The Confession of Brother Haluin (8 page)

“Through
no fault of yours,” said Cadfael strenuously.

“Does
that excuse me? It is a just judgment on me that I must go double the way. If I
fail of this, I said, may I live forsworn and die unforgiven! On the blessed
relics of Saint Winifred, who has been so good to us all, I swore it. How can I
turn back? I would rather die on the road, at least still faithfully trying to
redeem my vow, than abandon my faith and honor, and go back shamed.”

And
who was that speaking, Cadfael wondered, the dutiful monk, or the son of a good
Norman house, from a line at least as old as King William’s when he came
reaching for the crown of England, and without the irregularity of bastardy, at
that. No doubt but pride is a sin, and unbecoming a Benedictine brother, but
not so easily shed with the spurs and title of nobility.

Haluin,
too, had caught the fleeting implication of arrogance, and flushed at the
recognition, but would not draw back from it. He halted abruptly, swaying on
his crutches, and detached a hand in haste to take Cadfael by the wrist. “Don’t
chide me! Well I know you could, and your face shows me I deserve it, but spare
to condemn. I can do no other. Oh, Cadfael, I do know every argument you could
justly use against me. I have thought of them, I think of them still, but still
I am bound. Bound by vows I will not, dare not break. Though my abbot judge me
rebellious and disobedient, though my abbey cast me out, that I must bear. But
to take back what I have pledged to Bertrade that I will not bear.”

The
flush of blood mantling in his pale cheeks became him, warmed away the faded
look of emaciation from illness, and even stripped some years from him. In
stillness he stood upright, stretching his bent back upward between the braced
crutches. No persuasion was going to move him. As well accept it.

“But
you, Cadfael,” he said, gripping the wrist he held, “you have made no such vow,
you are not bound. No need for you to go further, you have done all that was
expected of you. Go back now, and speak for me to the lord abbot.”

“Son,”
said Cadfael, between sympathy and exasperation, “I am fettered as fast as you,
and you should know it. My orders are to go with you in case you founder, and
to take care of you if you do. You are on your own business, I am on the
abbot’s. If I cannot take you back with me I cannot go back.”

“But
your work,” protested Haluin, dismayed but unwavering. “Mine can well wait, but
you’ll be missed. How will they manage without you for so long?”

“As
best they can. There’s no man living who cannot be done without,” said Cadfael
sturdily, “and just as well, since there’s a term to life for every man. No,
say no more. If your mind’s made up, so is mine. Where you go, I go. And since
we have barely an hour of daylight left to us, and I fancy you have no wish to
seek a bed here in Hales, we had better move gently on, and look for a shelter
along the way.”

Adelais
de Clary rose in the morning and went to Mass, as was her regular habit. She
was meticulous in her religious observances and in almsgiving, keeping up the
old custom of her husband’s household. And if her charity seemed sometimes a
little cold and distant, at least it was constant and reliable. Whenever the
parish priest had a special case in need of relief, he brought it to her for remedy.

He
walked with her to the gate after the office, dutiful in attendance. “I had two
Benedictines come visiting yesterday, “ he said as she was drawing her cloak
about her against a freshening March wind. “Two brothers from Shrewsbury.”

“Indeed!”
said Adelais. “What did they want with you?”

“The
one of them was crippled, and went on crutches. He said he was once in your
service, before he took the cowl. He remembered Father Wulfnoth. I thought they
would have come to pay their respects to you. Did they not?”

She
did not answer that, but only observed idly, gazing into distance as though
only half her mind was on what was said, “I remember, I did have a clerk once
who entered the monastery at Shrewsbury. What was his business here at the
church?”

“He
said he had been spared by death, and was about making up all his accounts, to
be better prepared. I found them beside the tomb of your lord’s father. They
were in some error that a woman of your house was buried there, eighteen years
ago. The lame one had it in mind to spend a night’s vigil there in prayers for
her.”

“A
strange mistake,” said Adelais with the same tolerant disinterest. “No doubt
you undeceived him?”

“I
told him it was not so. I was not here then, of course, but I knew from Father
Wulfnoth that the tomb had not been opened for many years, and what the young
brother supposed could not be true. I told him that all of your house now are
buried at Elford, where the head of the manor lies.”

“A
long, hard journey that would be, for a lame man afoot,” said Adelais with easy
sympathy. “I hope he did not intend to continue his travels so far?”

“I
think, madam, he did. For they declined to rest and eat with me, and sleep the
night over, but set off again at once. ‘There I shall find her,’ the young one
said. Yes, I am sure they will have turned eastward when they reached the
highroad. A long, hard journey, indeed, but his will was good to perform it.”

His
relationship with his patroness was a comfortable and easy one, and he did not
hesitate to ask directly, “Will he indeed find the gentlewoman he’s seeking at
Elford?”

“He
well may,” said Adelais, pacing evenly and serenely beside him. “Eighteen years
is a long time, and I cannot enter into his mind. I was younger then, I kept a
bigger household. There were cousins, some left without fortune. My lord kept a
father’s hand on all of his blood. In his absence and as his regent, so did I.”

They
had reached the churchyard gate, and halted there. The morning was soft and
green, but very still, and the cloud cover hung heavy and low.

“There
will be more snow yet,” said the priest, “if it does not turn to rain.” And he
went on inconsequently: “Eighteen years! It may be that this monk in his time
with you was drawn to one of these young cousins, after the way of the young,
and her early death was greater grief to him than ever he ventured to let you
know.”

“It
may be so,” said Adelais distantly, and drew up the hood of her cloak against a
few infinitely fine spears of sleet that drifted on the still air and stung her
cheek. “Good day, Father!”

“I
will pray,” said the priest after her, “that his pilgrimage to her grave may
bring comfort and benefit to him living, and to the lady dead.”

“Do
so, Father,” said Adelais without turning her head. “And do not fail to add a
prayer for me and all the women of my house, that time may lie lightly on us
when our day comes.”

Cadfael
lay awake in the hayloft of the forester’s holding in the royal forest of
Chenet, listening to the measured breathing of his companion, too constant and
too tense for sleep. It was the second night since they had left Hales. The
first they had spent with a solitary cottar and his wife a mile or so beyond
the hamlet of Weston, and the day between had been long, and this
second-shelter in the early reaches of the forest came very warmiy and
gratefully. They had gone early to their beds in the loft, for Haluin, at whose
insistence they had continued so far into the evening, was close to exhaustion.
Sleep, Cadfael noted, came to him readily and peacefully, a restoring mercy to
a soul very troubled and wrung when awake. There are many ways by which God
tempers the burden. Haluin rose every morning refreshed and resolute.

It
was not yet light, there might still be an hour to dawn. There was no movement,
no rustling of the dry hay from the corner where Haluin lay, but Cadfael knew
he was awake now, and the stillness was good, for it meant that he lay in the
languor of ease of body, wherever the wakeful mind within might have strayed.

“Cadfael?”
said a still, remote voice out of the darkness. “Are you awake?”

“I
am,” he said as softly.

“You
have never asked me anything. Of the thing I did. Of her…”

“There
is no need,” said Cadfael. “What you wish to tell will be told without asking.”

“I
was never free to speak of her,” said Haluin, “until now. And now only to you,
who know.” There was a silence. He bled words slowly and arduously, as the shy
and solitary do. After a while he resumed softly; “She was not beautiful, as
her mother was. She had not that dark radiance, but something more kindly.
There was nothing dark or secret in her, but everything open and sunlit, like a
flower. She was not afraid of anything, not then. She trusted everyone. She had
never been betrayed—not then. Only once, and she died of it.”

Another
and longer silence, and this time the hay stirred briefly, like a sigh. Then he
asked almost timidly: “Cadfael, you were half your life in the world—did you
ever love a woman?”

“Yes,”
said Cadfael, “I have loved.”

“Then
you know how it was with us. For we did love, she and I. It hurts most of all,”
said Brother Haluin, looking back in resigned and wondering pain, “when you are
young. There is nowhere to hide from it, no shield you can raise between. To
see her every day… and to know that it was with her as it was with me…”

Even
if he had put it from him all these years, and tried to turn hands and mind and
spirit to the service he had undertaken, of his own will, in his extremity, he
had forgotten nothing; it was there within him ready to quicken at a breath,
like a sleeping fire when a door is opened. Now at least it could escape into
air, into the world of other men, where it could touch other men’s sufferings
and receive and give compassion. From Cadfael there were no words needed, only
the simple acknowledgment of companionship, the assurance of a listening ear.

Haluin
fell asleep with a last lingering word on his lips, murmured almost inaudibly
after lengthening silences. It might have been her name, Bertrade, or it might
have been “buried.” No matter! What mattered was that he had uttered it on the
edge of sleep, and now would blessedly sleep again after all his harsh labor
along the way, perhaps long past the coming of the light. So much the better!
One day more spent on this pilgrimage might grieve his impatient spirit, but it
would certainly benefit his harshly driven body.

Cadfael
arose very quietly, and left his companion deeply asleep and virtually a
prisoner in the loft, since he would need help to get to his feet and descend
the ladder. With the trapdoor left open, a listener below would hear when the
sleeper stirred, but by the look of his relaxed body and the thin face smoothed
of its tensions he would sleep for some time.

Cadfael
went out into the clear, sharp morning, to sniff the still air, redolent of the
lingering winter scents of forestland still half asleep. From the forester’s
small assart among the trees it was possible to see the cleared grey of the
track in broken glimpses between the old trunks, for the growth was close
enough to keep the ground almost clear of underbrush. A handcart trundled along
the road, laden with kindling from the fallen deadwood of the autumn, and the
chattering flight of disturbed birds accompanied it in a shimmer of fluttered
branches and drifting leaves. The forester was already up and about his morning
tasks, his cow lumbering in to be milked, his dog weaving busily about his
heels. A dry day, the sky overcast but lofty, the light good. A fine day for
the road. By night they could be in Chenet itself, and the manor, in the king’s
holding, would take them in. Tomorrow to Lichfield, and there Cadfael was
determined they should halt for another long night’s rest, however ardently
Haluin might argue for pressing on the remaining few miles to Elford. After a
proper sleep in Lichfield Haluin should be in better condition to endure the
next night’s vigil pledged in Bertrade’s memory, and face the beginning of the
return journey, during which, God be praised, there need be no haste at all,
and no cause to drive himself to the limits of endurance.

Sounds
came muffled and soft along the beaten earth of the track, but Cadfael caught
rather the vibration of hooves than the impact. Horses coming briskly from the
west, two horses, for their gaits quivered in counterpoint, coming at a brisk
trot, fresh from a night’s rest and ready for the day. Travelers heading,
perhaps, for Lichfield, after spending the night at the manor of Stretton, two
miles back along the road. Cadfael stood to watch them pass.

Two
men in dun-colored gear, leather-coated, easy in the saddle, their seats and
the handling of their mounts so strongly alike that either they had learned
from childhood together or the one had taught the other. And indeed, the one
was double the bulk of the other and clearly a generation the elder, and though
they were too distant and too briefly seen to have features, the whole shape of
them indicated that they were kin. Two privileged grooms to some noble house,
each with a woman pillion behind him. Women warmly cloaked for traveling look
all much alike, and yet Cadfael stared after the first of these with roused
attention, and kept his eyes on her until the horses and their riders had
vanished along the road, and the soft drumming of hooves faded into distance.