Brother Cadfael 15: The Confession of Brother Haluin

winter, appropriately completing Haluin's pilgrimage, as the first snow had begun it.
    The filigree green gauze of buds along the branches of bush and tree had burst into the tender plumage of young leaves. The moist grass shimmered, and gave off a faint, fragrant steam as the sun reached it. So much beauty, and behind him as he rode lay a great mercy, a just deliverance, and the renewal of hope. And before him a solitary soul to be saved or lost.
    He did not take the road to Vivers. It was not there he had urgent business, though he might well return that way. Once he halted to look back, and the long line of the abbey fence had disappeared in the folds of land, and the hamlet with it. Haluin would be waiting and wondering, groping his way through a confused dream, beset with questions to which he could have no answer, torn between belief and disbelief, fearful joy and recollected anguish, until the abbess should send to summon him to the meeting which would make all things plain at last.
    Cadfael rode on slowly until he should encounter someone from whom he could ask directions. A woman leading sheep and lambs out to pasture at the edge of the village stopped willingly to point him to the most direct road. He need not go near Vivers, and that was well, for he had no wish to meet Cenred or his men as yet. He had nothing at this moment to tell them, and indeed it was not he who must tell what finally had to be told.
    Once on the track his informant had indicated, he rode fast and purposefully, until he dismounted at the gate of the manor of Elford.
    It was the young portress who tapped at the door and entered Brother Haluin's haunted solitude, later in the morning, when the sun had shed its veil, and the grass of the garth was drying. He looked round as she came in, expecting Cadfael, and gazed at her with eyes still wide and blank with wonder.
    "I am sent by the lady abbess," said the girl, with solicitous gentleness, since it seemed he might be almost beyond understanding, "to bid you to her parlour. If you will come with me, I'll show, you the way."
    Obediently he reached for his crutches. "Brother Cadfael went forth and has not returned," he said slowly, looking about him like a man awaking from sleep. "Is this bidding to him also? Should I not wait for him?"
    "There is no need," she said. "Brother Cadfael has already spoken with Mother Patrice, and has an errand he says he must do now. You should wait for his return here, and be easy. Will you come?"
    Haluin thrust himself to his feet and went with her, across the rear court to the abbess's lodging, confiding like a child though half his mind was still absent. The little portress tempered her flying steps to his laboured gait, bringing him with considerate gentleness to the door of the parlour, and turning upon him on the threshold a bright, encouraging smile.
    "Go in, you are expected."
    She held the door open for him, since he had need of both hands for his crutches. He limped across the threshold into the wood-scented, dimly lit room, and halted just within to make his reverence to the mother superior, only to stand motionless and quivering as his eyes adjusted to the subdued light. For the woman who stood waiting for him, braced and still and wonderfully smiling in the centre of the room, her hands extended instinctively to aid his approach, was not the abbess, but Bertrade de Clary.
    Chapter Twelve
    The groom who came unhurriedly across the courtyard to greet the visitor and inquire his business was neither Lothair nor Luc, but a lanky lad not yet twenty, with a shock of dark hair. At his back the courtyard seemed emptied of its usual lively activity, only a few maids and manservants going back and forth about their work in a casual fashion, as if all constraints were slackened. By the look of things, the master of the house and most of his men were still out and about on the hunt for any word that might lead to the murderer of Edgytha.
    "If you're wanting the lord Audemar," said the boy at once, "you're out of luck. He's still away to Vivers about this woman who was killed a couple of nights back. But his steward's here. If you want lodging you'd best see him."
    "I thank you," said Cadfael, surrendering his bridle, "but it's not the lord Audemar I've come to see. My errand is to his mother. I know where her dower apartments are. If you'll see to the horse I'll go myself and ask her woman to inquire if the lady will be good enough to see me."
    "As you