TheConfession of Brother Haluin.
by Ellis Peters.
Chapter One.
THE WORST OF THE WINTER CAME EARLY, that year of 1142. After the prolonged autumn of mild, moist, elegiac days, December came in with heavy skies and dark, brief days that sagged upon the rooftrees and lay like oppressive hands upon the heart. In the scriptorium there was barely light enough at noon to form the letters, and the colors could not be used with any certainty, since the unrelenting and untimely dusk sapped all their brightness. The weather-wise had predicted heavy snows, and in midmonth they came, not with blizzard winds, but in a blinding, silent fall that continued for several days and nights, smoothing out every undulation, blanching all color out of the world, burying the sheep in the hills and the hovels in the valleys, smothering all sound, climbing every wall, turning roofs into ranges of white, impa.s.sable mountains, and the very air between earth and sky into an opaque, drifting whirlpool of flakes large as lilies. When the fall finally ceased, and the heavy swags of cloud lifted, the Foregate lay half buried, so nearly smoothed out into one white level that there were scarcely any shadows except where the tall buildings of the abbey soared out of the pure pallor, and the eerie, reflected light made day even of night, where only a week before the ominous gloom had made night of day.
These December snows, which covered most of the west, did more than disrupt the lives of country people, starve some isolated hamlets, bury not a few hill shepherds with their flocks, and freeze all travel into enforced stillness; they overturned the fortunes of war, made sport of the preoccupations of princes, and sent history spinning off-course into the new year of 1143.
They also brought about a strange cycle of events in the abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, at Shrewsbury.
In the five years that King Stephen and his cousin, the Empress Maud, had fought for the throne of England, fortune had swung between them like a pendulum many times, presenting the cup of victory to each in erratic turn, only to s.n.a.t.c.h it away again untasted, and offer it tantalizingly to the other contender. Now, in the white disguise of winter, it chose to turn probability topsy-turvy once again, and deliver the empress out of the king"s mailed hands as by a miracle, just as his fist seemed closing securely on his prisoner, and his warfare triumphantly ending. Back to the beginning of the five-year struggle, and all to do again. But that was in Oxford, far away beyond the impa.s.sable snows, and some time would elapse before the news reached Shrewsbury.
What was happening in the abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul was no more than a small annoyance by comparison, or seemed so at first. An envoy from the bishop, lodged in one of the upper chambers of the guest hall, and already irritated and displeased at being halted here perforce until the roads were pa.s.sable again, was unpleasantly awakened in the night by the sudden descent of a stream of icy water onto his head, and made very sure that everyone within range of his powerful voice should hear of it without delay. Brother Denis the hospitaler made haste to placate him, and move him to a dry bed elsewhere, but within the hour it became clear that while the first drenching soon slackened, a steady drip continued, and was soon joined by half a dozen more, spanning a circle some yards across. The great weight of snow on the southern roof of the guest hall had somehow worked a pa.s.sage through the lead and filtered in between the slates, perhaps even caved in a number of them. Pockets of the driven snow had felt the comparative warmth within, and with the mute malice of inanimate things had chosen to baptize the bishop"s emissary. And the leak was rapidly getting worse.
There was urgent conference at chapter that morning over what should and could be done. Perilous and unpleasant work on roofs was certainly to be avoided if possible during such weather, but on the other hand, if repairs were delayed until the thaw came, they were in for a flood, and the damage, limited at this point, might be greatly aggravated.
There were several among the brothers who had worked on the building of additions to the enclave, barns and stabling and storehouses, and Brother Conradin, who was still in his fifties and robust as a bull, had been one of the first child oblates, and worked as a boy under the monks of Seez, brought over by the founding earl to supervise the building of his abbey. Where the fabric was concerned, Brother Conradin"s advice carried the greatest weight, and having viewed the extent of the leak in the guest hall, he stated firmly that they could not afford to wait, or they might have to replace half the southern slope of the roof. They had timber, they had slates, they had lead. That southern slope overhung the drainage channel drawn off from the mill leat, frozen hard at present, but there would be no great difficulty in raising a scaffolding. True, it would be bitterly cold work up there, shifting the mountain of snow first, to ease away the deforming weight, and then replacing broken or displaced slates and repairing the lead flashings. But if they worked in short spells, and were allowed a fire in the warming room all day as long as the work lasted, the job could be done.
Abbot Radulfus listened, nodded his formidable head with his usual prompt comprehension and decision, and said, "Very well, do it!"
As soon as the long snowfall ceased, and the skies lifted, the tough inhabitants of the Foregate sallied forth from their houses, well m.u.f.fled and armed with shovels and brooms and long-handled rakes, and began to clear their way out to the highroad, and between them dig out a pa.s.sage to the bridge and the town, where no doubt the stout burgesses within the walls were tackling the same seasonal enemy. The frost still held, and day by day fretted away mysteriously into the air the surface fringes of every drift, by infinitely slow degrees lessening the load. By the time a few of the main highways were again pa.s.sable, and a few travelers, either foolhardy or having no choice, were laboriously riding them, Brother Conradin had his scaffolding up, his ladders securely braced up the slope of the roof, and all hands taking their turn aloft in the withering cold, cautiously shifting the great burden of snow, to get at the fractured lead and broken slates. A moraine of crumpled, untidy snow hills formed along the frozen drainage channel, and one unwary brother, who had failed to hear or heed the warning shout from above, was briefly buried by a minor avalanche, and had to be dug out hurriedly and dispatched to the warming room to thaw out.
By then the way was open between town and Foregate, and news, however hampered and slow its pa.s.sage, could be carried from Winchester even to Shrewsbury in time to reach the castle garrison and the sheriff of the shire some days before Christmas.
Hugh Beringar came down from the town hotfoot to share it with Abbot Radulfus. In a country debilitated by five years of desultory civil war it behooved state and church to work closely together, and where sheriff and abbot were of like mind they could secure for their people a comparatively calm and orderly existence, and fend off the worst excesses of the times. Hugh was King Stephen"s man, and held the shire for him loyally enough, but with even greater goodwill he held it for the folk who lived in it. He would welcome, and this autumn and winter had certainly been expecting, the king"s triumph at last, but his chief preoccupation was to hand over to his lord a county relatively prosperous, contented, and intact when the last battle was over.
He came looking for Brother Cadfael as soon as he had left the abbot"s lodging, and found his friend busy stirring a bubbling pot over his brazier, in his workshop in the herb garden. The inevitable coughs and colds of winter, the chilblained hands and heels, kept him busy replenishing the medicine cupboard in the infirmary, and thanks to the necessary brazier his timber workshop was somewhat warmer to work in than the carrels of the scriptorium.
Hugh came bursting in upon him in a gust of cold air and a wave of what was for him perceptible excitement, though its outward signs would have escaped anyone who knew him less well than Cadfael did. Only the crisp exasperation of his movements and the abruptness of his greeting caused Cadfael to cease his stirring and fix attentively on the young sheriff"s face, the pointed brilliance of his black eyes and the little pulse in his cheek.
"It"s all overturned!" said Hugh. "All to do again from the beginning!" And whatever that meant, and Cadfael did not trouble to ask, since he was certainly about to be told, there was no saying whether exasperation and frustration were not outmatched in Hugh"s voice and face by amused relief. He flung himself down on the bench against the timber wall, and dangled his hands between his knees in a gesture of helpless resignation.
"A courier got through from the south this morning," he said, raising his eyes to his friend"s attentive face. "She"s gone! Out of the trap, and fled away to join her brother at Wallingford. The king"s lost his prize. Even when he has her between his hands he lets her slip through his fingers. I wonder, I wonder," said Hugh, opening his eyes wide at a new thought, "whether he did not turn a blind eye and let her go, when it came to the point! It would be like him. G.o.d knows he wanted her badly enough, but he may have taken fright when it came to puzzling what he could do with her when he had her. It"s one question I"d love to ask him-but never shall!" he concluded with an oblique grin.
"Are you telling me," asked Cadfael cautiously, eyeing him across the brazier, "that the empress is escaped out of Oxford, after all? With the king"s army all round her, and stores down to starvation level in the castle, from what we last heard? And how did even she contrive it? Tell me next she"s grown wings and flown over the king"s lines to Wallingford! She could hardly walk through his siege vallations on foot, even if she managed to get out of the castle unseen."
"Ah, but she did, Cadfael! She did both! She got out of the castle unseen, and pa.s.sed through some part at least of Stephen"s lines. To the best they can guess, she must have been let down by a rope from the rear of the tower towards the river, she and two or three of her men with her. There could not have been more. They m.u.f.fled themselves all in white to be invisible against the snow. Indeed by all accounts it was snowing then, to hide them the better. They crossed the river on the ice, and walked the six miles or so to Abingdon, for it was there they got horses to take them on to Wallingford. Give her her due, Cadfael, this is a rare woman. From all accounts there"s no living with her when she"s in high feather, but by G.o.d I can see how a man could follow her when she"s down."
"So she"s back with FitzCount, after all," said Cadfael on a long, marveling breath. Barely a month ago it had seemed certain that the empress and her most faithful and devoted ally were irrevocably cut off from each other, and might never meet again in this world. Ever since September the lady had been under close siege in Oxford castle, the king"s armies drawn tightly round her, the town in his hands, and he content to sit back and starve out her battered garrison. And now, all in one bold bid and one snowy night, she was out of her chains, free to remuster her forces and take up the fight again on equal terms. Surely there never had been such a king as Stephen for conjuring defeat out of victory. But it was a quality they shared, perhaps native to their blood, for the empress, too, when she was gloriously installed in Westminster, and her coronation but a few days away, had borne herself so arrogantly and harshly towards the obstinate burgesses of her capital that they had risen in fury and driven her out. It seemed that as often as either of them got within touch of the crown, fortune took fright at the prospect of being in the service of either, and hurriedly s.n.a.t.c.hed the prize away.
"So after all," said Cadfael more placidly as he lifted his bubbling pot to the grid at the side of the brazier, to simmer in peace, "at least Stephen has got rid of his problem. He need worry no longer what to do with her."
"True," agreed Hugh wryly, "he"d never have had the iron in him to put her in chains, as she did to him when she had him prisoner after Lincoln, and she"s proved it would take more than stone walls to hold her. I fancy he"s been bunking the issue all these months, looking no further than the moment when he would force her surrender. He"s eased of all the troubles that would have been no more than beginning the day he made her prisoner. Better, perhaps, if he could winnow away her hopes so far that she"d be forced to go back to Normandy. But we"ve come to know the lady better," he acknowledged ruefully. "She never gives up."
"And how has King Stephen stomached his loss?" asked Cadfael curiously.
"As I"ve come to expect of him by this time," said Hugh, with resigned affection. "As soon as the lady was well out of it, Oxford castle surrendered to him. Without her, he"d lost interest in the rest of the starved rats within. Most men would have taken out their rage on the garrison. Once, as you"ll remember all too well, he let himself be persuaded to take such a revenge, here at Shrewsbury, G.o.d knows against his nature. Never again! As like as not, it was the memory of Shrewsbury that kept Oxford safe. He let them march out untouched, on condition they dispersed to their homes. He"s left the castle well garrisoned and supplied for his own cause, and made off to Winchester with his brother the bishop, to keep Christmas. And he"s sent to call all his midland sheriffs there to keep it with him. It"s long since he was in these parts, no doubt he"s anxious to look us over afresh, and make sure that all his defenses hold fast."
"Now?" said Cadfael, surprised. "To Winchester? You"ll never make the journey in time."
"Yes, we shall. We have four days, and according to the courier the thaw"s well forward, farther south, and the roads clear. I"ll be away tomorrow."
"And leave Aline and your boy to keep the feast without you! And Giles just past his third birthday, too!" Hugh"s son was a Christmas babe, and had entered the world in the most extreme of winters, in frost and snow and bitter gales. Cadfael was his G.o.dfather and most devoted admirer.
"Ah, Stephen won"t keep us long," said Hugh confidently. "He needs us where he placed us, to keep an eye on his shire revenues. I shall be home by the year"s end, if all goes well. But Aline will be glad if you could pay her a visit or two while I"m gone. Father Abbot won"t grudge you leave now and then, and that long lad of yours-Winfrid, is it?-he"s getting handy enough with the salves and medicines to be left on his own for an hour or two."
"Very gladly I"ll mind your flock for you at home," said Cadfael heartily, "while you"re strutting at court. But you"ll be missed, all the same. What a turnabout this has been! Five years of it now, and nothing gained on either part. And with the new year, no doubt it must all begin again. All that effort and waste, and nothing is changed."
"Oh, yes, there"s something changed, for what it"s worth!" Hugh uttered a brief bark of laughter. "There"s a new contender on the scene, Cadfael. Geoffrey could spare no more than a meager handful of knights to his wife"s aid, but he"s sent her something it seems he can part with more willingly. Either that or, as may very well be true, he"s taken Stephen"s measure shrewdly enough to know past doubt what he dare wager in safety. He"s sent over their son in Robert"s care, to see if the English will rally to him rather than to his mother. Henry Plantagenet, nine years old- or did they say ten? No more than that! Robert brought him to her at Wallingford. By this time I fancy the boy"s been whisked away to Bristol or Gloucester, out of harm"s way. But if Stephen laid hold of him, what could he do with him? As like as not, put him on board ship at his own expense, and send him well guarded back to France."
"Do you tell me so?" Cadfael"s eyes opened wide in astonishment and curiosity. "So there"s a new star on the horizon, is there? And starting young! It seems one soul at least has a blessed Christmas a.s.sured, with her liberty won, and her son in her arms again. His coming will give her heart, no question. But I doubt if he"ll do much more for her cause."
"Not yet!" said Hugh, with prophetic caution. "We"ll wait and see what his mettle is. With his mother"s stomach and Geoffrey"s wit he may give the king trouble enough in a few years" time. We"d best make better use of what time we have, and see to it the boy goes back to Anjou and stays there, and best of all, takes his mother with him. I wish," said Hugh fervently, rising with a sigh, "Stephen"s own son promised better, we"d have no need to fear what the empress"s sprig may have to show." He shook off present doubts with an impatient twitch of his lean shoulders. "Well, I"ll be off and make ready for the road. We"ll be away at first light."
Cadfael lifted his cooling pot aside to the earth floor, and went out with his friend through the walled stillness of the herb garden, where all his small, neat beds slept warmly through the frosts under deep snow. As soon as they let themselves out onto the path that skirted the frozen pools, they could see distantly, beyond the gla.s.sy surface and the broad gardens on the northern side, the long slope of the guest hall roof overhanging the drainage channel, the dark timber cage of scaffolding and ladders, and the two m.u.f.fled figures working on the uncovered slates.
"I see you have your troubles, too," said Hugh.
"Who escapes them, in winter? It"s the weight of the snow that"s shifted the slates, broken some of them, and found a way through to douse the bishop"s chaplain in his bed. If we left it till the thaw we"d have a flood, and far worse damage to repair."
"And your master builder reckons he can make it good, frost or no frost." Hugh had recognized the brawny figure halfway up the long ladder, hefting a hodful of slates surely few of his younger laborers could have lifted. "Bitter work up there, though," said Hugh, eyeing the highest platform of the scaffolding, stacked with a great pile of slates, and the two diminutive figures moving with painful caution on the exposed roof.
"We take it in short spells, and there"s a fire in the warming room when we come down. We elders are excused the service, but most of us take a turn, barring the sick and infirm. It"s fair, but I doubt if it pleases Conradin. It irks him having foolhardy youngsters up there, and he"d just as soon work only the ones he"s sure of, though I will say he keeps a close watch on them. If he sees any blanch at being up so high, he soon has them on solid earth again. We can"t all have the head for it."
"Have you been up there?" asked Hugh curiously.
"I did my stint yesterday, before the light began to fail. Short days are no help, but another week should see it finished."
Hugh narrowed his eyes against a sudden brief lance of sunlight that reflected back dazzlingly from the crystalline whiteness. "Who are those two up there now? Is that Brother Urien? The dark fellow? Who"s the other one?"
"Brother Haluin." The thin, alert figure was all but obscured by the jut of the scaffolding, but Cadfael had seen the pair climb the ladders barely an hour earlier.
"What, Anselm"s best illuminator? How comes it you allow such abuse of an artist? He"ll ruin his hands in this bitter cold. Small chance of him handling a fine brush for the next week or two, after grappling with slates."
"Anselm would have begged him off," Cadfael admitted, "but Haluin would have none of it. No one would have grudged him the mercy, seeing how valuable his work is, but if there"s a hair shirt anywhere within reach Haluin will claim it and wear it. A lifelong penitent, that lad, G.o.d knows for what imagined sins, for I never knew him so much as break a rule, since he entered as a novice, and seeing he was no more than eighteen when he took his first vows, I doubt if he"d had time to do the world much harm up to then. But there are some born to do penance by nature. Maybe they, lift the load for some of us who take it quite comfortably that we"re humankind, and not angels. If the overflow from Haluin"s penitence and piety washes off a few of my shortcomings, may it redound to him for credit in the accounting. And I shan"t complain."
It was too cold to linger very long in the deep snow, watching the cautious activities on the guest hall roof. They resumed their pa.s.sage through the gardens, skirting the frozen pools where Brother Simeon had chopped jagged holes to let in air to the fish below, and crossing the mill leat that fed the ponds by the narrow plank bridge glazed over with a thin and treacherous crust of ice. Closer now, the piers of the scaffolding jutted from the south wall of the guest hall across the drainage channel, and the workers on the roof were hidden from sight.
"I had him with me among the herbs as a novice, long ago," said Cadfael as they threaded the snowy beds of the upper garden and emerged into the great court. "Haluin, I mean. It was not long after I ended my own novitiate. I came in at past forty, and he barely turned eighteen. They sent him to me because he was lettered and had the Latin at his finger ends, and after three or four years I was still learning. He comes of a landed family, and would have inherited a good manor if he hadn"t chosen the cloister. A cousin has it now. The boy had been put out to a n.o.ble household, as the custom is, and was clerk to his lord"s estate, being uncommonly bright at learning and figuring. I often wondered why he changed course, but as every man within here knows, there"s no questioning a vocation. It comes when it will, and there"s no refusal."
"It would have been simpler to plant the lad straight into the scriptorium, if he came in with so much learning," said Hugh practically. "I"ve seen some of his work, he"d be wasted on any other labor."
"Ah, but his conscience would have him pa.s.s through every stage of the common apprenticeship before he came to rest. I had him for three years among the herbs, then he did two years more at the hospital of Saint Giles, among the sick and crippled, and two more laboring in the gardens at the Gaye, and helping with the sheep out at Rhydycroesau, before he"d settle to do what we found he could do best. Even now, as you saw, he"ll have no privilege because he has a delicate hand with the brushes and pens. If others must slither perilously on a snowy roof, so will he. A good fault, mind you," admitted Cadfael, "but he takes it to extremes, and the Rule disapproves extremes."
They crossed the great court towards the gatehouse, where Hugh"s horse was tethered, the tall, rawboned grey that was always his favorite mount, and could have carried twice or three times his master"s light weight.
"There"ll be no more snow tonight," said Cadfael, eyeing the veiled sky and sniffing the light, languid wind, "nor for a few days more, I fancy. Nor hard frost, either, we"re on the edge of it. I pray you"ll have a tolerable ride south."
"We"ll be away at dawn. And back, G.o.d willing, by the new year." Hugh gathered his bridle and swung himself into the high saddle, "May the thaw hold off until your roof"s weatherproof again! And don"t forget Aline will be expecting you."
He was off out of the gate, with a sharp echo of hooves ringing from the cobbles, and a single brilliant spark that had come and gone almost before the iron shoe left the frozen ground. Cadfael turned back to the door of the infirmary, and went to check the stores in Brother Edmund"s medicine cupboard. Another hour, and the light would be already dimming, in these shortest days of the year. Brother Urien and Brother Haluin would be the last pair up on the roof for this day.
Exactly how it happened no one ever clearly established. Brother Urien, who had obeyed Brother Conradin"s order to come down as soon as the call came, pieced together what he thought the most probable account, but even he admitted there could be no certainty. Conradin, accustomed to being obeyed, and sensibly concluding that no one in his right senses would wish to linger a moment longer than he must in the bitter cold, had simply shouted his command, and turned away to clear the last of the day"s broken slates out of the way of his descending workmen. Brother Urien let himself down thankfully to the boards of the scaffolding, and fumbled his way carefully down the long ladder to the ground, only too happy to leave the work. He was strong and willing, and had no special skills but a wealth of hard experience, and what he did would be well done, but he saw no need to do more than was asked of him. He drew off some yards to look up at what had been accomplished, and saw Brother Haluin, instead of descending the short ladder braced up the slope of the roof on his side, mount several rungs higher, and lean out sidelong to clear away a further sweep of snow and extend the range of the uncovered slates. It appeared that he had seen reason to suspect that the damage extended further on that side, and wished to sweep away the snow there to remove its weight and prevent worse harm.
The rounded bank of snow shifted, slid down in great folds upon itself, and fell, partly upon the end of the planks and the stack of slates waiting there, partly over the edge and sheer to the ground below. No such avalanche had been intended, but the frozen ma.s.s loosed its hold of the steep slates and dropped away in one solid block, to shatter as it struck the scaffolding. Haluin had leaned too far. The ladder slid with the snow that had helped to keep it stable, and he fell rather before than with it, struck the end of the planks a glancing blow, and crashed down without a cry to the frozen channel below. Ladder and snowfall dropped upon the planks and hurled them after him in a great downpour of heavy sharp-edged slates, slashing into his flesh.
Brother Conradin, busy almost beneath his scaffolding, had leaped clear only just in time, spattered and stung and half blinded for a moment by the blown drift of the fall. Brother Urien, standing well back, and arrested in the very act of calling up to his companion to stop, for the light was too far gone, uttered instead a great cry of warning, too late to save, and sprang forward, to be half buried by the edge of the fall. Shaking off snow, they reached Brother Haluin together.
It was Brother Urien who came in haste and grim silence looking for Cadfael, while Conradin ran out the other way into the great court, and sent the first brother he encountered to fetch Brother Edmund the infirmarer. Cadfael was in his workshop, just turfing over his brazier for the night, when Urien erupted into the doorway, a dark, dour man burning with ill news.
"Brother, come quickly! Brother Haluin has fallen from the roof!"
Cadfael, no less sparing of words, swung about, clouted down the last turf, and reached for a woolen blanket from the shelf.
"Dead?" The drop must be forty feet at least, timber by way of obstacles on the way down, and packed ice below, but if by chance he had fallen into deep snow made deeper still by the clearance of the roof, he might yet be lucky.
"There"s breath in him. But for how long? Conradin"s gone for more helpers, Edmund knows by now."
"Come!" said Cadfael, and was out of the door and running for the little bridge over the leat, only to change his mind and dart along the narrow neck of causeway between the abbey pools, and leap the leat at the end of it, to come the more quickly to where Haluin lay. From the great court the gleam of two torches advanced to meet them, and Brother Edmund with a couple of helpers and a hand litter, hard on Brother Conradin"s heels.
Brother Haluin, buried to the knees under heavy slates, with blood staining the ice beneath his head, lay still in the middle of the turmoil he had caused.
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 sh.o.r.ed 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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, h.o.a.rding 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... 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. G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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! G.o.d 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."