“You shall have a companion who need neither wonder nor question,” said the abbot, “since he already knows, at your own telling. Brother Cadfael shall come with you. His company and his prayers can only be of comfort and benefit to you. Your confidence and the lady’s memory will be in no danger, and he is well qualified to care for you along the way.” And to Cadfael, turning, he said, “Will you undertake this charge? I do not believe he is fit to go alone.”
Small choice, thought Cadfael, but not altogether displeased at the instruction, either. There was still, somewhere deep within him, a morsel of the vagus who had roamed the world from Wales to Jerusalem and back to Normandy for forty years before committing himself to stability within the cloister, and an expedition sanctioned, even ordered, by authority could be welcomed as blessed, instead of evaded as a temptation.
“If you so wish, Father,” he said, “I will.”
“This journey will take several days. I take it that Brother Winfrid will be competent to dispense whatever may be needed, with Edmund to guide him?”
“For a few days,” agreed Cadfael, “they should manage well enough. I have stocked the infirmary cupboard only yesterday, and in the workshop there’s a good supply of all the common remedies usually called for in the winter. Should something unforeseen be needed. Brother Oswin could come back from Saint Giles to help for a while.”
“Good! Then, son Haluin, you may prepare for this journey, and set out when you are ready, tomorrow if you will. But you will submit yourself to Brother Cadfael if your strength fails you, and do his bidding as faithfully as within these walls you have always done mine.”
“Father,” said Haluin fervently, “I will.”
At the altar of Saint Winifred, Brother Haluin recorded his solemn vow that same evening after Vespers, to leave himself no way out, with a white-faced vehemence which indicated to Cadfael, who witnessed it at Haluin’s own wish, that this implacable penitent in his deepest heart knew and feared the labor and pain he was imposing on himself, and embraced it with a passion and resolution Cadfael would rather have seen devoted to a more practical and fruitful enterprise. For who would benefit by this journey, even though it passed successfully, except the penitent himself, at least partially restored to his self-respect? Certainly not the poor girl who had committed no worse sin than to venture too much for love, and who surely was long since in a state of grace. Nor the mother who must long ago have put this evil dream behind her, and must now be confronted by it once again after years. And Cadfael was not of the opinion that a man’s main business in this world was to save his own soul. There are other ailing souls, as there are ailing bodies, in need of a hoist towards health.
But Haluin’s needs were not his needs. Haluin’s bitter years of silent self-blame certainly called for a remedy.
“On these most holy relics,” said Brother Haluin, with his palm pressed against the drapings that covered the reliquary, “I record my penitential vow: that I will not rest until I have gone on foot to the tomb in which Bertrade de Clary lies, and there passed a night’s vigil in prayer for her soul, and again on foot returned here to the place of my due service. And if I fail of this, may I live forsworn and die unforgiven.”
They set out after Prime, on the fourth morning of March, out at the gate and along the Foregate towards Saint Giles and the highroad due east. The day was cloudy and still, the air chill but not wintry cold. Cadfael viewed the way ahead in his mind, and found it not too intimidating. They would be leaving the western hills behind them, and with every mile eastward the country about them would subside peaceably into a green level. The road was dry, for there had been no recent rain, and the cloud cover above was high and pale, and threatened none, and there was a grassy verge such as could be found only on the king’s highways, wide on either side the track, easy walking even for a crippled man. The first mile or two might pass without grief, but after that the constant labor would begin to tell. He would have to be the judge of when to call a halt, for Haluin was likely to grit his teeth and press on until he dropped. Somewhere under the Wrekin they would find a hospitable refuge for the night, for there were abbey tenants there among the cottagers, and any hut along the way would willingly give them a place by the fire for a midday rest. Food they had with them in the scrip Cadfael carried.
In the brisk hopefulness of morning, with Haluin’s energy and eagerness at their best, they made good speed, and rested at noon very pleasurably with the parish priest at Attingham. But in the afternoon the pace slowed somewhat, and the strain began to tell upon Haluin’s hardworking shoulders, aching from the constant weight and endlessly repeated stress, and the cold as evening approached numbed his hands on the grips of his crutches, in spite of their mufflings of woolen cloth. Cadfael called a halt as soon as the light began to fade into the windless March dusk, grey and without distances, and turned aside into the village of Uppington, to beg a bed for the night at the manor.
Haluin had been understandably silent along the road, needing all his breath and all his resolution for the effort of walking. Fed and at ease in the evening, he sat watching Cadfael in accepting silence still for a while.
“Brother,” he said at last, “I take it very kindly that you’ve come with me on this journey. With no other but you could I speak without conceal of that old grief, and before ever we see Shrewsbury again I may sorely need to speak of it. The worst of me you already know, and I will never say word in excuse. But in eighteen years I have never until now spoken her name aloud, and now to utter it is like food after starvation.”
“Speak or be silent as the need takes you,” said Cadfael, “and I’ll hear or be deaf according to your wish. But as for tonight you should take your rest, for you’ve come a good third part of the way, and tomorrow, I warn you, you’ll find some aches and pains you knew nothing of, from laboring so hard and so long.”
“I am tired,” admitted Haluin, with a sudden and singularly touching smile, as brief as it was sweet. “You think we cannot reach Hales tomorrow, then?”
“Don’t think of it! No, we’ll get as far as the Augustinian canons at Wombridge, and spend another night there. And you’ll have done well to get so far in the time, so don’t grudge the one day more.”
“As you think best,” said Haluin submissively, and lay down to sleep with the confiding simplicity of a child charmed and protected by his prayers.
The next day was less kind, for there was a thin, spasmodic rain that stung at times with sleet, and a colder wind from the northeast, from which the long, green, craggy bulk of the Wrekin gave them no shelter as the road skirted it to the north. But they reached the priory before dusk, though Haluin’s lips were fast clenched in determination by then, and the skin drawn tight and livid over his cheekbones with exhaustion, and Cadfael was glad to get him into the warmth, and go to work with oiled hands on the sinews of his arms and shoulders, and the thighs that had carried him so bravely all day long.
And the third day, early in the afternoon, they came to the manor of Hales.
The manor house lay a little aside from the village and the church, timber-built on the stone undercroft, in level, well-drained fields, with gentle wooded slopes beyond. Within its wooden fence, stable and barn and bakehouse were ranged along the pale, well maintained and neat. Brother Haluin stood in the open gateway, and looked at the place of his old service with a face fixed and still, only his eyes alive and full of pain.
“Four years,” he said, “I kept the manor roll here. Bertrand de Clary was my father’s overlord. I was sent here before I was fourteen, to be page to his lady. Will you believe, the man himself I never saw. Before I came here he was already in the Holy Land. This is but one of his manors, the only one in these parts, but his son was already installed in his place, and ruled the honor from Staffordshire. She always liked Hales best, she left her son to his lordship and settled here, and it was here I came. Better for her if I had never entered this house. Better far for Bertrade!”