The Confession of Brother Haluin

by Ellis Peters

  She sat studying him for a long moment, and it seemed that she was guardedly satisfied with what she saw, for at length she said, “On one condition.”

  “And that is?”

  “That when time serves, and all harm is spent, you will tell me the other half of the story.”

  *

  Brother Cadfael led out his borrowed horse into the stableyard, and mounted without haste. The bishop had seen fit to provide stabling adequate for his own visitations, and two stout cobs for remounts should any of his envoys travel this way and make use of the abbey’s hospitality. Having been given a free hand, Cadfael had naturally chosen the more likely-looking of the two, and the younger, a lively, solid bay. It was no very long ride he had in mind, but he might as well get out of it what pleasure he could along the way. There would be little pleasure at the end of it.

  The sun was already high when he rode out at the gate, a pale sun growing brighter and clearer as the air of the day warmed into palpable spring. The fatal snow at Vivers would be the last snow of the winter, appropriately completing Haluin’s pilgrimage, as the first snow had begun it.

  The filigree green gauze of buds along the branches of bush and tree had burst into the tender plumage of young leaves. The moist grass shimmered, and gave off a faint, fragrant steam as the sun reached it. So much beauty, and behind him as he rode lay a great mercy, a just deliverance, and the renewal of hope. And before him a solitary soul to be saved or lost.

  He did not take the road to Vivers. It was not there he had urgent business, though he might well return that way. Once he halted to look back, and the long line of the abbey fence had disappeared in the folds of land, and the hamlet with it. Haluin would be waiting and wondering, groping his way through a confused dream, beset with questions to which he could have no answer, torn between belief and disbelief, fearful joy and recollected anguish, until the abbess should send to summon him to the meeting which would make all things plain at last.

  Cadfael rode on slowly until he should encounter someone from whom he could ask directions. A woman leading sheep and lambs out to pasture at the edge of the village stopped willingly to point him to the most direct road. He need not go near Vivers, and that was well, for he had no wish to meet Cenred or his men as yet. He had nothing at this moment to tell them, and indeed it was not he who must tell what finally had to be told.

  Once on the track his informant had indicated, he rode fast and purposefully, until he dismounted at the gate of the manor of Elford.

  *

  It was the young portress who tapped at the door and entered Brother Haluin’s haunted solitude, later in the morning, when the sun had shed its veil, and the grass of the garth was drying. He looked round as she came in, expecting Cadfael, and gazed at her with eyes still wide and blank with wonder.

  “I am sent by the lady abbess,” said the girl, with solicitous gentleness, since it seemed he might be almost beyond understanding, “to bid you to her parlour. If you will come with me, I’ll show, you the way.”

  Obediently he reached for his crutches. “Brother Cadfael went forth and has not returned,” he said slowly, looking about him like a man awaking from sleep. “Is this bidding to him also? Should I not wait for him?”

  “There is no need,” she said. “Brother Cadfael has already spoken with Mother Patrice, and has an errand he says he must do now. You should wait for his return here, and be easy. Will you come?”

  Haluin thrust himself to his feet and went with her, across the rear court to the abbess’s lodging, confiding like a child though half his mind was still absent. The little portress tempered her flying steps to his laboured gait, bringing him with considerate gentleness to the door of the parlour, and turning upon him on the threshold a bright, encouraging smile.

  “Go in, you are expected.”

  She held the door open for him, since he had need of both hands for his crutches. He limped across the threshold into the wood-scented, dimly lit room, and halted just within to make his reverence to the mother superior, only to stand motionless and quivering as his eyes adjusted to the subdued light. For the woman who stood waiting for him, braced and still and wonderfully smiling in the center of the room, her hands extended instinctively to aid his approach, was not the abbess, but Bertrade de Clary.

  Chapter 12

  THE GROOM WHO came unhurriedly across the courtyard to greet the visitor and inquire his business was neither Lothair nor Luc, but a lanky lad not yet twenty, with a shock of dark hair. At his back the courtyard seemed emptied of its usual lively activity, only a few maids and manservants going back and forth about their work in a casual fashion, as if all constraints were slackened. By the look of things, the master of the house and most of his men were still out and about on the hunt for any word that might lead to the murderer of Edgytha.

  “If you’re wanting the lord Audemar,” said the boy at once, “you’re out of luck. He’s still away to Vivers about this woman who was killed a couple of nights back. But his steward’s here. If you want lodging you’d best see him.”

  “I thank you,” said Cadfael, surrendering his bridle, “but it’s not the lord Audemar I’ve come to see. My errand is to his mother. I know where her dower apartments are. If you’ll see to the horse I’ll go myself and ask her woman to inquire if the lady will be good enough to see me.”

  “As you please, then. You were here afore,” said the lad, narrowing his eyes curiously at this vaguely familiar visitor. “Only a few days back, with another black monk, one that went on crutches and very lame.”

  “True,” said Cadfael. “And I had speech with the lady then, and she will not have forgotten either me or that lame brother. If she refuses me a hearing now, I will let her be—but I think she will not refuse.”

  “Try for yourself, then,” agreed the groom indifferently. “She’s still here with her maid, and I know she’s within. She keeps within, these last days.”

  “She had two grooms with her,” said Cadfael, “father and son. We were acquainted, when we stayed here, they had come from Shropshire with her. I’d willingly pass the time of day with them, afterward, if they’re not away to Vivers with the lord Audemar’s people.”

  “Oh, them! No, they’re her fellows, none of his. But they’re not here, neither. They went off yesterday on some errand of hers, very early. Where? How should I know where? Back to Hales, likely. That’s where the old dame keeps, most of her time.”

  I wonder, thought Cadfael, as he turned towards Adelais’s dwelling in the corner of the enclave wall, and the groom led the cob away to the stable, truly I wonder how it would suit Adelais de Clary to know that her son’s grooms speak of her as “the old dame.” Doubtless to that raw boy she seemed ancient as the hills, but resolutely she cherished and conserved what had once been great beauty, and from that excellence nothing and no one must be allowed to detract. Not for nothing did she choose for her intimate maid someone plain and pockmarked, surrounding herself with dull and ordinary faces that caused her own luster to glow more brightly.

  At the door of Adelais’s hall he asked for audience, and the woman Gerta came out to him haughtily, protective of her mistress’s privacy and assertive of her own office. He had sent in no name, and at sight of him she checked, none too pleased to see one of the Benedictines from Shrewsbury back again so soon, and so unaccountably.

  “My lady is not disposed to see visitors. What’s your business, that you need trouble her with it? If you need lodging and food, my lord Audemar’s steward will take care of it.”

  “My business,” said Cadfael, “is with the lady Adelais only, and concerns no one beside. Tell her that Brother Cadfael is here again, and that he comes from the abbey of Farewell, and asks to have some talk with her. That she shuns visitors I believe. But I think she will not refuse me.”

  She was not so bold that she dared take it upon herself to deny him, though she went with a toss of her head and a disdainful glance, and would have been glad to bring back a dismissi
ve answer. It was plain by the sour look on her face when she emerged from the solar that she was denied that pleasure.

  “My lady bids you in,” she said coldly, and opened the door wide for him to pass by her and enter the chamber. And no doubt she hoped to linger and be privy to whatever passed, but favor did not extend so far.

  “Leave us,” said the voice of Adelais de Clary, from deep shadow under a shuttered window. “And close the door between.”

  *

  She had no seemly woman’s occupation for her hands this time, no pretense at embroidering or spinning, she merely sat in her great chair in semidarkness, motionless, her hands spread along the arms and gripping the carved lion heads in which they terminated. She did not move as Cadfael came in, she was neither surprised nor disturbed. Her deep eyes burned upon him without wonder and, he thought, without regret. It was almost as though she had been waiting for him.

  “Where have you left Haluin?” she asked.

  “At the abbey of Farewell,” said Cadfael.

  She was silent for a moment, brooding upon him with a still face and glowing eyes, with an intensity he felt as a vibration upon the air, before ever his eyes had grown accustomed to the dim light, and watched her lineaments grow gradually out of darkness, the chosen darkness in which she had incarcerated herself. Then she said with harsh deliberation, “I shall never see him again.”

  “No, you will never see him again. When this is done, we are going home.”

  “But you,” she said, “yes, I have had it in mind all this time that you would be back. Sooner or later, you would be back. As well, perhaps! Things have gone far beyond my reckoning now. Well, say what you have come to say. I would as lief be silent.”

  “That you cannot do,” said Cadfael. “It is your story.”

  “Then be my chronicler. Tell it! Remind me! Let me hear how it will sound in my confessor’s ears, if any priest takes my confession ever again.” She stretched out one long hand suddenly, waving him imperiously to a seat, but he remained standing where he could see her most clearly, and she made no move to evade his eyes, and no concessions to the fixity of his regard. Her beautiful, proud face was composed and mute, admitting nothing, denying nothing. Only the burning of her dark eyes in their deep settings was eloquent, and even that in a language he could not quite translate.

  “You know all too well what you did, all those years ago,” said Cadfael. “You executed a fearful punishment upon Haluin for daring to love your daughter and getting her with child. You pursued him even into the cloister where your enmity had driven him—all too soon, but the young are quick to despair. You forced him to provide you with the means of abortion, and you sent him word, afterward, that it had killed both mother and child. That awful guilt you have visited upon him all these years, to be his torment lifelong. Did you speak?”

  “No,” she said. “Go on! You have barely begun.”

  “True, I have barely begun. That draught of hyssop and fleur-de-lis that you got from him—it never was used. Its purpose was only to poison him, it did no harm to any other. What did you do with it? Pour it away into the ground? No, long before ever you demanded the herbs of him, as soon as you had driven him out of your house, I daresay, you had hustled Bertrade away here to Elford, and married her to Edric Vivers. It must have been so certainly it was done in time to give her child, when it was born, a credible if unlikely father. No doubt the old man prided himself on still being potent enough to get a child. Why should anyone question the birth date, since you had acted so quickly?”

  She had not stirred or flinched, her eyes never left his face, admitting nothing, denying nothing.

  “Were you never afraid,” he asked, “that someone, somehow, should let fall within reach even of the cloister that Bertrade de Clary was wife to Edric Vivers, and not safely in her grave? That she had borne her old husband a daughter? It needed only a chance traveler with a gossiping tongue.”

  “There was no such risk,” she said simply. “What contact was there ever between Shrewsbury and Hales? None, until he suffered his fall and conceived his pilgrimage. Much less likely there should ever be dealings with manors in another shire. There was no such risk.”

  “Well, let us continue. You took her away and gave her to a husband. The child was born. So much mercy at least you had on the girl—why none for him? Why such bitter and vindictive hate, that you should conceive so terrible a revenge? Not for your daughter’s wrongs, no! Why should he not have been considered a suitable match for her in the first place? He came of good family, he was heir to a fine manor, if he had not taken the cowl. What was it you held so much against him? You were a beautiful woman, accustomed to admiration and homage. Your lord was in Palestine. And I well remember Haluin as he first came to me, eighteen years old, not yet tonsured. I saw him as you had been seeing him for some few years in your celibate solitude—he was comely…”

  He let it rest there, for her long, resolute lips had parted on deliberate affirmation at last. She had listened to him unwaveringly, making no effort to halt him, and no complaint. Now she responded.

  “Too comely!” she said. “I was not used to being denied, I did not even know how to sue. And he was too innocent to read me aright. How such children offend without offense! So if I could not have him,” she said starkly, “she should not. No woman ever should, but not she of all women.”

  It was said, she let it stand, adding nothing in extenuation, and having said it, she sat contemplating it, seeing again as in another woman what she could now no longer feel with the same intensity, the longing and the anger.

  “There is more,” said Cadfael, “much more. There is the matter of your woman Edgytha. Edgytha was the one trusted confidante you needed, the one who knew the truth. It was she who was sent to Vivers with Bertrade. Utterly loyal and devoted to you, she kept your secret and abetted your revenge all these years. And you trusted in her to keep it forever. So all was well for you, until Roscelin and Helisende grew up, and came to love each other no longer as playmates, but as man and woman. Knowing but forgetting that the world would hold such a love as poisoned, guilty, forbidden by the church. When the secret became a barrier between them, where no barrier need have been, when Roscelin was banished to Elford, and marriage with de Perronet threatened a final separation, then Edgytha could bear it no longer. She came running here in the night—not to Roscelin, but to you! To beg you to tell the truth at last, or to give her leave to tell it for you.”

  “I have wondered,” said Adelais, “how she knew that I was here within her reach.”

  “She knew because I told her. All unwitting I sent her out that night to plead with you to lift the shadow from two innocent children. By merest chance it was mentioned that here in Elford we had spoken with you. I sent her running to you and to her death, as it was Haluin who caused you to come here, in haste to ward him off from any dangerous discovery. We have been the instruments of your undoing, who never wished you anything but well. Now you had better consider what is left to you that can be saved.”

  “Go on!” she said harshly. “You have not finished yet.”

  “No, not yet. So Edgytha came to plead with you to do right. And you refused her! You sent her running back to Vivers in despair. And what befell her on the way you know.”

  She did not deny it. Her face was bleak and set, but her eyes never wavered.

  “Would she have come out with the truth, even against your prohibition? Neither you nor I will ever know the answer to that. But someone equally loyal to you overheard enough to understand the threat to you if she did. Someone feared her, followed and silenced her. Oh, not you! You had other tools to use. But did you speak a word in their ears?”

  “No!” said Adelais. “That I never did! Unless my face spoke for me. And if it did, it lied. I never would have harmed her.”

  “I believe you. But there are those who made certain she should never say a word that could harm you. Your lord’s men once, yours now, yours to the heart, yo
urs to the death, father and son alike. Which of them was it followed her? Lothair or Luc? Either one of them would die for you without question, and without question one of them has killed for you. And they are gone from here. Yesterday, on some errand of yours, very early! Back to Hales? No, I doubt that, it is not far enough. How distant is your son’s remotest manor?”

  “You will not find them,” said Adelais with certainty. “As for which of them did the thing I might have prevented, I do not know, I want never to know. I stopped their mouths when they would have spoken. To what end? That guilt, like all the rest, is mine alone, I will not cede any scruple of it. Yes. I sent them away. They will not pay my debts for me. Burying Edgytha with reverence is poor atonement. Confession, penance, even absolution cannot restore a life.”

  “There is one amend that can still be made,” said Cadfael. “Moreover, I think a price has been exacted from you, no less than from Haluin, all these years. Do not forget that I saw your face when he presented his ruined body before you. I heard your voice as you cried out to him: ‘What have they done to you!’ All that you did to him you did also to yourself, and once done, it could not be undone. Now you may be free of it, if you choose to deliver yourself.”

  “Go on!” said Adelais, though she knew well enough what was to come. He recognised it by the composure with which she had borne herself throughout. Surely she had been waiting here in her half-lit room for the finger of God to point.

  “Helisende is not Edric’s daughter, but Haluin’s. There is not a drop of Vivers blood in her veins. There is nothing to stand in the way if she wishes to marry Roscelin. Whether those two would do well to marry, who knows? But at least the shadow of incestuous affection can and must be lifted from them. The truth must come out, since it is out already at Farewell. Haluin and Bertrade are there together, making their peace, making each the other’s peace, and Helisende their child is with them, and the truth is already out of its grave.”