Brother Cadfael 15: The Confession of Brother Haluin Read Free Page B

shoe left the frozen ground. Cadfael turned back to the door of the infirmary, and went to check the stores in Brother Edmund's medicine cupboard. Another hour, and the light would be already dimming, in these shortest days of the year. Brother Urien and Brother Haluin would be the last pair up on the roof for this day.
    Exactly how it happened no one ever clearly established. Brother Urien, who had obeyed Brother Conradin's order to come down as soon as the call came, pieced together what he thought the most probable account, but even he admitted there could be no certainty. Conradin, accustomed to being obeyed, and sensibly concluding that no one in his right senses would wish to linger a moment longer than he must in the bitter cold, had simply shouted his command, and turned away to clear the last of the day's broken slates out of the way of his descending workmen. Brother Urien let himself down thankfully to the boards of the scaffolding, and fumbled his way carefully down the long ladder to the ground, only too happy to leave the work. He was strong and willing, and had no special skills but a wealth of hard experience, and what he did would be well done, but he saw no need to do more than was asked of him. He drew off some yards to look up at what had been accomplished, and saw Brother Haluin, instead of descending the short ladder braced up the slope of the roof on his side, mount several rungs higher, and lean out sidelong to clear away a further sweep of snow and extend the range of the uncovered slates. It appeared that he had seen reason to suspect that the damage extended further on that side, and wished to sweep away the snow there to remove its weight and prevent worse harm.
    The rounded bank of snow shifted, slid down in great folds upon itself, and fell, partly upon the end of the planks and the stack of slates waiting there, partly over the edge and sheer to the ground below. No such avalanche had been intended, but the frozen mass loosed its hold of the steep slates and dropped away in one solid block, to shatter as it struck the scaffolding. Haluin had leaned too far. The ladder slid with the snow that had helped to keep it stable, and he fell rather before than with it, struck the end of the planks a glancing blow, and crashed down without a cry to the frozen channel below. Ladder and snowfall dropped upon the planks and hurled them after him in a great downpour of heavy sharp-edged slates, slashing into his flesh.
    Brother Conradin, busy almost beneath his scaffolding, had leaped clear only just in time, spattered and stung and half blinded for a moment by the blown drift of the fall. Brother Urien, standing well back, and arrested in the very act of calling up to his companion to stop, for the light was too far gone, uttered instead a great cry of warning, too late to save, and sprang forward, to be half buried by the edge of the fall. Shaking off snow, they reached Brother Haluin together.
    It was Brother Urien who came in haste and grim silence looking for Cadfael, while Conradin ran out the other way into the great court, and sent the first brother he encountered to fetch Brother Edmund the infirmarer. Cadfael was in his workshop, just turfing over his brazier for the night, when Urien erupted into the doorway, a dark, dour man burning with ill news.
    "Brother, come quickly! Brother Haluin has fallen from the roof!"
    Cadfael, no less sparing of words, swung about, clouted down the last turf, and reached for a woollen blanket from the shelf.
    "Dead?" The drop must be forty feet at least, timber by way of obstacles on the way down, and packed ice below, but if by chance he had fallen into deep snow made deeper still by the clearance of the roof, he might yet be lucky.
    "There's breath in him. But for how long? Conradin's gone for more helpers, Edmund knows by now."
    "Come!" said Cadfael, and was out of the door and running for the little bridge over the leat, only to change his mind and dart along the