Ellis Peters - The Confession of Brother Haluin

“I am glad,” said Adelais, “to find you all assembled thus. I have that to say that I will say only once.”

It could never have been a problem for her, thought Cadfael, watching, to hold the attention of everyone about her, wherever she went. In every room she entered she was at once the focal point, the dominant in every company. Now they were silent every one, waiting on her word.

“As I have heard, Cenred,” she said, “you intended, two days ago, to marry your sister - your half sister, I should say - to this young gentleman. For reason enough, the church and the world would agree, seeing she had become all too dear to your son Roscelin, and he to her, and a marriage that would take her far away removed also the shadow of such an unholy attachment from your house and from your heir. Pardon me if I use too plain words, it’s late for any others. No blame to you, knowing only what you knew.”

“What more was there to know?” said Cenred, bewildered. “Plain words will do very well. They are close blood kin, as you know well! Would not you have taken the same measures to ward off such an evil from your grandchild, as I intended from my sister? She is as close a charge to me as my own son, and as dear. She is your grandchild. I well remember my father’s second marriage. I recall the day you brought the bride here, and my father’s pride in the child she bore him. Since he is long gone, I owe Helisende a father’s care no less than a brother’s. Certainly I sought to protect both her and my son. I still desire the same. This is but a check on the way. Messire de Perronet has not withdrawn his suit, nor I my sanction.”

Audemar had risen from his place, and stood eyeing his mother with close-drawn brows and an unrevealing face. “What more is there to know?” he said levelly, and for all his voice was equable and low, there was doubt and displeasure in it, and a woman of less implacable will might have found it menacing. She stared back at him eye-to-eye, and was unmoved.

“This! That you trouble needless. There is no barrier, Cenred, between your son and Helisende but the barrier you have conjured up. There is no peril of incest if they were wedded and bedded this very night. Helisende is not your sister, Cenred, she is not your father’s daughter. There is no drop of Vivers blood in her veins.”

“But this is foolishness!” protested Cenred, shaking his head over so incredible a claim. “All this household has known the child from birth. What you say is impossible. Why bring forth such a story when all my people can bear witness she was born to my father’s lawful wife, in their marriage bed, here in my house.”

“And conceived in mine,” said Adelais. “I can’t wonder if none of you thought to count the days, I had lost no time. My daughter was already with child when I brought her here to her marriage.”

Then they were all on their feet, all but Emma, shrinking appalled behind her embroidery frame, shaken by the outcries of anger and disbelief that clashed about her like contrary winds. Cenred was stricken breathless, but de Perronet was clamoring that this was false, and the lady out of her wits, and Roscelin had sprung to confront him, glittering, half incoherent, swinging about from his rival to Adelais, pleading, demanding, that what she said be truth. Until Audemar pounded the table thunderously with his fist, and raised an imperious voice over all to demand silence. And throughout, Adelais stood erect and unmoving as stone, and let the outcries whirl about her unacknowledged.

And then there was silence, no more exclaiming, not a sound, hardly a breath, while they stared upon her intently and long, as if the truth or falsity of what she said might be read in her face if a man held still and unblinking long enough.

“Do you fully know, madam, what you are saying?” asked Audemar, his voice now measured and low.

“Excellently well, my son! I know what I am saying, I know it is truth. I know what I have done, I know it was foully done. It needs none of you to say it, I say it. But I did it, and neither you nor I can undo it. Yes, I deceived the lord Edric, yes, I compelled my daughter, yes, I planted a bastard child in this house. Or, if you choose, I took measures to protect my daughter’s good name and estate and ensure her honorable status, as Cenred wills to do for a sister. Did Edric ever regret his bargain? I think not. Did he get joy out of his supposed child? Surely he did. All these years I have let well or ill alone, but now God has disposed otherwise, and I am not sorry.”

“If this is truth,” said Cenred, drawing deep breath, “Edgytha knew of it. She came here with Bertrade, if you are telling truth now, so late, then she must have known.”

“She did know,” said Adelais. “And sorry the day I refused her when she begged me to tell the truth earlier, and sorrier still this day when she cannot stand here and bear me witness. But here is one who can. Brother Cadfael is come from the abbey of Farewell, where Helisende now is, and her mother is there with her. And by strange chance,” she said, “so is her father. There is nowhere now to hide from the truth, I declare it in my own despite.”

“You have hidden from it long enough, madam, it seems,” said Audemar grimly.

“So I have, and make no virtue of revealing it now, when it is already out of its grave.”

There was a brief, profound silence before Cenred asked slowly, “You say he is there now - her father? There at Farewell with them both?”

“From me,” she said, “it can only be hearsay. Brother Cadfael will answer you.”

“I have seen them there, all three,” said Cadfael. “It is truth.”

“Then who is he?” demanded Audemar. “Who is her father?”

Adelais took up her story, never lowering her eyes. “He was once a young clerk in my household, of good birth, only a year older than my daughter. He desired to be accepted as a suitor for her hand. I refused him. They took measures to force my hand. No, perhaps I do them both wrong. What they did may not have been calculated, but done in desperation, for she was as lost in love as he. I dismissed him from my service, and brought her away here in haste, to a match the lord Edric had mooted a year or more earlier. And I lied, telling the lover that she was dead. Very blackly I lied to him, saying both Bertrade and her child had died, when we tried to rid her of her burden. He never knew until now that he had a daughter.”

“Then how comes it,” demanded Cenred, “that he has found her out now, and in so unlikely a place? This whole wild story comes so strangely, thus out of nowhere, I cannot believe in it.”

“You had better come to terms with it,” she said, “for neither you nor I can escape the truth or amend it. He has found her by the merciful dispensation of God. What more do you need?”

Cenred swung upon Cadfael in irritated appeal. “Brother, as you have been my guest in this house, tell what you know of this matter. After so many years, is this indeed a true tale? And how came these three to meet again now, at the end of all?”

“It is a true tale,” said Cadfael. “And truly they have met, by now they will have talked together. He has found them both because, believing his love dead, and having touched hands with his own death a few months ago, and been spared, he turned his thoughts to mortality, and determined at least, since he could never see her again in this world, to make a pilgrimage to her grave and pray for her peace in the next. And not finding her at Hales, where he supposed she must be, he came here, my lord, to your manor of Elford, where those of your line are buried. Now, on the way home again, by the grace of God we asked lodging last night at the abbey of Farewell. There the lady who was your sister is presently serving as instructress to the novices of the bishop’s new foundation. And there Helisende fled for sanctuary from too painful stresses. So they are all under one roof at last.”