Free The Confession of Brother Haluin by Ellis Peters Page A

one of these young cousins, after the way of the young,
and her early death was greater grief to him than ever he ventured to let you
know.”
    “It
may be so,” said Adelais distantly, and drew up the hood of her cloak against a
few infinitely fine spears of sleet that drifted on the still air and stung her
cheek. “Good day, Father!”
    “I
will pray,” said the priest after her, “that his pilgrimage to her grave may
bring comfort and benefit to him living, and to the lady dead.”
    “Do
so, Father,” said Adelais without turning her head. “And do not fail to add a
prayer for me and all the women of my house, that time may lie lightly on us
when our day comes.”
     
    Cadfael
lay awake in the hayloft of the forester’s holding in the royal forest of
Chenet, listening to the measured breathing of his companion, too constant and
too tense for sleep. It was the second night since they had left Hales. The
first they had spent with a solitary cottar and his wife a mile or so beyond
the hamlet of Weston, and the day between had been long, and this
second-shelter in the early reaches of the forest came very warmiy and
gratefully. They had gone early to their beds in the loft, for Haluin, at whose
insistence they had continued so far into the evening, was close to exhaustion.
Sleep, Cadfael noted, came to him readily and peacefully, a restoring mercy to
a soul very troubled and wrung when awake. There are many ways by which God
tempers the burden. Haluin rose every morning refreshed and resolute.
    It
was not yet light, there might still be an hour to dawn. There was no movement,
no rustling of the dry hay from the corner where Haluin lay, but Cadfael knew
he was awake now, and the stillness was good, for it meant that he lay in the
languor of ease of body, wherever the wakeful mind within might have strayed.
    “Cadfael?”
said a still, remote voice out of the darkness. “Are you awake?”
    “I
am,” he said as softly.
    “You
have never asked me anything. Of the thing I did. Of her…”
    “There
is no need,” said Cadfael. “What you wish to tell will be told without asking.”
    “I
was never free to speak of her,” said Haluin, “until now. And now only to you,
who know.” There was a silence. He bled words slowly and arduously, as the shy
and solitary do. After a while he resumed softly; “She was not beautiful, as
her mother was. She had not that dark radiance, but something more kindly.
There was nothing dark or secret in her, but everything open and sunlit, like a
flower. She was not afraid of anything, not then. She trusted everyone. She had
never been betrayed—not then. Only once, and she died of it.”
    Another
and longer silence, and this time the hay stirred briefly, like a sigh. Then he
asked almost timidly: “Cadfael, you were half your life in the world—did you
ever love a woman?”
    “Yes,”
said Cadfael, “I have loved.”
    “Then
you know how it was with us. For we did love, she and I. It hurts most of all,”
said Brother Haluin, looking back in resigned and wondering pain, “when you are
young. There is nowhere to hide from it, no shield you can raise between. To
see her every day… and to know that it was with her as it was with me…”
    Even
if he had put it from him all these years, and tried to turn hands and mind and
spirit to the service he had undertaken, of his own will, in his extremity, he
had forgotten nothing; it was there within him ready to quicken at a breath,
like a sleeping fire when a door is opened. Now at least it could escape into
air, into the world of other men, where it could touch other men’s sufferings
and receive and give compassion. From Cadfael there were no words needed, only
the simple acknowledgment of companionship, the assurance of a listening ear.
    Haluin
fell asleep with a last lingering word on his lips, murmured almost inaudibly
after lengthening silences. It might have been her name,