The Confession of Brother Haluin (9 page)

She
was still within his eyelids as he turned back into the hay hut, pricking
uneasily at his memory, urging, against all his dismissal of the possibility as
folly, that he had seen her before, and further, that if he would but admit it
he knew very well where.

But
whether that was true or not, and whatever it augured if it was, there was
nothing he could do about it. He shrugged it into the back of his mind, and
went in, to listen for the moment when Haluin should awake and have need of
him.

They
came through groves of trees into an expanse of level meadows, a little
bleached and grey as yet in the cold air, but fertile and well cultivated, a
rich little island in a shire otherwise somewhat derelict still after the harsh
pacification of fifty years back. There before them lay the sleek curves of the
River Tame, the steep-pitched roof of a mill, and the close cluster of the
houses of Elford, beyond the water.

In
the warm and welcoming hospitality of the clerics of Lichfield they had spent a
restful night, and received full directions as to the best road to Elford, and
with the first light of dawn they had set off on the last four miles or so of
this penitential journey. And here before them lay the goal of Haluin’s
pilgrimage, almost within reach, only an expanse of peaceful fields and a
wooden footbridge between him and his absolution. A fortunate place, prosperous
where much was impoverished, with not one mill by the waterside, but two, for
they could see the second one upstream, with ample meadowland, and rich soil
where the arable fields showed. A place that might well promise blessing and
peace of mind after labor and pain.

The
pale thread of the path led them forward, and the roofs of Elford rose before
them, circled with trees and bushes still naked and dark at this distant view,
not yet so far advanced in bud as to show the first faint, elusive smoke of
green. They crossed the bridge, the uneven planks causing Haluin to watch
carefully how he placed his crutches, and came into the track between the
houses. A neat village, with housewives and husbandmen going cheerfully and
confidently about their daily business, alert to strangers but civil and
welcoming to the Benedictine habit. They exchanged greetings along the way, and
Haluin, cheered and vindicated at the successful completion of his journey,
began to flush and brighten with pleasure at being offered this spontaneous
omen of acceptance and release.

No
need to ask how to reach the church, they had seen its low tower before they crossed
the bridge. It had been built since the Normans came, sturdy in grey stone,
with spacious churchyard very well stockaded for sanctuary at need, and full of
old and handsome trees. They entered under the round-arched portico, and came
into the familiar cool, echoing gloom of all stone-built churches, smelling
faintly of dust, and wax candles, and strongly and reassuringly of home, the
chosen abiding-place.

Haluin
had halted in the tiled silence of the nave to get his bearings. Here there was
no Lady Chapel to accommodate a patron’s tomb between the altars. The lords of
Elford must lie aside, built into the stones of the walls they had raised. The
red eye of light from the altar lamp showed them where the tomb lay, a great
table slab filling a niche in the right-hand wall. Some dead de Clary, perhaps
the first who came over with King William, and got his reward later, showed as
a sleeping figure in relief on the sealing stone. Haluin had started forward
towards it, only to check and draw back after the first echoing step, for there
was a woman on her knees beside the tomb.

They
saw her only as a shadowy figure, for the cloak she wore was dark grey like the
stone in this dim light, and they knew her for a woman and not a man because
the hood of the cloak was thrown back from her head, uncovering a white linen
coif and a gauze veil over it. They would have retired into the porch to let
her complete her prayers in peace, but she had heard the impact of the crutches
on the tiled floor, and turned her head sharply to look towards them. In a
single graceful, abrupt movement she rose to her feet, and coming towards them,
stepped into the light from a window, and showed them the proud, aging,
beautiful face of Adelais de Clary.

Chapter Five

“YOU?”
SHE SAID, staring, and turning her startled gaze from one face to the other,
seeking, it seemed, some logic in this unexpected visitation. Her voice was
neutral, neither welcoming nor repelling them. “I had not thought to see you
again so soon. Is there something more you have to ask of me, Haluin, that you
have followed me here? You have only to ask. I have said I forgive.”

“Madam,”
said Haluin, shaken and quivering from the apparition of his former mistress in
this unexpected place, “we have not followed you. Indeed I never thought to
find you here. For your forbearance I’m grateful, and I would not for the world
trouble you further. I have come here only in fulfillment of a vow I made. I
thought to spend a night in prayer at Hales, believing that my lady your
daughter must be buried there. But we heard from the priest that it is not so.
It’s here at Elford she lies, in the tomb of her grandsires. So I have
continued this far. And all I have to beg of you is your leave to keep my vigil
here through this coming night, in deliverance of what I have sworn. Then we
will depart, and trouble you no more.”

“I
will not deny,” she said, but with a softening voice, “that I shall be glad to
have you gone. No ill will! But this wound you have opened again for me I would
willingly swathe away out of sight until it heals. Your face is a contagion
that makes it open and bleed afresh. Do you think I should have taken horse and
ridden here so fast if you had not put that old grief in my mind?”

“I
trust,” said Haluin in a low and shaken voice, “you may find, madam, as I hope
to find, the wound cleansed of all its rancors by this atonement. It is my
prayer that for you this time the healing may be sweet and wholesome.”

“And
for you?” she said sharply, and turned a little away from him, with a motion of
her hand that forbade any answer. “Sweet and wholesome! You ask much of God,
and more of me.” In the sidelong light from the window her face was fierce and
sad. “You have learned a monk’s way with words,” she said. “Well, it is a long
time! Your voice was lighter once, so was your step. This at least I grant you,
you are here at a very heavy cost. Do not deny me the grace of offering you
rest and meat this time. I have a dwelling of my own here, within my son’s
manor pale. Come within and rest at least until Vespers, if you must punish
your flesh on the stones here through the night.”

“Then
I may have my night of prayer?” asked Haluin hungrily.

“Why
not? Have you not just seen me entreating God in the same cause?” she said. “I
see you broken. I would not have you forsworn. Yes, have your penitential
vigil, but take food in my house first. I’ll send my grooms to fetch you,” she
said, “when you have made your devotions here.”

She
was almost at the door, paying no attention to Haluin’s hesitant thanks, and
affording him no opportunity to refuse her hospitality, when she suddenly
halted and swung round to them again.

“But
say no word,” she said earnestly, “to any other about your purpose here. My
daughter’s name and fame are safe enough under the stone, let them lie quiet
there. I would not have any other reminded as I have been reminded. Let it be
only between us two, and this good brother who bears you company.”

“Madam,”
said Haluin devoutly, “there shall be no word said to any other soul but
between us three, neither now nor at any other time, neither here nor in any
other place.”

“You
ease my mind,” she said, and in a moment she was gone, and the door drawn
quietly to after her.

Haluin
could not kneel without something firm before him to which to cling, and
Cadfael’s arm about him to ease his weight down gently, sharing the burden with
his companion’s one serviceable foot. They offered their dutiful prayer at the
altar side by side, and Cadfael, open-eyed as Haluin kneeled long, traced with
measured concern the worn lines of the young man’s face. He had survived the
hard journey afoot, but not without a heavy cost. The night on the stones here
would be cold, cramping, and long, but Haluin would insist on the last extreme
of self-punishment. And after that, the long road back. As well, indeed, if the
lady could persuade him to remain for at least a second night, if only as a
concession and grace to her now that they had, in a fashion, come to terms with
their shared and haunted past.

For
it could certainly be true that Haluin’s sudden visit had sent her on her own
pilgrimage, hotfoot here to confront her own part in that old tragedy. Passing
by at a smart trot the forester’s assart near Chenet, with only a maidservant and
two grooms in her train, and striking an elusive spark in Cadfael’s memory. It
could well be true. Or would such a seed have borne fruit so fast? The
implication of haste was there. Cadfael saw again the two double-laden horses
passing in the early morning, going steadily and with purpose. In haste to pay
a half-forgotten debt of affection and remorse? Or to arrive before someone
else, and be ready and armed to receive him? She wanted them satisfied and
gone, but that was natural enough. They had trespassed on her peace, and held
up an old, flawed mirror before her beautiful face.

“Help
me up!” said Haluin, and raised his arms like a child to be lifted to his feet;
and that was the first time that he had asked for help, always before it had
been proffered, and his acceptance humble and resigned rather than grateful.

“You
did not speak one word throughout,” he said suddenly, marveling, as they turned
towards the church door.

“I
had not one word to speak,” said Cadfael. “But I heard many words. And even the
silences between them were not altogether inarticulate.”

Adelais
de Clary’s groom was waiting for them in the porch, as she had promised,
leaning indolently with one shoulder propped against the jamb of the door, as
though he had been waiting for some time, but with immovable patience. His
appearance confirmed everything Brother Cadfael had elaborated, in his own
mind, from the few glimpses he had had of the riders between the trees. The
younger of the pair, this, a brawny young man of perhaps thirty years,
thickset, bullnecked, unmistakably in the Norman mold. Perhaps the third or
fourth generation from a progenitor who had come over as a man at arms with the
first de Clary. The strong original stock still prevailed, though intermarriage
with Englishwomen had tempered the fairness of his hair into a straw brown, and
somewhat moderated the brutal bones of his face. He still wore his hair cropped
into a close cap in the Norman manner, and his strong jaw clean-shaven, and he
still had the bright, light, impenetrable eyes of the north. At their coming he
sprang erect, more at ease in movement than in repose.

“My
lady sends me to show you the way.”

His
voice was flat and clipped, and he waited for no reply, but set off out of the
churchyard before them, at a pace Haluin could not well maintain. The groom
looked back at the gate and waited, and thereafter abated his speed, though it
obviously chafed him to move slowly. He said nothing of his own volition, and
replied to question or simple civility cordially enough, but briefly. Yes,
Elford was a very fine property, good land and a good lord. Audemar’s competent
management of his honor was acknowledged indifferently; this young man’s
allegiance was to Adelais rather than to her son. Yes, his father was in the
same service, and so had his father been before him. About these monastic
guests he showed no curiosity at all, though he might have felt some. Those
pale grey alien eyes concealed all thought, or perhaps suggested thought’s
total absence.

He
brought them by a grassy way to the gate of the manor enclosure, which was
walled and spacious. Audemar de Clary’s house sat squarely in the midst, the
living floor raised well above a stone undercroft, and to judge by the small
windows above, there, were at least two more chambers over the solar. And his
ample courtyard was built round with other habitable rooms, as well as the
customary and necessary stables, armory, bakehouse and brewhouse, stores and
workshops, and was populous with the activities of a large and busy household.

The
groom led them to a small timber lodging under the curtain wall.

“My
lady has had this chamber made ready for you. Use it as your own, she says, and
the gateman will see to it you can come and go freely, to go to the church.”

Her
hospitality, as they found, was meticulous but remote and impersonal. She had
provided them with water for washing, comfortable pallets to rest on, sent them
food from her own table, and given orders to tell them to ask for anything they
might need or want that had been forgotten, but she did not receive them into
her own presence. Perhaps forgiveness did not reach so far as to render
Haluin’s remorseful presence agreeable to her. Nor was it her house servants
who waited on them, but the two grooms who had ridden with her from Hales. It
was the elder of the two who brought them meat and bread and cheese, and small
ale from the pantry. Cadfael had not been deceived in their relationship, for
this one was clearly father to the other, a tough, square-set man in his
fifties, close-mouthed like his son, broader in the shoulders, more bowed in
the legs from years spent as much on horseback as on his own two feet. The same
cold, unconfiding eyes, the same bold and powerful shaven jaws, but this one
was tanned to a lasting bronze that Cadfael recognized from his own past as
having its origin very far from England. His lord had been a crusader. This man
had surely been with him there in Holy Land, and got his burnished gloss there
under the fierce, remembered sun.