Peter Abelard

by Helen Waddell

  “I asked for her. I knew I must. And the portress was very loath to disturb her, I could see, but I persuaded her. And, God bless her, she sent word that she would see me after Nones, but that meantime I might wait in the refectory. I guessed what she meant.”

  “Then no one knows you are here but Reverend Mother and the portress?”

  Abelard nodded. He got up restlessly and walked over to the window that looked out on the cloister garden. “Heloise, why is it so still?”

  “It is always quiet between dinner and Nones. But to-day I think they are dead with sleep, for last night they were all roused to see Godric die.”

  “Are they all asleep?”

  “All but the four that are keeping vigil in the chapel.”

  He turned from the window and looked about him, frowning at the great spaces of the hall. His eye went to the Abbess’s table, and above it to the niche where the Virgin sat holding her child, Mother and Son gazing out from the wall with the same blank eyes.

  “Heloise, is there nowhere we can speak but this?”

  She shook her head. “One of the novices is to be received to-morrow, and her people are come already to the guest-house. That is why Reverend Mother sent you here.”

  “Anyhow, I’d rather be in the open. If no one is about,” he scowled at having to say it, “could you not take me to that bees’ garden you told me of, beside the river?”

  She looked troubled. “It is beyond the graveyard. And,” she flushed, “the sexton from St. Julien is digging Godric’s grave.”

  He uttered an impatient sound, and began pacing up and down the hall. Heloise watched him unhappily.

  “Beloved, we have such a little while. Will you not come and sit by me, so that at least I can feel you beside me?”

  He turned at the Abbess’s table, and looked at her almost harshly.

  “I can’t. You do not know. I dare not be near you.” And with that he began again his caged-beast pacing, talking now, jerkily at first, but gradually with a kind of resolute absorption: of the crowd of new students, of an idea that he had for a book on the Trinity, and how Gilles shook his head over it, imploring him to stick to his Universals in bulk, and not confine himself to three. There’s safety in numbers, said Gilles. Fulbert? Fulbert was well again, very much as when she was with him. This time there had been no relapse to the old shrunken misery.

  “I sometimes think,” he went on, “that he has accepted it, that you are going to take the veil, and finds a kind of appeasement in it. There is more life in the old man than I have seen for a long time.”

  Her face shadowed. “I do not like it. Abelard, he is dangerous, you do not know how dangerous. Sometimes I wake at night and see him—see him creeping up your stair.”

  Abelard shook his head at her. “Child, ever since you came here, the door at the stair-foot is barred at night. Gilles made me see to that. And I sleep now in the inner room, and Guibert in the great room, with his pallet across the door.”

  “Guibert! But when is he ever in at night?”

  Abelard halted at the window, his face cloudy, though he was wryly smiling. “Poor Guibert,” he said. “We’re a sorry pair, Heloise. There’s little for him in the Rue des Marmousets now. Bele Alys has been weary of him this long time. It was a marvel to me she endured him as long as she did, but she is a good-natured soul, and now and then he had his turn, between lovers maybe, or if he had a new song for her. But she just cannot abide him any longer. She spat at him in the street, God help him. And then—I think to get rid of him—she told him he could have her for a night if he brought her a hundred gold besants, and until he did that he wasn’t to come in her sight, or the bargain was off. I told him she was mocking him: for she might as well ask him for Anjou and Maine. But he will not believe it. And the creature, he sits there at night, copying some old lecture notes I gave him; he sells them to the new students. There’s a little bag he keeps under his mattress. And it is a bold man would come up those stairs at night, for with that pitiful purse of his, he is like a cat with her kittens.” He had leant his arm against the window, and his head upon it. “God, but it’s quiet It’s like the stillness before the Last Day.” He was silent for a little while.

  “Many a time I’ve laughed at him, Heloise, but he is no laughing matter now.

  Dira vi amoris teror.

  And he’ll be the ruin of me yet,” he went on ruefully, “for eveiy sous I have about me when I come in goes into that pitiful bag. It’s something to see one human creature happy, if only for the length of time it takes to open the little bag and chink the coin down. And there’s times I’m fool enough to think that our two fates depend on it. That some day—some day he and I will have our hearts’ desire.”

  His voice shook on the last words. With a little cry she was beside him, turning him towards her, her hands on his shoulders. He shivered as she touched him, then stood rigid looking down at her. And something in the strained whiteness of her face, the intolerable grey draperies that muffled her, broke his last defence, roused in him the panic terror that had driven him that night in Holy Week. He stooped and lifted her off her feet, to carry her to the dais.

  “Abelard—Abelard—not here.”

  He was muttering, half sobbing, words that she could not hear, and her own cry was stifled. Above them the Mother of God sat dandling her child, gazing blankly from the wall. Even as her head fell back, she saw those unseeing eyes: then her own, beneath his kisses, were blind.

  CHAPTER III

  “Down from the branches fall the leaves,

  A wanness comes on all the trees,

  The summer’s done.

  And into his last house——”

  “Have some wit, man,” said Thibault crossly. “Who wants a song with a drip at the nose like that, and it hardly October?”

  “Let him finish, Thibault,” said Foulques Mascaron of Toulouse. “It’s a good tune. Is that Master Peter’s, Guibert?”

  “Aye. He made it last week.” Guibert looked about him a little anxiously. His master had given him leave for the day and had himself ridden out of Paris half an hour ago; but he was incalculable these times. However, the crowd was growing. He had chosen a good pitch above the river steps at the Port St. Landry, for he caught the people coming in from the country for the Michaelmas fair, as well as the scholars.

  “Get on with it, then,” said Thibault, resigned. He had a cup and ball, and was practising a turn of the wrist that did wonders.

  “The swollen river rushes on

  Past meadows whence the green has gone.

  The golden sun

  Has fled out world. Snow falls by day,

  The nights are dumb.”

  Thibault sat down on the parapet, his shoulders hunched to his ears and his hands tucked into his sleeves. All his friends, except the thin Foulques, eyed him delightedly.

  “About me all the world is stark

  But I am burning. In my heart

  There is a fire,

  A living flame in me, the maid

  Of my desire.”

  “Aha!” said Thibault, rubbing his hands.

  “Her kisses, fuel of my fire,

  Her tender touches, flaming higher,

  The light of light

  Dwells in her eyes. Eternity

  Is in her sight.”

  “Ah, for God’s sake!” said Thibault, genuinely disappointed. “Why didn’t you tell us it was an Ave? Bring us a warming-pan, somebody. Here, Guibert, stop that and give us the Abbot of Angers.”

  Indifferently Guibert tightened a string and obeyed.

  “Once there was an

  Abbot of Angers,

  And the name of

  the first man did he bear,

  An
d they say he

  had a mighty thirst,

  Even beyond the

  townsmen of Angers.”

  By the second line Thibault had joined in, and by the time they had reached the chorus

  “Ho and ho and ho and ho,

  Glory be to Bacchus!”

  they were all shouting, even Foulques, and Guibert saved his voice and contented himself with strumming the accompaniment.

  “That’s better,” said Thibault. “Now give us the one about Margot, you know,

  “Fat, fat

  Was Margot’s cat——”

  “For God’s sake yourself,” said Foulques, “I’ve heard you at nothing else, out of bed and in, for the last week. God knows I’d as soon hear the animal itself. See here, Guibert,” he put down a couple of sous, “can you sing ‘Pus vezem de novelh fleurir’?”

  “Yah!” said Thibault. “Provence. Nobody in Provence has got any guts.” The ball was coming down as he spoke. Foulques’ hand swept up to meet it, seemed only to flick it with a fingernail, and it crashed with a resounding smack on Thibault’s head. It would have felled any other man, but on Thibault it was as though a fly had settled. All the same, he caught his friend’s head between his knees and chastised him soundly.

  “That’ll teach you,” said he. He backed to his old seat on the parapet, Foulques’ head still gripped in a vice. “No, Foulques, you don’t get up. You can listen nicely the way you are. Sing, Guibert, sing him what he wants.”

  Guibert’s sunken, unchanging eyes looked out indifferently above his flute. He played a bar or two, softly trying out the tune, put down the flute, and reached for his guitar.

  “Now for I see the fields in flower,

  The orchards green and clear the rills and fountains,

  Soft airs and wind,

  It seems but just that every man should find——”

  “Ow!” yelled Thibault, leaping suddenly into the air.

  —“His share of joy.”

  There was a roar of laughter from the crowd. Foulques was on his feet, dishevelled but happily smiling, his stylus in his hand.

  “Call it quits, Thibault,” said he. “That came very apt, Guibert. Go on.”

  “And if I have less joy than other men,

  It is because I wish what cannot be.

  This fate was given to me,

  Never of what I loved to have delight.

  So was it and so shall it be again,

  That at the height

  Of ecstasy, my heart still said to me

  ‘All this is vain.’”

  The crowd of young men were silent, overshadowed for a moment by an experience beyond them. Thibault was the first to recover.

  “Just what I was saying,” said he. “Nobody in Provence has got any guts.”

  Even Foulques laughed at that, gratefully. Guibert, meantime, was wiping his flute.

  “Guibert,” said Thibault suddenly, “do you ever laugh at anything? Look at him. Did ever you see as sad eyes out of a monkey’s head?”

  “It was in the Rue des Marmousets he got them,” said an ill-conditioned youngster, anxious to be witty.

  Guibert leapt to his feet, taut and quivering like a tormented cat.

  “Don’t heed him, Guibert,” said Thibault. “An oaf like that. But see here, it’s time we paid the piper.” He took up Guibert’s guitar and went the rounds with it, twisting the ears of the niggardly, and demanding from the last speaker a double contribution, under penalties hissed in his ear but efficacious. He brought it back, with mock solemnity. Guibert’s eyes lit like lamps. There was silver among the copper, more than he had seen for days.

  “Make the most of it, Guibert,” said Thibault warningly. “There’ll be less of this by the end of term, I can tell you. But by that time you can be writing letters home for us, on commission. Foulques here has got the loan of one, about starving in hospital, would draw money from an archdeacon. And, by the same token, there’s old Fulbert stepping out of his own side-door. What’s bitten him, to be out so spry and early? Coming this way, too. I’ll wager he has heard you singing, Guibert, and is out to ask for a song.”

  Guibert seized his guitar and made to be off down the Rue de l’Enfer, but Thibault seized his arm.

  “Stand your ground, man. It’s Grizzel has the evil eye. Do you remember the time we caught her cat and made him throw the dice between his forepaws, and sent him home with the bill of his debts round his neck? Foulques, what do you bet that Fulbert doesn’t ask Guibert here for a song?”

  “Drinks all round,” said Foulques briefly.

  “That Fulbert doesn’t ask Guibert for a song?”

  “Aye.”

  “Done,” said Thibault, “and I’ll bet you drinks all round that he does.”

  The little crowd waited, laughing, yet with a laughter that gradually flickered out. There was something oddly purposeful about the little figure stepping briskly along the quay, an air of curious elation. Thibault, who had made the wager from sheer inconsequence, felt suddenly uneasy as he neared them. As if a magnet drew him, he was bearing straight down upon their little group. He was rosy in the fresh wind, and smiling, but the eyes under the white eyebrows had a gleam that was not of merriment.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” said he. “You have good entertainment. I heard you from my window yonder. Guibert, it is a long time since I heard you sing last, in my own house. Will you do an old man a kindness, and come back with me?”

  Guibert’s bewildered eyes slid away, flickering wretchedly from face to face. The group had fallen silent, but they had unconsciously withdrawn a little, leaving a clear space between the two. Thibault was making faces at him behind Fulbert’s back, honest school-boy faces of dissuasion. It gave him courage to look up at last into the innocent, rosy countenance that beamed upon him.

  “I was just going to the Grand Pont, your reverence,” he said. “I’ll miss the crowds else. The folk are coming to the market, you see. This was just by way of daffing and sport.” It was a long time since Guibert had strung as many sentences together, but the words seemed to put up a kind of fence between him and the other.

  “I had no thought but to make it worth your while,” said Fulbert. He came forward and laid a coin on Guibert’s guitar.

  Guibert made a little sound in his throat. He looked up, dumbfounded, into Fulbert’s face, but even the eyes were smiling now.

  “Gold?” he whispered.

  Fulbert nodded. With a flash like the monkey Thibault had likened him to, the coin was snatched up and hidden. He was on his feet and following Fulbert, walking like a man in his sleep. The old man, now that he had gained his end, looked neither to right nor left, but set off back along the quay to his own house. The young men watched without a word. Only Thibault, shaking himself awake, grasped at Guibert as he went by.

  “Don’t go, Guibert,” he whispered urgently. “There’s some hell-broth brewing.”

  But Guibert looked up at him, still dazed.

  “It was gold,” he said, and went on.

  Thibault crossed himself. “For God’s sake,” said he, “let’s go and have a drink.”

  “You’ve won your bet, Thibault,” said the ill-conditioned lad who had made the joke about the Rue des Marmousets.

  Thibault seized him, turned him upside down, and held his face in the gutter.

  “And that’s your share of the drinks,” said he.

  Guibert stood, barely inside the threshold of Fulbert’s room. The door was open behind him. Fulbert moved briskly to the wall-press by the fire.

  “It’s ill singing on an empty belly,” said he. “You look cold, Guibert.” He poured him out a drink, and another for himself.

  “Shut the door and sit down, man,” he said kindly. “Here, bring your s
tool over to the fire, and drink in comfort.” He stooped to turn the log on the hearth, and Guibert took advantage of his back being turned to make the sign of the cross above the wine. Still, the old lad was drinking it himself, and what with the outer door being on the latch, he had not so far seen Grizzel. A kitten asleep on the warm hearth awoke, yawned a preposterous, tiny yawn, pranced delicately on its paws, and made a dart at the tassels of his guitar. He lifted it on his knee, and it was friendly and dug its claws into his hose and purred and suddenly slept. He was glad to feel it there. He held up his head and drank courageously, and the wine warmed him, a gentle warmth, like the warmth of the kitten’s little body on his thigh.

  Fulbert, it seemed, had nothing to say to him, and that also was a relief. Maybe it was a sudden notion the old man had taken. Not so long ago he had been astray in the head, though sensible enough of late. Well, if it was madness, it had taken a good turn for him. If only Grizzel would not come in, and make a scolding-match, and maybe take the gold piece from him. He looked uneasily at the door.

  “Grizzel’s at the market,” said Fulbert.

  Guibert nodded and settled himself more comfortably on his stool. He had finished his wine, and to show that he was diligent to earn his fee, he took his guitar and began tuning it.

  “That’s right,” said Fulbert. “There was a song you used to sing when you were here, Guibert. Two years ago. I believe it was one of Master Peter’s.” Guibert stole an uneasy look at him, but there was no crack in the smooth benevolence of the face. “Something about the summer coming in, and a young wench. Do you remember it?”

  Guibert looked embarrassed. “There’s a many about that, please your reverence,” said he. “Could you maybe mind a little more about it? Not but what I’ll sing you all I know and welcome, but maybe you would weary.”

  Fulbert looked down at his hands. “There was one line,” he said, “like Ut mei misereatur.” His voice was thin.

  Guibert flinched. If it had been any song but that. He had not dared to sing it in the streets for months, because the last time he had sung it he had broken down and they had gibed at him. But it might be easier here, in this quiet place, with the gentle old man. The old man would not laugh at him. And anyhow the first two verses were easy enough. He struck a few notes on his guitar.