Peter Abelard

by Helen Waddell

  She raised her head at that. “I do see,” she said. “There is nobody in the whole world for me but you. I would go after you through the fires of Hell. I would lie and cheat for you, as I have lied and cheated already. I have given my honour to the carrion crows of Paris and been proud to be called your whore. But you—but you——” She broke into terrible weeping.

  Bewildered, helpless, he gathered her into his arms. For a moment she struggled against him, then as desperately clung to him, shaking him as well as herself with the agony of her grief. He was powerless to comfort her: and when at last its violence was abated, she lay spent in his arms, now and then heaving a great sigh.

  “Beloved,” he bent over her. “What can I do or say?”

  She shook her head, and lifted one hand to touch his cheek.

  “There is only one thing left,” she said. “The grief that is to come will be no less than the love that went before it.”

  He shuddered at it, and in quick pity for him, she turned and flung her arms about him. For a while he sat, his cheek against hers: then, lifting her, carried her down the steps to their bed. Deadly weary as they were, they lay clinging to one another, like children in the dark, broken-hearted for each other, yet finding in the closeness and nearness of their bodies such consolation as might redeem all sorrows they had felt. Let the future bring what it might, thought Abelard, before he slept, if it left them the solace of each other’s arms.

  CHAPTER IV

  The Easter Mass was ended. Heloise, kneeling beside Denise, had listened to her lover’s voice triumphant in the Victimae Paschali,

  “Dux vitae mortuus regnat vivus,”

  transcending and yet carrying with it the sparrow chirping of the little choir-boys, who stared at him round-eyed, worshipping. That he who was so nearly their lord should take his place surpliced among them seemed to them a more stupendous condescension than any unintelligible Incarnation. Through the east window Heloise saw a budded limetree, holding up its small translucent cups of light: and her heart rose with it. From the moment she had wakened that morning with the west wind breathing on their faces through the open doorway, the doom and terror of the night had seemed only a bad dream: his arm was under her head. “Pour forth upon us, O Lord, the spirit of thy love, that by thy loving kindness thou mayest make to be of one mind those whom thou hast fed with the sacraments of thine Easter.” She was of one mind with him: come what might, she was content to go his way.

  She stood by the well in the courtyard, waiting for him. Denise had left her to go into the bakehouse, where ever since daybreak there had been a cheerful clatter of tongues and the crackling of sticks under the great oven, in preparation for the Easter feast. Heloise would have followed her, but Denise refused.

  “Child, there’s plenty here to get under my feet without you. Wait for Peter. Let him have his day.”

  She saw him now, coming up the causeway, side by side with Hugh the Stranger in companionable silence. Then Hugh turned and went into the stable, and Abelard came towards her.

  “Let’s go down to the river,” he said. He looked at her, a little discontented with the white coif that hid her hair. “Heloise, do you know that I have never done what all the lovers do, made you a spring garland? Do you know that until now we have wasted all our spring in a town?”

  “If you knew how I have wanted you,” said Heloise, “these April dusks in the fields.” They had gone through the gate, and were going down the uneven track to the ford. “And yet the pain of it seemed the richest thing I have ever had.”

  “Amore crucior,

  vulnere morior,

  quo glorior,”

  said Abelard under his breath. “Do you know the garland I am going to make you, Heloise? I was thinking of it this morning, before you wakened. If it were May, I thought it would be wild roses. I do not know why, but it must have a thorn in it. The wild roses were all over when we were riding down to Brittany last July. And then I looked at your dark hair and the small white face sleeping there, and I knew what it would be. First I shall plait you a crown of green rushes, so that I can fasten the twigs in it and not hurt you: and then it will be Flos de spina, flower of the thorn.”

  He reached up and pulled a branch from the blackthorn hedge that overhung the track.

  “It has always seemed to me the world’s miracle,” he went on, touching the frail white blossom on the long fierce spine. “I wonder what Adam thought his first March day outside Paradise, when the thorns that had cursed him all winter broke into anything so small and white and tender as this.”

  “Peter? Are you there?”

  The call came muffled from the hill behind them. They stopped, reluctantly. Heloise shook her head at the truant look preparing in Abelard’s eyes.

  “It’s Hugh, and he sounds uneasy,” she said. “We had better go back.” They turned, but stood aside to let the slow cows go by on their way from their belated milking to the water-meadow. They blew sweet breaths as they went by, and one timid young heifer at the unaccustomed sight of Abelard hustled into the hedge, throwing her head over another’s flank and looking at him with wild, frightened eyes.

  “Chè, Chè,” said Abelard comfortingly. The eyes ceased to roll, though they still looked anxious, and she swerved past him, cantering. The last laggard was coming through the gate as they reached it, and saw Hugh the Stranger standing in the stable door.

  “I wish you would look at the mare, Peter, if you are going to ride her to-morrow. She won’t let me near her. Did you notice her lame yesterday?”

  “I did not,” said Abelard. “But then I was leading her and walking slow with Heloise the last half-mile. Maybe she picked up a thorn at the gap. Let me see, girl.” The mare rubbed her head against his shoulder, and stood still while he lifted her fore foot.

  “That’s what it is, and a wicked one, too. I’ll need to bathe it. Wait for me in the orchard, Heloise.”

  She went to the corn bin by the door and filled her lap; screwing up her eyes as she came from the pungent darkness into the naked sunlight of the court. Then the pigeons spied her and were on her with a swoop, settling on her shoulders and arms, and she flung them off, throwing the corn into the air like golden spray, and they rose after it, a fountain of white breasts and dazzling wings. One handful she kept for a brooding hen that she had found with some pride in a hollow tree in the orchard: but when she passed through the gate and came stooping under the low apple-boughs that caught her hair and shook their strange cold dew upon her, she saw that someone was before her. Denise was kneeling beside the prisoner, lifting the grain and letting it fall again to tempt her, and making small crooning noises: and at last the hen replied, though querulously, lumbered with caution off her sitting of brown eggs and began to peck, grudgingly at first, then suddenly ravenous. Heloise, hidden among the apple-boughs, stood watching: she was never weary of watching Denise. It was her patience, not holy like the conscious patience of the saints, offering up all vexation as a mortification, but a kind of natural wisdom: like the verse in Isaiah, “and shall gently lead those that are with young.” She could be brisk enough with anything that could run about, on two or four feet, but with Peter Astrolabe, or a blind puppy, or a beast that was near its time, she seemed never to grow weary. She stood up now, deep-breasted but still slender; “crossed beauty,” they called her in that country, for she had brown eyes set far apart under hair that was very fair; then stooping, the hen now safely absorbed, she caught up an egg from the nest and held it to her ear, listening for the first faint tapping within. She looked up, a little guilty, as Heloise came across the dappled grass.

  “It wasn’t that I thought you would forget her,” she said. “But I thought I would see if any of the eggs are chipped. They should be, any day now. And I did want you to have your one day with Peter.”

  “He is with Hugh in the stable. Hugh wanted him about the mare.”

 
“Listen,” said Denise. She held the brown shell to the girl’s ear. It was there, the ghost of a voice, talking to itself in the dark. “And they have to work so hard to get out, the creatures.” She looked down at the nest, the same humorous gentleness in her eyes as Heloise had seen, watching the youngsters busy with their bowls and spoons. “Look at them, Heloise,” she said once, “trying so hard to live.”

  “Now, old woman,” she pushed a platter of water under the greedy beak, “it’s time you had a drink and got back to your work.”

  “Denise,” said Heloise suddenly. “Abelard says he is taking me back with him to-morrow.”

  “I thought that would be the way of it,” said Denise, rising to her feet. “I just thought that was what brought him back so soon. They can never let one be.” Then her brow puckered. “But, child, what is he going to do with you? It would be a scandal if he had you to live with himself, and he would never let you go back to your uncle.”

  “He says it will all be different,” said Heloise mechanically. It seemed to her that she could do nothing but repeat what Abelard had said last night, and that was bald enough. “He wants to marry me.”

  Denise caught her breath. Her arms came about Heloise in one of her rare quick caresses.

  “It is what I have prayed for,” said she, “ever since I saw Hugh lifting you down from your horse that first night. Oh, my dear,” her face had flushed and her eyes were bright with tears, “it is like when my father said that I might marry Hugh.”

  “But, Denise,” Heloise stopped. She felt she must make Denise realise something of the issues: but do what she would, she could not revive her own conviction of last night. There was no power of thought left in her: nothing but the tranquil acceptance of this shining day.

  “What is it, child? What is there to hinder you?”

  “It is Abelard,” said Heloise. “He is a clerk. If he marries me, it is the end of any great place for him.”

  “I never could see Peter a bishop,” said Denise indifferently. “But if he wanted it, I expect they would make him one. You do not know Peter, child, the way I do. He has always got what he wanted, ever since he was the height of a turf.”

  “It is not only that,” said Heloise. “But it would ruin him in Paris, if it were known. They might take the Schools from him.”

  “My dear, wherever Peter is, there the Schools will be. He emptied Paris once, and if they turn him out, he’ll empty it again.”

  Heloise was silent. In spite of herself, her spirits rose. I suppose, she thought to herself a little ruefully, even one’s lover can never seem quite so omnipotent as one’s eldest brother.

  “But, Denise, do you not think it is wrong of him to marry?”

  The hen had gone clucking back to her nest. Denise stooped to prop up the dilapidated osier basket that stopped the hole.

  “I think,” she said painfully, “it would be wrong of him not to. My dear,” she turned to Heloise, her face crimson, “you know what I did myself when I was a girl, with Hugh. A whole summer through. And I’d have gone after him begging through the ditches, if my father had turned him away. And I wasn’t ashamed of what I had done. At least, I wasn’t in my heart. And yet, once I was married to him—it is like drinking when one is thirsty, and yet you feel more blessed if you stop to say a Benedicat over it. I think, maybe, the difference was that now I could say my prayers before I went to bed with him. I couldn’t before. It seemed like cheating.”

  Heloise was fingering the moss on the elm. “You see, Denise,” she said slowly, “I don’t say any prayers, unless for him. So it does not matter.”

  Denise held her peace. She knew the spirit in those grey eyes was beyond her. She could not even fear for a creature so fearless for itself.

  “And I don’t think,” Heloise went on, “that he is doing it because he thinks it was wrong. It is because he says he broke faith. It—it is the point of honour.”

  Denise lifted her hands and dropped them again. “That is like him. They will never make a churchman out of Peter. He is far more of a fighter than Guillaume, even though he would never do his service and be knighted. All these tussles of his, I sometimes think it is only the fun of unhorsing people, only in a different way. There he is. Look at him.”

  Abelard had vaulted the orchard gate without waiting to open it. Smiling and mischievous, he came across the grass, then suddenly halted, his arms resting on a branch, his eyes fixed on them. Standing there as they did, side by side, with the budding apple-boughs above their heads, their faces turned to watch him, he felt suddenly remote, walled out from their mysterious ancient understanding. It was no altarpiece that he saw: it was an older thing than Mary the mother of Our Lord, and Anne the mother of Mary. It was Demeter and Persephone, with Pluto come to claim her, the six months ended. Then Heloise came a step to meet him, and the vision broke. He came gravely towards them, put his arm about her with a quick straining of her to his side, and then stood, looking down at his sister.

  “Well? Will you give us your blessing, Denise?”

  She looked up at him, her eyes soft, and for a while said nothing. Then she put her arms round his neck and kissed him. “I wish it could have been here,” she said, complaining. “I’d have liked to spread your marriage-bed. Could you not leave her till the summer, Peter?”

  He shook his head. “I promised to bring her back with me. The old man is breaking his heart for her, and I think he could not be content unless he saw her married with his own eyes. But now that I think of it, I must get her into Paris by stealth. Have you kept the nun’s habit you came in, Heloise?”

  “It is in my own chest,” said Denise. “No, child, stay where you are. I’ll bring it here to you. It will maybe need airing.”

  They moved into a patch of sunlight where an elm lay, half uprooted. Tiny sprigs of green were growing on the dark and ancient bark. Heloise touched them. It was like this morning, after last night’s despair.

  “Have you told Hugh?” she asked, after a while.

  Abelard nodded.

  “Did he say anything?”

  “I said I was taking you with me to Paris, to marry you. And he said,” Abelard’s voice was grave, but his glance at her was side-long, “‘Man, I’m glad to hear it. But at that rate, I’ll need to get her little horse in off the grass.’”

  Denise heard them laughing as she came through the trees, her arms full of creased black draperies. They smelt fusty as she shook them out, and Abelard looked at them with distaste against the delicate lilac of her gown.

  “Slip them on, Heloise,” she said. “You are taller since you came, and we’ll maybe have to let down the hem.”

  The girl stood up obediently, and Denise gathered up the dingy folds to slip them over her head. Suddenly, her face already hidden in them, she screamed aloud, thrusting them up with her hands.

  “I can’t, I can’t,” she cried, struggling with the black folds already fallen about her arms, and growing more hopelessly entangled. Even when Denise had pulled her free of them, she stood there shaking and crying, her hands over her eyes, more like a frightened child than Denise had ever seen her.

  “There,” she said, putting her warm hands on the girl’s shoulders, and holding her. “There. It’s all right now. Child, you’re like a little pony that has seen a ghost at the side of the road.”

  Heloise nodded. She stood, trying to twist the quivering of her mouth into a smile. “I am sorry,” she said shakily. “I think—I think I felt rather like a pony. A pony that has seen its own ghost. I suppose it was what Soeur Godric used to say at Argenteuil, that she knew someone was walking over her grave.”

  “They’re ugly things, anyhow,” said Denise comfortably, stirring the tumbled heap with her foot. “And come to think of it, I’d as soon put a young bride into her shroud as into these. I’ll find something else will hide you just as well.”

  “De
nise,” said Abelard diffidently, “you haven’t a suit of young Berengar’s? Surely she is about his height.”

  “To be sure I have,” said Denise. “There’s one he left behind him—you remember, Heloise, at Hallowe’en, when he came home from his uncle’s at Clisson. He had grown too broad in the shoulders for it, though it was new when he went away. You can try it on after dinner. But you’ll do no more till you have some food in you. There’s the children back from catechism.”

  She bundled the nun’s habit under her arm and went down the orchard. Abelard stood a moment, looking down at Heloise.

  “Will you be Berengar, beloved,” he said softly, “and ride to Paris to the Schools with your uncle Peter?”

  She looked up at him, her eyes alight. They walked together on the daisied grass, where the shadows of the apple-boughs made a stiff mosaic beneath their feet, and Abelard saw the woods through which to-morrow would find them riding, he and she.

  “Beloved,” he stopped and set his hands on her shoulders, “do you know what this will mean? If you are Berengar, you need have no woman with you. Guibert is in Paris. And for the first time in our lives, you and I will be alone.”

  It was barely sunrise when the two rode over the drawbridge and down the causeway; the morning ghost of the Easter moon lay on its back over the keep. Abelard was determined to start early, that they might be clear of the plain before the midday heat. They would avoid Nantes, he had decided, Nantes, and Angers, and Le Mans, though that was the shorter road. He was too familiar a figure on it. Instead, he would keep south of the Loire, through the woods past Azay and Chinon to Tours, and north from Tours to Chartres, and so to Paris. The slight figure still muffled in its cloak was very quiet, and he had the wisdom to keep silence for a while. Coming back through the solar for the cloak he had forgotten in the keep, he had seen her standing in her boy’s clothes beside Denise’s great bed, empty only for a tiny heave of the bedclothes at the further side. She was not crying, only rigid. He had gone back into the hall to talk to Hugh the Stranger till she came out.