Ellis Peters - The Confession of Brother Haluin

He was barely within the room when she rose abruptly to her feet, stiff as a lance. Over their heads she spoke first to the waiting-woman, who had made to follow them in.

“Leave us!” said Adelais de Clary, And to Haluin, as the leather curtain swung heavily into place between solar and hall: “What is this? What have they done to you?”

She must, Cadfael reckoned, growing used to the play of light and shadow within the room, be within ten years of his own age, but she looked younger. The dark hair that was coiled in heavy braids on either side of her head was bareiy touched with grey, and the imperious, fine bones of her face had kept their imperishable elegance, though the flesh that covered them was a little shrunken and sapless now, and her body had grown angular and lean as the juices of youth dried up. Her hands, though shapely still, betrayed her with swollen knuckles and seamed veins, and there was a languor upon her pale skin at throat and wrist where once the rounded gloss of youth had been. But for all that, in the oval face, the long, resolute lips, and large eyes in their deep settings Cadfael saw the ashes of great beauty. No, not ashes, embers, still alive and as hot at least as the coals burning in the heart of the brazier.

“Come nearer!” she said. And when Haluin stood before her with the light upon his face, pale and cold light from the window, flushed from the fire: “It is you!” she said. “I wondered. How have you.come to this?”

Her voice was low-pitched, full and authoritative, but the first implication of dismay and concern was gone. She looked at him neither compassionately nor coldly, but with a kind of detached indifference, a curiosity of no deep root.

“This is no man’s blame but mine,” said Haluin. “Don’t regard it! I have what I earned. I came by a great fall, but by the grace of God I am alive, who by this time had thought to be dead. And as I have eased my soul to God and my confessor for old sins, so I come to beg forgiveness of you.”

“Was that needful?” she said, marveling. “After so many years, and all this way?”

“Yes, it was needful. I do greatly need to hear you say that you forgive me the wrong I did, and the grief I brought upon you. There can be no rest for me now until the leaf is washed clear of every last stain.”

“And you have told over all the old writing,” said Adelais with some bitterness, “all that was secret and shameful, have you? To your confessor? And how many more? This good brother who bears you company? The whole household at chapter? Could you not bear to be still a sinner unshriven, rather than betray my daughter’s name to the world, and she so long in her grave? I would have gone sinful into purgatory rather!”

“And so would I!” cried Haluin, wrung. “But no, it is not so. Brother Cadfael bears me company because he is the only one who knows, excepting only Abbot Radulfus, who heard my confession. No other will ever know from us. Brother Cadfael was also grossly wronged in what I did, he had a right to give or withhold forgiveness. It was from his store and after his teaching that I stole those medicines I gave to you.”

She turned her gaze upon Cadfael in a long, steady stare, and her face, for once seen clearly, was intent and still. “Well,” she said, again turning away into indifference, “it was very long ago. Who would remember now? And I am not dying yet. What do I know! I shall need a priest myself someday, I could better have answered you then. Well, to put an end to it. Have what you ask! I do forgive you. I would not add to what you suffer. Go back in peace to your cloister. I forgive you as I hope for forgiveness.”

It was said without passion; the brief spurt of anger was already gone. It cost her no effort to absolve him; she did it as neutrally, it seemed, and with as little feeling as she would have handed out food to a beggar. Of gentlewomen of her nobility alms could properly be asked, and granting was a form of largesse, the due fulfillment of a rite of lordship. But what she gave lightly came as relieving grace to Haluin. The braced tension went out of his leaning shoulders and stiffly clenched hands. He bent his head humbly before her, and uttered his thanks in a low and halting voice, like a man momentarily dazed.

“Madam, your mercy lifts a load from me, and from my heart I am grateful.”

“Go back to the life you have chosen and the duties you have undertaken,” she said, again seating herself, though she did not yet reach for her needle. “Think no more of what happened long ago. You say you have a life spared. Use it as best you can, and so will I mine.”

It was a dismissal, and as such Haluin accepted it. He made her a deep reverence, and turned carefully upon his crutches, and Cadfael reached a hand to steady him in the movement. She had not so much as bidden them be seated, perhaps too shaken by so sudden and startling a visit, but as they reached the doorway she called after them suddenly:

“Stay if you will, take rest and meat in my house. My servants will provide you everything you need.”

“I thank you,” said Haluin, “but our leave of absence enjoins a return as soon as my pilgrimage here is done.”

“God hasten your way home, then,” said Adelais de Clary, and with a steady hand took up her needle again.

The church lay a short distance from the manor, where two tracks crossed, and the huddle of village house plots gathered close about the churchyard wall.

“The tomb is within,” said Haluin, as they entered at the gate. “It was never opened when I was here, but Bertrand’s father is buried here, and surely it must have been opened for Bertrade. She died here. I am sorry, Cadfael, that I refused hospitality also for you. I had not thought in time. I shall need no bed tonight.”

“You said no word of that to the lady,” Cadfael observed.

“No. I hardly know why, When I saw her again my heart misgave me that I did ill to bring before her again that old pain, that the very sight of me was an offense to her. Yet she did forgive. I am the better for that, and she surely none the worse. But you could have slept easy tonight. No need for two to watch.”

“I’m better fitted for a night on my knees than you,” said Cadfael. “And I am not sure the welcome there would have been very warm. She wished us gone. No, it’s very well as it is. Most likely she thinks we’re on the homeward way already, off her land and out of her life.”

Haluin halted for a second with his hand on the heavy iron ring latch of the church door, his face in shadow. The door swung open, creaking, and he gripped his crutches to ease himself down the two wide, shallow steps into the nave. It was dim and stonily chilly within. Cadfael waited a moment on the steps till his eyes grew accustomed to the changed light, but Haluin set off at once up the nave towards the altar. Nothing here was greatly changed in eighteen years, and nothing had been forgotten. Even the rough edges of the floor tiles were known to him. He turned aside towards the right-hand wall, his crutches ringing hollowly, and Cadfael, following, found him standing beside a stone table-tomb fitted between the pillars. The carved image recumbent there was in crude chain mail, and had one leg crossed over the other, and a hand on his sword hilt. Another Crusader, surely the father of Bertrand, who in his turn had followed him to the Holy Land. This one, Cadfael calculated, might well have been with Robert of Normandy’s army in my time, at the taking of Jerusalem. Clearly the de Clary men were proud of their warfare in the east.

A man came through from the sacristy, and seeing two unmistakable Benedictine habits, turned amicably to come towards them. A man of middle age, in a rusty black cassock, advancing upon them with a mildly inquiring expression and a welcoming smile, Haluin heard his steps, soft as they were, and swung about gladly to greet a remembered neighbor, only to recoil on the instant at seeing a stranger.