The Confession of Brother Haluin Read Online Free PDF Page A

closed.
    “Father…?”
questioned the remote voice fearfully.
    “I
am here. I will not leave you.”
    “Her
mother came… I did not know till then Bertrade was with child! The lady was in
terror of her lord’s anger when he came home. I served then with Brother
Cadfael, I had learned… I knew the herbs… I stole and gave her… hyssop,
fleur-de-lis… Cadfael knows better uses for them!”
    Yes,
better by far! But what could help a badly congested chest and a killing cough,
in small doses, or fight off the jaundice that turned a man yellow, could also
put an end to the carrying of a child, in an obscene misuse abhorrent to the
Church and perilous even to the woman it was meant to deliver. From fear of an
angry father, fear of shame before the world, fear of marriage prospects ruined
and family feuds inflamed. Had the girl’s mother entreated him, or had he
persuaded her? Years of remorse and self-punishment had not exorcised the
horror that still wrung his flesh and contorted his visage.
    “They
died,” he said, harsh and loud with pain. “My love and the child, both. Her
mother sent me word—dead and buried. A fever, they gave it out. Dead of a
fever—nothing more to fear. My sin, my most grievous sin… God knows I am
sorry!”
    “Where
true penitence is,” said Abbot Radulfus, “God does surely know. Well, this
grief is told. Have you done, or is there more yet to tell?”
    “I
have done,” said Brother Haluin. “But to beg pardon. I ask it of God—and of
Cadfael, that I abused his trust and his art. And of the lady of Hales, for the
great grief I brought upon her.” Now that it was out he had better control of
voice and words, the crippling tension was gone from his tongue, and weak
though his utterance was, it was lucid and resigned. “I would die cleansed and
forgiven,” he said.
    “Brother
Cadfael will speak on his own behalf,” said the abbot. “For God, I will speak
as He give me grace.”
    “I
forgive freely,” said Cadfael, choosing words with more than his accustomed
care, “whatever offense was done against my craft under great stress of mind.
And that the means and the knowledge were there to tempt you, and I not there
to dissuade, this I take to myself as much as ever I can charge them to you. I
wish you peace!”
    What
Abbot Radulfus had to say upon God’s behalf took longer. There were some among
the brothers, Cadfael thought, who would have been startled and incredulous if
they could have heard, at finding their abbot’s formidable austerity could also
hold so much measured and authoritative tenderness. A lightened conscience and
a clean death were what Haluin desired. It was too late to exact penance from a
dying man, and deathbed comfort cannot be priced, only given freely.
    “A
broken and a contrite heart,” said Radulfus, “is the only sacrifice required of
you, and will not be despised.” And he gave absolution and the solemn blessing,
and so left the sickroom, beckoning Cadfael with him. On Haluin’s face the ease
of gratitude had darkened again into the indifference of exhaustion, and the
fires were dead in eyes dulled and half closed between swoon and sleep.
    In
the outer room Rhun was waiting patiently, drawn somewhat aside to avoid
hearing, even unwittingly, any word of that confession.
    “Go
in and sit with him,” said the abbot. “He may sleep now, there will be no ill
dreams. If there should be any change in him, fetch Brother Edmund. And if
Brother Cadfael should be needed, send to my lodging for him.”
    In
the paneled parlor in the abbot’s lodge they sat together, the only two people
who would ever hear of the offense with which Haluin charged himself, or have
the right in private to speak of his confession.
    “I
have been here only four years,” said Radulfus directly, “and know nothing of
the circumstances in which Haluin came here. It seems one of his earliest
duties here was to help you