here afore,” said the lad, narrowing his eyes
curiously at this vaguely familiar visitor. “Only a few days back, with another
black monk, one that went on crutches and very lame.”

“True,”
said Cadfael. “And I had speech with the lady then, and she will not have
forgotten either me or that lame brother. If she refuses me a hearing now, I
will let her be—but I think she will not refuse.”

“Try
for yourself, then,” agreed the groom indifferently. “She’s still here with her
maid, and I know she’s within. She keeps within, these last days.”

“She
had two grooms with her,” said Cadfael, “father and son. We were acquainted,
when we stayed here, they had come from Shropshire with her. I’d willingly pass
the time of day with them, afterward, if they’re not away to Vivers with the
lord Audemar’s people.”

“Oh,
them! No, they’re her fellows, none of his. But they’re not here, neither. They
went off yesterday on some errand of hers, very early. Where? How should I know
where? Back to Hales, likely. That’s where the old dame keeps, most of her
time.”

I
wonder, thought Cadfael, as he turned towards Adelais’s dwelling in the corner
of the enclave wall, and the groom led the cob away to the stable, truly I
wonder how it would suit Adelais de Clary to know that her son’s grooms speak
of her as “the old dame.” Doubtless to that raw boy she seemed ancient as the
hills, but resolutely she cherished and conserved what had once been great
beauty, and from that excellence nothing and no one must be allowed to detract.
Not for nothing did she choose for her intimate maid someone plain and
pockmarked, surrounding herself with dull and ordinary faces that caused her
own luster to glow more brightly.

At
the door of Adelais’s hall he asked for audience, and the woman Gerta came out
to him haughtily, protective of her mistress’s privacy and assertive of her own
office. He had sent in no name, and at sight of him she checked, none too
pleased to see one of the Benedictines from Shrewsbury back again so soon, and
so unaccountably.

“My
lady is not disposed to see visitors. What’s your business, that you need
trouble her with it? If you need lodging and food, my lord Audemar’s steward
will take care of it.”

“My
business,” said Cadfael, “is with the lady Adelais only, and concerns no one
beside. Tell her that Brother Cadfael is here again, and that he comes from the
abbey of Farewell, and asks to have some talk with her. That she shuns visitors
I believe. But I think she will not refuse me.”

She
was not so bold that she dared take it upon herself to deny him, though she
went with a toss of her head and a disdainful glance, and would have been glad
to bring back a dismissive answer. It was plain by the sour look on her face
when she emerged from the solar that she was denied that pleasure.

“My
lady bids you in,” she said coldly, and opened the door wide for him to pass by
her and enter the chamber. And no doubt she hoped to linger and be privy to
whatever passed, but favor did not extend so far.

“Leave
us,” said the voice of Adelais de Clary, from deep shadow under a shuttered
window. “And close the door between.”

She
had no seemly woman’s occupation for her hands this time, no pretense at
embroidering or spinning, she merely sat in her great chair in semidarkness,
motionless, her hands spread along the arms and gripping the carved lion heads
in which they terminated. She did not move as Cadfael came in, she was neither
surprised nor disturbed. Her deep eyes burned upon him without wonder and, he
thought, without regret. It was almost as though she had been waiting for him.

“Where
have you left Haluin?” she asked.

“At
the abbey of Farewell,” said Cadfael.

She
was silent for a moment, brooding upon him with a still face and glowing eyes,
with an intensity he felt as a vibration upon the air, before ever his eyes had
grown accustomed to the dim light, and watched her lineaments grow gradually
out of darkness, the chosen darkness in which she had incarcerated herself.
Then she said with harsh deliberation, “I shall never see him again.”

“No,
you will never see him again. When this is done, we are going home.”

“But
you,” she said, “yes, I have had it in mind all this time that you would be
back. Sooner or later, you would be back. As well, perhaps! Things have gone
far beyond my reckoning now. Well, say what you have come to say. I would as
lief be silent.”

“That
you cannot do,” said Cadfael. “It is your story.”

“Then
be my chronicler. Tell it! Remind me! Let me hear how it will sound in my
confessor’s ears, if any priest takes my confession ever again.” She stretched
out one long hand suddenly, waving him imperiously to a seat, but he remained
standing where he could see her most clearly, and she made no move to evade his
eyes, and no concessions to the fixity of his regard. Her beautiful, proud face
was composed and mute, admitting nothing, denying nothing. Only the burning of
her dark eyes in their deep settings was eloquent, and even that in a language
he could not quite translate.

“You
know all too well what you did, all those years ago,” said Cadfael. “You
executed a fearful punishment upon Haluin for daring to love your daughter and
getting her with child. You pursued him even into the cloister where your
enmity had driven him—all too soon, but the young are quick to despair. You
forced him to provide you with the means of abortion, and you sent him word,
afterward, that it had killed both mother and child. That awful guilt you have
visited upon him all these years, to be his torment lifelong. Did you speak?”

“No,”
she said. “Go on! You have barely begun.”

“True,
I have barely begun. That draught of hyssop and fleur-de-lis that you got from
him—it never was used. Its purpose was only to poison him, it did no harm to
any other. What did you do with it? Pour it away into the ground? No, long
before ever you demanded the herbs of him, as soon as you had driven him out of
your house, I daresay, you had hustled Bertrade away here to Elford, and
married her to Edric Vivers. It must have been so certainly it was done in time
to give her child, when it was born, a credible if unlikely father. No doubt
the old man prided himself on still being potent enough to get a child. Why
should anyone question the birth date, since you had acted so quickly?”

She
had not stirred or flinched, her eyes never left his face, admitting nothing,
denying nothing.

“Were
you never afraid,” he asked, “that someone, somehow, should let fall within
reach even of the cloister that Bertrade de Clary was wife to Edric Vivers, and
not safely in her grave? That she had borne her old husband a daughter? It
needed only a chance traveler with a gossiping tongue.”

“There
was no such risk,” she said simply. “What contact was there ever between
Shrewsbury and Hales? None, until he suffered his fall and conceived his
pilgrimage. Much less likely there should ever be dealings with manors in
another shire. There was no such risk.”

“Well,
let us continue. You took her away and gave her to a husband. The child was
born. So much mercy at least you had on the girl—why none for him? Why such
bitter and vindictive hate, that you should conceive so terrible a revenge? Not
for your daughter’s wrongs, no! Why should he not have been considered a
suitable match for her in the first place? He came of good family, he was heir
to a fine manor, if he had not taken the cowl. What was it you held so much
against him? You were a beautiful woman, accustomed to admiration and homage.
Your lord was in Palestine. And I well remember Haluin as he first came to me,
eighteen years old, not yet tonsured. I saw him as you had been seeing him for
some few years in your celibate solitude—he was comely…”

He
let it rest there, for her long, resolute tips had parted on deliberate
affirmation at last. She had listened to him unwaveringly, making no effort to
halt him, and no complaint. Now she responded.

“Too
comely!” she said. “I was not used to being denied, I did not even know how to
sue. And he was too innocent to read me aright. How such children offend
without offense! So if I could not have him,” she said starkly, “she should
not. No woman ever should, but not she of all women.”

It
was said, she let it stand, adding nothing in extenuation, and having said it,
she sat contemplating it, seeing again as in another woman what she could now
no longer feel with the same intensity, the longing and the anger.