by Hager, Mandy
They lie side by side, the months of tension easing as defensiveness gives way.
‘Are you sure he does not hurt you?’ Jehanne says. ‘I heard blows and you cried out.’
‘Forgive me, it is a game he plays — and the noises are our ecstasy. In truth, the first time was not as I would have wished it, but oh, Jehanne, now it is the most miraculous of feelings. I do not understand why the Church sees it as a sin, when surely God made our bodies for just this.’
‘It can also cause damage, believe you me.’
‘You forget I, too, saw Sister Saris’s pain — and Gertrud drilled into me that men have ever stolen what they wanted with no consideration of the effects. Wealth, land, women … an asset, taken and locked away once owned. But Abelard stands apart from this: he treats me as his equal and gives as fully as he takes.’ All true, after the first.
Jehanne yawns. ‘I hope you are right.’
‘I have never felt more sure.’
At this, they fall into the companionable silence that leads to sleep. But when Heloise’s dreams rise up they are as vivid and unsettling as the dream of Ovid’s she had read that morning.
When heavy sleep oppos’d my weary sight,
This vision did my troubled mind affright:—
To Sol expos’d there stood a rising ground,
Which cast beneath a spacious shade around;
A gloomy grove of spreading oaks below,
And various birds were perch’d on ev’ry bough;
Just on the margin of a verdant mead,
Where murm’ring brooks refreshing waters spread
To shun the heat I sought this cool recess,
But in this shade I felt my heat no less;
When browzing o’er the flow’ry grass appear’d
A lovely cow, the fairest of the herd.
By spotless white distinguished from the rest,
Whiter than milk from her own udder press’d;
Whiter than falling, or the driven snow,
Before descending mists can make it flow.
She, with a lusty bull, her happy mate,
Delighted, on the tender herbage sat;
There, as he crops the flow’rs, and chews the cud,
Feasting a second time upon his food,
His limbs with sudden heaviness oppress’d,
He bends his head, and sinks to pleasing rest.
A noisy crow, cleaving the liquid air,
Thrice with lewd bill pick’d off the heifer’s hair;
The glossy white imbib’d a spreading blot,
But on her breast appear’d a livid spot …
Oh, learn’d diviner!
What may this visionary dream portend,
If dreams in any future truth can end?
Eight
PARIS TO FONTEVRAUD, 1115
Heloise leaves for Fontevraud with Fulbert and his companions early. She has slipped a brief farewell note under Abelard’s door; in her heart she hopes he will fret, yet her head counsels to hold back on any expectation.
Fulbert is thrilled, beaming as he hoists her onto one of Stephen de Garlande’s mares. With Garlande, two other canons and their manservants, and four of the king’s guard, they set off southwest through fertile lands aglow with the last of autumn’s vivid russets, reds and golds.
She has not travelled such a distance since Fulbert took her from her foster home, and it is the first time she has sat upon a horse for all the hours of light. By mid-afternoon her aches and pains so steal her focus she barely notices where they pass.
The second day, still stiff and hurting, she sinks into a brooding silence, cursing Jehanne for suggesting this, Fulbert for agreeing, and Abelard for causing this dilemma in the first place. The day drags as long as Penelope’s wait for Ulysses to return.
On the third day, they pass into woodlands sprinkled with hamlets so crude she feels as if they travel back in time. Though she has seen the poverty of Paris’s backstreets, there is nothing so grim as the settlement they now pass: the makeshift huts mere mud and sticks, the filth, the stench, suspicion in every frown. Their children huddle mute and staring, while toddlers cling to pregnant mothers loaded down with squalling babies at their hips. Amidst Heloise’s horror, she feels an overwhelming gratitude; if not for Fulbert’s kindness and God’s grace, any one of these poor mites could have been her.
From doorways, low-browed men stand tense and finger sickles, falchions, axes, cleavers, all manner of ugly hand knives and a frightening range of spears, both stone- and metal-tipped. The knights draw their swords, two riding up front and two behind as their progress is tracked by every eye. Not a word is said until they are free of the huts and the two other canons are out of earshot.
‘They must have fought with weapons such as those in the Paupers’ Crusade,’ Garlande says. ‘Armed to the hilt and killing for the chance to absolve their sins and conquer Heaven.’
‘Little good it has done them,’ Fulbert says. ‘God help us when they realise they will never be free to share the wealth.’
‘They struggle enough just to survive,’ says Garlande. ‘If now and then the king throws a few crusts it will distract them — like vultures picking over bones.’
‘Would not the king do better to lift them from their misery?’ Heloise says. Their hostility distresses her but she cannot blame them. ‘Surely it would be fairer — and safer — if he shared his good fortune among them all?’
Garlande wags a finger. ‘It is our duty to serve the king without question.’ Heloise cannot read his tone. He continues: ‘In any case, Louis takes his lead from the Church. They make good use of the poor’s misery — their desperation increases motivation to please God and his Church, and Louis by association. Everyone wants a chance to outrun poverty and death.’
‘Is that not excessively cynical?’
‘It is the truth, Heloise. Not sweetened, I’ll give you that, but surely to sweeten it would be worse?’
‘What about trying to lift them from that squalor?’
‘You forget they are mostly ignorant of the world beyond their doors,’ Garlande says. ‘They know nothing else — and certainly not how to take on the Church or king. Why do you think the choice of who delivers education, who receives it and what is taught is so political? Enquiry and independence of thought are dangerous things if shared too widely; they threaten stability. Even you are not immune to this.’
‘Just because a thing exists does not make it right,’ she says. ‘Surely anyone faithful to Christ’s message understands that by raising others up they also elevate themselves?’
‘Pursuit of the ideal is a privilege,’ Garlande says. ‘Do you think those wretches spend their days regretting their inability to read when they have mouths to feed and tithes to pay?’
‘You twist my words; my point is they could be better supported. And, anyway, why should idealism not be a virtue? It has to be superior to hiding behind spurious claims of stability.’
Fulbert breaks in. ‘Enough! My friend here provokes you for the enjoyment of argument, nothing more, much like your esteemed teacher.’
‘Abelard debates in order to advance all thought. He does not shy away from speaking out if he thinks a statement wrong. He is inspiring.’
Garlande looks her squarely in the eye. ‘Indeed. He is a paragon of virtue.’
Heat sears through Heloise, pulsing in her cheeks. She is only rescued from his scrutiny by a steepening of the track, which forces all to focus on leading their horses through rock-falls bordering a precarious drop.
Later, Fulbert begins again to weave his tales as if the years have fled and they are back exploring the ruins around Argenteuil. Heloise feels a surge of her old love for him as she is reminded that it was he who stoked her fondness for story. They chatter on together in the manner of those happy days, and it is only later, when his talk runs dry, that she feels ashamed she has shown him so little thankfulness for a long while now. Did he withdraw into his wine-soaked haze by choice, or had she first
withdrawn from him? She hates to think his drinking is the fault of her preoccupation.
The sun has set and a mist creeps up behind them as they arrive at their next lodgings, a half-built hostelry in a clearing beside a looted dolmen. There is a prickliness to the air; a sense of gross intrusion.
‘Why do we not stay in Orleans?’ This place seems unnecessarily inhospitable when Garlande’s royal favour opens any doors.
‘There are rumours of increasing trouble on the waysides such as these,’ Fulbert says. ‘As much as we go to honour Petronilla, we also act as eyes and ears to make note of anyone causing trouble for the king.’
‘We are bait?’
‘Not bait,’ Fulbert says, ‘witnesses.’
Heloise looks from him to Garlande.
He gestures towards their guard. ‘Have no fear, these men cut their teeth in the holy war. Not even the Saracens could fell them.’
She glances back at the knights who accompany them. Their torches’ light makes plain the hardness of the lines ingrained on their deadened faces. How does one reconcile slaughter in the name of God when the concept itself is so intrinsically wrong?
When they bed down in the one completed room, Fulbert hangs a saddlecloth across a timber beam to give her privacy. Her cloak is all she has for both bed and cover, so she merely drowses, hearing the buzz of Fulbert and Garlande’s late-night whisperings while they hunker by the fire sharing a skin of wine.
‘I doubt Robert will live long once his new abbess Petronilla officially takes the reins,’ Garlande says. ‘The last time we met he was petitioning the pope to safeguard Fontevraud’s governance so the Church cannot abandon his nuns on his death. I think he holds out purely to see this through.’
‘I pray he is remembered for his strengths and not the ridiculous slurs against him,’ Fulbert says. ‘Only the other day, I heard someone say he and the widow Hersende were more than brother and sister in Christ …’
The name slips into Heloise’s sluggish consciousness and shocks her awake. Has he just spoken of her mother? What is the connection?
‘I doubt its truth; it is just that he welcomes many a fallen woman through his doors. I heard he even laid down with several of his faithful to prove his strength of will!’
‘Then he must be a saint!’
‘He very likely is. For all his eccentricities, Robert is a good and decent man.’
‘People talk to salve their petty jealousies,’ says Fulbert. ‘They hate true purpose and charisma. Indeed, almost daily I hear similar allegations laid against Master Peter, and yet he assured me at the outset of his celibacy — and often I have seen him turn aside offers from the whore-wives who surround the king.’
Heloise rolls over little by little and stills her breath. What if Garlande tells her uncle his suspicions?
Garlande’s laugh sounds strained. ‘They say where Master Peter treads, women lie swooning in his wake.’
‘And yet all I see is a man so obsessed he rushes home to toil again as soon as he has tutored Heloise. For weeks now he has had the look of someone so engrossed he barely sleeps.’
Shame reddens Heloise’s cheeks. Despite his foibles, there is in Fulbert a kind of trusting sweetness that she is loath to mock — although she fears by her actions she already has.
‘Perhaps it would lighten his load if you removed the need for him to teach your niece?’ Garlande, too, for all the world sounds guileless, a masterful performance. ‘He is more fragile than many know.’
‘I cannot possibly stop it,’ Fulbert says. ‘How could I? Heloise has already lost two teachers she dearly loved and her grief was most disturbing. It gratifies me to see how happy she is to learn again. When our family know the greatness of her mind, it will lodge like a slow-poisoning arrow in their hearts. I hope it kills them.’
‘And yet you give her learning free rein to what other purpose, man? You either have to stop turning down the marriages I could broker or make her take the veil. At least there she can use her talents as Hersende and Petronilla have. How else do you see her living out her life? No man wants a woman who can best him in an argument — and she is not one to hold back.’
There is the name again. Heloise tries to figure the connection but Garlande’s last words so madden her she cannot think. That Garlande plots behind her back to marry her off, or thinks to imprison her — to silence her — within the Church, when he suspects her love for Abelard, feels like betrayal of them both.
‘I have vowed she may stay, and though it is sad she forsakes the chance of marriage and a child I will not go back on it. Besides, I admit selfish desire for her company in my old age. You, Stephen, have more family than at times is prudent, but Heloise is all I have.’
‘You may be right,’ Garlande says. ‘There are times my brothers and I are at each other’s throats behind closed doors. But what of your own family? You—’
‘I will not hear of them again,’ Fulbert says, his volume rising. ‘Damn it, man. I found my sister’s broken body like cast-off meat, left outside that monster’s fort for the crows. I will not forget her eyes, still open, staring up at circling birds without a blink. Each time I look at Heloise I see them.’
No, no, no, this cannot be! The image sears into her mind. Poor Fulbert, to carry this terrible find. She longs to fly to him and give him comfort but dare not disturb their conversation; there is still so much to know. What in God’s name happened to her mother? What monster would do such an evil thing? And who is this widow Hersende of whom they speak? Is she a different woman? Her heart races as if she runs. Lord in Heaven: cast-off meat? A shiver rocks her from head to toe.
‘Peace, man,’ Garlande says. ‘You did everything you could.’ There is warmth in his tone, a quality of kindness she does not expect. ‘Believe me, I understand that kind of haunting. In her eyes, too, I see her mother — and God’s wrath.’
‘Indeed, you have my pity. But you have done more for her than most would.’
‘If not for you taking her in …’
Heloise sits up. What? Surely not?
‘It is nothing,’ Fulbert says. ‘She works well and gives Heloise friendship and comfort. It is a favour mutually rewarding.’
Everything else they say from this point whirls beyond her consciousness. Jehanne is Stephen de Garlande’s daughter? There used to be little shame in that; even St Augustine had a bastard son. They were commonplace, replacement heirs, though denied inheritance or recognition unless the lucky last. But from what she has gathered, since Pope Gregory’s demands for celibacy amongst his clerics, the zealots now threaten any man’s standing if he strays. Is it Garlande’s conscience that regards Jehanne’s existence as punishment for his sins, or is it fear for his power? Though Gregory has been dead some thirty years, his push for uncompromising morality has been dangerously resurrected, ready to crucify any who cross his pietistic line. Heloise shudders. It seems they all have crossed this line, lime-washing over these cracks in their purity. At what point do these cracks give way? Cast-off meat? God forgive them all.
It takes eight days to reach the river crossing at La Chapelle sur Loire, by which time Heloise’s head is bursting with questions she dares not ask Fulbert for fear of spoiling this spell of easy conversation with him. His stories also help distract from her increasing unease at what she and Abelard have done. She will surely go to Hell — and Abelard, too. It is a kind of madness, this irresistible urge to be with him, and though distance from him allows space for her moral mind to nag, it also increases the urgency to reconnect.
They cross the river Loire by barge, and after a morning’s ride across a river plain they reach the bustle that is Fontevraud, a very welcome sight. Stone pillars form an arched entrance in the thick protective wall, and they ride through to find the complex in various stages of completion. A church sits to the southeast of the cloister, while stonemasons haul blocks up improvised ramps and ladders to complete the priory of St Lazarus, which stands apart to the north. From Robert of Arbr
issel’s ambitious beginnings, his ideal community is taking shape, a place where men and women live and work in abstinence, silence and modesty.
They are welcomed by Petronilla herself, a woman of middle years with sensual lips and wisps of greying hair breaking from the edges of her veil. She greets them with much kindness, taking Heloise aside to bathe in a tub of water warmed by heated stones. Of all the great wonders in God’s world, to lie up to the chin in hot water after eight days on a horse is to sample Heaven’s bliss.
This night they dine with Petronilla and the founder himself. Once a man of great vitality and presence, Robert is now old and physically frail, bent like a tree in the path of prevailing winds. Heloise has no doubt Garlande is right: his days are nearly done, and yet his mind remains sharp and his voice still holds the vestiges of a chiming resonance.
‘Heloise d’Argenteuil! I have heard of your intellect and learning but did not think to find you so radiant! Light shines from you.’ It is strange how these same words might cause her to blush if delivered by another but from Robert’s mouth they sound like a blessing. ‘We must talk tomorrow. Come to me after Terce and we will walk the garden while you tell me of your world.’
She thanks him, Fulbert beaming with fatherly pride, and begins to plan her questions for their meeting.
Throughout the meal, Petronilla serves Robert herself, sitting alongside to tend him. How different to Heloise’s old abbess, Alberea; always fearful of offending, she bowed before the priests and local lords. Petronilla is the first woman Heloise has observed who holds a position of power and appears unintimidated by either man or Church. It feeds Heloise’s hope.
Despite such a hospitable welcome and comfortable lodgings, when night closes in Heloise cannot sleep. While others snore, she rises from her bed and prowls the cloister, her head filled with too many unanswered questions. To calm herself, she thinks on how the journey has broadened her understanding, and plans how best to describe all she has seen and heard to Abelard, as if she writes a letter to him inside her head.
‘You are out late,’ comes a voice, causing her to jump. Stephen de Garlande steps from the cloister’s shadow. ‘Forgive me, I did not mean to startle you.’