Brother Cadfael 15: The Confession of Brother Haluin

not for the world he should turn his back on arms and reputation and hide himself away in the cloister. He is not made for that! A youth of such promise! Brother, this does but confirm me in what I am asking. There is no putting off what must be done. Once done, he will accept it. As long as the loss is not final he will go on hoping and hankering after the impossible. It is why I want her married, married and out of this house, before ever Roscelin enters it again."
    "I understand your reasons very well," said Haluin, opening his hollow eyes challengingly wide, "but it would not be right to make them reasons for a marriage, if the lady is unwilling. However hard your plight, you cannot sacrifice the one to preserve the other."
    "You mistake the case," said Cenred without heat. "I love my young sister, I have talked with her openly and fairly. She knows, she acknowledges, the enormity of what threatened them both, the impossibility of such a love ever coming to fruit. She wants this terrible knot severed, as truly as I do. She wants a career of honour for Roscelin because she loves him, and rather than see it blighted through her she agrees to seek refuge in marriage with another man. This has been no forced surrender. And no wanton choice, either. I have done the best I could for her, it is a match any family would welcome. Jean de Perronet is a well-endowed, well-conditioned young man of good estate. He is due here today, so you may see him for yourself. Helisende already knows him, and likes if she cannot yet love him. That may come, for he is greatly drawn to her. She has fully consented to this marriage. And de Perronet has this one inestimable advantage," he added grimly. "His seat is far away. He will take her home to Buckingham, out of Roscelin's sight. Out of sight, out of mind, I will not say, but at least the lines of a remembered face may fade gradually over the years, as even stubborn wounds heal."
    He had become eloquent by reason of his own deep disquiet and distress, a good man concerned for the best interests of all his household. He had not remarked, as Cadfael did, the gradual blanching of Haluin's thin face, the tight and painful set of his lips, or the way his linked hands gripped together in the lap of his habit until the bones shone white through the flesh. The words Cenred had not deliberately chosen to pierce or move had their own inspired force to reopen the old wound he had come all this way to try and heal. The lines of a remembered face, surely somewhat dimmed in eighteen years, were burning into vivid life again for him. And wounds that have not ceased to fester within cannot heal until they have again broken out and been cleansed, by fire if need be.
    "And you need not fear, and neither need I," said Cenred, "that she will not be cherished and held in high regard with de Perronet. Two years back he asked for her, and for all she would have none of him or any suitor then, he has waited his time."
    "Your lady is in agreement in this matter?" asked Cadfael.
    "We have all three talked of it together. And we are agreed. Will you do it? I felt it a kind of blessing on what we intend," said Cenred simply, "when a priest came to my door unsummoned on the eve of the bridegroom's coming. Stay over tomorrow, Brother - Father! - and marry them."
    Haluin unlocked his contorted hands slowly, and drew breath like a man awaking in pain. In low voice he said, "I will stay. And I will marry them."
    "I trust I have done right," said Haluin when they were back in their own quarters. But it did not seem that he was asking to be confirmed in his decision, rather setting it squarely before his own eyes as a responsibility he had no intention of hedging or sharing. "I know only too well," he said, "the perils of proximity, and their case is more desperate than ever was mine. Cadfael, I feel myself listening to echoes I thought had died out long ago. It is all for a purpose. Nothing is without purpose. How if I fell only to show me how far I was already fallen, and force me to make the assay to rise afresh? How if I came to life again as a cripple, to make me undertake those journeys of body and spirit that I dreaded when I was strong and whole? How if God put it into my mind to go on pilgrimage in order to become some other needy soul's miracle? Were we led to this place?"
    "Driven, rather," said Cadfael practically, remembering the blinding snow, and the small beckoning spark of the torch in the drifting