The Confession of Brother Haluin

by Ellis Peters

  “By next year,” said Sister Ursula, “we shall have flowers. Sister Benedicta, our best gardener at Polesworth, came here with me, the garth is her preserve. Things grow for her, birds come to her hand. That gift I never had.”

  “And has Polesworth also provided you your abbess?” asked Cadfael.

  “No, Bishop de Clinton brought Mother Patrice from Coventry. We two must go back to our own house when we’re no longer needed here, unless, as I say, they let us remain for life. We should need the bishop’s dispensation, but who knows, he may see fit to grant it.”

  Beyond the cloister a small private court opened, and the guest hall stood on the further side of it, close to the pale fence. The small room that awaited the first travelers was dim and full of the warmth and fragrance of wood, furnished simply with two beds and a little table, with a crucifix on the wall and a prayer-desk below it.

  “Use it as your domain,” said Sister Ursula cheerfully, “and I’ll have supper brought to you here. You come too late for Vespers, but if you please to join us at Compline later, you’ll hear the bell. Use our church for prayer as you wish. It is but young yet, the more good souls it harbors under its roof, the better. And now, if you have all you need, I’ll leave you to your rest.”

  *

  In the blessed virginal quiet of this new abbey of Farewell, Brother Haluin fell rapturously asleep as soon as he returned from Compline, and slept like a child all through the night and deep into the dawn of a soft, clear morning, free of any touch of frost. He awoke to find Cadfael already up, and preparing to go and recite the morning office and offer his private prayers in the church.

  “Has the bell sounded for Prime?” asked Haluin, rising in haste.

  “No, nor will for half an hour yet, by the light. We can have the church to ourselves for a while, if you’re so minded.”

  “A good thought,” said Haluin, and went with him gladly, out into the small court, and across it to the south door into the cloister. The turf in the garth was moist and green, the bleached pallor of winter vanished overnight. The shy mists of buds that had barely showed a few days ago along the branches of the trees now had a positive color, grown into a tender green veil. It wanted only a few more such mild days and a glimpse of the sun, and suddenly it would be spring. In the clear shallow water in the stone bowl small birds were fluttering and shrilling, aware of change. Brother Haluin approached the little church of Farewell through evidences of hope. Certainly this first church would be enlarged or replaced later, when the abbey’s immediate building needs were met, its endowment assured, and its prestige established. Yet this first edifice, small and plain as it was, would always be remembered with affection, and its supplanting a matter of regret to those, like Sister Ursula and Sister Benedicta, who had been present and served at its birth.

  They said the office together in the dim, stony quietness, kneeling before the small spark of the altar lamp, and made their private prayers in silence afterward. The light softened and brightened over them, the first veiled ray of the rising sun stole through the pales of the enclave and touched the upper stones of the eastern wall into pale rose, and still Brother Haluin kneeled, his crutches laid beside him.

  Cadfael was the first to rise. It could not be long now to Prime, and it might be an inconvenient distraction to new young sisters to have two men in evidence at their morning service, even two monks of the same order. He crossed to the south door, and stood there looking out into the garth, waiting until Haluin should need his help to rise.

  There was one of the sisters standing beside the stone bowl in the center, very slender and erect and composed, feeding the birds. She crumbled bread on the broad rim of the bowl, and held fragments of it out on her open palm, and the flurry and vibration of hovering wings span fearlessly about her. The black habit became her slenderness, and her bearing had a youthful grace that stabbed piercingly into Cadfael’s memory. The poise of the head on its long neck and straight shoulders, the narrow waist and elegant, long hand offering alms to the birds, these he had surely seen before, in another place, by another and deceptive light. Now she stood in open air, with the soft morning light upon her, and he could not believe that he was mistaken.

  Helisende was here at Farewell, Helisende in a nun’s habit. The bride had fled her unbearable dilemma to take the veil rather than marry anyone but her unfortunate lover Roscelin. True, she could not have taken any vows as yet, but the sisters might well see fit, in her stressful circumstances, to give her the instant protection of the habit, even before she entered on her novitiate.

  She had quick hearing, or perhaps she had been expecting and listening for a light footstep in the western range of the cloister, where the sisters’ dortoir lay. For plainly she caught the sound of someone approaching from that direction, and turned to meet the newcomer, smiling. The very movement, measured and tranquil, in itself cast doubt on the youth he had seen in her but a moment earlier, and showed him fully a face he had never seen before.

  Not a young, unpracticed girl, but a serene, worn, mature woman. The revelation in the hall at Vivers came about full circle, from illusion to reality, from the girl to the woman, as then it had spun headily backward from the woman to the girl. Not Helisende, not even very like Helisende, but for the tall white ivory brow, and the sweet and plaintive oval shape of the face, and wide-set, candid, gallant, and vulnerable eyes. In figure and bearing, yes, the very same. If she had turned her back again, she would again have become the image of her daughter.

  For who else could this be but the widowed mother who had taken the veil at Polesworth rather than be harried into a second marriage? Who else but Sister Benedicta, sent here to the bishop’s new foundation to help to establish a secure tradition and a blessed example for the fledgling nuns of Farewell? Sister Benedicta who could charm flowers to grow and birds to come to her hand? Helisende must have known of her move, if the rest of the household at Vivers had not. Helisende had known where to look for refuge in her need. Where should she go but to her mother?

  He had been concentrating so intensely upon the woman in the garth that he had heard nothing from within the church, until he caught the tapping of crutches on the flagstones within the doorway, and swung about almost guiltily to return to his bounden duty. Haluin had somehow got to his feet unaided, and emerged now at Cadfael’s side, gazing out with pleasure into the garth, where misty sunlight and moist shadow mingled.

  His eyes fell upon the nun, and he halted abruptly, swaying on his crutches. Cadfael saw the dark eyes fix and widen, their arrested stare burning hollowly into the glowing stillness of vision or trance, and the sensitive lips move almost soundlessly, forming the slow syllables of a name. Almost soundlessly, but not quite, for Cadfael heard it.

  In wonder and joy and pain, and all in extremes, as one driven and wracked by religious ecstasy: “Bertrade!” whispered Brother Haluin.

  Chapter 11

  THERE WAS NO mistaking the name, and no questioning the absolute certainty with which it was uttered. If Cadfael clung to sane, sensible disbelief for one moment, he discarded it the next, and it was swept away once for all in a great flood of enlightenment. In Haluin there was no doubt or question at all. He knew what he saw, he gave it its true, its unforgotten name, and stood lost in wonder, trembling with the intensity of his knowledge. Bertrade!

  The first glimpse of her daughter had struck him to the heart, the dimly seen copy outlined against the light was so true to the original. But as soon as Helisende had stepped forward into the torchlight the likeness had faded, the vision dissolved. This was a girl he did not know. Now she came again, and turned towards him the remembered and lamented face, and there was no more questioning.

  So she had not died. Cadfael grappled silently with enlightenment. The tomb Haluin had sought was an illusion. She had not died of the draught that robbed her of her child, she had survived that peril and grief, to be married off to an elderly husband, vassal and friend to her mother’s family, and to bear h
im a daughter the image of herself in build and bearing. And she had done her best to be a faithful wife and mother as long as her old lord lived, but after his death she had turned her back on the world and followed her first lover into the cloister, choosing the same order, taking to herself the name of the founder, binding herself once for all to the same discipline into which Haluin had been driven.

  Then why, argued a persistent imp in Cadfael’s mind, why did you—you, not Haluin!—find in the face of the girl at Vivers something inexplicably familiar? Who was it hiding from you deep in the caverns of memory, refusing to be recognised? You had never seen the girl before, never in life set eyes on this mother of hers. Whoever looked out at you from Helisende’s eyes, and then drew down a veil between, it was not Bertrade de Clary.

  All this came seething through his mind in the instant of revelation, the brief moment before Helisende herself emerged from the shadows of the west range and came out into the garth to join her mother. She had not donned the habit, she wore the same gown she had worn the previous evening at her brother’s table. She was pale and grave, but had the calm of the cloister about her, safe here from any compulsion, with time for thought and for taking counsel.

  The two women met, the hems of their skirts tracing two darker paths in the silver-green of the moist grass. They turned back together at leisure towards the doorway from which Helisende had come, to go in and join the rest of the sisterhood for Prime. They were going away, they would vanish, and nothing be answered, nothing resolved, nothing made plain! And still Haluin hung swaying on his crutches, stricken motionless and mute. He would lose her again, she was all but lost already. The two women had almost reached the west walk, the cords of deprivation were drawn out to breaking point.

  “Bertrade!” cried Haluin, in a great shout of terror and despair.

  That cry reached them, echoing startlingly from every wall, and brought them about to stare in alarm and astonishment towards the door of the church. Haluin tore himself out of his daze with a great heave, and went hurtling forward recklessly into the garth, his crutches goring the soft turf.

  At sight of an unknown man lurching towards them the women had instinctively recoiled, but seeing at second glance his habit, and how sadly he was crippled, in pure compassion they halted their flight to permit his approach, and even came a few impulsive steps to meet him. For a moment there was no more in it than that, pity for a lame man. Then abruptly everything changed.

  He had been in too much haste to reach them, he stumbled, and swayed out of balance for a moment, on the edge of a fall, and the girl, quick to sympathy, sprang forward to support him in her arms. His weight falling into her embrace swung them both about, to steady and recover almost cheek to cheek, and Cadfael saw the two faces for a long moment side by side, startled, bright, dazzled into wonder.

  So now at last he had his answer. Now he knew everything there was to be known, everything except what fury of bitterness could drive one human creature to do so base and cruel a thing to another. And even that answer would not be far to seek.

  It was at that moment of total enlightenment that Bertrade de Clary, staring earnestly into the stranger’s face, knew him for no stranger, and called him by his name: “Haluin!”

  *

  There was nothing more, not then, only the meeting of eyes and the mutual recognition, and the understanding, on either part, of past wrongs and agonies never before fully understood, bitter and terrible for a moment, then erased by a great flood of gratitude and joy. For in the moment when the three of them hung mute and still, staring at one another, they all heard the little bell for Prime ringing in the dortoir, and knew that the sisters would be filing down the night stairs to walk in procession into the church.

  So there was nothing more, not then. The women drew back, with lingering glances still wide with wonder, and turned to answer the summons and join their sisters. And Cadfael went forward from the porch to take Brother Haluin by the arm, and lead him gently, like a sleepwalking child, back to the guest hall.

  *

  “She is not dead,” said Haluin, rigidly erect on the edge of his bed. Over and over, recording the miracle in a repetition nearer incantation than prayer: “She is not dead! It was false, false, false! She did not die!”

  Cadfael said never a word. It was not yet time to speak of all that lay behind this revelation. For the moment Haluin’s shocked mind looked no further than the fact, joy that she should be alive and well and in safe haven whom he had lamented so long as dead, and dead by his grievous fault, the bewilderment and hurt that he should have been left so long mourning her.

  “I must speak with her,” said Haluin. “I cannot go without having speech with her.”

  “You shall not,” Cadfael assured him.

  It was inevitable now, all must come out. They had met, they had beheld each other, no one now could undo that, the sealed coffer was sprung open, the secrets were tumbling out of it, no one now could close the lid upon them ever again.

  “We cannot leave today,” said Haluin.

  “We shall not. Wait here in patience,” said Cadfael. “I am going to seek an audience with the lady abbess.”

  *

  The abbess of Farewell, brought by Bishop de Clinton from Coventry to direct his new foundation, was a dumpy round loaf of a woman, perhaps in her middle forties, with a plump russet face and shrewd brown eyes that weighed and measured in a glance, and were confident of their judgment. She sat uncompromisingly erect on an uncushioned bench in a small and spartan parlour, and closed the book on the desk before her as Cadfael came in.

  “You’re very welcome. Brother, to whatever service our house can offer you. Ursula tells me you are from the abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, at Shrewsbury. I intended to invite you and your companion to join me for dinner, and I cordially extend that invitation now. But I hear you have asked for this interview, forestalling any move of mine. I take it there is a reason. Sit down, Brother, and tell me what more you have to ask of me.”

  Cadfael sat down with her, debating in his mind how much he might tell, or how little. She was a woman quite capable of filling in gaps for herself, but also, he judged, a woman of scrupulous discretion, who would keep to herself whatever she read between the lines.

  “I come, Reverend Mother, to ask you to countenance a meeting, in private, between my brother Haluin and Sister Benedicta.”

  He saw her brows raised, but the small bright eyes beneath them remained unperturbed and sharp with intelligence.

  “In youth,” he said, “they were well acquainted. He was in her mother’s service, and being so close in the one house, and of an age, boy and girl together, they fell into loving. But Haluin’s suit was not at all to the mother’s mind, and she took pains to separate them. Haluin was dismissed from her service, and forbidden all ado with the girl, who was persuaded into a marriage more pleasing to her family. No doubt you know her history since then. Haluin entered our house, admittedly for a wrong reason. It is not good to turn to the spiritual life out of despair, but many have done it, as you and I know, and lived to become faithful and honorable ornaments to their houses. So has Haluin. So, I make no doubt, has Bertrade de Clary.”

  He caught the glint of her eyes at hearing that name. There was not much she did not know about her flock, but if she knew more than he had said of this woman she showed no sign and made no comment, accepting all as he had told it.

  “It seems to me,” she said, “that the story you tell me bids fair to be repeated in another generation. The circumstances are not quite the same, but the end well could be. It’s as well we should consider in time how to deal with it.”

  “I have that in mind,” said Cadfael. “And how have you dealt with it thus far? Since the girl came running to you by night? For the whole household of Vivers is out by now for the second day, scouring the roads for her.”

  “I think not,” said the abbess. “For I sent yesterday to let her brother know that she is here and safe,
and prays him to be left in peace here for a while for thought and prayer. I think he will respect her wish, in the circumstances.”

  “Circumstances which she has told you,” said Cadfael with conviction, “in full. So far, that is, as she knows them.”

  “She has.”

  “Then you know of a woman’s death, and of the marriage arranged for Helisende. And the reason for that marriage, you know that, too?”

  “I know she is too close kin to the young man she would liefer have. Yes, she has told me. More, I fancy, than she tells her confessor. You need not fear for Helisende. As long as she remains here she is safe from all harassment, and has the company and comfort of her mother.”

  “She could not be in a better place,” said Cadfael fervently. “Then, as to these two who most concern us now—I must tell you that Haluin was told that Bertrade was dead, and has believed her so all these years, and moreover, taken her death to himself as blame. This morning by God’s grace he has seen her before him alive and well. They have exchanged no words but their names. But I think it would be well that they should, if you so grant. They will serve better in their separate vocations if they have peace of mind. Also they have a right to know, each one, that the other is whole, blessed and content.”

  “And you think,” said the abbess with deliberation, “that they will be blessed and content? After as before?”

  “More and better than before,” he said with certainty. “I can speak for the man, if you know as much of the woman. And if they part thus without a word, they will be tormented to the end of their days.”

  “I would as soon not be answerable to God for that,” said the abbess with a brief, bleak smile. “Well, they shall have their hour and make their peace. It can do no harm, and may do much good. Do you purpose to remain here some days longer?”

  “This one day at least,” said Cadfael. “For I have one more prayer to make to you. Brother Haluin I leave to you. But there is a thing I must do, before we set off for home. Not here! Will you let me borrow a horse from your stable?”