The Confession of Brother Haluin

Chapter Two

Whatever the risks of moving him, to leave him where he was for a moment longer than was necessary would have been to consent to and abet the death that already had a fast hold on him. In mute and purposeful haste they lifted aside the fallen planks and dug out with their hands the knife-edged slates that crushed and lacerated his feet and ankles into a pulp of blood and bone. He was far gone from them, and felt nothing that was done to him as they eased him out of the icy bed of the drain enough to get slings under him, and hoisted him onto the litter. In mourne procession they bore him out through the darkened gardens to the infirmary, where Brother Edmund had prepared a bed for him in a small cell apart from the old and infirm who spent their last years there.

“He cannot live,” said Edmund, looking down at the remote and pallid face.

So Cadfael thought, too. So did they all. But still there was breath in him, even if it was a harsh, groaning breath that spoke of head injuries perhaps past mending; and they went to work on him as one who could and must live, even against their own virtual certainty that he could not. With infinite, wincing care they stripped him of his icy garments, and padded him round with blankets wrapped about heated stones, while Cadfael went over him gently for broken bones, and set and bound the left forearm that grated as he handled it, and still brought never a flicker to the motionless face. He felt carefully about Haluin’s head before cleaning and dressing the bleeding wound, but could not determine whether the skull was fractured. The bitter, snoring breathing indicated that it was, but he could not be sure. As for the broken feet and ankles, Cadfael labored over them for a long time after they had covered the rest of Brother Haluin with warmed brychans against simple death of cold, his body laid straight and shored securely every way to guard against the shock and pain of movement should he regain his senses. As no one believed he would, unless it was an obstinate, secret remnant of belief that caused them so to exert themselves to nourish even the failing spark.

“He will never walk again,” said Brother Edmund, shuddering at the shattered feet Cadfael was laboriously bathing.

“Never without aid,” Cadfael agreed somberly. “Never on these.” But for all that, he went on patiently putting together again, as best he could, the mangled remains.

Long, narrow, elegant feet Brother Haluin had had, in keeping with his slender build. The deep and savage cuts the slates had made penetrated to the bone in places, here and there had splintered the bone. It took a long time to clean away the bloody fragments, and bind up each foot at least into its human shape, and encase it in a hastily improvised cradle of felt, well padded within, to hold it still and let it heal as near as possible to what it had once been. If, of course, there was to be healing.

And all the while, Brother Haluin lay snoring painfully and oblivious of all that was done to him, very far sunk beneath the lights and shadows of the world, until even his breathing subsided gradually into a there shallow whisper, no more than the stirring of a solitary leaf in a scarcely perceptible breeze, and they thought that he was gone. But the leaf continued to stir, however faintly.

“If he comes to himself, even for a moment, call me at once,” said Abbot Radulfus, and left them to their watch.

Brother Edmund was gone to get some sleep. Cadfael shared the night watch with Brother Rhun, newest and youngest among the choir monks. One on either side the bed, they stared steadily upon the unbroken sleep beyond sleep of a body anointed and blessed and armed for death.

It was many years since Haluin had passed out of Cadfael’s care to go to manual labor in the Gaye. Cadfael reexamined with deep attention linaments he had almost forgotten in their early detail, and found now both changed and poignantly familiar. Not a big man, Brother Haluin, but somewhat taller than the middle height, with long, fine, shapely bones, and more sinew and less flesh on them now than when first he came into the cloister, a boy still short of his full growth, and just hardening into manhood. Thirty-five or thirty-six he must be now, barely eighteen then, with the softness and bloom still on him. His face was a long oval, the bones of cheek and jaw strong and clear, the thin, arched brows almost black, shades darker than the mane of crisp brown hair he had sacrificed to the tonsure. The face upturned now from the pillow was blanched to a clay-white pallor, the hollows of the cheeks and deep pits of the closed eyes blue as shadows in the snow, and round the drawn lips the same livid blueness was gathering even as they watched. In the small hours of the night, when the life sinks to its frailest, he would end or mend.

Across the bed Brother Rhun kneeled, attentive, unintimidated by another’s death any more than he would be, someday, by his own. Even in the dimness of this small, stony room Rhun’s radiant fairness, his face creamy with youth, his ring of flaxen hair and aquamarine eyes, diffused a lambent brightness. Only someone of Rhun’s virgin certainty could sit serenely by a deathbed, with such ardent loving-kindness and yet no taint of pity. Cadfael had seen other young creatures come to the cloister with something of the same charmed faith, only to see it threatened, dulled and corroded gradually by the sheer burden of being human under the erosion of the years. That would never happen to Rhun. Saint Winifred, who had bestowed on him the physical perfection he had lacked, would not suffer the gift to be marred by any maiming of his spirit.

The night passed slowly, with no perceptible change in Brother Haluin’s unrelenting stillness. It was towards dawn when at last Rhun said softly, “Look, he is stirring!”

The faintest quiver had passed over the livid face, the dark brows drew together, the eyelids tightened with the first distant awareness of pain, the lips lengthened in a brief grimace of stress and alarm. They waited for what seemed a long while, unable to do more than wipe the moist forehead, and the trickle of spittle that oozed from the corner of the drawn mouth.

In the first dim, reflected snowlight before dawn Brother Haluin opened his eyes, onyx black in their blue hollows, and moved his lips to emit a hair-fine thread of a voice that Rhun had to stoop his young, sharp ear to catch and interpret.

“Confession...” said the whisper from the threshold between life and death, and for a while that was all.

“Go and bring Father Abbot,” said Cadfael.

Rhun departed silently and swiftly. Haluin lay gathering his senses, and by the growing clarity and sharpening focus of his eyes he knew where he was and who sat beside him, and was mustering what life and wit remained to him for a purpose. Cadfael saw the quickening of pain in the strained whiteness of mouth and jaw, and made to trickle a little of the draught of poppies between his patient’s lips, but Haluin kept them tightly clenched and turned his head away. He wanted nothing to dull or hamper his senses, not yet, not until he had got out of him what he had to say.

“Father Abbot is coming,” said Cadfael, close to the pillow. “Wait, and speak but once.”

Abbot Radulfus was at the door by then, stooping under the low lintel. He took the stool Rhun had vacated, and leaned down to the injured man. Rhun had remained without, ready to run errands if he should be needed, and had drawn the door closed between. Cadfael rose to withdraw likewise, and suddenly yellow sparks of anxiety flared in Haluin’s hollow eyes, and a brief convulsion went through his body and fetched a moan of pain, as though he had willed to lift a hand to arrest Cadfael’s going, but could not do it. The abbot leaned closer, to be seen as well as heard.

“I am here, my son. I am listening. What is it troubles you?”

Haluin drew in breath, hoarding it to have a voice to speak with. “I have sins... ” he said, “never told.” The words came slowly and with much labor, but clearly. “One against Cadfael... Long past, never confessed... “

The abbot looked up at Cadfael across the bed. “Stay! He wishes it.” And to Haluin, touching the lax hand that was too weak to be lifted: “Speak as you can, we shall be listening. Spare many words, we can read between.”

“My vows,” said the thread-fine voice remotely. “Impure not out of devotion, but Despair!”

“Many have entered for wrong reasons,” said the abbot, “and remained for the right ones. Certainly in the four years of my abbacy here I have found no fault in your true service. On this head have no fear. God may have brought you into the cloister roundabout for his own good reasons.”

“I served de Clary at Hales,” said the thin voice. “Better, his lady - he being in the Holy Land then. His daughter...” A long silence while doggedly and patiently he renewed his endurance to deliver more and worse. “I loved her and was loved. But the mother my suit was not welcome. What was forbidden us we took... “

Another and longer silence. The blue, sunken lids were lowered for a moment over the burning eyes. “We lay together,” he said clearly. “That sin I did confess, but never named her. The lady cast me out. Out of despair I came here at least to do no more harm. And the worst harm yet to come!”

The abbot closed his hand firmly on the nerveless hand at Haluin’s side, to hold him fast by the grip, for the face on the pillow had sunk into a mask of clay, and a long shudder passed through the bruised and broken body, and left it tensed and chill to the touch.

“Rest!” said Radulfus, close to the sufferer’s ear. “Take ease! God hears even what is not said.”

It seemed to Cadfael, watching, that Haluin’s hand responded, however feeble its hold. He brought the drink of wine and herbs with which he had been moistening the patient’s mouth while he lay senseless, and trickled a few drops between the pained lips, and for the first time the offering was accepted, and the strings of the lean throat made the effort to swallow. His time was not yet. Whatever more he might have to heave off his heart, there was yet time for it. They fed him sips of wine, and watched the clay of his features again cohere into flesh, however pale and feeble. This time, when he came back to them, it was very faintly and with eyes still closed.

“Father ?” questioned the remote voice fearfully.

“I am here. I will not leave you.”

“Her mother came... I did not know till then Bertrade was with child! The lady was in terror of her lord’s anger when he came home. I served then with Brother Cadfael, I had learned... I knew the herbs... I stole and gave her hyssop, fleur-de-lis... Cadfael knows better uses for them!”

Yes, better by far! But what could help a badly congested chest and a killing cough, in small doses, or fight off the jaundice that turned a man yellow, could also put an end to the carrying of a child, in an obscene misuse abhorrent to the Church and perilous even to the woman it was meant to deliver. From fear of an angry father, fear of shame before the world, fear of marriage prospects ruined and family feuds inflamed. Had the girl’s mother entreated him, or had he persuaded her? Years of remorse and self-punishment had not exorcised the horror that still wrung his flesh and contorted his visage.

“They died,” he said, harsh and loud with pain. “My love and the child, both. Her mother sent me word - dead and buried. A fever, they gave it out. Dead of a fever - nothing more to fear. My sin, my most grievous sin... God knows I am sorry!”

“Where true penitence is,” said Abbot Radulfus, “God does surely know. Well, this grief is told. Have you done, or is there more yet to tell?”

“I have done,” said Brother Haluin. “But to beg pardon. I ask it of God - and of Cadfael, that I abused his trust and his art. And of the lady of Hales, for the great grief I brought upon her.” Now that it was out he had better control of voice and words, the crippling tension was gone from his tongue, and weak though his utterance was, it was lucid and resigned. “I would die cleansed and forgiven,” he said.

“Brother Cadfael will speak on his own behalf,” said the abbot. “For God, I will speak as He give me grace.”

“I forgive freely,” said Cadfael, choosing words with more than his accustomed care, “whatever offense was done against my craft under great stress of mind. And that the means and the knowledge were there to tempt you, and I not there to dissuade, this I take to myself as much as ever I can charge them to you. I wish you peace!”

What Abbot Radulfus had to say upon God’s behalf took longer. There were some among the brothers, Cadfael thought, who would have been startled and incredulous if they could have heard, at finding their abbot’s formidable austerity could also hold so much measured and authoritative tenderness. A lightened conscience and a clean death were what Haluin desired. It was too late to exact penance from a dying man, and deathbed comfort cannot be priced, only given freely.

“A broken and a contrite heart,” said Radulfus, “is the only sacrifice required of you, and will not be despised.” And he gave absolution and the solemn blessing, and so left the sickroom, beckoning Cadfael with him. On Haluin’s face the ease of gratitude had darkened again into the indifference of exhaustion, and the fires were dead in eyes dulled and half closed between swoon and sleep.

In the outer room Rhun was waiting patiently, drawn somewhat aside to avoid hearing, even unwittingly, any word of that confession.

“Go in and sit with him,” said the abbot. “He may sleep now, there will be no ill dreams. If there should be any change in him, fetch Brother Edmund. And if Brother Cadfael should be needed, send to my lodging for him.”

In the paneled parlor in the abbot’s lodge they sat together, the only two people who would ever hear of the offense with which Haluin charged himself, or have the right in private to speak of his confession.

“I have been here only four years,” said Radulfus directly, “and know nothing of the circumstances in which Haluin came here. It seems one of his earliest duties here was to help you among the herbs, and there he acquired this knowledge he put to such ill use. Is it certain this draught he concocted could kill? Or may this truly have been a death from fever?”

“If the girl’s mother used it on her, she could hardly be mistaken,” said Cadfael ruefully. “Yes, I’ve known hyssop to kill. I was foolish to keep it among my stores, there are other herbs that could take its place. But in small doses, both herb and root, dried and powdered, are excellent for the yellow distemper, and useful with horehound against chest troubles, though the blue-flowered kind is milder and better for that. I’ve known women use it to procure abortion, in great doses that purge to the extreme. Small wonder if sometimes the poor girl dies.”

“And this was surely during his novitiate, for he cannot have been here long if this child was his, as he supposes. He can have been only a boy.”

“Barely eighteen, and the girl no more, if as old. It is some extenuation,” said Cadfael firmly, “if they were in the same household, seeing each other daily, of equal birth, for he comes of a good family, and as open to love as are most children. In fact,” said Cadfael, kindling, “what I wonder at is that his suit should have been rejected out of hand. He was an only son, there was a good manor would have been his if he had not taken vows. And he was a very pleasing youth, as I recall, lettered and gifted. Many a knight would have welcomed him as a match for his daughter.”

“It may be her father already had other plans for her,” said Radulfus. “He may have betrothed her to someone else in childhood. And her mother would hardly venture to countenance a match in her husband’s absence, if she went in such awe of him.”

“She need not, however, have rejected the boy utterly, if she had let him hope, he would have waited, surely, and not tried to force her hand by forestalling marriage. Though it may be I do him wrong there,” Cadfael relented. “It was not calculation, I fancy, that brought him into the girl’s bed, but too rash affection. Haluin would never make a schemer.”

“Well, for better or worse,” said Radulfus with a weary sigh, “it was done, and cannot be undone. He is not the first, and will not be the last young man to fall into that error, nor she the first nor the last poor child to suffer for it. At least she has kept her good name. Easy to see why he feared to confide, for her sake, even under the seal of confession. But it is long ago, eighteen years, his age when it befell. Let us at least secure him a peaceful ending.”

It was the general view that a peaceful ending was the best that could be hoped for for Brother Haluin, and that prayers for him ought not to presume to look towards any other outcome, all the more as his brief return to his senses rapidly lapsed again into a deeper unconsciousness, and for seven days, while the festival of the Nativity came and passed, he lay oblivious of the comings and goings of his brethren round his bed, ate nothing, uttered no sound but the hardly perceptible flutter of his breath. Yet that breath, however faint, was steady and even, and as often as drops of honeyed wine were presented to his lips, they were accepted, and the cords of his throat moved of themselves, docilely swallowing, while the broad, chilly brow and closed eyes never by the least quiver or contraction revealed awareness of what his body did.

“As if only his body is here,” said Brother Edmund, soberly pondering, “and his spirit gone elsewhere until the house is again furbished and clean and waiting to be lived in.”

A sound biblical analogy, Cadfael considered, for certainly Haluin had himself cast out the devils that inhabited him, and the dwelling they vacated might well lie empty for a while, all the more if there was to be that unlooked-for and improbable act of healing, after all. For however this prolonged withdrawal might resemble dying, Brother Haluin would not die. Then we had better keep a good watch, thought Cadfael, taking the parable to its fitting close, and make sure seven devils worse than the first never manage to get a foot in the door while he’s absent. And prayers for Haluin continued with unremitting fervor throughout the festivities of Christmas and the solemn opening of the new year.

The thaw was beginning by that time, and even then it was a slow thaw, wearing away each day, by slow degrees, the heavy wastes of snow from the great fall. The work on the roof was finished without further mishap, the scaffolding taken down, and the guest hall once again weatherproof. All that remained of the great upheaval was this still and silent witness in his isolated bed in the infirmary, declining either to live or die.

Then, in the night of the Epiphany, Brother Haluin opened his eyes and drew a long, slow breath like any other man awaking without alarm, and cast his wondering gaze round the narrow room until it rested upon Brother Cadfael, mute and attentive on the stool beside him.

“I am thirsty,” said Haluin trustingly, like a child, and lay passive on Cadfael’s arm to drink.

They half expected him to sink again into his unconscious state, but he remained languid but aware all that day, and in the night his sleep was natural sleep, shallow but tranquil. After that he turned his face to life, and did not again look over his shoulder. Once risen from the semblance of death he came back to the territory of pain, and its signature was on his drawn brow and set lips, but he bore it without complaint. His broken arm had knitted while he lay ignorant of his injuries, and caused him only the irritating aches of healing wounds, and it seemed both to Cadfael and Edmund, after a day or two of keeping close watch on him, that whatever had been shaken out of place within his head had healed as the outer wound had healed, medicined by stillness and repose. For his mind was clear. He remembered the icy roof, he remembered his fall, and once when he was alone with Cadfael he showed that he recalled very clearly his confession, for he said after a long while of silent thought:

“I did shamefully by you, long ago, now you tend and medicine me, and I have made no amends.”

“I’ve asked none,” said Cadfael equably, and began with patient care to unfold the wrappings from one maimed foot, to renew the dressings he had been replacing night and morning all this time.

“But I need to pay all that is due. How else can I be clean?”

“You have made full confession,” said Cadfael reasonably. “You have received absolution from Father Abbot himself, beware of asking more.”

“But I have done no penance. Absolution so cheaply won leaves me still a debtor,” said Haluin heavily.

Cadfael had laid bare the left foot, the worse mangled of the pair. The surface cuts and wounds had healed over, but what had happened to the labyrinth of small bones within could never be put right. They had fused into a misshapen clot, twisted and scarred, discolored in angry dark reds and purples. Yet the seamed skin had knitted and covered all.

“If you have debts,” said Cadfael bluntly, “they bid fair to be paid in pain to the day you die. You see this? You will never set this firmly to ground again. I doubt if you will ever walk again.”

“Yes.” said Haluin, staring out through the narrow chink of the window at the darkening wintry sky, “yes, I shall walk. I will walk. If God allows, I will go on my own feet again, though I must borrow crutches to help them bear me. And if Father Abbot gives me his countenance, when I have learned to use what props are left to me I will go myself to Hales, to beg forgiveness of Adelais de Clary, and keep a night’s vigil at Bertrade’s tomb.”

In his own mind Cadfael doubted if either the dead or the living would take any great comfort from Haluin’s fondly resolved atonement, or still be nursing any profound recollection of him, after eighteen years. But if the pious intent gave the lad courage and determination to live and labor and be fruitful again, why discourage him? So all he said was:

“Well, let’s first mend all that can be mended, and put back some of that lost blood into you, for you’ll get no leave to go anywhere as you are now.” And contemplating the right foot, which at least still bore some resemblance to a human foot, and had a perceptible and undamaged ankle-bone, he went on thoughtfully: “We might make some sort of thick felt boots for you, well padded within. You might get one foot to the ground yet, though you’ll need the crutches. Not yet - not yet, nor for weeks yet, more likely months. But we’ll take your measure, and see what we can fashion between us.”

On reflection, Cadfael felt that it might be wise to warn Abbot Radulfus of the expiation Brother Haluin had in mind, and did so after chapter, in the privacy of the abbot’s parlor.

“Once he had heaved the load off his heart,” said Cadfael simply, “he would have died content if it had been his fortune to die. But he is going to live. His mind is clear, his will is strong, and if his body is meager it’s wiry enough, and now that he sees a life ahead of him he’ll not be content to creep out of his sins by way of absolution without penance. If he was of a lighter mind, and could be coaxed to forget this resolve as he gets well, for my part I would not blame him, I’d be glad of it. But penitence without penance will never be enough for Haluin. I’ll hold him back as long as I can, but trust me, we shall hear of this again, as soon as he feels able to attempt it.”

“I can hardly frown upon so fitting a wish,” said the abbot reasonably, “but I can forbid it until he is fit to undertake it. If it will give him peace of mind I have no right to stand in his way. It may also be of some belated comfort to this unhappy lady whose daughter died so wretchedly. I am not familiar,” said Radulfus, pondering the proposed pilgrimage warily, “with this manor of Hales, though I have heard the name of de Clary. Do you know where it lies?”

“Towards the eastern edge of the shire, Father, it must be a matter of twenty-five miles or so from Shrewsbury.”

“And this lord who was absent in the Holy Land - he can have been told nothing of the true manner of his daughter’s death, if his lady went in such awe of him. It is many years past, but if he is still living this visit must not take place. It would be a very ill thing for Brother Haluin to salve his own soul by bringing further trouble and danger upon the lady of Hales. Whatever her errors, she has suffered for them.”

“For all I know, Father,” Cadfael admitted, “they may both be dead some years since. I saw the place once, on the way from Lichfield on an errand for Abbot Heribert, but I know nothing of the household of de Clary.”

“Hugh Beringar will know,” said the abbot confidently. “He has all the nobility of the shire at his finger ends. When he returns from Winchester we may ask him. There’s no haste. Even if Haluin must have his penance, it cannot be yet. He is not yet out of his bed.”