The Confession of Brother Haluin (2 page)

“So
after all,” said Cadfael more placidly as he lifted his bubbling pot to the
grid at the side of the brazier, to simmer in peace, “at least Stephen has got
rid of his problem. He need worry no longer what to do with her.”

“True,”
agreed Hugh wryly, “he’d never have had the iron in him to put her in chains,
as she did to him when she had him prisoner after Lincoln, and she’s proved it
would take more than stone walls to hold her. I fancy he’s been bunking the
issue all these months, looking no further than the moment when he would force
her surrender. He’s eased of all the troubles that would have been no more than
beginning the day he made her prisoner. Better, perhaps, if he could winnow
away her hopes so far that she’d be forced to go back to Normandy. But we’ve
come to know the lady better,” he acknowledged ruefully. “She never gives up.”

“And
how has King Stephen stomached his loss?” asked Cadfael curiously.

“As
I’ve come to expect of him by this time,” said Hugh, with resigned affection.
“As soon as the lady was well out of it, Oxford castle surrendered to him.
Without her, he’d lost interest in the rest of the starved rats within. Most
men would have taken out their rage on the garrison. Once, as you’ll remember
all too well, he let himself be persuaded to take such a revenge, here at
Shrewsbury, God knows against his nature. Never again! As like as not, it was
the memory of Shrewsbury that kept Oxford safe. He let them march out
untouched, on condition they dispersed to their homes. He’s left the castle
well garrisoned and supplied for his own cause, and made off to Winchester with
his brother the bishop, to keep Christmas. And he’s sent to call all his
midland sheriffs there to keep it with him. It’s long since he was in these
parts, no doubt he’s anxious to look us over afresh, and make sure that all his
defenses hold fast.”

“Now?”
said Cadfael, surprised. “To Winchester? You’ll never make the journey in
time.”

“Yes,
we shall. We have four days, and according to the courier the thaw’s well
forward, farther south, and the roads clear. I’ll be away tomorrow.”

“And
leave Aline and your boy to keep the feast without you! And Giles just past his
third birthday, too!” Hugh’s son was a Christmas babe, and had entered the
world in the most extreme of winters, in frost and snow and bitter gales.
Cadfael was his godfather and most devoted admirer.

“Ah,
Stephen won’t keep us long,” said Hugh confidently. “He needs us where he
placed us, to keep an eye on his shire revenues. I shall be home by the year’s
end, if all goes well. But Aline will be glad if you could pay her a visit or
two while I’m gone. Father Abbot won’t grudge you leave now and then, and that
long lad of yours—Winfrid, is it?—he’s getting handy enough with the salves and
medicines to be left on his own for an hour or two.”

“Very
gladly I’ll mind your flock for you at home,” said Cadfael heartily, “while
you’re strutting at court. But you’ll be missed, all the same. What a turnabout
this has been! Five years of it now, and nothing gained on either part. And
with the new year, no doubt it must all begin again. All that effort and waste,
and nothing is changed.”

“Oh,
yes, there’s something changed, for what it’s worth!” Hugh uttered a brief bark
of laughter. “There’s a new contender on the scene, Cadfael. Geoffrey could
spare no more than a meager handful of knights to his wife’s aid, but he’s sent
her something it seems he can part with more willingly. Either that or, as may
very well be true, he’s taken Stephen’s measure shrewdly enough to know past
doubt what he dare wager in safety. He’s sent over their son in Robert’s care,
to see if the English will rally to him rather than to his mother. Henry
Plantagenet, nine years old— or did they say ten? No more than that! Robert
brought him to her at Wallingford. By this time I fancy the boy’s been whisked
away to Bristol or Gloucester, out of harm’s way. But if Stephen laid hold of
him, what could he do with him? As like as not, put him on board ship at his
own expense, and send him well guarded back to France.”

“Do
you tell me so?” Cadfael’s eyes opened wide in astonishment and curiosity. “So
there’s a new star on the horizon, is there? And starting young! It seems one
soul at least has a blessed Christmas assured, with her liberty won, and her
son in her arms again. His coming will give her heart, no question. But I doubt
if he’ll do much more for her cause.”

“Not
yet!” said Hugh, with prophetic caution. “We’ll wait and see what his mettle
is. With his mother’s stomach and Geoffrey’s wit he may give the king trouble
enough in a few years’ time. We’d best make better use of what time we have,
and see to it the boy goes back to Anjou and stays there, and best of all,
takes his mother with him. I wish,” said Hugh fervently, rising with a sigh,
“Stephen’s own son promised better, we’d have no need to fear what the
empress’s sprig may have to show.” He shook off present doubts with an
impatient twitch of his lean shoulders. “Well, I’ll be off and make ready for
the road. We’ll be away at first light.”

Cadfael
lifted his cooling pot aside to the earth floor, and went out with his friend
through the walled stillness of the herb garden, where all his small, neat beds
slept warmly through the frosts under deep snow. As soon as they let themselves
out onto the path that skirted the frozen pools, they could see distantly,
beyond the glassy surface and the broad gardens on the northern side, the long
slope of the guest hall roof overhanging the drainage channel, the dark timber
cage of scaffolding and ladders, and the two muffled figures working on the
uncovered slates.

“I
see you have your troubles, too,” said Hugh.

“Who
escapes them, in winter? It’s the weight of the snow that’s shifted the slates,
broken some of them, and found a way through to douse the bishop’s chaplain in
his bed. If we left it till the thaw we’d have a flood, and far worse damage to
repair.”

“And
your master builder reckons he can make it good, frost or no frost.” Hugh had
recognized the brawny figure halfway up the long ladder, hefting a hodful of
slates surely few of his younger laborers could have lifted. “Bitter work up
there, though,” said Hugh, eyeing the highest platform of the scaffolding,
stacked with a great pile of slates, and the two diminutive figures moving with
painful caution on the exposed roof.

“We
take it in short spells, and there’s a fire in the warming room when we come
down. We elders are excused the service, but most of us take a turn, barring
the sick and infirm. It’s fair, but I doubt if it pleases Conradin. It irks him
having foolhardy youngsters up there, and he’d just as soon work only the ones
he’s sure of, though I will say he keeps a close watch on them. If he sees any
blanch at being up so high, he soon has them on solid earth again. We can’t all
have the head for it.”

“Have
you been up there?” asked Hugh curiously.

“I
did my stint yesterday, before the light began to fail. Short days are no help,
but another week should see it finished.”

Hugh
narrowed his eyes against a sudden brief lance of sunlight that reflected back
dazzlingly from the crystalline whiteness. “Who are those two up there now? Is
that Brother Urien? The dark fellow? Who’s the other one?”

“Brother
Haluin.” The thin, alert figure was all but obscured by the jut of the
scaffolding, but Cadfael had seen the pair climb the ladders barely an hour
earlier.

“What,
Anselm’s best illuminator? How comes it you allow such abuse of an artist?
He’ll ruin his hands in this bitter cold. Small chance of him handling a fine
brush for the next week or two, after grappling with slates.”

“Anselm
would have begged him off,” Cadfael admitted, “but Haluin would have none of
it. No one would have grudged him the mercy, seeing how valuable his work is,
but if there’s a hair shirt anywhere within reach Haluin will claim it and wear
it. A lifelong penitent, that lad, God knows for what imagined sins, for I
never knew him so much as break a rule, since he entered as a novice, and
seeing he was no more than eighteen when he took his first vows, I doubt if
he’d had time to do the world much harm up to then. But there are some born to
do penance by nature. Maybe they, lift the load for some of us who take it
quite comfortably that we’re humankind, and not angels. If the overflow from
Haluin’s penitence and piety washes off a few of my shortcomings, may it
redound to him for credit in the accounting. And I shan’t complain.”

It
was too cold to linger very long in the deep snow, watching the cautious
activities on the guest hall roof. They resumed their passage through the
gardens, skirting the frozen pools where Brother Simeon had chopped jagged
holes to let in air to the fish below, and crossing the mill leat that fed the
ponds by the narrow plank bridge glazed over with a thin and treacherous crust
of ice. Closer now, the piers of the scaffolding jutted from the south wall of
the guest hall across the drainage channel, and the workers on the roof were
hidden from sight.

“I
had him with me among the herbs as a novice, long ago,” said Cadfael as they
threaded the snowy beds of the upper garden and emerged into the great court.
“Haluin, I mean. It was not long after I ended my own novitiate. I came in at
past forty, and he barely turned eighteen. They sent him to me because he was
lettered and had the Latin at his finger ends, and after three or four years I
was still learning. He comes of a landed family, and would have inherited a
good manor if he hadn’t chosen the cloister. A cousin has it now. The boy had
been put out to a noble household, as the custom is, and was clerk to his
lord’s estate, being uncommonly bright at learning and figuring. I often
wondered why he changed course, but as every man within here knows, there’s no
questioning a vocation. It comes when it will, and there’s no refusal.”

“It
would have been simpler to plant the lad straight into the scriptorium, if he
came in with so much learning,” said Hugh practically. “I’ve seen some of his
work, he’d be wasted on any other labor.”

“Ah,
but his conscience would have him pass through every stage of the common
apprenticeship before he came to rest. I had him for three years among the
herbs, then he did two years more at the hospital of Saint Giles, among the
sick and crippled, and two more laboring in the gardens at the Gaye, and
helping with the sheep out at Rhydycroesau, before he’d settle to do what we
found he could do best. Even now, as you saw, he’ll have no privilege because
he has a delicate hand with the brushes and pens. If others must slither
perilously on a snowy roof, so will he. A good fault, mind you,” admitted
Cadfael, “but he takes it to extremes, and the Rule disapproves extremes.”

They
crossed the great court towards the gatehouse, where Hugh’s horse was tethered,
the tall, rawboned grey that was always his favorite mount, and could have
carried twice or three times his master’s light weight.

“There’ll
be no more snow tonight,” said Cadfael, eyeing the veiled sky and sniffing the
light, languid wind, “nor for a few days more, I fancy. Nor hard frost, either,
we’re on the edge of it. I pray you’ll have a tolerable ride south.”

“We’ll
be away at dawn. And back, God willing, by the new year.” Hugh gathered his
bridle and swung himself into the high saddle, “May the thaw hold off until
your roof’s weatherproof again! And don’t forget Aline will be expecting you.”

He
was off out of the gate, with a sharp echo of hooves ringing from the cobbles, and
a single brilliant spark that had come and gone almost before the iron shoe
left the frozen ground. Cadfael turned back to the door of the infirmary, and
went to check the stores in Brother Edmund’s medicine cupboard. Another hour,
and the light would be already dimming, in these shortest days of the year.
Brother Urien and Brother Haluin would be the last pair up on the roof for this
day.

Exactly
how it happened no one ever clearly established. Brother Urien, who had obeyed
Brother Conradin’s order to come down as soon as the call came, pieced together
what he thought the most probable account, but even he admitted there could be
no certainty. Conradin, accustomed to being obeyed, and sensibly concluding
that no one in his right senses would wish to linger a moment longer than he
must in the bitter cold, had simply shouted his command, and turned away to
clear the last of the day’s broken slates out of the way of his descending
workmen. Brother Urien let himself down thankfully to the boards of the scaffolding,
and fumbled his way carefully down the long ladder to the ground, only too
happy to leave the work. He was strong and willing, and had no special skills
but a wealth of hard experience, and what he did would be well done, but he saw
no need to do more than was asked of him. He drew off some yards to look up at
what had been accomplished, and saw Brother Haluin, instead of descending the
short ladder braced up the slope of the roof on his side, mount several rungs
higher, and lean out sidelong to clear away a further sweep of snow and extend
the range of the uncovered slates. It appeared that he had seen reason to
suspect that the damage extended further on that side, and wished to sweep away
the snow there to remove its weight and prevent worse harm.

The
rounded bank of snow shifted, slid down in great folds upon itself, and fell,
partly upon the end of the planks and the stack of slates waiting there, partly
over the edge and sheer to the ground below. No such avalanche had been
intended, but the frozen mass loosed its hold of the steep slates and dropped
away in one solid block, to shatter as it struck the scaffolding. Haluin had
leaned too far. The ladder slid with the snow that had helped to keep it
stable, and he fell rather before than with it, struck the end of the planks a
glancing blow, and crashed down without a cry to the frozen channel below.
Ladder and snowfall dropped upon the planks and hurled them after him in a
great downpour of heavy sharp-edged slates, slashing into his flesh.