by Marion Meade
Fulbert stood to throw another log on the hearth. Laughing nervously, he said over his shoulder, "Never mind, little one. Monstrous filth, bibble-babble, that's all. I wouldn't repeat it before a maiden."
Suddenly Heloise's hands began to shake. She sat down on a chest under the window and curled them under her skirt. She wondered who had been Fulbert's informant. "God help me, I'm not a child anymore."
"Keep quiet, lady," Abelard said between his teeth. "There's no need to be so inquisitive. Your lord uncle and I have discussed the situation and made our decision."
Heloise looked from Abelard to Fulbert. Both of their faces appeared calm. For one wild moment she believed the crisis had passed.
Fulbert smiled at her. "I think," he said, "it would be best if Master Peter found himself another residence."
"Leave?" Heloise staggered to her feet.
"It would be prudent. Under the circumstances."
Very pale, Heloise turned to Abelard. He was gazing into the corner. She kept her eyes on him and cried to Fulbert, "Uncle! You can't!"
"Hush, child."
"My lessons!"
"Aaah, Heloise, you have no more need of lessons. Master Peter admits as much himself. Don't you, my dear Abelard?"
Abelard nodded grimly. He turned to look at Heloise. '’Your uncle is far too diplomatic, lady. My presence here is bringing dishonor upon your name—"
"And what of your—"
"—and that cannot be tolerated. The only solution is my going."
"I don't care about my name!" Heloise gasped, unthinking.
"Lady!" Abelard roared, striding toward her. He gripped her elbow so hard that she almost cried aloud. "This childish petulance is unworthy of you."
Uncertain, she wrenched her arm away and stepped back. Fulbert was watching her, shaking his head miserably like a man who wishes himself elsewhere. At last, controlling herself, she said, "God's pardon, Uncle. I forgot myself." Her breath was coming quickly. "Of course. You're quite right. Master Peter must find other lodgings."
Fulbert started to wring his hands. "Dear God, the best-laid plans —don't fret, little one. No harm has been done. I hope."
Her legs were trembling so that she could barely control them. Carefully she walked past Abelard and dropped on a stool before the hearth. Life without him was beyond envisioning. Beyond, even, bearability. How, she shrieked inside, how could God have permitted such an appalling error? She said, calmly, "And you, Master Peter? Surely this will be a great inconvenience."
He smiled thinly at her. "Don't vex yourself, lady. There are hundreds of lodging houses in Paris." He threw a cool grin at Fulbert "Although none that can match Agnes's cooking."
A log falling in the hearth ricocheted a trail of sparks onto the tile floor. Heloise kicked a burning ember into the fire. Outside, very close to the window, she heard feathery footfalls and an unknown mouth whistling a cheerful tune; she recognized it as one of the melodies from the Daniel play.
Fulbert started telling Abelard about a Canon Victor, who had doubled his prebend income in less than two years. When he had finished with Canon Victor's business acumen, he began to talk about an abbot named Bernard of Clairvaux, who had founded a new Cistercian monastery in Champagne, saying that this Bernard was a fanatic who made his monks eat boiled leaves. Abelard's eyes grazed past her head and focused pointedly on Fulbert; he told an amusing story about the monk Suger, who was Louis the Fat's favorite confidant and who slept on silk sheets. It was all very cordial. Both men appeared to have forgotten the discussion. Heloise got up and went off down the hall to the kitchen. Agnes was on her knees scrubbing the floor.
"Is there any raisin wine?" Heloise asked her.
"In the pantry."
"Agnes-"
Agnes lifted her head and stared. "What's wrong, lamb?"
"Nothing."
'Tell Agnes."
"Master Peter is leaving." She rocked backward and forward against the wall, her hands flapping loosely at her hips.
Awkwardly, Agnes wobbled to her feet and dropped the rag into the bucket. She walked over and laid a wet hand on Heloise's hair. "Well, mayhap it's for the best," she sighed. "You've been working too hard."
Heloise turned her face to the wall.
It had never occurred to her that she and Abelard would not go on and on, playing at being a couple in Fulbert's turret. As the months had slipped by safely and he had become almost a member of their family, the likelihood of his leaving had become more remote. Somewhere at the back of her mind, she had acknowledged the possibility of irremediable change, just as she understood that a person might be struck by lightning or trampled by a horse. But these annihilations, acts of God as they were, happened to other people. It was not wise to dwell on calamity, or it would, unerringly, seek one out.
Now everything had gone askew. By the following Monday, Abelard was gone, his books, his armchair with the carved arms, transferred to one of the hives of lodging houses on the other side of Notre Dame. The room across the landing stood vacant, peopled only by cobweb memories, and Heloise could not bring herself to open the door and look in.
He did not come back. The endless days slithered on around her, and finally it was Jourdain who came to see her. She half expected him to make some reproach, but he looked at her as if nothing had happened. "I've been to visit my friend Peter of Montboissier," he told her evenly. "You know, the one who's a monk at Cluny."
Jourdain seemed in no hurry to finish chronicling his journey to Cluny.
After what seemed like an eternity, he sat down on a chest and fell silent. "I have a message from Abelard," he said, studying her intently. "But first I must ask you something."
She widened her eyes expectantly.
"Do you wish to see him again?"
"How can you ask?" Heloise cried in a low voice. "I've been in hell, can't you see that?"
"I thought mayhap you wished to end it now."
Jourdain did not look at her, and finally she had to remind him about the message. Then he fumbled laboriously in his girdle and brought out a letter sealed with purple wax. When he saw that she would not open it in his presence, he made some excuse to say farewell.
Upstairs, she forced her fingers calm so as to avoid ripping the parchment. The letter said little. Nothing personal. Only that she was to meet him the following day at Master Adam's classroom on the Petit Pont. He wrote that Jourdain would call for her at sext and take her home afterward.
The lecture room used by Master Adam, Adam du Petit Pont his students called him, was on the second floor of a house halfway across the bridge. A goldsmith owned the building and practiced his trade on the street floor; above, connected by rickety stairs, was the room Adam rented for his classes. At noon on Tuesday the chamber stood cold and silent. Straw littered the plank floor, as well as cushions that students had left behind.
They coupled quickly, without speaking.
Afterward, she found Jourdain downstairs against a shopfront, whistling softly. He suggested that she might rethink what she was doing. Without becoming angry, she assured him that nobody was forcing her to do anything. On the way home, he talked about the weather, and she said nothing.
Quickly, she and Abelard settled into a curious pattern of letters (delivered by a resigned Jourdain), meetings in the temporary refuge of deserted classrooms, and, from time to time, predawn visits to his room, although the latter Abelard considered unsafe. Heloise failed to understand his apprehension. At his room, at least, nobody could break in on them; they could take off their clothes and hold each other. It was amazing, though, how many opportunities they invented for meeting, sometimes every day, at the very least three times a week. Heloise closed her eyes to the risks, although sometimes she wondered idly what Fulbert would do if he found them out. But this was not a thought she wished to dwell upon for very long.
Days when she did not see him had to be lived somehow. Agnes was making bliauts for Petronilla. Dyes had been purchased, red and a brilli
ant green, and the linen colored in a vat of boiling water near the stable. Then Agnes stretched the cloth over her dress patterns and cut out backs and fronts and sleeves. This sort of preparation for Petronilla's wardrobe was unusual, and there was, of course, a practical reason for it. The girl was sixteen and should have been married long ago, but Agnes, loath to give up her only source of household help, had postponed the day as long as possible. Now, still reluctant, she had an opportunity to betroth her daughter to the son of a fishmonger from the Greve. Even though Agnes had offered to part with 120 sous for a dowry—more than the man deserved, she said—the fishmonger nonetheless wished to have a look at Petronilla before closing the deal. Hence the new bliauts.
Heloise helped with the sewing. She flashed the needle back and forth through the fabric, listening idly to Agnes humming and Petronilla prating incessantly about her unknown boy. She couldn't stop talking: he would love her, she knew, he'd buy her a feather bed and ribbons for her hair. She tried, without success, to imagine what he might look like. It didn't much matter because she loved him already. Agnes laughed. "Idiot!" she said.
Petronilla, it suddenly occurred to Heloise, would soon be sleeping with a man she loved. And she, Heloise, would rot away with Agnes and Fulbert in this sterile house.
Just before dawn, she snapped herself awake, as if some internal bell had chimed in her head. She was asleep in her undertunic and for a moment could not remember why. Then she did. The room swelled with blackness, but she could not risk lighting a candle. She fumbled for the gown she had purposely laid across the end of the bed the previous evening.
When she had dressed, she opened her door a crack and listened. The house rustled with silence. It was too early for Agnes to be up yet. Halfway down the stairs, she remembered her uncombed hair. Well, she was not going back now; she pulled her shawl over her head and felt her way down, pausing briefly on the second floor to make sure there was no chink of light under Agnes's door.
She smiled to herself. Abelard wouldn't mind her scraggly hair; he liked to tease her, saying it was foolish to dress at all. She should throw on a cloak and nobody would know she was naked.
The Ile was uncannily quiet this morning, its obsessive rhythms stilled for a few hours. The deserted streets, left to an armada of rats, wore a shut-down look: no street vendors shrilling their wares, only overturned crates and a few people stumbling toward the cathedral. It was dangerous, of course, for a woman to walk the streets of Paris before daylight. Not long ago, she'd heard about a girl who had been raped by an apothecary's prentice, but the girl had been abroad at midnight, which was asking for trouble. Surely, Heloise thought, all the rapists were abed at this hour. Nonetheless, she walked quickly, but not too quickly lest someone recognize her and report back to Fulbert. Even in the thick half-light, she could feel that it was starting to be spring. In a few minutes, the sun would burst out and the March day would be mild.
For almost two weeks, she had not seen Abelard, in part because something unexpected and quite absurd had happened to her. At the advanced age of eighteen, she had begun having her monthly flux for the first time. That she may have been abnormal all these years had never troubled her, although Agnes would question her periodically and shake her head, and Abelard, even, had commented on this unusual situation, saying that it was unhealthy when a woman was not regularly purged of her superfluous humors. Since Heloise had felt perfectly well in every other respect, she had not paid much attention to either of them.
Then, one night in February, on the heels of so many other misfortunes, she had noticed stains on her undertunics. Later, Agnes had shown her how to wash the rags and fold them for use the next month. But in her opinion the whole thing was literally a bloody nuisance. She would not go to Abelard at this time, even though he had insisted it didn't matter; it mattered to her. She stayed home for several days, and after that Abelard had accompanied Louis the Fat on a royal hunting trip to the forest near Compiegne. It had been a long time, too long.
As she passed Notre Dame, she slowed down. Usually she slipped in to say a fast prayer to Our Lady, because this was a procedure Abelard advised, a kind of alibi in case she was seen. But this morning she felt too full of urgency to bother.
At the corner of Rue Notre Dame, she jumped back to avoid a horseman. Abelard lived in a house on a side street west of the cathedral. Compared to his quarters at Fulbert's, this new place was cramped and hopelessly ugly, full of badly made cupboards and a stool missing a leg.
One of the good things, the only good thing, about the room was that his window fronted on an alley. Obviously she could not enter through the main door of the house, but it was easy to climb in his window without being seen.
Two monks were heading toward her; she ducked into the alley and began to run. An upended barrel was standing beneath Abelard's window. She thought, Some night a thief will decide to pinch that barrel and I'll be in a pretty fix. She climbed up and gave the shutters a gentle push. Slinging one leg over the sill, she peered in to find Abelard grinning at her from the untidy bed, his hands crossed behind his head.
"What took you so long?" he said, laughing. "I've been waiting since lauds."
She slid to the floor and threw her shawl at his head. "Sweet, I've been waiting since Monday before last." She stayed at the window enjoying the look of him, his flawless head disheveled with sleep, the fragility of his mouth.
He said to her, teasing, "Are you through being a woman for this month?"
Heloise wrinkled her nose at him. "What a bother. Why did God have to build me this way?"
"God knows what he's doing." He raised his arm and hurled the shawl back at her. It sailed past her shoulder and dropped over the windowsill.
"Ah, Abelard, look what you've done." She leaned her head out and saw the shawl draped over the barrel like a tablecloth. The sky had begun to whiten, and a pink streak was splashed across the sky over Notre Dame. The day was going to turn out glorious.
"Leave it," she heard him call. "You can collect it on your way out."
"I'd better—"
"God's blood, come here!"
Hearing the urgency in his voice, she smiled mischievously. Straightening, without turning around, she clucked at him in a playful tone, "Forsooth, my lord. What's your big hurry? Haven't you heard that ladies need to be wooed a while?" She could go to him, or she could wait. If she waited, he would be wilder. This morning she wanted him wild.
He was beginning to sound cross. "Heloise, come here or I'll beat you."
"Beat me." Slowly she unwound her girdle and let it slide to the floor.
“I’ll rape you."
"Ummm," she sighed happily, still not looking at him. In her mind's eye, she could picture him behind her, his blue eyes gritty with desire.
"Heloise," he called,. "Come here. I have something for you."
Sinuously she lifted her bliaut to the waist and began to raise her arms. 'What?" She made her voice innocent.
"Something you'll like."
She struggled to keep from laughing out loud. The gown fell at her feet. She stood in her undertunic, shivering a little at the thought of him looking at her. The game was making her groin ache deliciously. Kicking off her shoes, she thought, In a minute. She would end it in one more minute. "What do you have for me? Breakfast?"
"Not exactly, sweeting." He paused, and she could hear the laughter brim in his voice. "But you may taste it if you like."
She giggled as she pulled off her undertunic and flung it into the corner. 'Tell me," she whispered, hugging her arms across her nipples. "I won't come unless you tell me what you have for me."
"Heloise!" he yelled. She heard him thump a threatening fist against the bedboard. "Come here."
She wanted him to say something bawdy; it always made her blood race hotly when she heard that dignified voice utter outrageous things. 'Tell me," she insisted.
"The biggest erection in all of the Ile!" he rumbled.
She turned and ran to him.
He sprawled her down among the covers and gave her bottom a stinging slap. "Shameless minx. Making me say wanton things." His fingers began to pluck her like a lute, now gentle, now savage. "Aren't you ashamed of yourself?"
She shook her head, letting him do as he liked. "I'm not ashamed of anything." Abruptly a thought thrust its way into her mind. "Sweet, wait," she told him impulsively. "I did do a terrible thing."
He lay still and looked down at her, smiling. "Did you?"
She whispered, "I gave myself pleasure. Last Friday."
Abelard grinned. "Is that all?" He moved his body over her, laughing at her. "As I recall, the penance is six days' fast on bread and water."
"I don't care!" She closed her eyes and locked herself around him. She felt him plunging wildly inside her. "My stallion, my own bawdy boy—"
He was talking quickly against her ear. "Do you like that, angel? Ah God, how I've missed you. Heloise, ladylove. It's torture without you. Do you like that!"
She didn't answer. Heat rushed up all over her skin in a thin layer of dew. After a while, his honeyed voice deepened, chanting almost incoherently the familiar words and phrases, the exquisite litany she knew as well as the paternoster. She clung to his neck and waited for it to happen.
A cool draft brushed across the soles of her feet. Heloise sighed and opened her eyes. Over Abelard's shoulder, she saw framed in the sunlit window a man's head and upper body. He was watching them.
She screamed.
Fulbert said, "Fair niece, it's time to go home."
9