The Confession of Brother Haluin

Chapter Twelve

The groom who came unhurriedly across the courtyard to greet the visitor and inquire his business was neither Lothair nor Luc, but a lanky lad not yet twenty, with a shock of dark hair. At his back the courtyard seemed emptied of its usual lively activity, only a few maids and manservants going back and forth about their work in a casual fashion, as if all constraints were slackened. By the look of things, the master of the house and most of his men were still out and about on the hunt for any word that might lead to the murderer of Edgytha.

“If you’re wanting the lord Audemar,” said the boy at once, “you’re out of luck. He’s still away to Vivers about this woman who was killed a couple of nights back. But his steward’s here. If you want lodging you’d best see him.”

“I thank you,” said Cadfael, surrendering his bridle, “but it’s not the lord Audemar I’ve come to see. My errand is to his mother. I know where her dower apartments are. If you’ll see to the horse I’ll go myself and ask her woman to inquire if the lady will be good enough to see me.”

“As you please, then. You were here afore,” said the lad, narrowing his eyes curiously at this vaguely familiar visitor. “Only a few days back, with another black monk, one that went on crutches and very lame.”

“True,” said Cadfael. “And I had speech with the lady then, and she will not have forgotten either me or that lame brother. If she refuses me a hearing now, I will let her be - but I think she will not refuse.”

“Try for yourself, then,” agreed the groom indifferently. “She’s still here with her maid, and I know she’s within. She keeps within, these last days.”

“She had two grooms with her,” said Cadfael, “father and son. We were acquainted, when we stayed here, they had come from Shropshire with her. I’d willingly pass the time of day with them, afterward, if they’re not away to Vivers with the lord Audemar’s people.”

“Oh, them! No, they’re her fellows, none of his. But they’re not here, neither. They went off yesterday on some errand of hers, very early. Where? How should I know where? Back to Hales, likely. That’s where the old dame keeps, most of her time.”

I wonder, thought Cadfael, as he turned towards Adelais’s dwelling in the corner of the enclave wall, and the groom led the cob away to the stable, truly I wonder how it would suit Adelais de Clary to know that her son’s grooms speak of her as “the old dame.” Doubtless to that raw boy she seemed ancient as the hills, but resolutely she cherished and conserved what had once been great beauty, and from that excellence nothing and no one must be allowed to detract. Not for nothing did she choose for her intimate maid someone plain and pockmarked, surrounding herself with dull and ordinary faces that caused her own luster to glow more brightly.

At the door of Adelais’s hall he asked for audience, and the woman Gerta came out to him haughtily, protective of her mistress’s privacy and assertive of her own office. He had sent in no name, and at sight of him she checked, none too pleased to see one of the Benedictines from Shrewsbury back again so soon, and so unaccountably.

“My lady is not disposed to see visitors. What’s your business, that you need trouble her with it? If you need lodging and food, my lord Audemar’s steward will take care of it.”

“My business,” said Cadfael, “is with the lady Adelais only, and concerns no one beside. Tell her that Brother Cadfael is here again, and that he comes from the abbey of Farewell, and asks to have some talk with her. That she shuns visitors I believe. But I think she will not refuse me.”

She was not so bold that she dared take it upon herself to deny him, though she went with a toss of her head and a disdainful glance, and would have been glad to bring back a dismissive answer. It was plain by the sour look on her. face when she emerged from the solar that she was denied that pleasure.

“My lady bids you in,” she said coldly, and opened the door wide for him to pass by her and enter the chamber. And no doubt she hoped to linger and be privy to whatever passed, but favor did not extend so far.

“Leave us,” said the voice of Adelais de Clary, from deep shadow under a shuttered window. “And close the door between.”

She had no seemly woman’s occupation for her hands this time, no pretense at embroidering or spinning, she merely sat in her great chair in semidarkness, motionless, her hands spread along the arms and gripping the carved lion heads in which they terminated. She did not move as Cadfael came in, she was neither surprised nor disturbed. Her deep eyes burned upon him without wonder and, he thought, without regret. It was almost as though she had been waiting for him.

“Where have you left Haluin?” she asked.

“At the abbey of Farewell,” said Cadfael.

She was silent for a moment, brooding upon him with a still face and glowing eyes, with an intensity he felt as a vibration upon the air, before ever his eyes had grown accustomed to the dim light, and watched her lineaments grow gradually out of darkness, the chosen darkness in which she had incarcerated herself. Then she said with harsh deliberation, “I shall never see him again.”

“No, you will never see him again. When this is done, we are going home.”

“But you,” she said, “yes, I have had it in mind all this time that you would be back. Sooner or later, you would be back. As well, perhaps! Things have gone far beyond my reckoning now. Well, say what you have come to say. I would as lief be silent.”

“That you cannot do,” said Cadfael. “It is your story.”

“Then be my chronicler. Tell it! Remind me! Let me hear how it will sound in my confessor’s ears, if any priest takes my confession ever again.” She stretched out one long hand suddenly, waving him imperiously to a seat, but he remained standing where he could see her most clearly, and she made no move to evade his eyes, and no concessions to the fixity of his regard. Her beautiful, proud face was composed and mute, admitting nothing, denying nothing. Only the burning of her dark eyes in their deep settings was eloquent, and even that in a language he could not quite translate.

“You know all too well what you did, all those years ago,” said Cadfael. “You executed a fearful punishment upon Haluin for daring to love your daughter and getting her with child. You pursued him even into the cloister where your enmity had driven him - all too soon, but the young are quick to despair. You forced him to provide you with the means of abortion, and you sent him word, afterward, that it had killed both mother and child. That awful guilt you have visited upon him all these years, to be his torment lifelong. Did you speak?”

“No,” she said. “Go on! You have barely begun.”

“True, I have barely begun. That draught of hyssop and fleur-de-lis that you got from him - it never was used. Its purpose was only to poison him, it did no harm to any other. What did you do with it? Pour it away into the ground? No, long before ever you demanded the herbs of him, as soon as you had driven him out of your house, I daresay, you had hustled Bertrade away here to Elford, and married her to Edric Vivers. It must have been so. certainly it was done in time to give her child, when it was born, a credible if unlikely father. No doubt the old man prided himself on still being potent enough to get a child. Why should anyone question the birth date, since you had acted so quickly?”

She had not stirred or flinched, her eyes never left his face, admitting nothing, denying nothing.

“Were you never afraid,” he asked, “that someone, somehow, should let fall within reach even of the cloister that Bertrade de Clary was wife to Edric Vivers, and not safely in her grave? That she had borne her old husband a daughter? It needed only a chance traveler with a gossiping tongue.”

“There was no such risk,” she said simply. “What contact was there ever between Shrewsbury and Hales? None, until he suffered his fall and conceived his pilgrimage. Much less likely there should ever be dealings with manors in another shire. There was no such risk.”

“Well, let us continue. You took her away and gave her to a husband. The child was born. So much mercy at least you had on the girl - why none for him? Why such bitter and vindictive hate, that you should conceive so terrible a revenge? Not for your daughter’s wrongs, no! Why should he not have been considered a suitable match for her in the first place? He came of good family, he was heir to a fine manor, if he had not taken the cowl. What was it you held so much against him? You were a beautiful woman, accustomed to admiration and homage. Your lord was in Palestine. And I well remember Haluin as he first came to me, eighteen years old, not yet tonsured. I saw him as you had been seeing him for some few years in your celibate solitude - he was comely... “

He let it rest there, for her long, resolute lips had parted on deliberate affirmation at last. She had listened to him unwaveringly, making no effort to halt him, and no complaint. Now she responded.

“Too comely!” she said. “I was not used to being denied, I did not even know how to sue. And he was too innocent to read me aright. How such children offend without offense! So if I could not have him,” she said starkly, “she should not. No woman ever should, but not she of all women.”

It was said, she let it stand, adding nothing in extenuation, and having said it, she sat contemplating it, seeing again as in another woman what she could now no longer feel with the same intensity, the longing and the anger.

“There is more,” said Cadfael, “much more. There is the matter of your woman Edgytha. Edgytha was the one trusted confidante you needed, the one who knew the truth. It was she who was sent to Vivers with Bertrade. Utterly loyal and devoted to you, she kept your secret and abetted your revenge all these years. And you trusted in her to keep it forever. So all was well for you, until Roscelin and Helisende grew up, and came to love each other no longer as playmates, but as man and woman. Knowing but forgetting that the world would hold such a love as poisoned, guilty, forbidden by the church. When the secret became a barrier between them, where no barrier need have been, when Roscelin was banished to Elford, and marriage with de Perronet threatened a final separation, then Edgytha could bear it no longer. She came running here in the night - not to Roscelin, but to you! To beg you to tell the truth at last, or to give her leave to tell it for you.”

“I have wondered,” said Adelais, “how she knew that I was here within her reach.”

“She knew because I told her. All unwitting I sent her out that night to plead with you to lift the shadow from two innocent children. By merest chance it was mentioned that here in Elford we had spoken with you. I sent her running to you and to her death, as it was Haluin who caused you to come here, in haste to ward him off from any dangerous discovery. We have been the instruments of your undoing, who never wished you anything but well. Now you had better consider what is left to you that can be saved.”

“Go on!” she said harshly. “You have not finished yet.”

“No, not yet. So Edgytha came to plead with you to do right. And you refused her! You sent her running back to Vivers in despair. And what befell her on the way you know.”

She did not deny it. Her face was bleak and set, but her eyes never wavered.

“Would she have come out with the truth, even against your prohibition? Neither you nor I will ever know the answer to that. But someone equally loyal to you overheard enough to understand the threat to you if she did. Someone feared her, followed and silenced her. Oh, not you! You had other tools to use. But did you speak a word in their ears?”

“No!” said Adelais. “That I never did! Unless my face spoke for me. And if it did, it lied. I never would have harmed her.”

“I believe you. But there are those who made certain she should never say a word that could harm you. Your lord’s men once, yours now, yours to the heart, yours to the death, father and son alike. Which of them was it followed her? Lothair or Luc? Either one of them would die for you without question, and without question one of them has killed for you. And they are gone from here. Yesterday, on some errand of yours, very early! Back to Hales? No, I doubt that, it is not far enough. How distant is your son’s remotest manor?”

“You will not find them,” said Adelais with certainty. “As for which of them did the thing I might have prevented, I do not know, I want never to know. I stopped their mouths when they would have spoken. To what end? That guilt, like all the rest, is mine alone, I will not cede any scruple of it. Yes. I sent them away. They will not pay my debts for me. Burying Edgytha with reverence is poor atonement. Confession, penance, even absolution cannot restore a life.”

“There is one amend that can still be made,” said Cadfael. “Moreover, I think a price has been exacted from you, no less than from Haluin, all these years. Do not forget that I saw your face when he presented his ruined body before you. I heard your voice as you cried out to him: ‘What have they done to you!’ All that you did to him you did also to yourself, and once done, it could not be undone. Now you may be free of it, if you choose to deliver yourself.”

“Go on!” said Adelais, though she knew well enough what was to come. He recognized it by the composure with which she had borne herself throughout. Surely she had been waiting here in her half-lit room for the finger of God to point.

“Helisende is not Edric’s daughter, but Haluin’s. There is not a drop of Vivers blood in her veins. There is nothing to stand in the way if she wishes to marry Roscelin. Whether those two would do well to marry, who knows? But at least the shadow of incestuous affection can and must be lifted from them. The truth must out, since it is out already at Farewell. Haluin and Bertrade are there together, making their peace, making each the other’s peace, and Helisende their child is with them, and the truth is already out of its grave.”

She knew, she had known ever since the old woman’s death, that it must come to that at last, and if she had deliberately averted her eyes and refused to acknowledge it, she could no longer do so. Nor was she the woman to delegate a hard thing to others, once her mind was made up, nor to do things by halves, whether for good or ill.

He would not prompt her. He drew back from her to leave her space and time, and stood apart, watching her disciplined stillness, and measuring in his mind the bitter toll of eighteen years of silence, of pitilessly contained hate and love. The first words he had heard from her now, even at this extreme, had been of Haluin, and still he heard the vibration of pain in her voice as she cried aloud: “What have they done to you?”

Adelais got up abruptly from her chair and crossed with long, fierce steps to the window, to fling back the shutter and let in air and light and cold. She stood for a while looking out at the quiet court, and the pale sky dappled with little clouds, and the green gauze veiling the branches of the trees beyond the enclave wall. When she turned to him again he saw her face in full, clear light, and saw as in a dual vision both her imperishable beauty and the dust time had cast upon it, the taut lines of her long throat fallen slack, the grey of ashes in her coiled black hair, the lines that had gathered about mouth and eyes, the net of fine veins marring cheeks which had once been smooth ivory. And she was strong, she would not lightly relinquish her hold of the world and go gently out of it. She would live long, and rage against the relentless assault of old age until death at once defeated and released her. By her very nature Adelais’s penance was assured.

“No!” she said with abrupt, imperious authority, as though he had advanced some suggestion with which she was in absolute disagreement. “No, I want no advocate, there shall no man rid me of any part of what is mine. What now needs to be told, I will tell. No other! Whether it ever would have been told, if you had never come near me - you with your hand forever at Haluin’s elbow, and your temperate eyes that I could never read - do I know? Do you? That is of no account now. What is left to be done, I will do.”

“Command me to go,” said Cadfael, “and I will go. You do not need me.”

“Not as advocate, no. As witness, perhaps! Why should you be cheated of the ending? Yes!” she said, glittering, “you shall ride with me, and see it ended. I owe you a fulfillment as I owe God a death.”

He rode with her, as she had decreed. Why not? He had to return to Farewell, and by way of Vivers was as good a road as any. And once she had resolved upon action there could be no delay and no denial.

She rode astride, booted and spurred like a man, she who in the common progressions of her recent years had been content to go decorously pillion behind a groom, as was fitting for a dame of her age and dignity. She rode with the lordly confidence of a man, erect and easy in the saddle, her bridle hand held low. And she rode fast but steadily, advancing upon her losses as vigorously as upon her gains.

Cadfael, riding at her side, could not but wonder whether she still felt tempted to hold back some part of the truth, to cover herself from the last betrayal. But the smoldering calm of her face spoke against it. There was no evasion, no appeal, no excuse. What she had done she had done, and would as starkly declare. And if she repented of it, only God would ever know.