The Confession of Brother Haluin (15 page)

“Helisende
has never considered that refuge?” asked Cadfael.

“Not
she, God forbid she ever should! My girl was never of that mind. For those who
take to it kindly it may be bliss, but for those who are pressed into it, it
must be a hell on earth! If you’ll pardon my tongue, Brothers! You know your
own vocation best, and no doubt you took the cowl for the best of reasons, but Helisende…
No, I would not want that for her. Better by far this Perronet lad, if there
has to be a second-best,” She had begun to gather up the platters and dishes
they had emptied, and took up the pitcher to refill their cups. “I did hear say
that you’ve been at Elford, and seen Roscelin there. Is that true?”

“Yes,”
said Cadfael, “we left Elford only yesterday. We did, by chance, have some
brief talk with the young man, but never knew until this morning that he came
from this neighboring manor of Vivers.”

“And
how did he look?” she asked longingly. “Is he well? Was he down in spirits? I
have not seen him for a month or more, and I know how ill he took it that he
should be sent away like some offending page from his own home, when he had
done no wrong, nor thought none. As good a lad as ever stepped! What had he to
say?”

“Why,
he was in excellent health at any rate,” said Cadfael cautiously, “and very
fair spirits, considering all. It’s true he did complain of being banished, and
was very ill-content where he is. Naturally he said little about the
circumstances, seeing we were chance comers and unknown to him, and I daresay
he would have said no more to anyone else who had as little business in the
matter. But he did say he had given his word to abide by his father’s orders,
and wait for leave before he’d venture home.”

“But
he does not know,” she said, between anger and helplessness, “what’s being
planned here. Oh, he’ll get leave to come home fast enough as soon as Helisende
is out of the house, and far away south on her way to that young man’s manor.
And what a homecoming that will be for the poor lad! Shame to deal so behind
his back!”

“They
think it for the best,” said Haluin, pale and moved. “Even for his best
interests, they believe. And this matter is hard even for them. If they are
mistaken in hiding this marriage from him until it is over, surely they may be
forgiven.”

“There
are those,” said Edgytha darkly, “who never will be.” She picked up her wooden
tray, and the keys at her girdle chimed faintly as she moved towards the door.
“I wish this had been honestly done. I wish he had been told. Whether he could
ever have her or not, he had a right to know, and to give his blessing or his
ban. How was it you were brought in touch with him there, to know the half of
his name but not the whole?”

“It
was the lady mentioned his name,” said Cadfael, “when de Clary came in from
riding, and the young man was with him. Roscelin, she called him. It was later
we spoke with him. He saw my friend here stiff from a night on his knees, and
came to lend him an arm to lean on.”

“So
he would!” she said, warming. “To any one he saw in need. The lady, you say?
Audemar’s lady?”

“No,
our errand was not to him, we never saw his wife and children. No, this was his
mother, Adelais de Clary.”

The
dishes jangled momentarily on Edgytha’s tray. With care she balanced it on one
hand, and reached to the latch of the door. “She is there? There at Elford?”

“She
is. Or she was when we left, yesterday, and with the snow coming so shortly
after, she is surely there still.”

“She
visits very rarely,” said Edgytha, shrugging. “They say there’s small love lost
between her and her son’s wife. That’s no uncommon thing, either, I suppose, so
they’re just as well apart.” She nudged the door open expertly with an elbow,
and swung the large tray through the doorway edgewise. “Do you hear the horses,
outside there? That will be Jean de Perronet’s party riding in.”

There
was nothing clandestine or secretive, certainly, about Jean de Perronet’s
arrival, though nothing ceremonious or showy, either. He came with one body
servant and two grooms, and with two led horses for the bride and her
attendant, and packhorses for the baggage. The entire entourage was practical
and efficient, and de Perronet himself went very plainly, without flourishes in
his dress or his manner, though Cadfael noted with appreciation the quality of
his horseflesh and harness. This young man knew where to spend his money, and
where to spare.

They
had gone out, Haluin and Cadfael together, to watch the guests dismount and
unload. The afternoon air was again clearing towards a night frost, but there
were scudding clouds in the upper air, and might be further flurries of snow in
the dark hours. The travelers would be well content to be under a sound roof
and out of the chilly wind.

De
Perronet dismounted from his flecked roan horse before the door of the hall,
and Cenred came striding down the steps to meet him and embrace him, and lead
him by the hand up to the doorway, where the lady Emma waited to welcome him as
warmly. Helisende, Cadfael noted, did not appear. At supper at the high table
she would have no choice but to attend, but at this stage it was fitting that
the honors of the house should rest with her brother and his wife, the guardians
of her person and the disposers of her marriage. Host, hostess, and guest
vanished within the great hall. Cenred’s servants and de Perronet’s grooms
unloaded baggage and stabled horses, and went about the business so practically
that within a matter of minutes the courtyard was empty.

So
that was the bridegroom! Cadfael stood considering what he had seen, and so far
could find no fault in it except that it was, as Edgytha had said, a
second-best. And a second-best was all that boy would gain. A young man of
perhaps twenty-five or twenty-six, already accustomed to authority and
responsibility by his bearing, and well capable of handling them. His men,
these favored ones at least, were easy with him. He knew his business as they
knew theirs, and there was an air of mutual respect between them. Moreover, he
was a good-looking young man, tall and shapely, of open, amiable countenance,
and, by the look of him, in the happiest possible humor on the eve of his
marriage. Cenred had done his best for his young sister, and his best promised
to turn out very well. A pity it could not have been what her heart desired.

“But
what else could he have done?” said Haluin, betraying in few words the depth of
his own dismay and doubt.

Chapter Eight

IN
THE LATE AFTERNOON Cenred sent his steward to ask the two Benedictine brothers
if they felt able to join his household at supper in hall, or if Father Haluin
preferred to continue his rest in retirement, and be waited on in his own
chamber. Haluin, who had withdrawn into a dark, inward meditation, would
certainly rather have remained apart, but felt it discourteous to absent
himself any longer, and made the effort to emerge from his anxious silence, and
do honor to the company at the high table. They had given him a place close to
the bridal pair, by virtue of his office as the priest who was to marry them.
Cadfael, seated a little apart, had them all in view. And below, in the body of
the hall, the whole household assembled in its due ranks, under the glow of the
torches.

It
occurred to Cadfael, watching Haluin’s grave face, that this would be the first
time his friend had ever been called upon to be go-between for God. It was true
that the young brothers were being encouraged to aim at orders, more now than
ever in the past, but many of them would be, as Haluin was, priests without
pastoral cares, who in a long life would probably never christen, never marry,
never bury, never ordain others to follow them in the same sheltered paths. It
is a terrible responsibility, thought Cadfael, who had never aspired to
ordination, to have the grace of God committed to a man’s hands, to be
privileged and burdened to play a part in other people’s lives, to promise them
salvation in baptism, to lock their lives together in matrimony, to hold the
key to purgatory at their departing. If I have meddled, he thought devoutly,
and God knows I have, when need was and there was no better man to attempt it,
at least I have meddled only as a fellow sinner, tramping the same road, not as
a viscount of heaven, stooping to raise up. Now Haluin faces this same terrible
demand, and no wonder if he is afraid.

He
looked along the array of faces which Haluin, being so close beside them, could
see only as overlapping profiles, each briefly seen as the ripple of movement
flowed along the high table, and lit deceptively by the falling glow of the
torches. Cenred’s broad, open, blunt-featured countenance a little drawn and
taut with strain, but resolutely jovial, his wife presiding over the table with
determined amiability and a somewhat anxious smile, de Perronet in happy
innocence, shining with evident pleasure at having Helisende seated beside him
and all but his already. And the girl, pale and quiet and resolutely gracious
at his side, doing her gallant best to respond to his brightness, since this
grief was no fault of his, and she had acknowledged that he deserved better.
Seeing them thus together, there was no question of the man’s attachment, and
if he missed the like radiance in her, perhaps he accepted that as the common ground
on which marriages begin, and was ready and willing to be patient until the bud
came to flower.

This
was the first time Haluin had seen the girl since she had startled him to his
feet here in the hall, and brought him down in that crashing fall, half dazed
as he already was by the stinging wind and the blinding snow. And this stiff
young figure in her best, gilded by the torchlight, might have been a stranger,
never before seen. He looked at her, when chance brought her profile into clear
view, with doubt and bewilderment, burdened by a responsibility new to him, and
heavy to bear.

It
was late when the women withdrew from the high table, leaving the men to their
wine, though they would not sit here in the hall much longer. Haluin looked
round to catch Cadfael’s eye, agreeing in a glance that it was time for them to
leave host and guest together, and Haluin was already reaching for his crutches
and bracing himself for the effort of rising when Emma came in again from the
solar with a flustered step and an anxious face, a young maidservant at her
heels.

“Cenred,
here’s something strange happened! Edgytha is gone out and has not returned,
and now it’s beginning to snow again, and where should she be going, thus in
the night? I sent for her to attend me to bed, as always, and she’s nowhere to
be found, and now Madlyn here says that she went out hours ago, as soon as it
was dusk.”

Cenred
was slow to turn his mind from his hospitable duty towards his guest to an
apparently small domestic problem, surely the women’s business rather than his.

“Why,
Edgytha may surely go out if she so chooses,” he said good-humoredly,” and will
come back when she chooses no less. She’s a free woman, knows her own mind, and
can be trusted to mind her duties. If she’s once missing when she’s called for,
that’s no great matter. Why should you worry over it?”

“But
when does she ever do so without saying? Never! And now it’s snowing again, and
she’s been gone four hours or more, if Madlyn says true. How if she’s come to
harm? She would not stay away so long of her own will. And you know how I value
her. I would not for the world that any harm should come to her.”

“No
more would I,” said Cenred warmly, “nor to any of my people. If she’s gone
astray we’ll look for her. But no need to fret before we know of any mishap.
Here, girl, speak up, what is it you know of the matter? You say she went out
some hours ago?”

“Sir,
so she did!” Madlyn came forward willingly, wide-eyed with half-pleasurable
excitement. “It was after we’d made all ready. I was coming in from the dairy,
and I saw her come forth from the kitchen with her cloak about her, and I said
to her that this was like to be a busy night, and she’d be missed, and she said
she would be back before she was called for. It was just beginning to get dark
then. I never thought she’d be gone so long.”

“And
did you not ask her where she was going?” demanded Cenred.

“I
did,” said the girl, “though it was little enough she was ever likely to tell
about her own business, and I should have known she’d make a sour answer if she
made any at all. But there’s no sense to be made of it. She said she was going
to find a cat,” said Madlyn in baffled innocence, “to put among the pigeons.”

If
it meant nothing to her, it had meaning for Cenred and for his wife, who
plainly heard it now for the first time. Emma’s startled gaze flew to her
husband’s face as he came abruptly to his feet. The look they exchanged Cadfael
could read as if he had the words ringing in his ears. He had been given clues
enough to make the reading easy. Edgytha was nurse to them both, indulged them,
loved them like her own, resents even their separation, whatever the church and
the ties of blood may say, and much more this marriage that makes the
separation final. She is gone to enlist help to prevent what she deplores, even
at this last moment. She is gone to tell Roscelin what is being done behind his
back. She is gone to Elford.