Brother Cadfael 15: The Confession of Brother Haluin

story."
    "Then be my chronicler. Tell it! Remind me! Let me hear how it will sound in my confessor's ears, if any priest takes my confession ever again." She stretched out one long hand suddenly, waving him imperiously to a seat, but he remained standing where he could see her most clearly, and she made no move to evade his eyes, and no concessions to the fixity of his regard. Her beautiful, proud face was composed and mute, admitting nothing, denying nothing. Only the burning of her dark eyes in their deep settings was eloquent, and even that in a language he could not quite translate.
    "You know all too well what you did, all those years ago," said Cadfael. "You executed a fearful punishment upon Haluin for daring to love your daughter and getting her with child. You pursued him even into the cloister where your enmity had driven him - all too soon, but the young are quick to despair. You forced him to provide you with the means of abortion, and you sent him word, afterward, that it had killed both mother and child. That awful guilt you have visited upon him all these years, to be his torment lifelong. Did you speak?"
    "No," she said. "Go on! You have barely begun."
    "True, I have barely begun. That draught of hyssop and fleur-de-lis that you got from him - it never was used. Its purpose was only to poison him, it did no harm to any other. What did you do with it? Pour it away into the ground? No, long before ever you demanded the herbs of him, as soon as you had driven him out of your house, I daresay, you had hustled Bertrade away here to Elford, and married her to Edric Vivers. It must have been so. Certainly it was done in time to give her child, when it was born, a credible if unlikely father. No doubt the old man prided himself on still being potent enough to get a child. Why should anyone question the birth date, since you had acted so quickly?"
    She had not stirred or flinched, her eyes never left his face, admitting nothing, denying nothing.
    "Were you never afraid," he asked, "that someone, somehow, should let fall within reach even of the cloister that Bertrade de Clary was wife to Edric Vivers, and not safely in her grave? That she had borne her old husband a daughter? It needed only a chance traveller with a gossiping tongue."
    "There was no such risk," she said simply. "What contact was there ever between Shrewsbury and Hales? None, until he suffered his fall and conceived his pilgrimage. Much less likely there should ever be dealings with manors in another shire. There was no such risk."
    "Well, let us continue. You took her away and gave her to a husband. The child was born. So much mercy at least you had on the girl - why none for him? Why such bitter and vindictive hate, that you should conceive so terrible a revenge? Not for your daughter's wrongs, no! Why should he not have been considered a suitable match for her in the first place? He came of good family, he was heir to a fine manor, if he had not taken the cowl. What was it you held so much against him? You were a beautiful woman, accustomed to admiration and homage. Your lord was in Palestine. And I well remember Haluin as he first came to me, eighteen years old, not yet tonsured. I saw him as you had been seeing him for some few years in your celibate solitude - he was comely..."
    He let it rest there, for her long, resolute tips had parted on deliberate affirmation at last. She had listened to him unwaveringly, making no effort to halt him, and no complaint. Now she responded.
    "Too comely!" she said. "I was not used to being denied, I did not even know how to sue. And he was too innocent to read me aright. How such children offend without offence! So if I could not have him," she said starkly, "she should not. No woman ever should, but not she of all women."
    It was said, she let it stand, adding nothing in extenuation, and having said it, she sat contemplating it, seeing again as in another woman what she could now no longer feel with the same intensity, the longing and the anger.
    "There is more," said Cadfael, "much more. There is the matter of your woman Edgytha. Edgytha was the one trusted confidante you needed, the one who knew the truth. It was she who was sent to Vivers with Bertrade. Utterly loyal and devoted to you, she kept your secret and abetted your revenge all these years. And you trusted in her to keep it forever. So all was well for you, until Roscelin and Helisende grew up, and came to love each other no longer as