Brother Cadfael 15: The Confession of Brother Haluin by Ellis Peters Read Free Book Online Page B

Somewhere under the Wrekin they would find a hospitable refuge for the night, for there were abbey tenants there among the cottagers, and any hut along the way would willingly give them a place by the fire for a midday rest. Food they had with them in the scrip Cadfael carried.
    In the brisk hopefulness of morning, with Haluin's energy and eagerness at their best, they made good speed, and rested at noon very pleasurably with the parish priest at Attingham. But in the afternoon the pace slowed somewhat, and the strain began to tell upon Haluin's hardworking shoulders, aching from the constant weight and endlessly repeated stress, and the cold as evening approached numbed his hands on the grips of his crutches, in spite of their mufflings of woolen cloth. Cadfael called a halt as soon as the light began to fade into the windless March dusk, grey and without distances, and turned aside into the village of Uppington, to beg a bed for the night at the manor.
    Haluin had been understandably silent along the road, needing all his breath and all his resolution for the effort of walking. Fed and at ease in the evening, he sat watching Cadfael in accepting silence still for a while.
    "Brother," he said at last, "I take it very kindly that you've come with me on this journey. With no other but you could I speak without conceal of that old grief, and before ever we see Shrewsbury again I may sorely need to speak of it. The worst of me you already know, and I will never say word in excuse. But in eighteen years I have never until now spoken her name aloud, and now to utter it is like food after starvation."
    "Speak or be silent as the need takes you," said Cadfael, "and I'll hear or be deaf according to your wish. But as for tonight you should take your rest, for you've come a good third part of the way, and tomorrow, I warn you, you'll find some aches and pains you knew nothing of, from labouring so hard and so long."
    "I am tired," admitted Haluin, with a sudden and singularly touching smile, as brief as it was sweet. "You think we cannot reach Hales tomorrow, then?"
    "Don't think of it! No, we'll get as far as the Augustinian canons at Wombridge, and spend another night there. And you'll have done well to get so far in the time, so don't grudge the one day more."
    "As you think best," said Haluin submissively, and lay down to sleep with the confiding simplicity of a child charmed and protected by his prayers.
    The next day was less kind, for there was a thin, spasmodic rain that stung at times with sleet, and a colder wind from the northeast, from which the long, green, craggy bulk of the Wrekin gave them no shelter as the road skirted it to the north. But they reached the priory before dusk, though Haluin's lips were fast clenched in determination by then, and the skin drawn tight and livid over his cheekbones with exhaustion, and Cadfael was glad to get him into the warmth, and go to work with oiled hands on the sinews of his arms and shoulders, and the thighs that had carried him so bravely all day long.
    And the third day, early in the afternoon, they came to the manor of Hales.
    The manor house lay a little aside from the village and the church, timber-built on the stone undercroft, in level, well-drained fields, with gentle wooded slopes beyond. Within its wooden fence, stable and barn and bakehouse were ranged along the pale, well maintained and neat. Brother Haluin stood in the open gateway, and looked at the place of his old service with a face fixed and still, only his eyes alive and full of pain.
    "Four years," he said, "I kept the manor roll here. Bertrand de Clary was my father's overlord. I was sent here before I was fourteen, to be page to his lady. Will you believe, the man himself I never saw. Before I came here he was already in the Holy Land. This is but one of his manors, the only one in these parts, but his son was already installed in his place, and ruled the honour from Staffordshire. She always liked Hales best,