Stealing Heaven

by Marion Meade

  "Crazy little fool." Heloise kissed her roughly and stumbled out into the glaring yard. The portress brought up a brawny man leading a packhorse. Without speaking, the butcher lashed her bundles to the saddle and boosted Heloise up onto a cushion. He mounted, and they started to ride out through the gate. Heloise turned and looked back. Ceci was still standing in the doorway of the lodge, her face dazed, and when Heloise waved, she lifted her hand in a weary farewell. After a while, Heloise twisted forward on the cushion and riveted her eyes on the butcher's back and, over his shoulder, at a strip of field being weeded by men with sunbrowned faces. The fragrance of herbs and moist earth and sweat fogged the hot blue air. When next she looked around, Argenteuil had vanished behind a hill.

  2

  Fulbert's house stood on the far edge of the cloister at Notre Dame, where the Rue des Chantres meets the river. The ground pitched away steeply, sweeping down to the Port Saint-Landry; Heloise could see a cluster of boats tied up to the quay. Two fishermen were arguing as they hung their nets. Confused, she stared at the house, at the fishermen, and then back at the house again. It was not what she expected. Taller perhaps. Grander. When she looked closely, she realized that it was not one building but three, stuck together as if by a playful mason. Reluctantly, she slid to the ground and waited, wobbly-legged, while the butcher pounded on the closed door.

  Immediately the door jerked open and a woman, her face flushed, impaled him with a baleful glare. "God's toenails! Took your good sweet time, didn't you! Did you come by way of Avignon?"

  The butcher looked properly cowed. He began to mumble about traffic, but his words were drowned in a torrent of abuse. "The canon expected her before dinner," she shouted. "Here it's nearly nones." She called him villein, dog, and son of a whore before extracting a denier from her girdle and waving him away.

  The butcher snorted at the coin. "May your tongue rot," he said mildly. He strode back to the horse and mounted.

  Heloise lowered her eyes. When she raised them, she saw the woman lumbering toward her, arms outstretched, a tearful smile grooving jagged lines about her mouth. "Lady, lady, lady. Oh, my sweet little one, my Iamb . . .”

  Not until the calloused hands had begun stroking her hair did Heloise recognize Agnes. She could have sworn that her uncle's housekeeper had been fat. This woman was big-boned and muscular but far from obese. Over Agnes's shoulder, she saw, crouched in the doorway, a girl with white-blond hair squinting at her suspiciously. When Heloise caught her eye, she looked away, scowling.

  Heloise wanted to tell Agnes that she was happy to he here, but the words demanded by custom and courtesy stuck in her throat. She was beginning to feel the queasiness in her stomach that she had experienced earlier in the day, and for a queer instant she could barely recall what Argenteuil looked like. "Agnes—“

  Agnes smothered her neck with kisses. She did not seem to notice Heloise's silence. "God be praised!" she said, beaming. "What a joyous day for the master. And look at you . . . What a great bean pole you've become."

  Heloise smiled stiffly.

  "Come inside before you catch sunstroke. Master went to the cathedral after dinner, but I've saved you some quail." She led her by the hand toward the house. "I'm afraid the sauce has gone bad. In this heat you can't keep anything. Isn't that right, Petronilla?" The pouting girl clung to the doorway, apparently immobilized. Agnes raised a clenched fist. "Take the lady's bundle up to her room, and mind you don't touch anything or I'll box your ears. And see to a bath for your mistress. Hurry up!"

  Her mouth dry with thirst, Heloise followed Agnes. Inside, the house was as cool and dark as a cave. Blinded, she hesitated and locked her hand under Agnes's arm to keep from stumbling. The vaulted passageway smelled of lavender and incense. And of a fermented silence. She wondered why, considering Agnes's propensity for gabbling like a magpie. The passageway ran alongside a solar, and, through an arch, Heloise caught a glimpse of an arras-covered wall. They skirted the kitchen and came out at the rear of the house into a garden strewn with fine white pebbles. A pear tree shaded half of the courtyard from the midafternoon sun. Through the foliage, hazy shafts of light struck the pebbles and burst into golden motes. At the base of a wall at the back of the garden, dragonflies swooned in beds of mint, basil, horehound, and sweet william.

  Heloise sank on a bench under the pear tree. She felt very tired. All she wanted was a cool drink and a bed. Suddenly, boisterous shouts of laughter erupted on the other side of the wall. There were sounds of yelling and thrashing about; somebody cursed loudly. She looked quizzically at Agnes.

  "Students in the close." Agnes's voice was almost bored. "You'll get used to them."

  "Do they always make so much racket?" asked Heloise.

  "Usually. Noisy whelps." She grimaced. "And it's been unbearable since Master Peter has come back." According to Agnes, this Master Peter was responsible for half the riffraff in western Europe settling in the Ile-de-France, with a goodly share of the rabble congregated directly behind the canon's garden wall. Paris, she panted bitterly, was no longer fit for decent folk. Still disparaging the students, she began moving toward the house. Heloise called her back.

  “I”m not hungry, Agnes," she said. "Just a drink, please." Eyes half closed, she slouched against the tree trunk. It was hard to stay awake.

  "As you wish, lady." Agnes brought a bowl of water from the well. "Slowly, now," she warned. "Best way to take fever is to drink icy water on a hot day."

  Heloise held the bowl greedily, forcing herself to empty it in small gulps. She leaned back and stirred her toes in the pebbles while she considered asking why Fulbert had sent for her. Agnes would be sure to say that she knew nothing about it; no doubt she knew everything about it.

  After a while, Agnes took her upstairs to a turret room on the third floor and left her with Petronilla. At first, all she could see was fat pillows on a great feather bed, and after a dozen years on a prickly straw mattress at Argenteuil, she couldn't help gaping. She had never seen such a bed; even Lady Alais's could not compare. Her uncle, she thought, must be rich as a king.

  She ran to the window and peered down at the Seine, its massive surface rippling like gold in the sun. Upstream, she could see an island, a flat saucer on which herds of cows were grazing. Petronilla circled behind her and began to peel off Heloise's sweaty gown and shift. A tub sat in the middle of the floor, and when she stepped into it, water sloshed over the sides.

  She soaped herself in silence. The girl was busy with Heloise's bundle, lifting out the crumpled gowns, inspecting them with undisguised disdain, and hanging them on the wall pegs. She looked to be about Ceci's age but, with the exception of the fair hair that flowed down her back, she was more ugly than not. Her nose was too long, her chin slightly receding, her mouth sulky. "How long will you stay?" she blurted out suddenly.

  Heloise started at hearing a voice emerge from that sullen mouth. “I don't know."

  "Did you like the convent?"

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  Heloise bobbed her head under the water to wet her hair. The girl asked too many questions. "Boring."

  Petronilla gave a knowing laugh. "Have you had a man?" she asked boldly.

  "What?"

  "I have. Five or six."

  Heloise retreated into shocked silence. The girl must be lying; she was only a child. She forced her face into a blank expression for fear of eliciting further unwanted confidences. Surely the girl lied.

  But Petronilla did not pursue the subject. She carelessly dumped the rest of Heloise's belongings into a chest that served as a window seat and slammed down the lid hard. Licking her lips, she said, "Everybody talks about you."

  "Who?"

  "Master. Agnes. Everybody."

  Heloise stood up and motioned Petronilla to bring the towel. "What do you mean? What do they say?" She frowned a little, thinking nervously of the gossiping women at Argenteuil. No trivial incident, no personal idiosyncrasy, was too insignificant for them
to chew to pieces. She knew no one in Paris; what could they possibly have to say about her? "What are you talking about?"

  "You know." Petronilla yawned, her eyes never leaving Heloise's face. "That you can read and do sums."

  She laughed out loud in relief. "Oh. Is that all?" She began untangling her wet hair with a comb. The girl squatted on the floor, arms folded over her knees, and slyly watched her every move. For lack of something better to say, Heloise asked if Agnes had been ill.

  "No."

  "You're sure?"

  "Of course."

  "But she's always been fat," Heloise insisted. "Now she's thin."

  Bending double with laughter, Petronilla rolled on the floor. Heloise stared down with increasing annoyance at the childish horseplay and finally nudged her with a foot. Flat on her back, the girl gasped, "Can't you tell when a woman is breeding?"

  In the haughty tone that the young take with a toothless grandam, Petronilla explained that Agnes was brought to bed nearly every year, but the brats invariably died before they were out of swaddling clothes. "Save myself, of course," she added, hauling herself to her feet.

  "Holy Lady!" Heloise cried, forgetting her irritation. "Agnes is your mother!"

  "Yes."

  Her curiosity piqued, Heloise asked, "And who is your father?" Petronilla did not answer.

  "Come now, you must have a father. Don't you know?"

  She raised her eyes and blasted a hard, mocking look straight into Heloise's face. "No, I don't know!" she shouted. "And I don't want to know, and if I did know I wouldn't tell you!" She burst into sobs, hiccuping and blubbering as runnels of tears coursed down the sides of her nose and into her mouth.

  Startled, Heloise said nothing. The child was odd, anyone could see that. When she finally spoke, her voice was gentle. "Silly! Lots of people don't have fathers. Is it anything to cry about?"

  Still sniveling, the girl refused to be consoled, and after a while Heloise turned away in disgust. She walked over to the bed and pulled down the coverlet. Between the cool white sheets Agnes had tucked bunches of lavender. Heloise clambered onto the bed. Before her head reached the pillows, she was asleep.

  The voice of a man somewhere below in the house jerked her awake. The sun was flooding through the windows, rouging the room with a wash of crimson light. From the direction of the close skittered a confused murmur of voices, laughter, jangled snatches of a charivari. After Argenteuil, the rough male tones unsettled her. She was only beginning to realize the difference between the ordinary world and the convent, not that the nuns hadn't reminded her often enough. Her mind wandered to a day—she must have been four, five—when old Sister Marie had jabbed her and pointed to a goat. See that? she had cackled, lips stretched back over mirthless gums. There with the horns. Do you know what that thing is? That's a woman of the world!

  Heloise had smiled dutifully, but she had not believed her, of course. She recognized an animal when she saw one. Still. What precisely had Sister Marie meant? For years afterward, whenever she saw a goat, she thought of the old nun's words and grew faintly uneasy.

  When she came downstairs, Agnes motioned her into the solar and left without a word. Fulbert was standing by the window, and despite the warmth of the day, he was wearing a cloak of dark-red velvet. At the sight of him, Heloise felt a sharp, cold blade pass through her body, but in the instant it took him to turn from the window and walk slowly toward her, the sensation vanished. She was a little surprised to see a man of taller than average height—she could look into his eyes without lowering her head—with an extremely pale, clean-shaven face and silvery-blond hair. There was something striking in Fulbert's appearance; his handsome face had a hand-carved look, that angularity of cheekbones and chin that makes age indeterminable. She knew he must be close to forty, but he had the face of a much younger man.

  "Agnes said you'd grown tall."

  He came to her and kissed her on both cheeks. His eyes were a grayish blue, friendly but wistful, distracted even, and they made her feel self-conscious. She backed away from him and smiled vaguely.

  He patted her shoulder and pulled up a stool for her. "Here, child. Sit down."

  She sank down reluctantly and watched him as he looked her over. Suddenly she felt awkward and painfully aware of her shabby gown.

  "Well, now," he said gently. "You've given me reason to feel proud of you. Lady Alais tells me that you're a genius."

  Heloise colored deeply. Lady Alais only parroted what Madelaine told her. "I did what they asked of me." Then: "I love books."

  Fulbert cleared his throat. "Heloise," he said, "is it your wish to take the veil?"

  "No." Her voice was vehement.

  Her uncle sighed. "So Lady Alais informed me. In her opinion, you have no vocation. Which is a pity. An immense pity because a learned woman is at a great advantage in the Church."

  He went on at some length about Church politics and the opportunities for advancement when a girl could read Greek and Hebrew. He said that he knew of few grown men who had achieved what Heloise had already accomplished as a child. She lost track of what the rambling voice was saying. He could not force her to return to Argenteuil; if he tried she would run away. She folded her hands in her lap and listened to Agnes banging kettles in the kitchen and yelling at Petronilla to fetch eggs.

  "Therefore, I suppose I must see about finding you a husband."

  The statement nearly propelled her off the stool. "A husband!" she cried. "I don't want a husband!"

  Fulbert didn't seem to have heard her. His face was as matter-of-fact as though he were selecting hymns for vespers. "You are fifteen—"

  "Fourteen," she interrupted.

  "—almost fifteen, and of an age when it's proper that a woman be married." He walked to the doorway and called for Agnes without raising his voice. "You come from good stock. Be assured that I’ll give you to a man of sufficiently high rank"—he cleared his throat again—"that is, the highest possible rank for a girl with no dower to speak of."

  Agnes appeared in the doorway, wiping her hands on her apron. Fulbert spoke without looking at her. "Have Petronilla set up the trestle in the garden tonight. It's much too warm to dine indoors

  Yes, my lord."

  Heloise slumped on the stool, sluggish. Fulbert made everything sound so simple. Black and white, convent and marriage. She felt a torrent of involuntary fury surge over her, but it was directed entirely inward. In bed sometimes at night, after coming up from matins, she would make up lives for herself, and in her mind she often saw herself as the Margravine Ida who had ridden to the Holy Land at the head of her crusading army. Some said that the Austrian amazon had perished, killed at the same massacre in the hills of Asia Minor where Heloise's father had died; others swore that she had been captured and taken away to live in some emir's desert castle. But later, after Heloise had studied Greek, her dream-fantasies were all placed in Lesbos or Athens, where she pictured herself as the sweet-tongued lioness, Sappho, or as Aspasia, lovely and wise, strolling among the fluted columns of the Parthenon with her lover, Pericles. Yet these were the foolish mirages of a child, and for several years she had known it, even though she continued to dream, eddying on a phantasmal river that made life bearable. She thought sorrowfully, I'm too old for make-believe.

  The moment of panic skittered away. All she felt was shame. She fully expected Fulbert to be furious with her, but he was still standing there, smiling amiably. Apparently he had already devoted some thought to this problem of a husband, for later, over supper, he spoke of little else. What he sought was a man of good family, a man somewhat learned himself who would appreciate the value of a young woman on whom he could get intelligent sons, someone to keep the household accounts in perfect order and read aloud in the evenings. Ideal would be an older man, preferably a widower seeking the exotic in a second or third wife.

  Unfortunately, Fulbert confessed to her, he had been unable to think of anyone remotely approaching this description. Heloise, ravenous,
ate and said nothing.

  After the meal, on her way up to bed, she overheard him telling Agnes that Heloise was too big for a woman, but, God he thanked, she was at least pretty. A girl both ugly and learned would be nigh impossible to dispose of, she would be eating his bread until the day he died.

  "She carries herself like a duchess," Agnes replied.

  "Too tall."

  3

  At first, Fulbert talked a great deal about Heloise's marriage, and so did Agnes and Petronilla. But on the second Sunday of June took place the Procession of the Relic, when Notre Dame displayed the piece of the True Cross that it had acquired a few years earlier. Since relics were Fulbert's chief passion, he was busy with arrangements for the feast day. On the Thursday after St. John's Day, he rode down to Melun to collect overdue rents from his tenant farms, and after he returned it rained steadily for a week. The coverlet on her bed began to smell of mildew, and the streets of the Ile turned into lakes of mud until horses floundered up to their fetlocks. On the main streets, planks had been thrown down at the crossings, but nobody went about much unless he had to. Heloise noticed that Fulbert no longer mentioned the betrothal. Probably he had forgotten, and she had no intention of reminding him.

  During the first summer in Paris, life seemed to settle into a pattern, but unlike the oppressive rituals at Argenteuil, it was a routine that filled her with an immense peace. Fulbert owned a fine library; she would spend the mornings in his study or take the books to her turret chamber and read by the window, turning the parchment pages and memorizing whole passages from Seneca and St. Jerome. The more she read, the more she became aware of all she had not read, and she devoured books the way Petronilla bolted down Agnes's cardamom cakes.

  Fulbert puzzled her. He was responsible for selecting the music at three of the seven daily services, but he hired others to do much of the work. Most of his time was spent dealing in relics, at which business he made considerable profit (with the exception of Christ's baby tooth, and in that case he claimed to have been cruelly swindled), and he was constantly adding to his property holdings near Melun. His canonical duties were performed as a sort of afterthought, or so it appeared to Heloise.