The Confession of Brother Haluin bc-15

by Ellis Peters

  “I will not deny,” she said, but with a softening voice, “that I shall be glad to have you gone. No ill will! But this wound you have opened again for me I would willingly swathe away out of sight until it heals. Your face is a contagion that makes it open and bleed afresh. Do you think I should have taken horse and ridden here so fast if you had not put that old grief in my mind?”

  “I trust,” said Haluin in a low and shaken voice, “you may find, madam, as I hope to find, the wound cleansed of all its rancors by this atonement. It is my prayer that for you this time the healing may be sweet and wholesome.”

  “And for you?” she said sharply, and turned a little away from him, with a motion of her hand that forbade any answer. “Sweet and wholesome! You ask much of God, and more of me.” In the sidelong light from the window her face was fierce and sad. “You have learned a monk’s way with words,” she said. “Well, it is a long time! Your voice was lighter once, so was your step. This at least I grant you, you are here at a very heavy cost. Do not deny me the grace of offering you rest and meat this time. I have a dwelling of my own here, within my son’s manor pale. Come within and rest at least until Vespers, if you must punish your flesh on the stones here through the night.”

  “Then I may have my night of prayer?” asked Haluin hungrily.

  “Why not? Have you not just seen me entreating God in the same cause?” she said. “I see you broken. I would not have you forsworn. Yes, have your penitential vigil, but take food in my house first. I’ll send my grooms to fetch you,” she said, “when you have made your devotions here.”

  She was almost at the door, paying no attention to Haluin’s hesitant thanks, and affording him no opportunity to refuse her hospitality, when she suddenly halted and swung round to them again.

  “But say no word,” she said earnestly, “to any other about your purpose here. My daughter’s name and fame are safe enough under the stone, let them lie quiet there. I would not have any other reminded as I have been reminded. Let it be only between us two, and this good brother who bears you company.”

  “Madam,” said Haluin devoutly, “there shall be no word said to any other soul but between us three, neither now nor at any other time, neither here nor in any other place.”

  “You ease my mind,” she said, and in a moment she was gone, and the door drawn quietly to after her.

  Haluin could not kneel without something firm before him to which to cling, and Cadfael’s arm about him to ease his weight down gently, sharing the burden with his companion’s one serviceable foot. They offered their dutiful prayer at the altar side by side, and Cadfael, open-eyed as Haluin kneeled long, traced with measured concern the worn lines of the young man’s face. He had survived the hard journey afoot, but not without a heavy cost. The night on the stones here would be cold, cramping, and long, but Haluin would insist on the last extreme of self-punishment. And after that, the long road back. As well, indeed, if the lady could persuade him to remain for at least a second night, if only as a concession and grace to her now that they had, in a fashion, come to terms with their shared and haunted past.

  For it could certainly be true that Haluin’s sudden visit had sent her on her own pilgrimage, hotfoot here to confront her own part in that old tragedy. Passing by at a smart trot the forester’s assart near Chenet, with only a maidservant and two grooms in her train, and striking an elusive spark in Cadfael’s memory. It could well be true. Or would such a seed have borne fruit so fast? The implication of haste was there. Cadfael saw again the two double-laden horses passing in the early morning, going steadily and with purpose. In haste to pay a half-forgotten debt of affection and remorse? Or to arrive before someone else, and be ready and armed to receive him? She wanted them satisfied and gone, but that was natural enough. They had trespassed on her peace, and held up an old, flawed mirror before her beautiful face.

  “Help me up!” said Haluin, and raised his arms like a child to be lifted to his feet; and that was the first time that he had asked for help, always before it had been proffered, and his acceptance humble and resigned rather than grateful.

  “You did not speak one word throughout,” he said suddenly, marveling, as they turned towards the church door.

  “I had not one word to speak,” said Cadfael. “But I heard many words. And even the silences between them were not altogether inarticulate.”

  Adelais de Clary’s groom was waiting for them in the porch, as she had promised, leaning indolently with one shoulder propped against the jamb of the door, as though he had been waiting for some time, but with immovable patience. His appearance confirmed everything Brother Cadfael had elaborated, in his own mind, from the few glimpses he had had of the riders between the trees. The younger of the pair, this, a brawny young man of perhaps thirty years, thickset, bullnecked, unmistakably in the Norman mold. Perhaps the third or fourth generation from a progenitor who had come over as a man at arms with the first de Clary. The strong original stock still prevailed, though intermarriage with Englishwomen had tempered the fairness of his hair into a straw brown, and somewhat moderated the brutal bones of his face. He still wore his hair cropped into a close cap in the Norman manner, and his strong jaw clean-shaven, and he still had the bright, light, impenetrable eyes of the north. At their coming he sprang erect, more at ease in movement than in repose.

  “My lady sends me to show you the way.”

  His voice was flat and clipped, and he waited for no reply, but set off out of the churchyard before them, at a pace Haluin could not well maintain. The groom looked back at the gate and waited, and thereafter abated his speed, though it obviously chafed him to move slowly. He said nothing of his own volition, and replied to question or simple civility cordially enough, but briefly. Yes, Elford was a very fine property, good land and a good lord. Audemar’s competent management of his honor was acknowledged indifferently; this young man’s allegiance was to Adelais rather than to her son. Yes, his father was in the same service, and so had his father been before him. About these monastic guests he showed no curiosity at all, though he might have felt some. Those pale grey alien eyes concealed all thought, or perhaps suggested thought’s total absence.

  He brought them by a grassy way to the gate of the manor enclosure, which was walled and spacious. Audemar de Clary’s house sat squarely in the midst, the living floor raised well above a stone undercroft, and to judge by the small windows above, there, were at least two more chambers over the solar. And his ample courtyard was built round with other habitable rooms, as well as the customary and necessary stables, armory, bakehouse and brewhouse, stores and workshops, and was populous with the activities of a large and busy household.

  The groom led them to a small timber lodging under the curtain wall.

  “My lady has had this chamber made ready for you. Use it as your own, she says, and the gateman will see to it you can come and go freely, to go to the church.”

  Her hospitality, as they found, was meticulous but remote and impersonal. She had provided them with water for washing, comfortable pallets to rest on, sent them food from her own table, and given orders to tell them to ask for anything they might need or want that had been forgotten, but she did not receive them into her own presence. Perhaps forgiveness did not reach so far as to render Haluin’s remorseful presence agreeable to her. Nor was it her house servants who waited on them, but the two grooms who had ridden with her from Hales. It was the elder of the two who brought them meat and bread and cheese, and small ale from the pantry. Cadfael had not been deceived in their relationship, for this one was clearly father to the other, a tough, square-set man in his fifties, close-mouthed like his son, broader in the shoulders, more bowed in the legs from years spent as much on horseback as on his own two feet. The same cold, unconfiding eyes, the same bold and powerful shaven jaws, but this one was tanned to a lasting bronze that Cadfael recognized from his own past as having its origin very far from England. His lord had been a crusader. This man had surely been with h
im there in Holy Land, and got his burnished gloss there under the fierce, remembered sun.

  The elder groom came again later in the afternoon, with a message not for Haluin but for Cadfael. It so happened that Haluin had fallen asleep on his pallet, and the man’s entrance, light and soft as a cat for all his bulk, did not disturb his rest, for which Cadfael was grateful. There was a long and unrestful night to come. He motioned to the groom to wait, and went out into the courtyard to him, closing the door softly after him.

  “Let him lie. He’ll need to be wakeful later.”

  “My lady told us how he means to spend the night,” said the groom. “It’s you she bids to her, if you’ll come with me now. Let the other brother rest, she says, for he’s been mortal sick. I grant him a man’s guts, or he’d never have come so far on those feet. This way, Brother!”

  Her dower dwelling was built into a corner of the curtain wall, sheltered from the prevailing winds, small, but enough for such occasional visits as she chose to make to her son’s court. A narrow hall and chamber, and a kitchen built lean-to against the wall outside. The groom strode in and through the hall with simple authority, as one having privilege here, and entered his mistress’s presence much as a son or brother of hers might have done, trusting and trusted. Adelais de Clary was well served, but without subservience.

  “Here is Brother Cadfael from Shrewsbury, my lady. The other one’s asleep.”

  Adelais was sitting at a distaff loaded with deep blue wool, spinning the spindle with her left hand, but at their entrance she ceased to turn it, and lodged it carefully against the foot of the distaff to prevent the yarn from uncoiling.

  “Good! It’s what he needs. Leave us now, Lothair, our guest will find his own way back. Is my son home yet?”

  “Not yet. I’ll be looking out for him when he comes.”

  “He has Roscelin with him,” she said, “and the hounds. When they’re all home and kenneled and stalled, take your ease, it’s well earned.”

  He merely nodded by way of acknowledgment, and departed, taciturn and uneffusive as ever, and yet there was a tone in their exchange of invulnerable assurance, secure as rooted rock. Adelais said no word until the door of her chamber had closed after her servant. She was eyeing Cadfael with silent attention, and the faint shadow of a smile.

  “Yes,” she said, as if he had spoken. “More than an old servant. He was with my lord all the years he fought in Palestine. More than once he did Bertrand that small service, to keep him man alive. It is another manner of allegiance, not a servant’s. As bound in fealty as ever lord is to his overlord. I inherited what was my lord’s before me. Lothair, he’s called. His son is Luc. Born and bred in the some mold. You’ll have seen the likeness, God knows it can hardly be missed.”

  “I have seen it,” said Cadfaei. “And I knew where Lothair got that copper skin he wears.”

  “Indeed?” She was studying him with concentrated interest now, having gone to the trouble to see him for the first time.

  “I was some years in the east myself, before his time. If he lives long enough his brown will fade as mine has faded, but it takes a long while.”

  “Ah! So you were not given to the monks in childhood? I thought you had not the look of such virgin innocents,” said Adelais.

  “I entered of my own will,” said Cadfael, “when it was time.”

  “So did he—of his own will, though I think it was not time.” She stirred and sighed. “I sent for you only to ask if you have everything you need—if my men have taken proper care of you.”

  “Excellent care. And for their kindness and yours we are devoutly grateful.”

  “And to ask you of him—of Haluin. I have seen in what sad case he is. Will it ever be better for him?”

  “He will never walk as he did before,” said Cadfaei, “but as his sinews gain time and strength he will improve. He believed he was dying, so did we all, but he lives and will yet find much good in life—once his mind is at peace.”

  “And will it be at peace after tonight? Is this what he needs?”

  “I believe he will. I believe it is.”

  “Then it has my blessing. And then you will take him back to Shrewsbury? I can provide you horses,” she said, “for the way back. Lothair can fetch them to Hales when we return.”

  “That kindness he will surely refuse,” said Cadfael. “He has sworn to complete this penance on foot.”

  She nodded understanding. “I will ask him, nonetheless. Well—that is all, Brother. If he will not, I can do no more. Yes, one thing I can! I am coming to Vespers tonight. I will speak to the priest, and make certain that no one—no one!—shall question or trouble his vigil. You understand, nothing must be let slip to any soul but us who already know all too well. Tell him so. What remains is between him and God.”

  The master of the house was just riding in at the gate as Cadfael walked back to the lodging where Haluin lay sleeping. The ring of harness and hooves and voices entered ahead of the cavalcade, a lively sound, bringing out grooms and servants like bees from a disturbed hive to attend on their lord’s arrival. And here he came, Audemar de Clary, on a tall chestnut horse, a big man in dark, plain, workmanlike riding clothes, without ornament, and needing none to mark him out as having authority here. He rode in with head uncovered, the hood of his short cloak flung back on his shoulders, and his shock of crisp hair was as dark as his mother’s, but the powerful bones of his face, high-bridged nose, thrusting cheekbones, and lofty forehead he surely had from his Crusader father.

  He could not, Cadfael thought, be yet forty years old. The vigor of his movements as he dismounted, the spring of his step on the ground, the very gestures of his hands as he stripped off his gloves, all were young. But the formidable features of his face and the mastery that was manifest all about him, in the efficiency of his management here and the prompt and competent service he expected and got, made him seem older in dominance than he was in years. He had been master, Cadfael recalled, in his father’s long absence, beginning early, probably before he was twenty, and the de Clary honor was large and scattered. He had learned his business well. Not a man to be crossed lightly, but no one here feared him. They approached him cheerfully and spoke with him boldly. His anger, when justified, might be withering, even perilous, but it would be just.

  He had a young fellow, page or squire, riding close at his elbow, a youth of seventeen or eighteen, fresh-faced and flushed with open air and exercise, and after them came two kennelmen on foot with the hounds on leash after their run. Audemar handed over his bridle to the groom who came running, and stood stamping his booted feet as he shed his cloak into the young man’s ready hands. The brief flurry of activity was over in a few minutes, the horses on their way across the court to the stables, the hounds away to the kennels. The young groom Luc came out of the stableyard and spoke to Audemar, apparently to deliver a message from Adelais, for Audemar at once looked round toward the lady’s lodging, nodded understanding, and came striding towards her door. His eyes fell on Cadfael, standing discreetly aside from his path, and for an instant he checked as though to stop and speak, but then changed his mind and went on, to vanish into the deep doorway.

  Judging by the time that she and her grooms and her maid had passed by in the forest, Cadfael reckoned, Adelais must have arrived here that same day, two days previously. They would have no need to halt for a night between Chenet and Elford, for on horseback the distance was easy. Therefore she must already have seen and talked with her son. What she had to communicate to him now, as soon as he returned from riding, might well have to do with whatever was news this day at the manor of Elford. And what was new but the arrival of the two monks from Shrewsbury, and their reason for being here, a reason she would interpret with discretion for his ears. For he had been here at Elford when his sister died in Hales, for the world’s ears—and her brother’s also?—of a fever. That must be all he had ever known of it, a simple, sad death, such as may happen in any household, even to one in the blo
om of youth. No, that strong and resolute woman would never have let her son into the secret. An old, trusted, confidential maidservant, maybe. She must have needed such a one, now perhaps dead. But her young son, no, never.

  And if that was true, no wonder Adelais was taking every precaution to smooth Haluin’s way to his atonement, and be rid of him as quickly as possible, warding off all inquiry, even from the priest, offering horses to hasten the departure, and pledging the two pilgrims not to reveal anything of the past to any other being, not to say one word of the import of their errand, or mention the name of Bertrade.

  Something, at least, I begin to understand, thought Cadfael. Wherever we turn, there is Adelais between us and all others. She houses us, she feeds us, it is her most loyal servants who approach and wait on us, not any from her son’s household. My daughter’s name and fame are safe enough under the stone, she had said, let them lie quiet there. Small blame to her for making sure, and no wonder she had ridden in haste to reach Elford beforehand and be ready for them.

  And go we will, he thought, tomorrow morning if Haluin is fit to set out, and she can set her mind at rest. We can find another halting place a mile or two from here, if we must, but at all costs we’ll quit these walls, and she need never see or think of Haluin again.

  The young squire had remained standing to watch his lord cross to the lady’s door, Audemar’s cloak flung over his shoulder, his bare head almost flaxen against the dark cloth. He had still the coltish, angular grace of youth. In a year or two his slenderness would fill out into solid and shapely manhood, with every movement under smooth control, but as yet he retained the vulnerable uncertainty of a boy. He looked after Audemar with surprised speculation, stared at Cadfael in candid curiosity, and turned slowly towards the door of Audemar’s hall.