by Hager, Mandy
‘But are you willing to give your lives to the Lord? If you take the veil you sacrifice your chance at a normal life. You must consider this well.’
‘It is all we have thought about for a good while now,’ Agnes says. ‘When we heard you were here, the idea has kept us going ever since.’
Agatha nods. ‘You have no idea how much we have dreamed to come. Your lessons left us hungry for more.’
‘Did you not continue once I left? I stayed only a few short months.’
‘Those months were the best of my life.’
‘Mine, too,’ says Agnes. ‘Mama taught us after you went, but she knew little more. It was not her fault; she’d had only her mother to teach her.’
So Dagobert has educated only his sons — the normal way of course, but from Abelard’s brother she hoped for more. It hurts to look at her nieces; their faces bear the marks of heartbreak for their mother, and the hurt inflicted by their father dulls their whole demeanour. So many damaged souls. Is this why God brought her here, to tend His battered flock?
‘Very well. If this is what you wish, of course you may.’
That they break into relieved sobbing tells her much. May the Devil skewer Dagobert’s soul. She embraces each in turn.
Agatha sighs as Heloise releases her. ‘We will never let you down, I promise.’ She rummages in the bag at her side and lays a linen bundle tied with silken cord on the desk between them. ‘This belongs to you.’
Heloise reaches for it, puzzled. ‘What is it?’ When she loosens the knot, a bundle of letters spill out. Her fourteen letters to her son, still sealed.
‘Please forgive Mama. She hid them when our father refused to send them on. At the time of her death, she told us where they were and asked us to get them to you so you would know of Father’s betrayal. We dared not send them on to Astrolabe, in case our father found out.’
Heloise swallows a howl. All these years she has prayed Astrolabe would know of her love, and yet here its proof now sits, unseen. ‘He never knew of their existence?’
Agnes shakes her head. ‘I am so sorry. If we had known in time we would have told him. Father ordered them burned. Mother lived in fear he would find out.’
‘Did Abelard know?’ This little thought jabs most painfully.
‘I think not.’
‘Nor I. He and Father did not get along.’
This is true enough. Poor Maree, her fear must have constrained her every act.
Heloise picks the letters up with shaking hands to weigh their ruined intent. Breathe on. ‘Tell me of him: Astrolabe. Is he well? How does he look?’ Such internal hurt.
‘He is tall like Uncle Peter,’ Agnes says. ‘And serious in his nature.’
Just like me.
‘But he loves music. He sings and plays the lute and dulcimer extremely well.’
A true son of Abelard, then. She aches to see him. ‘Is he happy?’
Agatha’s brow knits. ‘It is hard to tell. He gives little away. But Denyse and Hugh have loved him as one of their own.’ The words both soothe and sting.
‘Does he know of me?’
She nods. ‘Of course! Denyse has made a point of speaking of you in the kindest terms, and whenever Uncle Peter visited they sat and talked.’
It feels as if her heart will leap out through her chest, so brutal is its knock. She wills it to slow, evicting a leaden sigh. ‘But he does not live with them still?’
‘No. At twelve he was sent to Uncle Porchaire, one of the canons at Nantes Cathedral.’
‘Do you think if I send these on to Nantes, Astrolabe will welcome them?’
‘I see no reason why not.’ Agnes’s smile is still damp around the edges.
Heloise feels a fool; furious she did not send the letters straight to Denyse. She had sought Garlande’s advice on where best to send them, delivery to such far-flung places always fraught, and did not think Dagobert would take so against her … Oh foolish heart.
That night she rebundles the letters and adds a fifteenth to the pile:
My son, dearest, please forgive me. It was not from lack of love you have not heard from me, only my foolishness in thinking these letters delivered when they were not. I love you as much as any human being can love another; I treasure you with the sacred maternal love God gives each woman to bond her to her child. Not a day goes by without you in my thoughts; not one hour without wondering how you are. These letters track your years; read from first to last and, if you will, then write to me. Allow us to start a heart-to-heart connection through the medium of written words, as if together face to face. And let us always tell the truth; I have no wish to waste more time. I leave it in your hands. I hold you ever in my heart.
Once she sends the letters off to Nantes, her mind records the wait; it nips and gnaws, though there is much else to distract her. After the death of Pope Honorius the previous year came news of a rift that quickly deepened to a schism in the Church, and now the two nominees — Anacletus and Innocent — battle it out in a war of words and brazen bribes, absurdly ironic given this battle is waged by the very two men deemed sufficiently close to God to bear the sacred title pope.
Louis the Fat calls on Bernard of Clairvaux to pronounce on a winner, and when Bernard declares in Innocent’s favour, he and the new pope ride about the country to gather support and advance their careers. It is under these conditions that Heloise hears Bernard is coming to sniff out the Paraclete.
Heloise calls on all her sisters, and together they agree on a plan: there will be no overt mention of Abelard unless directly asked, and then anything said will be succinct; and there is to be no questioning of Bernard’s stance. They all know far too well his snooping has potential to upend them; what has been given can also just as easily be ripped away.
Bernard arrives one windy afternoon with a group of acolytes. He is of similar age to Heloise, pale and small, sickly-looking, his pate shaved to a tonsure.
As she walks him around the site to show off their achievements, she finds him more agreeable than expected and they fall into comfortable banter, enjoying the play of words and the dredging up of quotes to enrich the conversation. She thinks him as persuasive in his speech as Abelard, though of quite a different style: where Abelard amuses and allures, unpredictable but at all times exciting, Bernard never loosens the grip on his highly ordered mind.
Only once does this good will falter. After she has invited him to take their Mass, thinking it safe from contention, Bernard complains about their preferring Matthew’s rendition of the Lord’s Prayer — which Abelard had insisted was more authentic — to that of Luke. It is a petty blow. Heloise swallows it down as humbly as acting permits, inside fuming, but knows despite his charm Bernard is a hornet not worth the risk of stirring.
He leaves her very much in two minds. On the one hand, he has a sharp and erudite wit; on the other, there is the whiff of zealot about him. What his visit most underlines is their ongoing vulnerability. The meeting reminds her of walking through the gardens at Fontevraud many years earlier with Robert of Arbrissel and his prescient advice: Guard well your heart and hearth, Heloise … secure everything you own by papal seal …
She sets about to obtain title to the Paraclete at once, so no one can evict them ever again. While Innocent is still in France, Heloise sends a request through Garlande to seek the pope’s confirmation of their ownership. Garlande in turn asks Abelard, and together they meet with Pope Innocent at Morigny, hounds shepherding a reluctant sheep, until they obtain his seal on a Bull confirming the nuns’ possession for all time. There is much delighted celebration, much tearful relief.
Stirred by his kindness, Heloise writes to Abelard to thank him, but he does not respond. She starts to think his avoidance childish; can he not think past his injured male pride? In fact, that stirring of once-held desire that obviously so shames him, she now finds strangely comforting; a sign that at least his body remembers the closeness they once shared.
She suspects he fears she wil
l talk of love — and perhaps he is right, for she still mourns his loss. She longs to hear him discuss what brought them to this place; to test his logic and better understand his need for such callous silence. So invested is he in labelling his philosophical categories, he sees only the separations — student, lover, wife, mother, friend, support or nun — unwilling to acknowledge any strength in more nuanced combinations. She finds his notion that a man must choose one role and forgo all the rest a flaw in his thinking. He could have been a teacher and a husband, too, or a monk and friend.
The lack of reply from Astrolabe also eats at her. Does he hate her, dismiss her or simply not think of her at all? Has Abelard poisoned her son’s heart to her, or are they merely two of a kind: too absorbed in their own worlds to give any thought to hers? On her more charitable days, she understands how one’s personal concerns can be locked away when duty calls. It is both a sadness and a solace that she must increasingly put aside her own and focus on her flock.
From Matins to Compline, she works to meet her sisters’ needs, as ever more come to take the veil. It is now many a woman’s only hope of reprieve from domination, poverty, servitude, exploitation or abuse, although those still trapped under clerical boots see little mercy. Many, as Robert feared, are scarcely more than slaves and often abused by those who hide beneath the church’s impervious robes. As one experienced in love, Heloise does not doubt God’s gift of sensual ecstasy. Surely the sin is in the selfish disregard for His intent that they respect this act of love and not defile it through coercion or force? It takes time and sensitivity to mend those in such woefully broken states.
Almost monthly, she welcomes another novice into their community. Many stay silent about their past, yet their eyes bleed hurt; some cry out their stories in a tangled rush, pleading with Heloise to take them in. If not for her firm friends, those who helped build the Paraclete with their bare hands, Heloise is not sure she could bear their pain.
In the hour before Vespers, once their work is done, they meet in the refectory to share the highs and lows of their day. Clotild, their chief gardener, often entertains them with her ongoing war against the hordes of rabbits, which she traps in snares at their burrows’ mouth.
‘I had one — a big healthy suckling mother — and I lifted the axe, ready to dispatch her, when her little eyes looked up at me.’ She grins, knowing this is a story they have heard many times before.
‘You couldn’t do it, could you?’ Rhecia says, as the others laugh. Clotild might have a perpetual gripe against the rabbits and rodents who attack her gardens, but her heart is as soft as duck down.
‘Tell me you didn’t!’ cries Celestria. ‘What of her young?’
‘Lord above!’ says Astrane. ‘Are we trying to save the local wildlife or feed our sisters?’
‘But her eyes, Astrane! She looked at me as if I were the Devil himself.’
‘As you should be to those little cabbage thieves,’ Rhecia says. ‘If you surrender every time you see little pleading eyes, we will have neither meat nor vegetables. Honestly, Clotild, if you do not have the stomach for it, call on me. All I see is a stew or pie in the making!’
‘There is your solution, Clotild,’ says Heloise. ‘Next time you catch one, call on either Rhecia or Astrane!’
Astrane looks horrified. ‘Pray, not me! It used to be my job to slaughter chickens. I swear on the Book, their little decapitated heads would look up at me and try to cluck!’
‘I will do it,’ says Melisende, their keeper of the fishponds, when the riotous laughter has died down. ‘If I can kill a fish, I can tackle a rabbit, and I am already first to be called on when a chicken’s days are up.’ She chuckles and looks around the table at her sisters. ‘So best you all behave yourselves!’
‘No need,’ Rhecia says, no longer smiling. She turns from Melisende to Clotild. ‘I have told you before, I will do it if you let me know. It is more my job than hers.’
Melisende rounds on her. ‘If it is your job then pray tell why I have been called on to dispatch every chicken that is—’
‘Do you understand how much work I have to do? What is your job? To fish now and then? I supervise and cook two meals for the whole community every day. I—’
‘To fish now and then? It is you who does not understand. Do you think those ponds just—’
‘Sisters, please!’ Heloise holds up her hands for silence. ‘Where is your charity? We work together, all towards the same goal. If one of us needs help, then she should ask for it — and if you are feeling overwhelmed with work then you should tell me.’ Lord give me strength.
A group of women all together, many with their bloods and consequent touchy moods aligned, sees some days as precarious as living in a den of head-sore bears. Daily she must step in somewhere to smooth down fur. Diversion comes in the form of Matilda’s welcome visits, allowing the busy mother to escape from her expanding horde. After weaning Theobald, number six, Matilda stays a week. On the day she arrives, they walk the fields beside the river to search out the compagnon rouge that Celestria likes to add to soaps.
‘Stephen is well on the way to mending his row with the king,’ Matilda tells her. ‘He is back in Paris awaiting a return to service.’
‘So I have heard. He has been buried in the country far too long. He does not possess the nature to live the quiet life. He writes me the most frightfully bad-tempered letters!’
Matilda laughs. ‘So says Thibaud as well! The move back also helps him redeem Peter’s standing, in the hope of returning him to Paris to calm his preoccupations. They say Peter fights phantoms in his head.’
Heloise stoops to pluck a cluster of bilberries, their deep purple juice staining her fingers. She shudders at their colour. Poor Abelard. He must feel so alone. ‘Does he continue to write?’
‘If he is, I doubt it makes sense. He is convinced his monks attempt to kill him, and so spends weeks on the road to hide away. Lately he fell from his horse and broke a bone in his neck, the pain adds to his distraction. On a visit to his brother in Nantes, he claimed his monks conspired to poison him. An attendant who tasted his meal suddenly up and died.’ She offers her basket to free up Heloise’s hands.
A visit to his brother and, no doubt, to see Astrolabe as well. ‘I pray he is wrong.’
‘Thibaud thinks it unlikely. But the poor server ran from blame; this Peter took as an admission of guilt, and it further worked to shake him. Now he refuses to stay in one place, afraid of other plots, and on the road he rides as if Satan chases him, thinking bandits lie in wait to take his life. He even hounded Pope Innocent to force his monks to acquiesce.’
Heloise groans. ‘How did His Holiness respond?’
‘He sent a legate to St Gildas to compel them to pledge their loyalty, which of course they did. But Peter insists they harbour swords to slit his throat — and this despite all manner of reassurances. Thibaud fears he sinks so low, eventually his mind will not have power to rise again.’
Heloise’s heart aches as if caught by a strangling hand. ‘Then it is good that Garlande works to shift him. If he can teach again and see how many still hold him in good regard, this may help.’
They settle under an elm and devour ripe bilberries until their tongues turn black.
‘How does it go here?’ Matilda asks.
‘We have yet to resolve the boundary dispute with our neighbours at Vauluisant, though I am hoping for a resolution someday soon. Other than that, spring seems to have infused my sisters’ blood! We have endured a spate of silly tricks — frogs in bedding, shoes swapped, ridiculous tales … I spent one whole day trying to ascertain if a rumour that the king is planning a privy tax was true or false!’ She shakes her head, chuckling at herself. ‘And what of you?’
Matilda speaks of her own woes now; of her quiet despair at her endless birthing and her worries with Thibaud’s advisors, who resist her inclusion in his decision-making although he asks for it himself.
‘It is only thanks to his mother, Adela
, that I am given any clout. She acted as regent until he came of age and schooled him well. I hope to teach my own sons Thibaud’s respect, although already Henri is influenced by those around him. Last week, he told me women were made by God solely to assist the world of men.’
‘It seems he is observant, then. At least he has a sharp mind!’
Matilda laughs. ‘Tell no one, but I gave him a good tongue-lashing. I said we would not have the son of God if not for Mother Mary!’
‘I have had to give a few tongue-lashings myself lately. That same spring spirit has brought on a deluge of petty squabbles and complaints. They protest the stew is too thin, though the Lord knows how Rhecia stretches our stores as well as she does, and several of our younger sisters complain the lessons are too hard. I try to simplify them and take into account those of lesser aptitude, but in truth, Matilda, some of our latest postulants have trouble memorising even our daily hymns. May God give me strength!’
‘You forget that most of us have not your outstanding mind.’
Heloise flags this away. ‘It certainly does make me appreciate Abelard’s skill at imparting difficult concepts with such clarity and freshness.’
As they talk, clouds from the north obliterate the sun. Now drops of rain begin to pit the dry ground around them and Heloise jumps up.
‘I must run,’ she says. ‘We washed all our bedding today to purge it of lice. If the covers get wet again, we will have to spend the night without them.’
Matilda scoops up the basket and they run through the fields, cursing the fat raindrops that bat at them. By the time they reach the cloister, Astrane and her team of novices are stringing up the covers under the roof, a minor disaster averted just in time. All Heloise need do is thank her vigilant prioress.
In the winter of 1132, Heloise is called from her work by Agnes to greet her brother Berengar, who travels to Paris and seeks a bed for the night. He has his father Dagobert’s looks, though he presents with a much more loving nature. His pleasure at seeing his sisters is palpable.