Brother Cadfael 15: The Confession of Brother Haluin

passionately, "tell him! If she did make for Elford, where can she be now? My lord, Helisende is gone, she has ridden out alone, my father believes she must have set out for Elford - because of me! But I rode here by the rough track and saw nothing of her. Has she indeed come safely to you? Put me out of this anxiety - did she go by the highroad? Is she safe at Elford now?" 't
    "She is not!" Brought up short against this new vexation, Audemar looked sharply from son to father and back again, well aware of the tensions that plagued them. "We have just come by the highroad and never a sign of her or any woman have we seen. One road or the other, one of us would have met with her. Come, now!" he said, sweeping Cenred along with him in his free arm. "Let's within, the few of us, and see what knowledge we can put together, to be used with good sense tomorrow by daylight. Madam, you should take some rest, all's done that you can do before morning, and I will make myself accountable from this on. No need for you to watch out the night."
    There was no question now as to who was master here. At his bidding Emma folded her hands thankfully, shared a glance of harried affection between her husband and her son, and departed docilely to such rest as she could hope to get before dawn. Audemar looked round once from within the solar, a sweeping glance amiable enough but unmistakable in its dominance, that dismissed all further attendance. His eye lit upon the two Benedictines, waiting unobtrusively on the edge of the scene, recognized them with a nod of easy reverence for their habit, and smiled.
    "Good night, Brothers!" said Audemar, and drew the solar door firmly closed at his back, shutting himself in with the troubled Vivers household and their aspiring kinsman.
    Chapter Ten
    He is right!" said Brother Haluin, stretched on his bed in the predawn twilight, wakeful still and loosed now from his long silence on the fringe of other men's chaos. "Good night. Brothers, and good-bye! There will be no marriage. There can be no marriage, there is now no bride. And even if she should come back, this match cannot now go forward as if nothing had happened to cast it into such bitter doubt. When I accepted the burden - for even so it was burdensome - there was no call to question that it was for the best, grievous though it might be. There is good reason to question now."
    "I think," said Cadfael, listening to the muted, deliberate voice, as Haluin felt his way towards a resolution, "you are not sorry to be delivered from your promise."
    "No, I am not sorry. Sorry enough. God knows, that a woman has died, sorry that these children should suffer unhappiness without remedy. But I could not now be answerable to God for joining the girl to any man. unless I could recover the certainty I have lost. As well that she is gone, and I pray into some safe refuge. And now it only remains," said Brother Haluin, "for us to take our leave. We no longer have any part to play here. De Clary has plainly told us so. And Cenred will be glad to see us go."
    "And you have a vow to complete, and no further cause to delay. True!" said Cadfael, torn between relief and regret.
    "I have delayed too long already. It is time I acknowledged," said Haluin inflexibly, "how small are my own griefs, and how great the part I have chosen. I made the choice for my own craven sake. Now with what life I have left I will make it good for a worthier reason."
    So this journey, thought Cadfael, has not been in vain. For the first time since his flight from the world, sick with his guilt and loss, he has ventured back into the world, and found it full of pain, into which his own pain has fallen and been lost, like a raindrop in the sea. All these years he has been outwardly dutiful, keeping every scruple of the Rule, and agonized in solitude within. His true vocation begins now. Once enlightened, Haluin may well prove the stuff of which saints are made. As for me, I am unregenerate man.
    For in his heart he did not want to leave Vivers thus, with nothing resolved. Everything Haluin said was true. The bride was gone, there could be no marriage, they had no excuse for remaining here any longer, nor had Cenred any further use for them. He would indeed be glad to see them go. But Cadfael would not go gladly, turning his back upon a murder unavenged, justice out of kilter, a wrong that might never be set right.
    True also, Audemar de Clary was overlord here, a man of force and decision,