The Confession of Brother Haluin

Chapter Three

Hugh and his escort came home four days after Epiphany. Much of the snow was gone by then, the weather grey, the days short and somber, the nights hovering on the edge of frost, so that the thaw continued its gradual way, and there was no flooding. After such a heavy fall a rapid thaw would have seen a great mass of water coming down the river and draining from every drift, and the Severn would have backed up the Meole Brook and flooded the lower part of the fields, even if the enclave itself escaped inundation. This year they were spared that trouble, and Hugh, kicking off his boots and shrugging off his cloak in his own house by Saint Mary’s Church, with his wife bringing him his furred shoes and his son clinging to his sword belt and clamoring to have his new, painted wooden knight duly admired, was able to report an easy journey for the time of year, and a satisfactory reception at court for his stewardship.

“Though I doubt if this Christmas truce will last long,” he said to Cadfael later, after acquainting the abbot with all the news from Winchester. “He’s swallowed the failure at Oxford gallantly enough, but for all that, he’s on his mettle for vengeance, he’ll not sit still for long, winter or no. He wants Wareham back, but it’s well stocked, and manned to the battlements, and Stephen never did have the patience for a siege. He’d like a fortress more to the west, to carry the war to Robert’s country. There’s no guessing what he’ll try first. But he wants none of me or my men there in the south, he’s far too wary of the earl of Chester to keep me long out of my shire. Thank God, for I’m of the same mind myself,” said Hugh blithely. “And how have you been faring? Sorry I am to hear your best illuminator had a fall that all but ended him. Father Abbot told me of it. I can hardly have left you an hour, that day, when it happened. Is it true he’s mending well?”

“Better than any of us ever expected,” said Cadfael, “least of all the man himself, for he was certainly bent on clearing his soul for death. But he’s out of the shadow, and in a day or two we’ll have him out of his bed. But his feet are crippled for life, the slates chopped them piecemeal. Brother Luke is cutting some crutches to his measure. Hugh,” said Cadfael directly, “what do you know of the de Clarys who hold the manor of Hales? There was one of them was a Crusader nearly twenty years back. I never knew him, he was after my time in the east. Is he still living?”

“Bertrand de Clary,” said Hugh promptly, and looked up at his friend with quickening interest. “What of him? He died years back, ten or more it must be. His son holds the honor now. I’ve had no dealings with them, Hales is the only manor they hold in this shire, the caput and most of their lands are in Staffordshire. Why, what’s put de Clary in your mind?”

“Why, Haluin has. He was in their service before he took the cowl. It seems he feels he has left unpaid some debt he still owes in that direction. It came to mind when he made what he took to be his deathbed confession. In something he feels he offended, and has it on his conscience still.”

That was all that could be told, even to Hugh, the confessional being sacred, and if nothing more was offered, Hugh would ask for nothing more, however he might speculate on what had not been said.

“He’s set on making the journey to set the account straight, when he’s fit to undertake it. I was wondering if this Bertrand’s widow is no longer in the land of the living, either, as well Haluin should know it at once, and put it out of his mind.”

Hugh was eyeing his friend with steady interest and a tolerant smile. “And you want him to have nothing to trouble about, body or mind, but getting back into the way of living as soon as may be. I’m no help, Cadfael. The widow’s living still. She’s there at Hales, she paid her dues last Michaelmas. Her son’s married to a Staffordshire wife, and has a young son to succeed him, and from all accounts his mother is not of a nature to share another woman’s household without meddling. Hales is her favorite home, she keeps there from choice and leaves her son to rule his own roost, while she makes sure of ruling hers. No doubt it suits them both very well. I should not be even so well informed, ” he said by way of explanation, “if we had not ridden some miles of the way from Winchester with a company of de Clary’s men, dispersing from the siege of Oxford. The man himself I never saw, he was still delayed at court when we left. He’ll be on his way home by now, unless Stephen keeps him for whatever move he has next in mind.”

Cadfael received this news philosophically but without pleasure. So she was still living, this woman who had sought to help her daughter to an abortion, and succeeded only in helping her to her death. Not the first nor the last to come by such a death. But what must the mother’s despair and guilt have been then, and what bitter memories must remain even now, beneath the ashes of eighteen years? Better, surely, to let them lie buried still. But Haluin’s self-torturing conscience and salvation-hungry soul had their rights, too. And after all, he had been just eighteen years old! The woman who had forbidden him any aspiration to her daughter’s affection must have been double his age. She might, thought Cadfael almost indignantly, have had the wisdom to see how things began to be between those two, and taken steps to separate them in time.

“Did you ever feel, Hugh, that it might be better to let even ill alone,” wondered Cadfael ruefully, “rather than let loose worse? Ah, well! He has not even tried his crutches yet. Who knows what changes a few weeks may bring?”

They lifted Brother Haluin out of his bed in the middle of January, found him a corner near the infirmary fire, since he could not move about freely like the others to combat the cold, and treated his body, stiff from long lying, with oil and massage to get the sinews working again. To occupy his hands and mind they brought him his colors and a little desk to work on, and gave him a simpler page to adorn until his fingers should regain their deftness and steadiness. His mangled feet had healed and fused into misshapen forms, and there was no question as yet of letting him attempt to stand on them, but Cadfael allowed him to try the crutches Brother Luke had made for him, with support on either side, to get accustomed to the heft and balance of them, and the shaped and padded props under his armpits. If neither foot could ever be brought to support him again, even the crutches would not be of any use, but both Cadfael and Edmund agreed that there was every hope of the right foot being restored to use in time, and even the left might eventually provide a grain of assistance, with a little ingenuity in shoeing the invalid.

To that end Cadfael called in, at the end of the month, young Philip Corviser, the provost’s son, and they put their heads together over the problem, and between them produced a pair of boots as ill-matched in appearance as were the feet for which they were intended, but adapted as best they could devise to give strong support. They were of thick felt with a leather sole, built up well above the ankles and laced close with leather thongs to support and protect the damaged flesh and make full use of the shinbones, which were intact. Philip was pleased with his work, but wary of praise until the boots were tried on, and found to be wearable without pain, and blessedly warm in this wintry weather.

And all that was done for him Brother Haluin accepted gratefully and humbly, and went on doggedly refreshing eye and hand with his reds and blues and delicately laid gold. But as often as the hours of leisure came round he would be precariously hoisting himself out of his corner bench with shoulders braced upon his crutches, poised to reach for the support of wall or bench if his balance was shaken. It took some time for the sinews to recover their toughness in his wasted legs, but early in February he could set his right foot firmly to the ground, and even stand on it briefly without other support, and from that time on he began to use his crutches in earnest, and to master them. He was seen again, dutiful and punctual, in his stall at chapel, and in the choir at every office. By the end of February he could even set the blocked toe of his left boot to the ground, to help hold him steady and secure on his crutches, though never again would that foot be able to support his weight, light though he was.

In one thing he was fortunate, that the winter, once that first early snowfall had thawed and vanished, was not a hard one. There were occasional spells of frost, but none that lasted long, and after January such snow showers as there were, were fitful and slight, and did not lie long. When he had his balance and was used to his new gait he could exercise his skills outdoors as well as in, and grew expert, fearful only of the cobbles of the court when they were glazed with frost.

At the beginning of March, with the days lengthening, and the first cautious and reluctant signs of spring in the air, Brother Haluin rose in chapter, when all the urgent business of the day was over, and meekly but resolutely made a plea which only Abbot Radulfus and Brother Cadfael could fully understand.

“Father,” he said, his dark eyes fixed unwaveringly on the abbot’s face, “you know that in my trouble I conceived a desire to make a certain pilgrimage, if I should by God’s grace be restored. Great mercy has been shown to me, and if you will give me leave, I wish now to register my vow in heaven. I beg your sanction and the prayers of my brothers that I may fulfill what I promise, and return in peace.”

Radulfus regarded the petitioner in silence for a disturbingly long time, his face revealing neither approval nor disapproval, though the fixity of his gaze brought a surge of blood into Haluin’s hollow cheeks.

“Come to me after chapter,” said the abbot then, “and I will hear what you intend, and judge whether you are yet fit to undertake it.”

In the abbot’s parlor Haluin repeated his request in open terms, as to men before whom his spirit was naked and known. Cadfael knew why he himself had been summoned to attend. Two reasons, indeed, stood clear: he was the only other witness of Haluin’s confession, and might therefore be admitted into his counsels; and he could speak as to Haluin’s fitness to set out on such a journey. He had not yet guessed at a third reason, but he was not quite easy in his mind as he listened.

“I must not and will not hold you back,” said the abbot, “from what is needful for your soul’s health. But I think you ask too soon. You cannot yet have regained your strength. And it is not yet spring, however well we happen to have fared these last weeks. There may still be bitter weather to come. Think how recently you have been close to death, and spare putting yourself in such hardship until you are fitter to bear it.”

“Father,” said Haluin ardently, “it is because I have been close to death that I must not delay. How if death should reach for me again before I can expiate my sin? I have seen how it can lay its hand on a man in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. I have had my warning. I must heed it. If I die in paying the penance due from me, that I will embrace as fitting. But to die and not have made any amend, that would be endless reproach to me. Father,” he said, burning up like a stirred fire, “I truly loved her, I loved her according to the way of marriage, I would have loved her lifelong. And I destroyed her. I have hidden my sins too long. Now that I have confessed them I long to complete the atonement.”

“And have you thought of the miles you must go and return? Are you in any case to ride?”

Haluin shook his head vigorously at that. “Father, I have vowed already in my heart and will repeat the vow on the altar, to go on foot to the place where she is buried, and on foot return - on these feet that brought me to the earth and made me to face the truth of my unshriven offenses. I can go, I have learned how the innocent lame must go. Why should not I, who am guilty of so much, suffer the same labors? I can endure it. Brother Cadfael knows!”

Brother Cadfael was none too pleased at being called in witness, and none too happy about saying anything which could promote this obsessed enterprise, but neither could he see any genuine peace of mind for this tormented creature until the expiation was completed.

“I do know he has the will and the courage,” he said. “Whether he has the strength is another matter. And whether he has the right to force his body to the death in order to cleanse his soul is something on which I will not judge.”

Radulfus pondered for some minutes in somber silence, eyeing the petitioner with fixity which should have caused him to stir uneasily and lower his gaze had there been anything false or pretentious in his purpose, but Haluin’s wide, earnest eyes sustained the encounter ardently.

“Well, I acknowledge your desire to atone, late though it comes,” said the abbot at last, “and I understand the better since the delay of years has not been for your own sake. Go, then, make the attempt. But I will not permit you to go alone. There must be someone with you in case you founder, and should that happen, you must allow him to make such dispositions for your safety as he sees fit. If you endure the journey well, he need not do anything to impair your sacrifice, but if you fall by the wayside, then he stands as my representative, and you must obey him as you obey me.”

“Father,” said Haluin in anxious protest, “my sin is mine alone, my confession sealed and sacred. How can I let another man come so close, without myself breaking that seal? It would be a violation even to cause wonder and question concerning this penance of mine.”

“You shall have a companion who need neither wonder nor question,” said the abbot, “since he already knows, at your own telling. Brother Cadfael shall come with you. His company and his prayers can only be of comfort and benefit to you. Your confidence and the lady’s memory will be in no danger, and he is well qualified to care for you along the way.” And to Cadfael, turning, he said, “Will you undertake this charge? I do not believe he is fit to go alone.”

Small choice, thought Cadfael, but not altogether displeased at the instruction, either. There was still, somewhere deep within him, a morsel of the vagus who had roamed the world from Wales to Jerusalem and back to Normandy for forty years before committing himself to stability within the cloister, and an expedition sanctioned, even ordered, by authority could be welcomed as blessed, instead of evaded as a temptation.

“If you so wish, Father,” he said, “I will.”

“This journey will take several days. I take it that Brother Winfrid will be competent to dispense whatever may be needed, with Edmund to guide him?”

“For a few days,” agreed Cadfael, “they should manage well enough. I have stocked the infirmary cupboard only yesterday, and in the workshop there’s a good supply of all the common remedies usually called for in the winter. Should something unforeseen be needed. Brother Oswin could come back from Saint Giles to help for a while.”

“Good! Then, son Haluin, you may prepare for this journey, and set out when you are ready, tomorrow if you will. But you will submit yourself to Brother Cadfael if your strength fails you, and do his bidding as faithfully as within these walls you have always done mine.”

“Father,” said Haluin fervently, “I will.”

At the altar of Saint Winifred, Brother Haluin recorded his solemn vow that same evening after Vespers, to leave himself no way out, with a white-faced vehemence which indicated to Cadfael, who witnessed it at Haluin’s own wish, that this implacable penitent in his deepest heart knew and feared the labor and pain he was imposing on himself, and embraced it with a passion and resolution Cadfael would rather have seen devoted to a more practical and fruitful enterprise. For who would benefit by this journey, even though it passed successfully, except the penitent himself, at least partially restored to his self-respect? Certainly not the poor girl who had committed no worse sin than to venture too much for love, and who surely was long since in a state of grace. Nor the mother who must long ago have put this evil dream behind her, and must now be confronted by it once again after years. And Cadfael was not of the opinion that a man’s main business in this world was to save his own soul. There are other ailing souls, as there are ailing bodies, in need of a hoist towards health.

But Haluin’s needs were not his needs. Haluin’s bitter years of silent self-blame certainly called for a remedy.

“On these most holy relics,” said Brother Haluin, with his palm pressed against the drapings that covered the reliquary, “I record my penitential vow: that I will not rest until I have gone on foot to the tomb in which Bertrade de Clary lies, and there passed a night’s vigil in prayer for her soul, and again on foot returned here to the place of my due service. And if I fail of this, may I live forsworn and die unforgiven.”

They set out after Prime, on the fourth morning of March, out at the gate and along the Foregate towards Saint Giles and the highroad due east. The day was cloudy and still, the air chill but not wintry cold. Cadfael viewed the way ahead in his mind, and found it not too intimidating. They would be leaving the western hills behind them, and with every mile eastward the country about them would subside peaceably into a green level. The road was dry, for there had been no recent rain, and the cloud cover above was high and pale, and threatened none, and there was a grassy verge such as could be found only on the king’s highways, wide on either side the track, easy walking even for a crippled man. The first mile or two might pass without grief, but after that the constant labor would begin to tell. He would have to be the judge of when to call a halt, for Haluin was likely to grit his teeth and press on until he dropped. Somewhere under the Wrekin they would find a hospitable refuge for the night, for there were abbey tenants there among the cottagers, and any hut along the way would willingly give them a place by the fire for a midday rest. Food they had with them in the scrip Cadfael carried.

In the brisk hopefulness of morning, with Haluin’s energy and eagerness at their best, they made good speed, and rested at noon very pleasurably with the parish priest at Attingham. But in the afternoon the pace slowed somewhat, and the strain began to tell upon Haluin’s hardworking shoulders, aching from the constant weight and endlessly repeated stress, and the cold as evening approached numbed his hands on the grips of his crutches, in spite of their mufflings of woolen cloth. Cadfael called a halt as soon as the light began to fade into the windless March dusk, grey and without distances, and turned aside into the village of Uppington, to beg a bed for the night at the manor.

Haluin had been understandably silent along the road, needing all his breath and all his resolution for the effort of walking. Fed and at ease in the evening, he sat watching Cadfael in accepting silence still for a while.

“Brother,” he said at last, “I take it very kindly that you’ve come with me on this journey. With no other but you could I speak without conceal of that old grief, and before ever we see Shrewsbury again I may sorely need to speak of it. The worst of me you already know, and I will never say word in excuse. But in eighteen years I have never until now spoken her name aloud, and now to utter it is like food after starvation.”

“Speak or be silent as the need takes you,” said Cadfael, “and I’ll hear or be deaf according to your wish. But as for tonight you should take your rest, for you’ve come a good third part of the way, and tomorrow, I warn you, you’ll find some aches and pains you knew nothing of, from laboring so hard and so long.”

“I am tired,” admitted Haluin, with a sudden and singularly touching smile, as brief as it was sweet. “You think we cannot reach Hales tomorrow, then?”

“Don’t think of it! No, we’ll get as far as the Augustinian canons at Wombridge, and spend another night there. And you’ll have done well to get so far in the time, so don’t grudge the one day more.”

“As you think best,” said Haluin submissively, and lay down to sleep with the confiding simplicity of a child charmed and protected by his prayers.

The next day was less kind, for there was a thin, spasmodic rain that stung at times with sleet, and a colder wind from the northeast, from which the long, green, craggy bulk of the Wrekin gave them no shelter as the road skirted it to the north. But they reached the priory before dusk, though Haluin’s lips were fast clenched in determination by then, and the skin drawn tight and livid over his cheekbones with exhaustion, and Cadfael was glad to get him into the warmth, and go to work with oiled hands on the sinews of his arms and shoulders, and the thighs that had carried him so bravely all day long.

And the third day, early in the afternoon, they came to the manor of Hales.

The manor house lay a little aside from the village and the church, timber-built on the stone undercroft, in level, well-drained fields, with gentle wooded slopes beyond. Within its wooden fence, stable and barn and bakehouse were ranged along the pale, well maintained and neat. Brother Haluin stood in the open gateway, and looked at the place of his old service with a face fixed and still, only his eyes alive and full of pain.

“Four years,” he said, “I kept the manor roll here. Bertrand de Clary was my father’s overlord. I was sent here before I was fourteen, to be page to his lady. Will you believe, the man himself I never saw. Before I came here he was already in the Holy Land. This is but one of his manors, the only one in these parts, but his son was already installed in his place, and ruled the honor from Staffordshire. She always liked Hales best, she left her son to his lordship and settled here, and it was here I came. Better for her if I had never entered this house. Better far for Bertrade!”

“It’s too late,” said Cadfael mildly, “to do right whatever was done amiss then. This day is for doing aright what you have pledged yourself to do now, and for that it is not too late. You’ll be freer with her, maybe, if I wait for you without.”

“No,” said Haluin. “Come with me! I need your witness, I know it will be just.”

A tow-haired youth came out of the stable with a pitchfork in his hands, steaming gently in the chill air. At sight of two black Benedictine habits in the gateway he turned and came towards them, leisurely and amiable.

“If you’re wanting a bed and a meal. Brothers, come in, your cloth’s always welcome here. There’s good lying in the loft, and they’ll feed you in the kitchen if you’ll please to walk through.”

“I do remember,” said Haluin, his eyes still fixed upon a distant past, “your lady kept always a hospitable house for travelers. But I shall need no bed this night. I have an errand to the lady Adelais de Clary herself, if she will give me audience. A few minutes of her time is all I ask.”

The boy shrugged, staring them over with grey, unreadable Saxon eyes, and waved them towards the stone steps that led up to the hall door.

“Go in and ask for her woman Gerta, she’ll see if the lady’ll speak with you.” And he stood to watch them as they crossed the yard, before turning back to his labors among the horses.

A manservant was just coming up the steps from the kitchen into the passage as they entered the great doorway. He came to ask their business, and being told, sent off a kitchen boy to carry word to the lady’s woman of the chamber, who presently came out from the hall to see who these monastic guests might be. A woman of about forty years, very brisk and neat, plain in her dress and plain in her face, for she was pockmarked. But of her confidence in office there was no question. She looked them over somewhat superciliously, and listened to Haluin’s meekly uttered request without a responsive smile, in no hurry to open a door of which she clearly felt herself the privileged custodian.

“From the abbey at Shrewsbury, you come? And on the lord abbot’s business, I suppose?”

“On an errand the lord abbot has sanctioned,” said Haluin.

“It is not the same,” said Gerta sharply. “What other than abbey business can send a monk of Shrewsbury here? If this is some matter of your own, let my lady know with whom she is dealing.”

“Tell her,” said Haluin patiently, leaning heavily on his crutches, and with eyes lowered from the woman’s unwelcoming face, “that Brother Haluin, a Benedictine monk of Shrewsbury abbey, humbly begs of her grace to receive him.”

The name meant nothing to her. Clearly she had not been in Adelais de Clary’s service, or certainly not in her confidence or even close enough to guess at her preoccupations, eighteen years ago. Some other woman, perhaps nearer her mistress’s years, had filled this intimate office then. Close body servants, grown into their mistress’s trust and into their own blood loyalty, carry a great treasury of secrets, often to their deaths. There must somewhere, Cadfael thought, watching in silence, be a woman who would have stiffened and opened her eyes wide at that name, even if she had not instantly known the changed and time-worn face.

“I will ask,” said the tirewoman, with a touch of condescension still, and went away through the hall to a leather-curtained doorway at the far end. Some minutes passed before she appeared again, drawing back the hangings, and without troubling to approach them, called from the doorway: “My lady says you may come.”

The solar they entered was small and dim, for the windward of the two windows was shuttered fast against the weather, and the tapestries that draped the walls were old, and in rich dark colors. There was no fireplace, but a stone hearth laid close to the most sheltered corner carried a charcoal brazier, and between that and the one window that gave light a woman was sitting at a little embroidery frame, on a cushioned stool. Against the light from the window she showed as a tall, erect shape, dark-clothed, while the glow of the brazier shone in copper highlights on her shadowed face. She had left her needle thrust into the stretched cloth. Her hands were clenched fast on the raised arms of the stool, and her eyes were on the doorway, into which Brother Haluin lurched painfully on his crutches, his one serviceable foot sore with use and bearing him wincingly at every step, the blocked toe of his left foot barely touching the floor as a meager aid to balance. Constant leaning into the crutches had hunched his shoulders and bent his straight back. Having heard his name, she must surely have expected something nearer to the lively, comely young man she had cast out all those years ago. What could she make now of this mangled wreckage?

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?”