“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 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 to leave her space and time, and stood apart, watching her disciplined stillness, and measuring in his mind the bitter toll of eighteen years of silence, of pitilessly contained hate and love. The first words he had heard from her now, even at this extreme, had been of Haluin, and still he heard the vibration of pain in her voice as she cried aloud: “What have they done to you?”
Adelais got up abruptly from her chair and crossed with long, fierce steps to the window, to fling back the shutter and let in air and light and cold. She stood for a while looking out at the quiet court, and the pale sky dappled with little clouds, and the green gauze veiling the branches of the trees beyond the enclave wall. When she turned to him again he saw her face in full, clear light, and saw as in a dual vision both her imperishable beauty and the dust time had cast upon it, the taut lines of her long throat fallen slack, the grey of ashes in her coiled black hair, the lines that had gathered about mouth and eyes, the net of fine veins marring cheeks which had once been smooth ivory. And she was strong, she would not lightly relinquish her hold of the world and go gently out of it. She would live long, and rage against the relentless assault of old age until death at once defeated and released her. By her very nature Adelais’s penance was assured.
“No!” she said with abrupt, imperious authority, as though he had advanced some suggestion with which she was in absolute disagreement. “No, I want no advocate, there shall no man rid me of any part of what is mine. What now needs to be told, I will tell. No other! Whether it ever would have been told, if you had never come near me-you with your hand forever at Haluin’s elbow, and your temperate eyes that I could never read-do I know? Do you? That is of no account now. What is left to be done, I will do.”
“Command me to go,” said Cadfael, “and I will go. You do not need me.”
“Not as advocate, no. As witness, perhaps! Why should you be cheated of the ending? Yes!” she said, glittering, “you shall ride with me, and see it ended. I owe you a fulfillment as I owe God a death.”
He rode with her, as she had decreed. Why not? He had to return to Farewell, and by way of Vivers was as good a road as any. And once she had resolved upon action there could be no delay and no denial.
She rode astride, booted and spurred like a man, she who in the common progressions of her recent years had been content to go decorously pillion behind a groom, as was fitting for a dame of her age and dignity. She rode with the lordly confidence of a man, erect and easy in the saddle, her bridle hand held low. And she rode fast but steadily, advancing upon her losses as vigorously as upon her gains.
Cadfael, riding at her side, could not but wonder whether she still felt tempted to hold back some part of the truth, to cover herself from the last betrayal. But the smoldering calm of her face spoke against it. There was no evasion, no appeal, no excuse. What she had done she had done, and would as starkly declare. And if she repented of it, only God would ever know.