The Confession of Brother Haluin bc-15

by Ellis Peters

  “So she is no sister of mine,” said Cenred heavily, rather to himself than to any other, and as quickly repeated it with sudden anger to them all: “She is no sister of mine!”

  “None,” said Adelais. “But until now she believed herself so. It is not her fault, never cast blame on her.”

  “She is no kin to me. I owe her nothing, neither dowry nor lands. She has no claim on me.” He said it bitterly rather than vengefully, lamenting the abrupt severance of a strong affection.

  “None. But she is kin to me,” said Adelais. “Her mother’s dower lands went to Polesworth when she took the veil, but Helisende is my granddaughter and my heiress. The lands I hold in my own right will go to her. She will not be penniless.” She looked at de Perronet as she spoke, and smiled, but wryly. No need to make the lovers’ path too smooth by rendering the girl less profitable, and therefore less attractive in the rival’s eyes.

  “Madam, you mistake me.” said Cenred with muted fury. “This house has been her home, she will still think of it as home. Where else is there for her? It is we here who are suddenly cut off, like topped limbs. Her father and mother, both, are in the cloister, and what guidance, what care has she ever had from you? Kin to us or not, she belongs here at Vivers.”

  “But nothing prevents now,” cried Roscelin triumphantly. “I may approach her, I may lawfully ask for her, there is no barrier now. We’ve done no wrong, there’s no shadow over us, no ban between us. I’ll go and bring her home. She’ll come, blithely she’ll come! I knew,” he exulted, his blue eyes brilliant with vindicated joy, “I knew we did no wrong in loving, never, never! It was you persuaded me I sinned. Sir, let me go and fetch her home!”

  At that de Perronet took fire in his turn, with a hiss like a sulphur match flaring, and took two rapid strides forward to confront the boy. “You leap too soon and too far, my friend! Your rights are no better than mine. I do not withdraw my suit, I urge it, I will pursue it with my might.”

  “And so you may,” exulted Roscelin, too drunk with relief and delight to be ungenerous or take easy offense. “I don’t grudge any man his say, but on fair terms now, you and I and any who come, and we shall see what Helisende replies.” But he knew what her reply would be, his very certainty was offense, though it meant none, and de Perronet had his hand on his dagger and hotter words mounting in his throat when Audemar smote the table and bellowed them both into silence.

  “Hush your noise! Am I overlord here, or no? The girl is not without kin, for she is niece to me. If there is anyone here who has rights in her and a duty towards her—any who has not farmed out both upon another man long since!—it is I, and I say that if Cenred so wishes, then I place her here in his fosterage, with all the rights he has exercised as her kinsman all these years. And in the matter of her marriage both he and I will take good care what is best for her, but never against her will. But now, let her be! She has asked for time untroubled, and she shall have it. When she is ready to return, I will fetch her home.”

  “Content,” said Cenred, breathing deeply. “I am content! I could ask no better.”

  “And, Brother

  ” Audemar turned to Cadfael. He had the entire issue in his hands now, over all matters here his writ ran, and what he ordained would be done. The least damage was his design, as his mother’s had been the ultimate destruction. “Brother, if you are going back to Farewell, tell them there what I have said. What’s done is done, all that waits to be done shall be in daylight, openly. Roscelin,” he ordered sharply, turning on the boy restless and glittering with the joy of his release, “have the horses readied, we ride for Elford. You are still in my service until I please to dismiss you, and I have not forgotten that you went forth without leave. Let me have no further cause for displeasure.”

  But his voice was dry, and neither words nor look cast the least shadow upon Roscelin’s exultant brightness. He bent his knee in the briefest of reverences by way of acknowledging the order, and went blithely to do his lord’s bidding. The wind of his flight swung the curtain at the door, and sent a current of outer air floating across the chamber like a sigh.

  Audemar looked last and longest at Adelais, who stood with eyes steady and dark upon his face, waiting his judgment.

  “Madam, you will ride back with me to Elford. You have done what you came here to do.”

  Nevertheless, it was Cadfael who got to horse first. No one was any longer in need of him here, and whatever natural curiosity he might feel concerning the family adjustments still to be made, and perhaps less easily accomplished than decreed, must be forever contained, since he was unlikely to pass this way again. He reclaimed his horse without haste, and mounted, and was ambling towards the gate when Roscelin broke away from the grooms who were busy saddling Audemar’s horses, and came running to his stirrup.

  “Brother Cadfael

  “He was lost for a moment for words, since his wonder and happiness were beyond words, and shook his head and laughed over his own incoherence. “Tell her! Tell her we’re free, we need not change, there’s no one can blacken us now

  “

  “Son,” said Cadfael heartily, “by this she knows it as well as you.”

  “And tell her soon, very soon, I shall come for her. Oh, yes, I know,” he said confidently, seeing Cadfael’s raised brows, “but it’s me he’ll send. I know him! He’d rather a kinsman he knows and can rely on, his own man, with lands bordering his own, than any lordling from distant parts. And my father won’t stand between us now. Why should he, when it solves everything? What’s changed, except what needed changing?”

  And there was something in that, Cadfael reflected, looking down from the saddle into the young, ardent face. What was changed was the replacement of falsity by truth, and however hard the assimilation might be, it must be for the better. Truth can be costly, but in the end it never falls short of value for the price paid.

  “And tell him,” said Roscelin earnestly, “the lame brother

  her father

  ” His voice hung on the word with, wonder and awe. “Tell him I’m glad, say I owe him more than ever can be repaid. And tell him he need never fret for her happiness, for I’ll give my life to it.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  At about the same time that Cadfael dismounted in the court of Farewell, Adelais de Clary sat with her son in his private chamber at Elford. There had been a long and heavy silence between them. The afternoon was drawing to its close, the light dimming, and he had sent for no candles.

  “There is a matter,” he said at length, stirring out of his moume stillness, “which has hardly been touched on yet. It was to you, madam, that the old woman came. And you sent her away with a short answer. To her death! Was that at your orders?”

  Without passion she said, “No.”

  “I will not ask what you know of it. To what end? She is dead. But I do not like your manner of dealing, and I choose to have no more ado with it. Tomorrow, madam, you shall return to Hales. Hales you may have for your hermitage. But do not come back to this house, ever, for you will not be admitted. The doors of every manor of mine except Hales are henceforth closed to you.”

  Indifferently she said, “As you will, it is all one to me. I need only a little space, and may not need it long. Hales will do very well.”

  “Then, madam, take your leave when you will. You shall have a safe escort on the road, seeing,” he said with bitter meaning, “that you have parted with your own grooms. And a litter, if you prefer to hide your face. Let it not be said that I left you to travel defenseless, like an old woman venturing out alone by night.”

  Adelais rose from her stool and went out from him without a word.

  In the hall the servants had begun to kindle the first torches and set them in their sconces, but in every corner, and in the smoky beams of the lofty roof, darkness gathered and clung, draped cobwebs of shadow.

  Roscelin was standing over the central fire on its flagged hearth, driving the heel of his boot into it to tease
it into life after the damped-down hours of the day. He still had Audemar’s cloak over his arm, the capuchon dangling from one hand, The light from the reviving flames gilded his stooping face into gold, smooth-cheeked, with elegant bones and a brow as fair as a girl’s, and on his dreaming lips the softest and most beguiling of smiles bore witness to his deep happiness. His flaxen hair swung against his cheek, and parted above the suave nape of his neck, the most revealing beauty of the young. For a moment she stood apart in the shadows to watch him, herself unnoticed, for the pleasure and the pain of experiencing again the irresistible attraction, the unbearable bliss and anguish of beholding beauty and youth pass by and depart. Too sharp and sweet a reminder of things ended long ago, and for years believed forgotten, only to burn up into new life, like the phoenix, when a door opened, and confronted her with the ruin the years had left of the beloved being.

  She passed by silently, so that he should not hear, and turn upon her the too radiant, too exultant blue eyes. The dark eyes that she remembered, deeply and delicately set beneath arched black brows, had never looked so, never for her. Always dutiful, always wary, often lowered in her presence.

  Adelais went out into the chill of the evening, and turned towards her own apartments. Well, it was over. The fire was ashes. She would never see him again.

  “Yes, I have seen her,” said Brother Haluin. “Yes, I have spoken with her. I have touched her hand, it is warm flesh, woman’s flesh, no illusion. The portress brought me into her presence all unprepared, I could neither speak nor move. She had been so long dead to me. Even that glimpse I had of her in the garth among the birds

  Afterward, when you were gone, I could not be sure I had not dreamed it. But to touch her, to have her call me by my name

  And she was glad

  “Her case was not as mine, though God knows I would not say her burden has been any lighter. But she knew I was man alive, she knew where I was, and what I was, and for her there was no guilt, she had done no wrong but in loving me. And she could speak. Such words she offered me, Cadfael! ‘Here is one,’ she said, ‘who has already embraced you, with good right. Now with good right embrace her. She is your daughter. Can you conceive such a miracle? Giving the child to me by the hand, she said it. Helisende, my daughter—not dead! Alive and young and kind and fresh as a flower. And I thought I had destroyed her, destroyed them both! Of her own sweet will the child kissed me. Even if it was only from pity—it must have been pity, how could she love one she never knew?—but even if it was only from pity, it was a gift beyond gold.

  “And she will be happy. She can love as it best pleases her, and marry where her heart is. Once she called me, ‘Father,’ but I think it was as a priest, as first she knew me. Even so it was good to hear and will be sweet to remember.

  “This hour we three have had together repays all the eighteen years, even though there was so little said between us. The heart could hold no more. She is gone to her duties now, Bertrade. So must I to mine, soon

  very soon

  tomorrow

  “

  Cadfael had sat silent through the long, stumbling, eloquent monologue of his friend’s revelation, broken by long pauses in which Haluin was rapt away again into a trance of wonder. Not one word of the abominable thing that had been done to him, wantonly, cruelly, that was washed clean away out of the mind by the joy of its undoing, without a lingering thought of blame or forgiveness. And that was the last and most ironic judgment on Adelais de Clary.

  “Shall we go to Vespers?” said Cadfael. “The bell has gone, they’ll all be in their places by now, we can creep in unnoticed.”

  From their chosen dim corner in the church Cadfael scanned the young, clear faces of the sisters, and lingered long upon Sister Benedicta, who had once been Bertrade de Clary. Beside him Haluin’s low, happy voice intoned the responses and prayers, but what Cadfael was hearing in his own mind was the same voice bleeding words slowly and haltingly, in the darkness of the forester’s hayloft, before dawn. There in her stall, serene, fulfilled, and content, stood the woman he had tried to describe. “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.”

  But no, she had not died. And certainly at this moment, devout and dutiful, there was nothing dark or secret in her. The oval face shone serene, as she celebrated with joy the mercy of God, after years. Without any lingering regret; her contentment was without blemish. The vocation she had undertaken unblessed, and labored at against the grain, perhaps, all these years, surely reached its true wholeness only now, in the revelation of grace. She would not have turned back now even for that first love. There was no need. There are seasons of love. Theirs had passed beyond the storms of spring and the heat of summer into the golden calm of the first autumn days, before the leaves begin to fall. Bertrade de Clary looked as Brother Haluin looked, confirmed and invulnerable in the peace of the spirit. Henceforth presence was unnecessary, and passion irrelevant. They were eased of the past, and both of them had work to do for the future, all the more eagerly and thoroughly for knowing, each of them, that the other lived and labored in the same vineyard.

  In the morning, after Prime, their farewells made, they set out on the long journey home.

  The sisters were in chapter when Cadfael and Haluin took scrip and crutches and went out from the guest hall, but the girl Helisende went with them to the gate. It seemed to Cadfael that all these faces about him had been washed clear of every shadow and every doubt; they had all of them that stunned brightness, astonished by the good that had befallen them. Now it could be seen more clearly how like were father and daughter, so many of the marks of the years having been smoothed from Haluin’s face.

  Helisende embraced him without words at parting, fervent but shy. However they had spent the previous day, whatever confidences had been exchanged, she could not so quickly know him of her own knowledge, only through her mother’s eyes, but she knew of him that he was gentle and of pleasing person and address, and that his eruption into her life had freed her from a nightmare of guilt and loss, and she would always remember and think of him so, with pleasure and gratitude not so far distant from love. Profit enough, even if he never saw her again.

  “God keep you, Father!” said Helisende.

  It was the first and the last time that she gave him that title not as a priest but as a man, but it was a gift that would last him a lifetime.

  They halted for the night at Hargedon, where the canons of Hampton had a grange, in a countryside slowly being recovered out of the waste that had followed the Norman settlement. Only now, after sixty years, was ploughland being resurrected out of the scrub, and an occasional hamlet being raised where tracks crossed, or rivers provided water for a mill. The comparative security offered by the presence of the canons’ steward and servants had drawn others to settle close by, and there were now assarts being hewn out of the neglected woods by enterprising younger sons. But still it was sparsely populated territory, level, lonely, and in the evening light melancholy. Yet with every labored step taken westward across this mournful plain Brother Haluin’s brightness increased, his pace quickened, and his color flushed into eagerness.

  From the narrow unshuttered window in the loft he looked out westward into a night full of stars. Nearer to Shrewsbury, where the hills began to heave their fleeces towards the mountains of Wales, earth and sky balanced in harmony, but here the vault above looked immense, and the earth of men suppressed and shadowy. The brilliance of the stars, the blackness of the space between, spoke of a touch of frost in the air, but promised a fine day for the morrow.

  “And you never feel,” said Cadfael quietly, “any desire to look back over your shoulder?”

  “No,” said Haluin tranquilly. “No need. There behind me all is well. All i
s very well. There is nothing now for me to do there, everything where I am bound. We are sister and brother now. We ask nothing more, we want nothing more. Now I can bring a whole heart to God. I’m glad beyond measure that he cast me down, to raise me renewed to his service.”

  There was a long, untroubled silence, while he continued to stare out into the clear night with a kind of bright hunger in his face. “I left a leaf half finished when we set out for Hales,” he said meditatively. “I thought to be back to complete it long before this. I hope Anselm has not given it to someone else. It was a capital N for the Nunc Dimittis, still wanting half of the colors.”

  “It will be waiting for you,” Cadfael assured him.

  “Aelfric is good, but he doesn’t know my intent, he might overdo the gold.” His voice was soft and practical and young.

  “Leave fretting,” said Cadfael. “Possess your soul three days more in patience, and you’ll have brush and pen in hand again, and get back to work. And so must I to my herbs, for the medicine cupboards will be running low by this time. Lie down, lad, and get your rest. There are more miles waiting for you tomorrow.”

  A soft wind from the west blew in through the open window, and Haluin lifted his head and sniffed the air like a high-bred horse scenting his stable.

  “How good it is,” he said, “to be going home!”

  the end

 

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  Ellis Peters

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