The Confession of Brother Haluin (4 page)

“They
died,” he said, harsh and loud with pain. “My love and the child, both. Her
mother sent me word—dead and buried. A fever, they gave it out. Dead of a
fever—nothing more to fear. My sin, my most grievous sin… God knows I am
sorry!”

“Where
true penitence is,” said Abbot Radulfus, “God does surely know. Well, this
grief is told. Have you done, or is there more yet to tell?”

“I
have done,” said Brother Haluin. “But to beg pardon. I ask it of God—and of
Cadfael, that I abused his trust and his art. And of the lady of Hales, for the
great grief I brought upon her.” Now that it was out he had better control of
voice and words, the crippling tension was gone from his tongue, and weak
though his utterance was, it was lucid and resigned. “I would die cleansed and
forgiven,” he said.

“Brother
Cadfael will speak on his own behalf,” said the abbot. “For God, I will speak
as He give me grace.”

“I
forgive freely,” said Cadfael, choosing words with more than his accustomed
care, “whatever offense was done against my craft under great stress of mind.
And that the means and the knowledge were there to tempt you, and I not there
to dissuade, this I take to myself as much as ever I can charge them to you. I
wish you peace!”

What
Abbot Radulfus had to say upon God’s behalf took longer. There were some among
the brothers, Cadfael thought, who would have been startled and incredulous if
they could have heard, at finding their abbot’s formidable austerity could also
hold so much measured and authoritative tenderness. A lightened conscience and
a clean death were what Haluin desired. It was too late to exact penance from a
dying man, and deathbed comfort cannot be priced, only given freely.

“A
broken and a contrite heart,” said Radulfus, “is the only sacrifice required of
you, and will not be despised.” And he gave absolution and the solemn blessing,
and so left the sickroom, beckoning Cadfael with him. On Haluin’s face the ease
of gratitude had darkened again into the indifference of exhaustion, and the
fires were dead in eyes dulled and half closed between swoon and sleep.

In
the outer room Rhun was waiting patiently, drawn somewhat aside to avoid
hearing, even unwittingly, any word of that confession.

“Go
in and sit with him,” said the abbot. “He may sleep now, there will be no ill
dreams. If there should be any change in him, fetch Brother Edmund. And if
Brother Cadfael should be needed, send to my lodging for him.”

In
the paneled parlor in the abbot’s lodge they sat together, the only two people
who would ever hear of the offense with which Haluin charged himself, or have
the right in private to speak of his confession.

“I
have been here only four years,” said Radulfus directly, “and know nothing of
the circumstances in which Haluin came here. It seems one of his earliest
duties here was to help you among the herbs, and there he acquired this
knowledge he put to such ill use. Is it certain this draught he concocted could
kill? Or may this truly have been a death from fever?”

“If
the girl’s mother used it on her, she could hardly be mistaken,” said Cadfael
ruefully. “Yes, I’ve known hyssop to kill. I was foolish to keep it among my
stores, there are other herbs that could take its place. But in small doses,
both herb and root, dried and powdered, are excellent for the yellow distemper,
and useful with horehound against chest troubles, though the blue-flowered kind
is milder and better for that. I’ve known women use it to procure abortion, in
great doses that purge to the extreme. Small wonder if sometimes the poor girl
dies.”

“And
this was surely during his novitiate, for he cannot have been here long if this
child was his, as he supposes. He can have been only a boy.”

“Barely
eighteen, and the girl no more, if as old. It is some extenuation,” said
Cadfael firmly, “if they were in the same household, seeing each other daily,
of equal birth, for he comes of a good family, and as open to love as are most
children. In fact,” said Cadfael, kindling, “what I wonder at is that his suit
should have been rejected out of hand. He was an only son, there was a good
manor would have been his if he had not taken vows. And he was a very pleasing
youth, as I recall, lettered and gifted. Many a knight would have welcomed him
as a match for his daughter.”

“It
may be her father already had other plans for her,” said Radulfus. “He may have
betrothed her to someone else in childhood. And her mother would hardly venture
to countenance a match in her husband’s absence, if she went in such awe of
him.”

“She
need not, however, have rejected the boy utterly, if she had let him hope, he
would have waited, surely, and not tried to force her hand by forestalling
marriage. Though it may be I do him wrong there,” Cadfael relented. “It was not
calculation, I fancy, that brought him into the girl’s bed, but too rash
affection. Haluin would never make a schemer.”

“Well,
for better or worse,” said Radulfus with a weary sigh, “it was done, and cannot
be undone. He is not the first, and will not be the last young man to fall into
that error, nor she the first nor the last poor child to suffer for it. At
least she has kept her good name. Easy to see why he feared to confide, for her
sake, even under the seal of confession. But it is long ago, eighteen years,
his age when it befell. Let us at least secure him a peaceful ending.”

It
was the general view that a peaceful ending was the best that could be hoped
for for Brother Haluin, and that prayers for him ought not to presume to look
towards any other outcome, all the more as his brief return to his senses
rapidly lapsed again into a deeper unconsciousness, and for seven days, while
the festival of the Nativity came and passed, he lay oblivious of the comings
and goings of his brethren round his bed, ate nothing, uttered no sound but the
hardly perceptible flutter of his breath. Yet that breath, however faint, was
steady and even, and as often as drops of honeyed wine were presented to his
lips, they were accepted, and the cords of his throat moved of themselves,
docilely swallowing, while the broad, chilly brow and closed eyes never by the
least quiver or contraction revealed awareness of what his body did.

“As
if only his body is here,” said Brother Edmund, soberly pondering, “and his
spirit gone elsewhere until the house is again furbished and clean and waiting
to be lived in.”

A
sound biblical analogy, Cadfael considered, for certainly Haluin had himself
cast out the devils that inhabited him, and the dwelling they vacated might
well lie empty for a while, all the more if there was to be that unlooked-for
and improbable act of healing, after all. For however this prolonged withdrawal
might resemble dying, Brother Haluin would not die. Then we had better keep a
good watch, thought Cadfael, taking the parable to its fitting close, and make
sure seven devils worse than the first never manage to get a foot in the door
while he’s absent. And prayers for Haluin continued with unremitting fervor
throughout the festivities of Christmas and the solemn opening of the new year.

The
thaw was beginning by that time, and even then it was a slow thaw, wearing away
each day, by slow degrees, the heavy wastes of snow from the great fall. The
work on the roof was finished without further mishap, the scaffolding taken
down, and the guest hall once again weatherproof. All that remained of the
great upheaval was this still and silent witness in his isolated bed in the
infirmary, declining either to live or die.

Then,
in the night of the Epiphany, Brother Haluin opened his eyes and drew a long,
slow breath like any other man awaking without alarm, and cast his wondering
gaze round the narrow room until it rested upon Brother Cadfael, mute and
attentive on the stool beside him.

“I
am thirsty,” said Haluin trustingly, like a child, and lay passive on Cadfael’s
arm to drink.

They
half expected him to sink again into his unconscious state, but he remained
languid but aware all that day, and in the night his sleep was natural sleep,
shallow but tranquil. After that he turned his face to life, and did not again
look over his shoulder. Once risen from the semblance of death he came back to
the territory of pain, and its signature was on his drawn brow and set lips,
but he bore it without complaint. His broken arm had knitted while he lay
ignorant of his injuries, and caused him only the irritating aches of healing
wounds, and it seemed both to Cadfael and Edmund, after a day or two of keeping
close watch on him, that whatever had been shaken out of place within his head
had healed as the outer wound had healed, medicined by stillness and repose.
For his mind was clear. He remembered the icy roof, he remembered his fall, and
once when he was alone with Cadfael he showed that he recalled very clearly his
confession, for he said after a long while of silent thought:

“I
did shamefully by you, long ago, now you tend and medicine me, and I have made
no amends.”

“I’ve
asked none,” said Cadfael equably, and began with patient care to unfold the
wrappings from one maimed foot, to renew the dressings he had been replacing
night and morning all this time.

“But
I need to pay all that is due. How else can I be clean?”

“You
have made full confession,” said Cadfael reasonably. “You have received
absolution from Father Abbot himself, beware of asking more.”

“But
I have done no penance. Absolution so cheaply won leaves me still a debtor,”
said Haluin heavily.

Cadfael
had laid bare the left foot, the worse mangled of the pair. The surface cuts
and wounds had healed over, but what had happened to the labyrinth of small
bones within could never be put right. They had fused into a misshapen clot,
twisted and scarred, discolored in angry dark reds and purples. Yet the seamed
skin had knitted and covered all.

“If
you have debts,” said Cadfael bluntly, “they bid fair to be paid in pain to the
day you die. You see this? You will never set this firmly to ground again. I
doubt if you will ever walk again.”

“Yes.”
said Haluin, staring out through the narrow chink of the window at the
darkening wintry sky, “yes, I shall walk. I will walk. If God allows, I will go
on my own feet again, though I must borrow crutches to help them bear me. And
if Father Abbot gives me his countenance, when I have learned to use what props
are left to me I will go myself to Hales, to beg forgiveness of Adelais de
Clary, and keep a night’s vigil at Bertrade’s tomb.”

In
his own mind Cadfael doubted if either the dead or the living would take any
great comfort from Haluin’s fondly resolved atonement, or still be nursing any
profound recollection of him, after eighteen years. But if the pious intent
gave the lad courage and determination to live and labor and be fruitful again,
why discourage him? So all he said was:

“Well,
let’s first mend all that can be mended, and put back some of that lost blood
into you, for you’ll get no leave to go anywhere as you are now.” And
contemplating the right foot, which at least still bore some resemblance to a
human foot, and had a perceptible and undamaged ankle-bone, he went on
thoughtfully: “We might make some sort of thick felt boots for you, well padded
within. You might get one foot to the ground yet, though you’ll need the
crutches. Not yet—not yet, nor for weeks yet, more likely months. But we’ll
take your measure, and see what we can fashion between us.”

On
reflection, Cadfael felt that it might be wise to warn Abbot Radulfus of the
expiation Brother Haluin had in mind, and did so after chapter, in the privacy
of the abbot’s parlor.

“Once
he had heaved the load off his heart,” said Cadfael simply, “he would have died
content if it had been his fortune to die. But he is going to live. His mind is
clear, his will is strong, and if his body is meager it’s wiry enough, and now
that he sees a life ahead of him he’ll not be content to creep out of his sins
by way of absolution without penance. If he was of a lighter mind, and could be
coaxed to forget this resolve as he gets well, for my part I would not blame
him, I’d be glad of it. But penitence without penance will never be enough for
Haluin. I’ll hold him back as long as I can, but trust me, we shall hear of
this again, as soon as he feels able to attempt it.”

“I
can hardly frown upon so fitting a wish,” said the abbot reasonably, “but I can
forbid it until he is fit to undertake it. If it will give him peace of mind I
have no right to stand in his way. It may also be of some belated comfort to
this unhappy lady whose daughter died so wretchedly. I am not familiar,” said
Radulfus, pondering the proposed pilgrimage warily, “with this manor of Hales,
though I have heard the name of de Clary. Do you know where it lies?”

“Towards
the eastern edge of the shire, Father, it must be a matter of twenty-five miles
or so from Shrewsbury.”

“And
this lord who was absent in the Holy Land—he can have been told nothing of the
true manner of his daughter’s death, if his lady went in such awe of him. It is
many years past, but if he is still living this visit must not take place. It
would be a very ill thing for Brother Haluin to salve his own soul by bringing
further trouble and danger upon the lady of Hales. Whatever her errors, she has
suffered for them.”

“For
all I know, Father,” Cadfael admitted, “they may both be dead some years since.
I saw the place once, on the way from Lichfield on an errand for Abbot
Heribert, but I know nothing of the household of de Clary.”