Brother Cadfael 15: The Confession of Brother Haluin

accomplished what I swore to do. If he were here to be asked, he would tell me to go on. I said I would not rest until I had gone on foot to the tomb where Bertrade lies buried, and there passed a night in prayer and vigil, and that I have not done."
    "Through no fault of yours," said Cadfael strenuously.
    "Does that excuse me? It is a just judgment on me that I must go double the way. If I fail of this, I said, may I live forsworn and die unforgiven! On the blessed relics of Saint Winifred, who has been so good to us all, I swore it. How can I turn back? I would rather die on the road, at least still faithfully trying to redeem my vow, than abandon my faith and honour, and go back shamed."
    And who was that speaking, Cadfael wondered, the dutiful monk, or the son of a good Norman house, from a line at least as old as King William's when he came reaching for the crown of England, and without the irregularity of bastardy, at that. No doubt but pride is a sin, and unbecoming a Benedictine brother, but not so easily shed with the spurs and title of nobility.
    Haluin, too, had caught the fleeting implication of arrogance, and flushed at the recognition, but would not draw back from it. He halted abruptly, swaying on his crutches, and detached a hand in haste to take Cadfael by the wrist. "Don't chide me! Well I know you could, and your face shows me I deserve it, but spare to condemn. I can do no other. Oh, Cadfael, I do know every argument you could justly use against me. I have thought of them, I think of them still, but still I am bound. Bound by vows I will not, dare not break. Though my abbot judge me rebellious and disobedient, though my abbey cast me out, that I must bear. But to take back what I have pledged to Bertrade. that I will not bear."
    The flush of blood mantling in his pale cheeks became him, warmed away the faded look of emaciation from illness, and even stripped some years from him. In stillness he stood upright, stretching his bent back upward between the braced crutches. No persuasion was going to move him. As well accept it.
    "But you, Cadfael," he said, gripping the wrist he held, "you have made no such vow, you are not bound. No need for you to go further, you have done all that was expected of you. Go back now, and speak for me to the lord abbot."
    "Son," said Cadfael, between sympathy and exasperation, "I am fettered as fast as you, and you should know it. My orders are to go with you in case you founder, and to take care of you if you do. You are on your own 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