The Confession of Brother Haluin (25 page)

“Hush
your noise! Am I overlord here, or no? The girl is not without kin, for she is
niece to me. If there is anyone here who has rights in her and a duty towards
her—any who has not farmed out both upon another man long since!—it is I, and I
say that if Cenred so wishes, then I place her here in his fosterage, with all
the rights he has exercised as her kinsman all these years. And in the matter
of her marriage both he and I will take good care what is best for her, but never
against her will. But now, let her be! She has asked for time untroubled, and
she shall have it. When she is ready to return, I will fetch her home.”

“Content,”
said Cenred, breathing deeply. “I am content! I could ask no better.”

“And,
Brother…” Audemar turned to Cadfael. He had the entire issue in his hands now,
over all matters here his writ ran, and what he ordained would be done. The
least damage was his design, as his mother’s had been the ultimate destruction.
“Brother, if you are going back to Farewell, tell them there what I have said.
What’s done is done, all that waits to be done shall be in daylight, openly.
Roscelin,” he ordered sharply, turning on the boy restless and glittering with
the joy of his release, “have the horses readied, we ride for Elford. You are
still in my service until I please to dismiss you, and I have not forgotten
that you went forth without leave. Let me have no further cause for
displeasure.”

But
his voice was dry, and neither words nor look cast the least shadow upon
Roscelin’s exultant brightness. He bent his knee in the briefest of reverences
by way of acknowledging the order, and went blithely to do his lord’s bidding.
The wind of his flight swung the curtain at the door, and sent a current of
outer air floating across the chamber like a sigh.

Audemar
looked last and longest at Adelais, who stood with eyes steady and dark upon
his face, waiting his judgment.

“Madam,
you will ride back with me to Elford. You have done what you came here to do.”

Nevertheless,
it was Cadfael who got to horse first. No one was any longer in need of him
here, and whatever natural curiosity he might feel concerning the family
adjustments still to be made, and perhaps less easily accomplished than
decreed, must be forever contained, since he was unlikely to pass this way
again. He reclaimed his horse without haste, and mounted, and was ambling
towards the gate when Roscelin broke away from the grooms who were busy
saddling Audemar’s horses, and came running to his stirrup.

“Brother
Cadfael…”He was lost for a moment for words, since his wonder and happiness
were beyond words, and shook his head and laughed over his own incoherence.
“Tell her! Tell her we’re free, we need not change, there’s no one can blacken
us now…”

“Son,”
said Cadfael heartily, “by this she knows it as well as you.”

“And
tell her soon, very soon, I shall come for her. Oh, yes, I know,” he said
confidently, seeing Cadfael’s raised brows, “but it’s me he’ll send. I know
him! He’d rather a kinsman he knows and can rely on, his own man, with lands
bordering his own, than any lordling from distant parts. And my father won’t
stand between us now. Why should he, when it solves everything? What’s changed,
except what needed changing?”

And
there was something in that, Cadfael reflected, looking down from the saddle
into the young, ardent face. What was changed was the replacement of falsity by
truth, and however hard the assimilation might be, it must be for the better.
Truth can be costly, but in the end it never falls short of value for the price
paid.

“And
tell him,” said Roscelin earnestly, “the lame brother… her father…” His voice
hung on the word with, wonder and awe. “Tell him I’m glad, say I owe him more
than ever can be repaid. And tell him he need never fret for her happiness, for
I’ll give my life to it.”

Chapter Fourteen

AT
ABOUT THE SAME TIME that Cadfael dismounted in the court of Farewell, Adelais
de Clary sat with her son in his private chamber at Elford. There had been a
long and heavy silence between them. The afternoon was drawing to its close,
the light dimming, and he had sent for no candles.

“There
is a matter,” he said at length, stirring out of his moume stillness, “which
has hardly been touched on yet. It was to you, madam, that the old woman came.
And you sent her away with a short answer. To her death! Was that at your
orders?”

Without
passion she said, “No.”

“I
will not ask what you know of it. To what end? She is dead. But I do not like
your manner of dealing, and I choose to have no more ado with it. Tomorrow,
madam, you shall return to Hales. Hales you may have for your hermitage. But do
not come back to this house, ever, for you will not be admitted. The doors of
every manor of mine except Hales are henceforth closed to you.”

Indifferently
she said, “As you will, it is all one to me. I need only a little space, and
may not need it long. Hales will do very well.”

“Then,
madam, take your leave when you will. You shall have a safe escort on the road,
seeing,” he said with bitter meaning, “that you have parted with your own
grooms. And a litter, if you prefer to hide your face. Let it not be said that
I left you to travel defenseless, like an old woman venturing out alone by
night.”

Adelais
rose from her stool and went out from him without a word.

In
the hall the servants had begun to kindle the first torches and set them in
their sconces, but in every corner, and in the smoky beams of the lofty roof,
darkness gathered and clung, draped cobwebs of shadow.

Roscelin
was standing over the central fire on its flagged hearth, driving the heel of
his boot into it to tease it into life after the damped-down hours of the day.
He still had Audemar’s cloak over his arm, the capuchon dangling from one hand,
The light from the reviving flames gilded his stooping face into gold,
smooth-cheeked, with elegant bones and a brow as fair as a girl’s, and on his
dreaming lips the softest and most beguiling of smiles bore witness to his deep
happiness. His flaxen hair swung against his cheek, and parted above the suave nape
of his neck, the most revealing beauty of the young. For a moment she stood
apart in the shadows to watch him, herself unnoticed, for the pleasure and the
pain of experiencing again the irresistible attraction, the unbearable bliss
and anguish of beholding beauty and youth pass by and depart. Too sharp and
sweet a reminder of things ended long ago, and for years believed forgotten,
only to burn up into new life, like the phoenix, when a door opened, and
confronted her with the ruin the years had left of the beloved being.

She
passed by silently, so that he should not hear, and turn upon her the too
radiant, too exultant blue eyes. The dark eyes that she remembered, deeply and
delicately set beneath arched black brows, had never looked so, never for her.
Always dutiful, always wary, often lowered in her presence.

Adelais
went out into the chill of the evening, and turned towards her own apartments.
Well, it was over. The fire was ashes. She would never see him again.

“Yes,
I have seen her,” said Brother Haluin. “Yes, I have spoken with her. I have
touched her hand, it is warm flesh, woman’s flesh, no illusion. The portress
brought me into her presence all unprepared, I could neither speak nor move.
She had been so long dead to me. Even that glimpse I had of her in the garth
among the birds… Afterward, when you were gone, I could not be sure I had not
dreamed it. But to touch her, to have her call me by my name… And she was glad…

“Her
case was not as mine, though God knows I would not say her burden has been any
lighter. But she knew I was man alive, she knew where I was, and what I was,
and for her there was no guilt, she had done no wrong but in loving me. And she
could speak. Such words she offered me, Cadfael! ‘Here is one,’ she said, ‘who
has already embraced you, with good right. Now with good right embrace her. She
is your daughter.’ Can you conceive such a miracle? Giving the child to me by
the hand, she said it. Helisende, my daughter—not dead! Alive and young and
kind and fresh as a flower. And I thought I had destroyed her, destroyed them
both! Of her own sweet will the child kissed me. Even if it was only from
pity—it must have been pity, how could she love one she never knew?—but even if
it was only from pity, it was a gift beyond gold.

“And
she will be happy. She can love as it best pleases her, and marry where her
heart is. Once she called me, ‘Father,’ but I think it was as a priest, as
first she knew me. Even so it was good to hear and will be sweet to remember.

“This
hour we three have had together repays all the eighteen years, even though
there was so little said between us. The heart could hold no more. She is gone
to her duties now, Bertrade. So must I to mine, soon… very soon… tomorrow…”

Cadfael
had sat silent through the long, stumbling, eloquent monologue of his friend’s
revelation, broken by long pauses in which Haluin was rapt away again into a
trance of wonder. Not one word of the abominable thing that had been done to
him, wantonly, cruelly, that was washed clean away out of the mind by the joy
of its undoing, without a lingering thought of blame or forgiveness. And that
was the last and most ironic judgment on Adelais de Clary.

“Shall
we go to Vespers?” said Cadfael. “The bell has gone, they’ll all be in their
places by now, we can creep in unnoticed.”

From
their chosen dim corner in the church Cadfael scanned the young, clear faces of
the sisters, and lingered long upon Sister Benedicta, who had once been
Bertrade de Clary. Beside him Haluin’s low, happy voice intoned the responses
and prayers, but what Cadfael was hearing in his own mind was the same voice
bleeding words slowly and haltingly, in the darkness of the forester’s hayloft,
before dawn. There in her stall, serene, fulfilled, and content, stood the
woman he had tried to describe. “She was not beautiful, as her mother was. She
had not that dark radiance, but something more kindly. There was nothing dark
or secret in her, but everything open and sunlit, like a flower. She was not
afraid of anything—not then. She trusted everyone. She had never been
betrayed—not then. Only once, and she died of it.”

But
no, she had not died. And certainly at this moment, devout and dutiful, there
was nothing dark or secret in her. The oval face shone serene, as she
celebrated with joy the mercy of God, after years. Without any lingering
regret; her contentment was without blemish. The vocation she had undertaken
unblessed, and labored at against the grain, perhaps, all these years, surely
reached its true wholeness only now, in the revelation of grace. She would not
have turned back now even for that first love. There was no need. There are
seasons of love. Theirs had passed beyond the storms of spring and the heat of
summer into the golden calm of the first autumn days, before the leaves begin
to fall. Bertrade de Clary looked as Brother Haluin looked, confirmed and
invulnerable in the peace of the spirit. Henceforth presence was unnecessary,
and passion irrelevant. They were eased of the past, and both of them had work
to do for the future, all the more eagerly and thoroughly for knowing, each of
them, that the other lived and labored in the same vineyard.

In
the morning, after Prime, their farewells made, they set out on the long
journey home.

The
sisters were in chapter when Cadfael and Haluin took scrip and crutches and
went out from the guest hall, but the girl Helisende went with them to the
gate. It seemed to Cadfael that all these faces about him had been washed clear
of every shadow and every doubt; they had all of them that stunned brightness,
astonished by the good that had befallen them. Now it could be seen more
clearly how like were father and daughter, so many of the marks of the years
having been smoothed from Haluin’s face.

Helisende
embraced him without words at parting, fervent but shy. However they had spent
the previous day, whatever confidences had been exchanged, she could not so
quickly know him of her own knowledge, only through her mother’s eyes, but she
knew of him that he was gentle and of pleasing person and address, and that his
eruption into her life had freed her from a nightmare of guilt and loss, and
she would always remember and think of him so, with pleasure and gratitude not
so far distant from love. Profit enough, even if he never saw her again.

“God
keep you, Father!” said Helisende.

It
was the first and the last time that she gave him that title not as a priest
but as a man, but it was a gift that would last him a lifetime.

They
halted for the night at Hargedon, where the canons of Hampton had a grange, in
a countryside slowly being recovered out of the waste that had followed the
Norman settlement. Only now, after sixty years, was ploughland being
resurrected out of the scrub, and an occasional hamlet being raised where
tracks crossed, or rivers provided water for a mill. The comparative security
offered by the presence of the canons’ steward and servants had drawn others to
settle close by, and there were now assarts being hewn out of the neglected
woods by enterprising younger sons. But still it was sparsely populated
territory, level, lonely, and in the evening light melancholy. Yet with every
labored step taken westward across this mournful plain Brother Haluin’s
brightness increased, his pace quickened, and his color flushed into eagerness.