Brother Cadfael 15: The Confession of Brother Haluin

playmates, but as man and woman. Knowing but forgetting that the world would hold such a love as poisoned, guilty, forbidden by the church. When the secret became a barrier between them, where no barrier need have been, when Roscelin was banished to Elford, and marriage with de Perronet threatened a final separation, then Edgytha could bear it no longer. She came running here in the night - not to Roscelin, but to you! To beg you to tell the truth at last, or to give her leave to tell it for you."
    "I have wondered," said Adelais, "how she knew that I was here within her reach."
    "She knew because I told her. All unwitting I sent her out that night to plead with you to lift the shadow from two innocent children. By merest chance it was mentioned that here in Elford we had spoken with you. I sent her running to you and to her death, as it was Haluin who caused you to come here, in haste to ward him off from any dangerous discovery. We have been the instruments of your undoing, who never wished you anything but well. Now you had better consider what is left to you that can be saved."
    "Go on!" she said harshly. "You have not finished yet."
    "No, not yet. So Edgytha came to plead with you to do right. And you refused her! You sent her running back to Vivers in despair. And what befell her on the way you know."
    She did not deny it. Her face was bleak and set, but her eyes never wavered.
    "Would she have come out with the truth, even against your prohibition? Neither you nor I will ever know the answer to that. But someone equally loyal to you overheard enough to understand the threat to you if she did. Someone feared her, followed and silenced her. Oh, not you! You had other tools to use. But did you speak a word in their ears?"
    "No!" said Adelais. "That I never did! Unless my face spoke for me. And if it did, it lied. I never would have harmed her."
    "I believe you. But there are those who made certain she should never say a word that could harm you. Your lord's men once, yours now, yours to the heart, yours to the death, father and son alike. Which of them was it followed her? Lothair or Luc? Either one of them would die for you without question, and without question one of them has killed for you. And they are gone from here. Yesterday, on some errand of yours, very early! Back to Hales? No, I doubt that, it is not far enough. How distant is your son's remotest manor?"
    "You will not find them," said Adelais with certainty. "As for which of them did the thing I might have prevented, I do not know, I want never to know. I stopped their mouths when they would have spoken. To what end? That guilt, like all the rest, is mine alone, I will not cede any scruple of it. Yes. I sent them away. They will not pay my debts for me. Burying Edgytha with reverence is poor atonement. Confession, penance, even absolution cannot restore a life."
    "There is one amend that can still be made," said Cadfael. "Moreover, I think a price has been exacted from you, no less than from Haluin, all these years. Do not forget that I saw your face when he presented his ruined body before you. I heard your voice as you cried out to him: 'What have they done to you!' All that you did to him you did also to yourself, and once done, it could not be undone. Now you may be free of it, if you choose to deliver yourself."
    "Go on!" said Adelais, though she knew well enough what was to come. He recognized it by the composure with which she had borne herself throughout. Surely she had been waiting here in her half-lit room for the finger of God to point.
    "Helisende is not Edric's daughter, but Haluin's. There is not a drop of Vivers blood in her veins. There is nothing to stand in the way if she wishes to marry Roscelin. Whether those two would do well to marry, who knows? But at least the shadow of incestuous affection can and must be lifted from them. The truth must out, since it is out already at Farewell. Haluin and Bertrade are there together, making their peace, making each the other's peace, and Helisende their child is with them, and the truth is already out of its grave."
    She knew, she had known ever since the old woman's death, that it must come to that at last, and if she had deliberately averted her eyes and refused to acknowledge it, she could no longer do so. Nor was she the woman to delegate a hard thing to others, once her mind was made up, nor to do things by halves, whether for good or ill.
    He would not prompt her. He drew back from her