The Confession of Brother Haluin Page 14

  Chapter 10

  “HE IS RIGHT!” said Brother Haluin, stretched on his bed in the predawn twilight, wakeful still and loosed now from his long silence on the fringe of other men’s chaos. “Good night. Brothers, and goodbye! There will be no marriage. There can be no marriage, there is now no bride. And even if she should come back, this match cannot now go forward as if nothing had happened to cast it into such bitter doubt. When I accepted the burden—for even so it was burdensome—there was no call to question that it was for the best, grievous though it might be. There is good reason to question now.”

  “I think,” said Cadfael, listening to the muted, deliberate voice, as Haluin felt his way towards a resolution, “you are not sorry to be delivered from your promise.”

  “No, I am not sorry. Sorry enough, God knows, that a woman has died, sorry that these children should suffer unhappiness without remedy. But I could not now be answerable to God for joining the girl to any man unless I could recover the certainty I have lost. As well that she is gone, and I pray into some safe refuge. And now it only remains,” said Brother Haluin, “for us to take our leave. We no longer have any part to play here. De Clary has plainly told us so. And Cenred will be glad to see us go.”

  “And you have a vow to complete, and no further cause to delay. True!” said Cadfael, torn between relief and regret.

  “I have delayed too long already. It is time I acknowledged,” said Haluin inflexibly, “how small are my own griefs, and how great the part I have chosen. I made the choice for my own craven sake. Now with what life I have left I will make it good for a worthier reason.”

  So this journey, thought Cadfael, has not been in vain. For the first time since his flight from the world, sick with his guilt and loss, he has ventured back into the world, and found it full of pain, into which his own pain has fallen and been lost, like a raindrop in the sea. All these years he has been outwardly dutiful, keeping every scruple of the Rule, and agonized in solitude within. His true vocation begins now. Once enlightened, Haluin may well prove the stuff of which saints are made. As for me, I am unregenerate man.

  For in his heart he did not want to leave Vivers thus, with nothing resolved. Everything Haluin said was true. The bride was gone, there could be no marriage, they had no excuse for remaining here any longer, nor had Cenred any further use for them. He would indeed be glad to see them go. But Cadfael would not go gladly, turning his back upon a murder unavenged, justice out of kilter, a wrong that might never be set right.

  True also, Audemar de Clary was overlord here, a man of force and decision, and with such crimes as fell within his writ he must deal. There was nothing Cadfael could tell him that Cenred would not already have told him.

  And what, after all, did Cadfael really know in this matter? That Edgytha had been absent several hours before she died, since there was already snow on the ground when she fell. That she must have been on her way back to Vivers, as she had intended. That she had had ample time to go as far as Elford. That she had not been robbed. The murderer had simply killed and left her, not the way of footpads living wild. If not to stop her from warning Roscelin—for that would have been credible only on the outward journey—then to stop her mouth for another reason, before ever she could get back to Vivers. Yet what connection was there between Elford and Vivers except young Roscelin’s banishment to Audemar’s service? What other secret to fear betrayal but that of the planned marriage?

  But Edgytha had never reached Roscelin, never had speech with him, nor had she gone to Audemar or any of his household. So if she had been to Elford, why had no one there seen her? And if she had not been to Elford, where had she been?

  So if it was not what he along with his host and hostess had supposed, what was the cat Edgytha had gone to find, to put among Cenred’s pigeons?

  And in all probability he would never learn the answers to these questions, or learn what fortune awaited the lost girl and the unhappy boy, and the elders distressed and torn with concern for both of them. A pity! But no help for it, they could no longer trespass on Cenred’s disrupted family and burdened hospitality. As soon as the household was astir they must take their leave and set out for Shrewsbury. No one would miss them. And it was high time they went home.

  *

  The morning came greyly, under a sky lightly clouded over but lofty, and threatening no further falls of snow. Only a few threads and traceries of white lingered along the bases of walls and under the trees and bushes, and the frost was yielding. It would not be a bad day for travelers.

  The household was up and in ferment early. Cenred’s servants rolled out of their brief sleep bleary-eyed and grim, well aware that there would be no rest for them that day. Whatever else had been decided in the solemn conference in the solar overnight, whatever possible asylums had been suggested as safe havens for Helisende, it was certain that Audemar would have patrols working every road in the countryside, and inquiring at every cottage, in case someone, somewhere, had seen and spoken with Edgytha, or seen anything of a solitary and furtive figure lurking along the path she had taken. They were already gathering in the courtyard, saddling up, tightening girths and waiting stoically for their orders, when Cadfael and Haluin, booted and girded for the road, presented themselves before Cenred.

  He was deep in colloquy with his steward in the middle of the bustle in the hall, when they approached him, and he turned to them courteously but blankly for a moment, as if in these graver preoccupations he had forgotten he had ever before set eyes on them. Recollection came at once, but brought him no pleasure, only a gesture of hospitable compunction.

  “Brothers, I ask your pardon, you have been neglected. If we have troubles here to deal with, don’t let that disturb you. Use my home as your own.”

  “My lord,” said Haluin, “we owe you thanks for all your kindness, but we must be on our way. There is now no way I can serve you. There is no more haste, since there is no more secrecy. And we have duties waiting for us at home. We are come to take our leave.”

  Cenred was too honest to pretend any reluctance to part with them, and made no demur. “I have delayed your return for my own ends,” he said ruefully, “and all to no purpose. I am sorry I ever drew you into so vexed a business. Believe me, at least, that my intent was good. And go with my goodwill, I wish you a peaceful journey.”

  “And to you, sir, the safe recovery of the lady, and the guidance of God through all perplexities,” said Haluin.

  Cenred did not offer horses for the first stage of the journey, as Adelais had done for the whole of it. He had need here of all the horses at his disposal. But he watched the two habited figures, the hale and the lame, make their way slowly down the steps from the hall door, Cadfael’s hand at Haluin’s elbow ready to support him at need, Haluin’s hands, calloused now from gripping the staves of his crutches, braced and careful at every tread. In the courtyard they threaded the bustle of preparation, and drew near to the gate. Cenred took his eyes from them with relief at being rid of one complication, and turned his face doggedly if wearily upon those remaining.

  Roscelin, chafing at delay, stood bridle in hand at the gate, shifting restlessly from foot to foot, and peering impatiently back for his father or Audemar to give the word to mount. He gave the two monks a preoccupied glance as they drew near, and then, warming, bade them a good-morning, and even smiled through the grey, distorting mask of his own anxiety.

  “You’re away for Shrewsbury? It’s a good step. I hope you’ll have easy traveling.”

  “And you a blessed end to your search,” said Cadfael.

  “Blessed for me?” said the boy, again clouding over. “I don’t look for it.”

  “If you find her safe and well, and no man’s wife until she so pleases, that’s a fair measure of blessing. I doubt if you may ask for more. Not yet,” said Cadfael cautiously. “Take the day’s measure of good, and be thankful, and who knows but more may be added?”

  “You talk of impossibilities,” said Rosc
elin implacably, “But you mean me well, and I take it as you mean it.”

  “Where will you ride first, to look for Helisende?” asked Brother Haluin.

  “Some of us back to Elford, to make sure she has not slipped between us and made her way there, after all. And to every manor around, for any word of her, or of Edgytha. She cannot have gone far.” He had truly grieved and been angry for Edgytha, but the “she” that drove all others from his mind was Helisende.

  They left him chafing and agonizing, more restless than the horse that shifted and stamped to be off. When they looked back from outside the gate his foot was already in the stirrup, and behind him the rest of the hunters were gathering the reins and mounting. Back to Elford first, in case Helisende had slipped through their fingers, eluding the riders on both tracks, and come safe to shelter. Cadfael and Haluin must go in the opposite direction, towards the west. They had turned some way north from the highroad to reach the lights of the manor. They did not return that way, but turned due west at once, on a trodden path that skirted the manor fence. From the limit of the enclave they heard Audemar’s hunters ride forth, and turned to watch them stream out from the gate and lengthen out into a long, many-colored thread, dwindling into the east and vanishing among the trees of the first belt of woodland.

  “And is that the end of it?” wondered Haluin, suddenly grieved. “And we shall never know what comes of it all! Poor lad, and his own case beyond hope. All his comfort in this world must be to see her happy, if that will ever be possible without him. I know,” said Brother Haluin, in compassion untainted by any lingering self-pity, “what they suffer.”

  But it seemed that it was indeed over for them, and there was no sense in looking back. They set their faces towards the west, and went forward steadily on this untested path, with the rising sun behind them, casting their elongated shadows along the moist grass.

  “By this way,” said Cadfael, taking his bearings thoughtfully when they halted to eat their midday bread and cheese and strip of salt bacon in the lee of a bushy bank, “I think we shall miss Lichfield. I judge we’re already passing to the north of it. No matter, we shall find a bed somewhere before nightfall.”

  Meantime, the day was clear and dry, and the country through which they made their way was pleasant, but sparsely populated, and afforded them fewer human encounters than they had met with on the direct highway through Lichfield. Having had so little sleep they made no haste, but went steadily, and took whatever rests offered along the way, wherever a solitary assart provided the hospitality of a bench by the hearth, and a few minutes of neighborly gossip in passing.

  A light wind sprang up with the approach of evening, warning them it was time to look for a night’s shelter. They were in country still wasted from harsh usage fifty years past. The people of these parts had not taken kindly to the coming of the Normans, and had paid the price for their obduracy. There were the relics of deserted holdings to be seen here and there, collapsing into grass and brambles, and the ruins of a mill rotting gently into its own overgrown stream. Hamlets were few and far between. Cadfael began to scan the landscape round for any sign of an inhabited roof.

  An elderly man gathering firewood in a stand of old trees straightened his bent back to answer their greeting, and peered at them curiously from within his sacking hood.

  “Not half a mile on, Brothers, you’ll see to your right the pale of a nunnery. They’re still building, it’s mostly timber yet, but the church and the cloister are in stone, you can’t miss it. There’s but two or three holdings in the hamlet, but the sisters take in travelers. You’ll get a bed there.” And he added, eyeing their black habits: “They’re of your own persuasion, it’s a Benedictine house.”

  “I knew of none in these parts,” said Cadfael. “What is this house called?”

  “It’s like the hamlet, called Farewell. It’s no more than three years old. Bishop de Clinton set it up. You’ll be made welcome there.”

  They thanked him, and left him to bind up and hoist his great bundle of wood, and make off for home in the opposite direction, while they went on, encouraged, towards the west.

  “I remember,” said Haluin, “hearing something of this place, or at least of the bishop’s plans for a new foundation somewhere here, close to his cathedral. But I never heard the name Farewell until—do you recall?—Cenred spoke of it, that night we first came to Vivers. The only Benedictine house in these parts, he said, when he asked where we were from. We’re fortunate, it’s well we came this way.”

  By this time, with the twilight closing in, he was beginning to flag, in spite of the easy pace they had set. They were both glad when the path brought them to a small open green flanked by three or four cottages, and they saw beyond these the long pale fence of the new abbey, and the roof of the church above it. The track led them to a modest timber gatehouse. Both the stout gate and the grille set in it were closed, but a pull at the bell sent a succession of echoes flying away into distance within, and after a few moments brought light, flying footsteps skipping towards them from within the pale.

  The grille slid open, and revealed a round, rosy youthful face beaming through at them. Wide blue eyes surveyed their habits and tonsures, and recognised kindred.

  “Good even, Brothers,” said a high, girlish voice, joyously self-important. “You’re late on the road tonight. Can we offer you a roof and a rest?”

  “We were about to ask it,” said Cadfael heartily. “Can you lodge us overnight?”

  “And longer if you need,” she said cheerfully. “Men of the Order will always be welcome here. We’re off the beaten track, and not yet well known, and with the place still building we offer less comfort, I daresay, than some older houses, but we have room for such guests as you. Wait till I unbar the doors.”

  She was about it already, they heard the bolt shot back and the latch of the wicket lifted, and then the door opened wide in exuberant welcome, and the portress waved them in.

  She could not, Cadfael thought, be more than seventeen, and new in her novitiate, one of those superfluous daughters of poorly endowed small nobility for whom there was little to spare by way of dowry, and little prospect of an advantageous marriage. She was small and softly rounded, plain of face but fresh and wholesome as new bread, and blessedly she glowed with enthusiasm in her new life, with no apparent regret for the world she had left behind. The satisfaction of trusted office became her, and so did the white wimple and black cowl framing her bright and candid face.

  “Have you traveled far?” she asked, viewing Haluin’s laboured gait with wide-eyed concern.

  “From Vivers,” said Haluin, quick in reassurance, “It is not so far, and we have taken it gently.”

  “And have you very far still to go?”

  “To Shrewsbury,” said Cadfael, “where we belong to the abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul.”

  “It’s a long way,” she said, shaking her head over them. “You’ll be needing your rest. Will you wait here in the lodge for me, till I tell Sister Ursula she has guests? Sister Ursula is our hospitaler. The lord bishop asked for two experienced elder sisters to come to us from Polesworth for a season, to instruct the novices. We are all so new, and there’s so much to learn, besides all the work we have to do in the building and the garden. And they sent us Sister Ursula and Sister Benedicta. Sit and warm yourselves but a few minutes, and I’ll be back.” And she was off, with her light, dancing step, as blithe in her cloistered calling as any of her secular sisters could have been in approaching a more worldly marriage.

  “She is truly happy,” said Brother Haluin, wondering and pleased. “No, it is not a second-best. So I have found it in the end, but she from the beginning. The sisters from Polesworth must be women of wisdom and grace, if this is their work.

  *

  Sister Ursula the hospitaler was a tall, thin woman perhaps fifty years old, with a lined, experienced face at once serene, resigned, and even mildly amused, as if she had seen and come to terms with a
ll the vagaries of human behavior, and nothing could now surprise or disconcert her. If the other borrowed instructress measures up to this one, Cadfael thought, these green girls of Farewell have been fortunate.

  “You’re warmly welcome,” said Sister Ursula, sailing briskly into the lodge with the young portress beaming at her elbow. “The lady abbess will be happy to receive you in the morning, but you must be most in need now of food and rest and a bed, all the more if you have such a long journey before you. Come with me, there’s a chamber prepared for chance comers always, and our own brothers are all the more welcome.”

  She led them out from the lodge into a narrow outer court, where the church lay before them, a modest building of stone, with the traces of the continuing work, ashlar and timber, cords and scaffolding boards, stacked neatly under its walls, in token that nothing here was finished. But in only three years they had raised the church and the entire frame of the cloister, but for the south range, where only the lower floor which housed the refectory was completed.

  “The bishop has provided us the labour and a generous endowment,” said Sister Ursula, “but we shall be building for some years yet. Meantime we live simply. We want for nothing that’s needful, and hanker after nothing beyond our needs. I suppose when all these timber housings are replaced in stone my work here will be done, and I should be returning to Polesworth, where I took my vows years ago, but I don’t know but I’d rather stay here, if I’m offered a choice. There’s something about bringing a new foundation to birth, you feel towards it as towards a child of your own body.”

  The enclave fence, doubtless, would eventually be replaced by a stone wall, the wooden buildings that lined it, infirmary, domestic offices, guest hall and storehouses, gradually rebuilt one by one. But already the glimpse they had into the cloister in passing showed that the garth had been grassed, and a shallow stone basin in the center held water to attract the birds.