Free The Confession of Brother Haluin by Ellis Peters

business, I am on the
abbot’s. If I cannot take you back with me I cannot go back.”
    “But
your work,” protested Haluin, dismayed but unwavering. “Mine can well wait, but
you’ll be missed. How will they manage without you for so long?”
    “As
best they can. There’s no man living who cannot be done without,” said Cadfael
sturdily, “and just as well, since there’s a term to life for every man. No,
say no more. If your mind’s made up, so is mine. Where you go, I go. And since
we have barely an hour of daylight left to us, and I fancy you have no wish to
seek a bed here in Hales, we had better move gently on, and look for a shelter
along the way.”
     
    Adelais
de Clary rose in the morning and went to Mass, as was her regular habit. She
was meticulous in her religious observances and in almsgiving, keeping up the
old custom of her husband’s household. And if her charity seemed sometimes a
little cold and distant, at least it was constant and reliable. Whenever the
parish priest had a special case in need of relief, he brought it to her for remedy.
    He
walked with her to the gate after the office, dutiful in attendance. “I had two
Benedictines come visiting yesterday, “ he said as she was drawing her cloak
about her against a freshening March wind. “Two brothers from Shrewsbury.”
    “Indeed!”
said Adelais. “What did they want with you?”
    “The
one of them was crippled, and went on crutches. He said he was once in your
service, before he took the cowl. He remembered Father Wulfnoth. I thought they
would have come to pay their respects to you. Did they not?”
    She
did not answer that, but only observed idly, gazing into distance as though
only half her mind was on what was said, “I remember, I did have a clerk once
who entered the monastery at Shrewsbury. What was his business here at the
church?”
    “He
said he had been spared by death, and was about making up all his accounts, to
be better prepared. I found them beside the tomb of your lord’s father. They
were in some error that a woman of your house was buried there, eighteen years
ago. The lame one had it in mind to spend a night’s vigil there in prayers for
her.”
    “A
strange mistake,” said Adelais with the same tolerant disinterest. “No doubt
you undeceived him?”
    “I
told him it was not so. I was not here then, of course, but I knew from Father
Wulfnoth that the tomb had not been opened for many years, and what the young
brother supposed could not be true. I told him that all of your house now are
buried at Elford, where the head of the manor lies.”
    “A
long, hard journey that would be, for a lame man afoot,” said Adelais with easy
sympathy. “I hope he did not intend to continue his travels so far?”
    “I
think, madam, he did. For they declined to rest and eat with me, and sleep the
night over, but set off again at once. ‘There I shall find her,’ the young one
said. Yes, I am sure they will have turned eastward when they reached the
highroad. A long, hard journey, indeed, but his will was good to perform it.”
    His
relationship with his patroness was a comfortable and easy one, and he did not
hesitate to ask directly, “Will he indeed find the gentlewoman he’s seeking at
Elford?”
    “He
well may,” said Adelais, pacing evenly and serenely beside him. “Eighteen years
is a long time, and I cannot enter into his mind. I was younger then, I kept a
bigger household. There were cousins, some left without fortune. My lord kept a
father’s hand on all of his blood. In his absence and as his regent, so did I.”
    They
had reached the churchyard gate, and halted there. The morning was soft and
green, but very still, and the cloud cover hung heavy and low.
    “There
will be more snow yet,” said the priest, “if it does not turn to rain.” And he
went on inconsequently: “Eighteen years! It may be that this monk in his time
with you was drawn to