It was said without passion; the brief spurt of anger was already gone. It cost her no effort to absolve him; she did it as neutrally, it seemed, and with as little feeling as she would have handed out food to a beggar. Of gentlewomen of her nobility alms could properly be asked, and granting was a form of largesse, the due fulfillment of a rite of lordship. But what she gave lightly came as relieving grace to Haluin. The braced tension went out of his leaning shoulders and stiffly clenched hands. He bent his head humbly before her, and uttered his thanks in a low and halting voice, like a man momentarily dazed.
“Madam, your mercy lifts a load from me, and from my heart I am grateful.”
“Go back to the life you have chosen and the duties you have undertaken,” she said, again seating herself, though she did not yet reach for her needle. “Think no more of what happened long ago. You say you have a life spared. Use it as best you can, and so will I mine.”
It was a dismissal, and as such Haluin accepted it. He made her a deep reverence, and turned carefully upon his crutches, and Cadfael reached a hand to steady him in the movement. She had not so much as bidden them be seated, perhaps too shaken by so sudden and startling a visit, but as they reached the doorway she called after them suddenly:
“Stay if you will, take rest and meat in my house. My servants will provide you everything you need.”
“I thank you,” said Haluin, “but our leave of absence enjoins a return as soon as my pilgrimage here is done.”
“God hasten your way home, then,” said Adelais de Clary, and with a steady hand took up her needle again.
The church lay a short distance from the manor, where two tracks crossed, and the huddle of village house plots gathered close about the churchyard wall.
“The tomb is within,” said Haluin, as they entered at the gate. “It was never opened when I was here, but Bertrand’s father is buried here, and surely it must have been opened for Bertrade. She died here. I am sorry, Cadfael, that I refused hospitality also for you. I had not thought in time. I shall need no bed tonight.”
“You said no word of that to the lady,” Cadfael observed.
“No. I hardly know why, When I saw her again my heart misgave me that I did ill to bring before her again that old pain, that the very sight of me was an offense to her. Yet she did forgive. I am the better for that, and she surely none the worse. But you could have slept easy tonight. No need for two to watch.”
“I’m better fitted for a night on my knees than you,” said Cadfael. “And I am not sure the welcome there would have been very warm. She wished us gone. No, it’s very well as it is. Most likely she thinks we’re on the homeward way already, off her land and out of her life.”
Haluin halted for a second with his hand on the heavy iron ring latch of the church door, his face in shadow. The door swung open, creaking, and he gripped his crutches to ease himself down the two wide, shallow steps into the nave. It was dim and stonily chilly within. Cadfael waited a moment on the steps till his eyes grew accustomed to the changed light, but Haluin set off at once up the nave towards the altar. Nothing here was greatly changed in eighteen years, and nothing had been forgotten. Even the rough edges of the floor tiles were known to him. He turned aside towards the right-hand wall, his crutches ringing hollowly, and Cadfael, following, found him standing beside a stone table-tomb fitted between the pillars. The carved image recumbent there was in crude chain mail, and had one leg crossed over the other, and a hand on his sword hilt. Another Crusader, surely the father of Bertrand, who in his turn had followed him to the Holy Land. This one, Cadfael calculated, might well have been with Robert of Normandy’s army in my time, at the taking of Jerusalem. Clearly the de Clary men were proud of their warfare in the east.
A man came through from the sacristy, and seeing two unmistakable Benedictine habits, turned amicably to come towards them. A man of middle age, in a rusty black cassock, advancing upon them with a mildly inquiring expression and a welcoming smile, Haluin heard his steps, soft as they were, and swung about gladly to greet a remembered neighbor, only to recoil on the instant at seeing a stranger.
“Good day, Brothers! God be with you!” said the priest of Hales. “To travelers of your cloth my house is always open, like this house of God. Have you come far?”
“From Shrewsbury,” said Haluin, strongly recovering himself. “Forgive me, Father, if I was taken aback. I had expected to see Father Wulfnoth. Foolish of me, indeed, for I have not been here for many years, and he was growing grey when I knew him, but to me in youth it seemed he would be here forever. Now I dare hardly ask!”
“Father Wulfnoth is gone to his rest,” said the priest, “seven years ago now it must be. Ten years back I came here, after he was brought to his bed by a seizure, and three years I looked after him until he died. I was newly priest then, I learned much from Wulfnoth, his mind was clear and bright if the flesh had failed him.” His good-natured round face offered sympathetic curiosity. “You know this church and this manor, then? Were you born in Hales?”
“No, not that, But for some years I served with the lady Adelais at the manor. Church and village I knew well, before I took the cowl at Shrewsbury. Now,” said Haluin earnestly, observing how brightly he was studied, and feeling the need to account for his return, “I have good need to give thanks for escaping alive from a mishap that might have caused my death, and I have taken thought to discharge, while I may, every debt I have on my conscience. Of which number, one brings me here to this tomb. There was a lady of the de Clary family whom I reverenced, and she died untimely. I should like to spend the night here at her burial place, in prayers for her. It was long before your time, eighteen years ago now. It will not disturb you if I spend the night here within?”
“Why, as to that, you’d be welcome,” said the priest heartily, “and I could light a cresset for you. It gives some help against the cold. But surely, Brother, you’re under some mistake. True, what you say puts this before my time, but Father Wulfnoth told me much concerning the church and the manor, he’d been in the service of the lords of Hales all his life. It was they helped him to his studies and set him up here as priest. There has been no burial here in this tomb since the old lord died, this one who’s carved here on the stone. And that was more than thirty years back. It’s his grandson rules now. A lady of the family, you say? And died young?”
“A kinswoman,” said Haluin, low-voiced and shaken, his eyes lowered to the stone which had not been raised for thirty years. “She died here at Hales. I had thought she must be buried here.” He would not name her, or betray more than he must of himself and what moved him, even to this kindly man. And Cadfael stood back from them, watched, and held his peace.
“And only eighteen years ago? Then be certain. Brother, she is not here. If you knew Father Wulfnoth, you know you can rely upon what he told me. And I know his wits were sharp until the day he died.”
“I do believe it, ” said Haluin, quivering with the chill of disappointment. “He would not be mistaken. So-she is not here!”
“But this is not the chief seat of the de Clary honor,” the priest pointed out gently, “for that’s Elford, in Staffordshire. The present lord, Audemar, took his father there for burial; the family has a great vault there. If there are any close kin dead these last years, that’s where they’ll be. No doubt the lady you speak of was also taken there to lie among her kinsfolk.”
Haluin seized upon the hope hungrily. “Yes… yes, it could well be so, it must be so. There I shall find her.”
“I have no doubt of it,” said the priest. “But it’s a long way to go afoot.” He had sensed an urgency that was very unlikely to listen to reason, but he did his best to temper it. “You’d be well advised to go mounted, if you must go now, or put it off for longer days and better weather. At least come inside, to my house, and take meat with me, and rest overnight.”