Brother Cadfael 15: The Confession of Brother Haluin

Haluin I must call him - that he need have no qualms for me. I know what I am doing. No one is forcing my hand."
    "I will tell him so," said Cadfael. "But I think you do it for others, not for yourself."
    "Then say to him that I choose - freely - to do it for others."
    "And what of Jean de Perronet?" said Cadfael.
    For one instant her firm, full lips shook. It was the one thing that still disrupted her resolute composure, that she was not being fair to the man who was to be her husband. Cenred would certainly not have told him that he was getting only a sad remainder after the heart was gone. Nor could she tell him so. The secret belonged only to the family. The only hope for this hapless pair was that love might come with time, a kind of love, better, perhaps, than many marriages ever achieve, but still far short of the crown.
    "I will try," she said steadily, "to give him all that he is asking, all that he wants and expects. He deserves well, he shall have the best I can do."
    There was no point in saying to her that it might not be enough, she already knew that, and was uneasy about a degree of deception she could not evade. It might even be that what had already been said here in the dimness of the kennels had reopened a deep abyss of doubt which she had almost succeeded in sealing over. Better let well alone, where there was no possibility of rendering the load she carried any lighter.
    "Well, I pray you may be blessed in all you do," said Cadfael, and drew back out of her way. The bitch had uncoiled herself from among her puppies and was nuzzling the pail, and waving a feathered tail in hungry expectation. The ordinary business of the day goes on through births, marriages, deaths, and festivals. When he looked back from the doorway the girl Helisende was stooping to fill the bitch's bowl, the heavy braid of her brown hair swinging among the scrambling litter. She did not look up, but for all that, he had the feeling that she was deeply and vulnerably aware of him until he turned and walked softly away.
    "You'll miss your nurseling," said Cadfael when Edgytha came at noon to serve food and drink for them. "Or will you be going south with her when she's married?"
    The old woman lingered, taciturn by nature but visibly in need of unburdening a heart by no means reconciled to losing her darling. Within the stiff folds of her wimple her withered cheek trembled.
    "What should I do at my age, in a strange place? I am too old to be of much value now, I shall stay here. At least I know the way of things here, and everyone knows me. What respect should I have in a strange household? But she'll go, I know that! She'll go, I suppose, as go she must. And the young man's well enough - if my lamb had not another in her eye and in her heart."
    "And one placed so far out of reach," Haluin reminded her gently, but his face was pale, and when she turned and looked at him in silence for a long moment he averted his eyes and turned away his head.
    Her eyes were the pale, washed blue of fading harebells. Once, shadowed by lashes now grown thin and meagre, they might have resembled more the colour of periwinkles. "So my lord will have told you," she said. "So they all say. And if there's no help, she might do much worse. I know! I came here in attendance on her mother, all those years ago, and that was no lovers' match, her so young, and him nigh on three times her age. A decent, kind man he was, but old, old! She had good need, poor lady, of someone from home, someone she knew well and could trust. At least they're marrying my girl to somebody young."
    Cadfael asked what had been preoccupying his mind for some little while, since no word had been said on the matter: "Is Helisende's mother dead?"
    "No, not dead. But she took the veil at Polesworth, it must be eight years ago now, after the old lord died. She's within your own order, a Benedictine nun. She had always a leaning towards it, and when her husband died, and she began to be talked about and bargained about as widow ladies are, and urged to marry again, rather than that she left the world. It's one way of escape," said Edgytha, and set her lips grimly.
    "And left her daughter motherless?" said Haluin, with more reproof in his voice than he had intended.
    "She left her daughter very well mothered! She left her to the lady Emma and to me!" Edgytha smouldered for a moment, and subdued the brief fire within lowered eyelids. "Three mothers that child has had, and all fond. My