Ellis Peters - The Confession of Brother Haluin

He had a young fellow, page or squire, riding close at his elbow, a youth of seventeen or eighteen, fresh-faced and flushed with open air and exercise, and after them came two kennelmen on foot with the hounds on leash after their run. Audemar handed over his bridle to the groom who came running, and stood stamping his booted feet as he shed his cloak into the young man’s ready hands. The brief flurry of activity was over in a few minutes, the horses on their way across the court to the stables, the hounds away to the kennels. The young groom Luc came out of the stableyard and spoke to Audemar, apparently to deliver a message from Adelais, for Audemar at once looked round toward the lady’s lodging, nodded understanding, and came striding towards her door. His eyes fell on Cadfael, standing discreetly aside from his path, and for an instant he checked as though to stop and speak, but then changed his mind and went on, to vanish into the deep doorway.

Judging by the time that she and her grooms and her maid had passed by in the forest, Cadfael reckoned, Adelais must have arrived here that same day, two days previously. They would have no need to halt for a night between Chenet and Elford, for on horseback the distance was easy. Therefore she must already have seen and talked with her son. What she had to communicate to him now, as soon as he returned from riding, might well have to do with whatever was news this day at the manor of Elford. And what was new but the arrival of the two monks from Shrewsbury, and their reason for being here, a reason she would interpret with discretion for his ears. For he had been here at Elford when his sister died in Hales, for the world’s ears - and her brother’s also? - of a fever. That must be all he had ever known of it, a simple, sad death, such as may happen in any household, even to one in the bloom of youth. No, that strong and resolute woman would never have let her son into the secret. An old, trusted, confidential maidservant, maybe. She must have needed such a one, now perhaps dead. But her young son, no, never.

And if that was true, no wonder Adelais was taking every precaution to smooth Haluin’s way to his atonement, and be rid of him as quickly as possible, warding off all inquiry, even from the priest, offering horses to hasten the departure, and pledging the two pilgrims not to reveal anything of the past to any other being, not to say one word of the import of their errand, or mention the name of Bertrade.

Something, at least, I begin to understand, thought Cadfael. Wherever we turn, there is Adelais between us and all others. She houses us, she feeds us, it is her most loyal servants who approach and wait on us, not any from her son’s household. My daughter’s name and fame are safe enough under the stone, she had said, let them lie quiet there. Small blame to her for making sure, and no wonder she had ridden in haste to reach Elford beforehand and be ready for them.

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 laboriously 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.”