The Confession of Brother Haluin Read online

  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.

  So this must be the Roscelin to whom Adelais had referred, thought Cadfael, watching him go. Not a son of the house, by the cut of him and the coloring, but not a servant, either. Doubtless a youngster from the family of one of Audemar’s tenants, sent here to his overlord to get his training in arms, and acquire the skills and practices of a small court, in preparation for the wider world. Such apprentice lordlings proliferated in every great barony, the de Clary honor might well be patron to one or two of the same kind.

  The early evening had turned cold, and there was a biting wind rising, with a few fine needles of sleet stinging in its touch. The hour of Vespers was not far away. Cadfael went in thankfully from the chill, to find Brother Haluin awake and waiting, silent and tense, for his hour of fulfillment.

  *

  Adelais had evidently made her dispositions well. No one intruded upon their privacy, no one asked any question or showed any curiosity. The young groom Luc brought them food before Vespers, and at the end of the office they were left alone in the church to conduct their vigil as they pleased. Doubtful if any among the household wondered about them at all, being accustomed to random visitors of all kinds, with differing needs, and the devotions of a pair of itinerant Benedictines surprised no one. If monks of the abbey of Saint Peter elected to spend a night in prayer in a church of Saint Peter, that was no special wonder, and concerned no one else.

  So Brother Haluin had his will, and redeemed his vow. He would have no softening of the stone, no extra cloak to ward off the cold of the night, nothing to abate the rigors of his penance. Cadfael helped him to his knees, within reach of the solid support of the tomb, so that if faintness or dizziness came over him he could at least hold fast by it to break his fall. The crutches were laid at the foot of the stone. There was no more he would permit anyone to do for him. But Cadfael kneeled with him, withdrawn into shadow to leave him solitary with his dead Bertrade and a God doubtless inclining a compassionate ear.

  It was a long night, and cold. The altar lamp made an eye of brightness in the gloom, at least ruddy like fire if it gave no warmth. The silence carried hour by hour, like an infinitesimal ripple vibrating through it, the gradual heave of Haluin’s breathing and the constant whisper of his moving lips, felt in the blood and the bowels rather than audible with the ear. From somewhere within him he drew an inexhaustible wealth of words to be spent for his dead Bertrade. Their tension and passion kept him erect and oblivious to pain, though pain took fast hold of him before midnight, and never left him until his rapture and his ordeal ended together with the coming of light.

  When he opened his eyes at last to the full light of a frosty morning, and labouriously unlocked his cold, clasped hands, the sounds of the customary early activity were already audible from the outside world. Haluin stared dazedly upon the waking day, returning from some place very far off, very deep within. He essayed to move, to grip the rim of the stone, and his fingers were so numbed they could not feel, and his arms so stiff they could give him no help to raise himself. Cadfael wound an arm about him to lift him, but Haluin could not straighten his stiff knees to set his better foot to the ground, but hung a dead weight on the encircling arm. And suddenly there was a flurry of light footsteps, and another arm, young and strong, embraced the helpless body from the other side, a fair head stooped to Haluin’s shoulder, and between his two supporters he was hauled upright, and held so as the blood flowed back achingly into his numbed legs.

  “In God’s name, man,” said the young man Roscelin impatiently, “must you use yourself so hardly when you have already enough for any sane man to carry?”

  Haluin was too startled, and his mind still too far away, to be capable of grasping that, much less answering it. And if Cadfael privately considered it a perfectly sensible reaction, aloud he said practically, “Keep firm hold of him so, while I pick up his crutches. And God bless you for appearing so aptly. Spare to scold him, you’d be wasting your breath. He’s under vow.”

  “A foolish vow!” said the boy with the arrogant certainty of his years. “Who’s the better for this?” But for all his disapproval he held Haluin warmly and firmly, and looked at him sidelong with a frown at least as anxious as it was exasperated.

  “He is,” said Cadfael, propping the crutches under Haluin’s armpits, and setting to work to chafe life back into the cold hands that could not yet grip the staves. “Hard to believe, but you had better credit it. There, you can let him lean on his props now, but hold him steady. Well for you at your years, you can sleep easy, with nothing to regret and nothing to ask pardon for. How did you come to look in here so timely?” he asked, eyeing the young man with fresh interest, thus at close quarters. “Were you sent?”

  For this boy seemed an unlikely instrument for Adeiais to use in shepherding her inconvenient guests in and out of Elford—too young, too blunt, too innocent.

  “No,” said Roscelin shortly, and relented to add with better grace, “I was plain curious.”

  “Well, that’s human,” admitted Cadfael, recognising his own besetting sin.

  “And this morning Audemar has no immediate work for me, he’s busy with his steward. Had we not better get this brother of yours back to his lodging, where it’s warmer? How shall we do? I can fetch a horse for him if we can get him mounted.”

  Haluin had come back from his distant place to find himself being discussed and handled as if he had no mind of his own, and no awareness of his surroundings. He stiffened instinctively against the indignity. “No,” he said, “I thank you, but I can go now. I need not trespass on your kindness further.” And he flexed his hands and gripped the staves of his crutches, and took the first cautious steps away from the tomb.

  They followed closely, one at either elbow in case he faltered, Roscelin going before up the shallow steps and through the doorway to prevent a possible stumble, Cadfael coming close behind to support him if he reeled backward. But Haluin had gathered to his aid a will refreshed and strengthened by achievement, and was resolute to manage this walk alone, at whatever cost. And there was no haste. When he felt the need he could rest on his crutches to draw breath, and so he did three times before they reached Audemar’s courtyard, already populous and busy about bakery and mews and wellhead. It said much for young Roscelin’s quickness and delicacy of mind, Cadfael reflected, that he waited without comment or impatience at every pause, and refrained from offering a hand in help until help should be invited. So Haluin came back to the lodging in Audemar’s courtyard as he would have wished, on his own misshapen feet, and could feel that he had earned the ease of his bed.

  Roscelin followed them in, still curious, in no haste to go in search of whatever duties awaited him. “Is that all, then?” he said, watching Haluin stretch out his still-numbed limbs gratefully, and draw the brychan over them. “Then where do you go when you leave us? And when? You’ll not set out today?”

  “We go back to Shrewsbury,” said Cadfael. “Today—that I doubt. A day’s rest would be wisdom.” By the weary ease of Haluin’s face, and the softened gaze turned inward, it would not be long before he fell asleep, the best and best-earned sleep since he had made confession.

  “I saw you ride in with the lord Audemar yesterday,” sai
d Cadfael, studying the youthful face before him. “The lady mentioned your name. Are you kin to the de Clarys?”

  The boy shook his head. “No. My father is tenant and vassal to him, they’ve always been good friends, and there’s a marriage tie, a while back now. No, I’m sent here to Audemar’s service at my father’s order.”

  “But not at your wish,” said Cadfael, interpreting the tone rather than the words,

  “No! Much against my wish!” said Roscelin abruptly, and scowled at the floorboards between his booted feet.

  “Yet to all appearances as good a lord as you could hope for,” suggested Cadfael mildly, “and better than most.”

  “He’s well enough,” the boy owned fairly. “I’ve no complaint of him. But I grudge it that my father has sent me away here to be rid of me out of the house, and that’s the truth of it.”

  “Now, why,” wondered Cadfael, curious but not quite asking, “why should any father want to be rid of you?” For here was undoubtedly the very picture of a presentable son, upstanding, well formed, well conducted, and decidedly engaging in his fair-haired, smooth-cheeked comeliness, a son any father would be glad to parade before his peers. Even in sullenness his face was pleasing, but it was certainly true that he had not the look of one happy in his service.

  “He has his reasons,” said Roscelin moodily. “You’d say good reasons, too, I know that. And I’m not so estranged from him that I could refuse him the obedience due. So I’m here, and pledged to stay here unless lord and father both give me leave to go. And I’m not such a fool as not to admit I could be in far worse places. So I may as well get all the good I can out of it while I’m here.”

  It seemed that his mind had veered into another and graver quarter, for he sat for some moments silent, staring down into his clasped hands with a frowning brow, and looked up only to measure Cadfael earnestly, his eyes dwelling long upon the black habit and the tonsure.

  “Brother,” he said abruptly, “I wondered, now and then—about the monkish life. Some men have taken to it, have they not, because what they most wanted was forever impossible—forbidden them! Is that true? Can it provide a life, if… if the life a man wants is out of reach?”

  “Yes,” said Brother Haluin’s voice, gently and quietly out of a waking dream now very close to sleep. “Yes, it can!”

  “I would not recommend entering it as a second-best,” said Cadfael stoutly. Yet that was what Haluin had done, long ago, and he spoke now as one recording a revelation, the opening of his inward eyes just as they were heavy and closing with sleep.

  “The time might be long, and the cost high,” said Haluin with gentle certainty, “but in the end it would not be second-best.”

  He drew in a long breath, and spent it in a great healing sigh, turning his head away from them on the pillow. They were both so intent on him, doubting and wondering, that neither of them had noted the approach of brisk footsteps without, and they started round in surprise as the door was thrown wide open to admit Lothair, carrying a basket of food and a pitcher of small ale for the guests. At sight of Roscelin seated familiarly upon Cadfael’s pallet, and apparently on good terms with the brothers, the groom’s weathered face tightened perceptibly, almost ominously, and for an instant a deeper spark flashed and vanished again in his pale eyes.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded with the bluntness of an equal, and the uncompromising authority of an elder. “Master Roger’s looking for you, and my lord wants you in attendance as soon as he’s broken his fast. You’d best be off, and sharp about it, too.”

  It could not be said that Roscelin showed any alarm at this intelligence, or resentment at the manner in which it was delivered; rather the man’s assurance seemed to afford him a little tolerant amusement. But he rose at once, and with a nod and a word by way of farewell went off obediently but without haste to his duty. Lothair stood narrow-eyed in the doorway to watch him go, and did not come fully into the room with his burdens until the boy had reached the steps to the hall door.

  Our guard dog, thought Cadfael, has his orders to ward off any others who come too close, but he had not reckoned with having to do as much for young Roscelin. Now, could there, I wonder, be some reason why that contact in particular should cause him consternation? For that’s the first spark I’ve seen struck from his steel!

  Chapter 6

  ADELAIS HERSELF paid a gracious visit to her monastic guests after Mass, with solicitous inquiries after their health and well-being. It was possible, Cadfael reflected, that Lothair had reported back to her the inconvenient and undesirable incursion of the young man Roscelin into a preserve she clearly wished to keep private. She appeared in the doorway of their small chamber, prayer book in hand, alone, having sent her maid on ahead to her dower house. Haluin was awake, and made to rise from his pallet in respectful acknowledgment of her coming, reaching in haste for his crutches, but she motioned him back with a wave of her hand.

  “No, be still! No ceremony is needed between us. How do you find yourself now—now that your vow is accomplished? I hope you have experienced grace, and can return to your cloister in peace. I wish you that mercy. An easy journey and a safe arrival!”

  And above all, thought Cadfael, an early departure. And small blame to her. It’s what I want, too, and so must Haluin. To have this matter finished, neatly and cleanly, with no more harm to any creature, with mutual forgiveness, once spoken, and thereafter silence.

  “You have had little rest,” she said, “and have a long journey back to Shrewsbury. My kitchen shall supply you with food for the first stages of the way. But I think you should also accept horses. I have said so to Brother Cadfael already. The stables here can spare you mounts, and I will send for them to Hales when I return there. You should not attempt to go back all that way on foot.”

  “For the offer, and for all your kindness, we are grateful,” said Haluin in instant and hasty protest. “But this I cannot accept. I undertook both to go and to return on foot, and I must make good what I vowed. It is a pledge of faith that I am not so crippled as to be utterly useless and unprofitable hereafter, to God and man. You would not wish me to go home shamed and forsworn.”

  She shook her head over his obstinacy with apparent resignation. “So your fellow here warned me you would argue, when I spoke of it to him, but I hoped you would see better reason. Surely you are also pledged to return to your duty at the abbey as soon as may be. Has that no force? If you insist on going afoot you cannot set out at least until tomorrow, after so hard a night on the stones.”

  To Haluin, no doubt, that sounded like true solicitude, and an invitation to delay until he was fully rested. To Cadfael it had the sound of a subtle dismissal.

  “I never thought that it would be easy,” said Haluin, “to perform what I swore. Nor should it be. The whole virtue, if there is any virtue in it at all, is to endure the hardship and complete the penance. And so I can and shall. You are right, I owe it to my abbot and my brothers to get back to my duty as soon as I may. We must set out today. There are still hours of daylight left, we must not waste them.”

  To do her justice, she did seem to be taken aback at such ready compliance with what she wished, even if she had not expressed the wish. She urged, though without warmth, the necessity of rest, but gave way pliantly before Haluin’s stubborn insistence. Things had gone as she wished, and at the last moment she could afford one brief convulsion of pity and regret.

  “It must be as you wish,” she said. “Very well, Luc shall bring you food and drink before you go, and fill your scrip for you. As for me, I part from you in goodwill; Now and hereafter, I wish you well.”

  When she was gone, Haluin sat silent for a while, shivering a little in the recoil from the finality of this ending. It was as he had hoped, and yet it left him shaken.

  “I have made things needlessly hard for you,” he said ruefully. “You must be weary as I am, and I have committed you to leaving thus, without sleep. She wanted us gone, and for my part
I heartily wish to be gone. The sooner severed, the better for us all.”

  “You did right,” said Cadfael. “Once out of here we need not go far. You are in no case to attempt it today. But to be out of here is all we need.”

  *

  They left Audemar de Clary’s manor gates in midafternoon, under a sky heavy with grey cloud, and turned westward along the track through Elford village, with a chill, insidious wind in their faces. It was over. From this point on, with every step taken they were returning to normality and safety, to the monastic hours and the blessed daily round of work, worship, and prayer.

  From the highroad Cadfael looked back once, and saw the two grooms standing in the gateway to watch the guests depart. Two solid, sturdy figures, taciturn and inscrutable, following the withdrawal of the interlopers with light, fierce northern eyes. Making sure, thought Cadfael, that the disquiet we brought to that lady departs with us, and leaves no shadow behind.

  They did not look back a second time. The need now was to put at least one safe, alienating mile between themselves and the dower house of Elford, and after that they could look for a night’s shelter early, for in spite of his resolution it was clear that Haluin was haggard and grey with exhaustion, and would not get far without danger of collapse. His face was set to endure, he went steadily but heavily on his crutches, his eyes dilated and dark in their deep hollows. Doubtful if even now he enjoyed the peace he should have found at Bertrade’s tomb, but perhaps it was not Bertrade who still haunted his thoughts.

  “I shall never see her again,” said Haluin, to God, himself, and the gathering dusk rather than to Cadfael. And it was hard to say whether he spoke in relief or regret, as at leaving something unfinished.

  *

  The first snow of a capricious March burst upon them suddenly out of the lowering sky when they were some two miles from Elford. The air was on the edge of frost, there would be no great or prolonged fall, but while it lasted it was thick and blinding, stinging their faces and confusing the path before them. The premature dusk closed down on them almost abruptly, a murky darkness out of which whirling clouds of white flakes wound about them bewilderingly, veiling even what landmarks they had on a stretch of track open, windswept, and treeless.