The Confession of Brother Haluin (6 page)

“Father,”
said Haluin in anxious protest, “my sin is mine alone, my confession sealed and
sacred. How can I let another man come so close, without myself breaking that
seal? It would be a violation even to cause wonder and question concerning this
penance of mine.”

“You
shall have a companion who need neither wonder nor question,” said the abbot,
“since he already knows, at your own telling. Brother Cadfael shall come with
you. His company and his prayers can only be of comfort and benefit to you.
Your confidence and the lady’s memory will be in no danger, and he is well
qualified to care for you along the way.” And to Cadfael, turning, he said,
“Will you undertake this charge? I do not believe he is fit to go alone.”

Small
choice, thought Cadfael, but not altogether displeased at the instruction,
either. There was still, somewhere deep within him, a morsel of the vagus who
had roamed the world from Wales to Jerusalem and back to Normandy for forty
years before committing himself to stability within the cloister, and an
expedition sanctioned, even ordered, by authority could be welcomed as blessed,
instead of evaded as a temptation.

“If
you so wish, Father,” he said, “I will.”

“This
journey will take several days. I take it that Brother Winfrid will be
competent to dispense whatever may be needed, with Edmund to guide him?”

“For
a few days,” agreed Cadfael, “they should manage well enough. I have stocked
the infirmary cupboard only yesterday, and in the workshop there’s a good
supply of all the common remedies usually called for in the winter. Should
something unforeseen be needed. Brother Oswin could come back from Saint Giles
to help for a while.”

“Good!
Then, son Haluin, you may prepare for this journey, and set out when you are
ready, tomorrow if you will. But you will submit yourself to Brother Cadfael if
your strength fails you, and do his bidding as faithfully as within these walls
you have always done mine.”

“Father,”
said Haluin fervently, “I will.”

At
the altar of Saint Winifred, Brother Haluin recorded his solemn vow that same
evening after Vespers, to leave himself no way out, with a white-faced
vehemence which indicated to Cadfael, who witnessed it at Haluin’s own wish,
that this implacable penitent in his deepest heart knew and feared the labor
and pain he was imposing on himself, and embraced it with a passion and
resolution Cadfael would rather have seen devoted to a more practical and
fruitful enterprise. For who would benefit by this journey, even though it
passed successfully, except the penitent himself, at least partially restored
to his self-respect? Certainly not the poor girl who had committed no worse sin
than to venture too much for love, and who surely was long since in a state of
grace. Nor the mother who must long ago have put this evil dream behind her,
and must now be confronted by it once again after years. And Cadfael was not of
the opinion that a man’s main business in this world was to save his own soul.
There are other ailing souls, as there are ailing bodies, in need of a hoist
towards health.

But
Haluin’s needs were not his needs. Haluin’s bitter years of silent self-blame
certainly called for a remedy.

“On
these most holy relics,” said Brother Haluin, with his palm pressed against the
drapings that covered the reliquary, “I record my penitential vow: that I will
not rest until I have gone on foot to the tomb in which Bertrade de Clary lies,
and there passed a night’s vigil in prayer for her soul, and again on foot
returned here to the place of my due service. And if I fail of this, may I live
forsworn and die unforgiven.”

They
set out after Prime, on the fourth morning of March, out at the gate and along
the Foregate towards Saint Giles and the highroad due east. The day was cloudy
and still, the air chill but not wintry cold. Cadfael viewed the way ahead in
his mind, and found it not too intimidating. They would be leaving the western
hills behind them, and with every mile eastward the country about them would
subside peaceably into a green level. The road was dry, for there had been no
recent rain, and the cloud cover above was high and pale, and threatened none,
and there was a grassy verge such as could be found only on the king’s
highways, wide on either side the track, easy walking even for a crippled man.
The first mile or two might pass without grief, but after that the constant
labor would begin to tell. He would have to be the judge of when to call a
halt, for Haluin was likely to grit his teeth and press on until he dropped.
Somewhere under the Wrekin they would find a hospitable refuge for the night,
for there were abbey tenants there among the cottagers, and any hut along the
way would willingly give them a place by the fire for a midday rest. Food they
had with them in the scrip Cadfael carried.

In
the brisk hopefulness of morning, with Haluin’s energy and eagerness at their
best, they made good speed, and rested at noon very pleasurably with the parish
priest at Attingham. But in the afternoon the pace slowed somewhat, and the
strain began to tell upon Haluin’s hardworking shoulders, aching from the
constant weight and endlessly repeated stress, and the cold as evening
approached numbed his hands on the grips of his crutches, in spite of their
mufflings of woolen cloth. Cadfael called a halt as soon as the light began to
fade into the windless March dusk, grey and without distances, and turned aside
into the village of Uppington, to beg a bed for the night at the manor.

Haluin
had been understandably silent along the road, needing all his breath and all
his resolution for the effort of walking. Fed and at ease in the evening, he
sat watching Cadfael in accepting silence still for a while.

“Brother,”
he said at last, “I take it very kindly that you’ve come with me on this
journey. With no other but you could I speak without conceal of that old grief,
and before ever we see Shrewsbury again I may sorely need to speak of it. The
worst of me you already know, and I will never say word in excuse. But in
eighteen years I have never until now spoken her name aloud, and now to utter
it is like food after starvation.”

“Speak
or be silent as the need takes you,” said Cadfael, “and I’ll hear or be deaf
according to your wish. But as for tonight you should take your rest, for
you’ve come a good third part of the way, and tomorrow, I warn you, you’ll find
some aches and pains you knew nothing of, from laboring so hard and so long.”

“I
am tired,” admitted Haluin, with a sudden and singularly touching smile, as
brief as it was sweet. “You think we cannot reach Hales tomorrow, then?”

“Don’t
think of it! No, we’ll get as far as the Augustinian canons at Wombridge, and
spend another night there. And you’ll have done well to get so far in the time,
so don’t grudge the one day more.”

“As
you think best,” said Haluin submissively, and lay down to sleep with the
confiding simplicity of a child charmed and protected by his prayers.

The
next day was less kind, for there was a thin, spasmodic rain that stung at times
with sleet, and a colder wind from the northeast, from which the long, green,
craggy bulk of the Wrekin gave them no shelter as the road skirted it to the
north. But they reached the priory before dusk, though Haluin’s lips were fast
clenched in determination by then, and the skin drawn tight and livid over his
cheekbones with exhaustion, and Cadfael was glad to get him into the warmth,
and go to work with oiled hands on the sinews of his arms and shoulders, and
the thighs that had carried him so bravely all day long.

And
the third day, early in the afternoon, they came to the manor of Hales.

The
manor house lay a little aside from the village and the church, timber-built on
the stone undercroft, in level, well-drained fields, with gentle wooded slopes
beyond. Within its wooden fence, stable and barn and bakehouse were ranged
along the pale, well maintained and neat. Brother Haluin stood in the open
gateway, and looked at the place of his old service with a face fixed and
still, only his eyes alive and full of pain.

“Four
years,” he said, “I kept the manor roll here. Bertrand de Clary was my father’s
overlord. I was sent here before I was fourteen, to be page to his lady. Will
you believe, the man himself I never saw. Before I came here he was already in
the Holy Land. This is but one of his manors, the only one in these parts, but
his son was already installed in his place, and ruled the honor from
Staffordshire. She always liked Hales best, she left her son to his lordship
and settled here, and it was here I came. Better for her if I had never entered
this house. Better far for Bertrade!”

“It’s
too late,” said Cadfael mildly, “to do right whatever was done amiss then. This
day is for doing aright what you have pledged yourself to do now, and for that
it is not too late. You’ll be freer with her, maybe, if I wait for you
without.”

“No,”
said Haluin. “Come with me! I need your witness, I know it will be just.”

A
tow-haired youth came out of the stable with a pitchfork in his hands, steaming
gently in the chill air. At sight of two black Benedictine habits in the
gateway he turned and came towards them, leisurely and amiable.

“If
you’re wanting a bed and a meal, Brothers, come in, your cloth’s always welcome
here. There’s good lying in the loft, and they’ll feed you in the kitchen if
you’ll please to walk through.”

“I
do remember,” said Haluin, his eyes still fixed upon a distant past, “your lady
kept always a hospitable house for travelers. But I shall need no bed this
night. I have an errand to the lady Adelais de Clary herself, if she will give
me audience. A few minutes of her time is all I ask.”

The
boy shrugged, staring them over with grey, unreadable Saxon eyes, and waved
them towards the stone steps that led up to the hall door.

“Go
in and ask for her woman Gerta, she’ll see if the lady’ll speak with you.” And
he stood to watch them as they crossed the yard, before turning back to his
labors among the horses.

A
manservant was just coming up the steps from the kitchen into the passage as
they entered the great doorway. He came to ask their business, and being told,
sent off a kitchen boy to carry word to the lady’s woman of the chamber, who
presently came out from the hall to see who these monastic guests might be. A
woman of about forty years, very brisk and neat, plain in her dress and plain
in her face, for she was pockmarked. But of her confidence in office there was
no question. She looked them over somewhat superciliously, and listened to
Haluin’s meekly uttered request without a responsive smile, in no hurry to open
a door of which she clearly felt herself the privileged custodian.

“From
the abbey at Shrewsbury, you come? And on the lord abbot’s business, I
suppose?”

“On
an errand the lord abbot has sanctioned,” said Haluin.

“It
is not the same,” said Gerta sharply. “What other than abbey business can send
a monk of Shrewsbury here? If this is some matter of your own, let my lady know
with whom she is dealing.”

“Tell
her,” said Haluin patiently, leaning heavily on his crutches, and with eyes
lowered from the woman’s unwelcoming face, “that Brother Haluin, a Benedictine
monk of Shrewsbury abbey, humbly begs of her grace to receive him.”

The
name meant nothing to her. Clearly she had not been in Adelais de Clary’s
service, or certainly not in her confidence or even close enough to guess at
her preoccupations, eighteen years ago. Some other woman, perhaps nearer her
mistress’s years, had filled this intimate office then. Close body servants,
grown into their mistress’s trust and into their own blood loyalty, carry a
great treasury of secrets, often to their deaths. There must somewhere, Cadfael
thought, watching in silence, be a woman who would have stiffened and opened
her eyes wide at that name, even if she had not instantly known the changed and
time-worn face.

“I
will ask,” said the tirewoman, with a touch of condescension still, and went
away through the hall to a leather-curtained doorway at the far end. Some
minutes passed before she appeared again, drawing back the hangings, and
without troubling to approach them, called from the doorway: “My lady says you
may come.”

The
solar they entered was small and dim, for the windward of the two windows was
shuttered fast against the weather, and the tapestries that draped the walls
were old, and in rich dark colors. There was no fireplace, but a stone hearth
laid close to the most sheltered corner carried a charcoal brazier, and between
that and the one window that gave light a woman was sitting at a little
embroidery frame, on a cushioned stool. Against the light from the window she
showed as a tall, erect shape, dark-clothed, while the glow of the brazier
shone in copper highlights on her shadowed face. She had left her needle thrust
into the stretched cloth. Her hands were clenched fast on the raised arms of
the stool, and her eyes were on the doorway, into which Brother Haluin lurched
painfully on his crutches, his one serviceable foot sore with use and bearing
him wincingly at every step, the blocked toe of his left foot barely touching
the floor as a meager aid to balance. Constant leaning into the crutches had
hunched his shoulders and bent his straight back. Having heard his name, she
must surely have expected something nearer to the lively, comely young man she
had cast out all those years ago. What could she make now of this mangled
wreckage?