by Marion Meade
For that matter, very few of Abelard's family remained at the castle. Some years earlier, Berengarius and Lucia had retreated into their respective abbeys, and by now the children too had scattered: Porcarius and Dagobert to Nantes, where the former had become a canon, the latter a knight in the service of the Duke of Brittany; Radulphus, dead of dysentery, to a grave under the pine grove on the hill. Abelard's middle brother, Dagobert, preferred to live at the duke's palace, and he returned to Le Pallet only three or four times a year, on which occasions he invariably impregnated his wife if she were not already carrying a child. If it had once troubled Alienor that she saw her husband infrequently, this was no longer true, and she had come to regard his periodic visits as a seasonal annoyance that must be borne philosophically, like the sudden storm that leaves in its wake a torn roof to be mended.
Since Berengarius's departure, Le Pallet had become, in effect, the property of Abelard's sister, Denise, and her husband, William. A petty knight, a younger son with no prospects whatsoever, William had responded to this rise in his fortunes with a gratitude that bordered on the touching; he stewarded Berengarius's fief as if the land had been his own and toiled harder than any peasant. Denise, a small, slightly plump woman, was by no means happy with her hardworking spouse, but it took Heloise many months to realize this. Her first impression of the castle was a blur of children, for with Denise's surviving eight and Alienor's thirteen, the hall and ward echoed from prime to matins with the sound of excited voices and always, it seemed, with the squalling of one infant or another. Depending upon one's capacity for noise and affection for children, it was either a juvenile Utopia or the worst sort of chaos.
Unwilling to make any such judgment at the outset, Heloise decided to reserve opinion and observe, although as the months passed, after Jourdain had gone and she had made friends with some of the children, she was obliged to conclude that the only word for Le Pallet was bedlam. Happy bedlam, but bedlam nonetheless. This was, she often reminded herself, the place where she would be spending the remainder of her life. It was, after all, the real world, just as Saint-Gervais was also the normal world of dogs and children, horses and halls with their smoke-blackened walls. She had never existed in this world, neither Argenteuil nor the Rue des Chantres falling into any such category, and she embarked on a self-conducted campaign of adjustment. And when she sometimes awakened in the night with a queer hunger, only a dream perhaps, for her turret chamber in Fulbert's house, she hastily walled up the memories.
Living at Le Pallet, she decided, was just like sitting in a warm tub; it clipped the senses utterly so that the weeks and months slipped by with the greased passage of buttery soap. Perhaps, though, it was only the condition of pregnancy. She felt like doing nothing, and no one required anything of her, although she volunteered her services with the chores without being asked. At first, Denise and William seemed to approach her on tiptoe, as if she were some countess who had inexplicably stumbled through their gate for her lying-in. This partial awe in which they held her created, of course, barriers, and by autumn Heloise still had not become fully intimate with the members of the household. This did not bother her as much as it might have under other circumstances; she felt strangely lethargic, half there and half someplace other, but where she could not say.
Nothing troubled her excessively, except the news from Paris. It was very bad. Abelard had not come at Lammas as he had promised, only letters from both him and Jourdain describing more or less the same situation: that Fulbert had reacted to her disappearance with a grief and fury so spectacular that it bordered on insanity. It had to be seen, Abelard wrote, to be believed.
Her uncle roved the Ile and the Left Bank, knocking on doors and pleading with goodwives to tell him if they had seen his niece. Canon Martin and others had been sent bearing threats to cut Abelard's throat if he did not return Heloise, and when it finally became apparent that she was not with him, Fulbert took his complaints to Louis the Fat, accusing Master Peter of debauching and kidnaping his niece. He hired men to guard Abelard's house and to follow him day and night, and for this reason Abelard had not dared journey to Brittany in the summer. Only after classes had resumed in the fall did he explain the situation to King Louis, asking him to inform Fulbert that further search was futile, that Heloise, pregnant, had gone to Le Pallet.
Her uncle's uppermost thoughts were of vengeance, but what could he do? If he were to kill or injure Abelard, some retribution might fall on Heloise among the barbaric Bretons. Nevertheless, Jourdain reassuringly wrote to her, Abelard was very much on guard against assault, and he had taken the precaution of hiring a bodyguard who accompanied him to class and slept outside his door at night. Fulbert had not, Jourdain added, the courage to harm Abelard now. Heloise could do nothing—but worry.
By the end of August, her belly was beginning to unfurl and she could feel the floating and fluttering of butterfly wings, a sensation that the women of the castle quickly demoted from the realm of the poetic to a prosaic observation: The babe was kicking.
The day before Michaelmas, Alienor gave birth to a stillborn son, and then, a week later, Denise followed with a live daughter, whom she christened Agnes. Neither of these occurrences created a ripple in the daily life of the castle, where gestation and parturition were as unremarkable as the passing of the seasons. Two days after Agnes's birth, Denise was out of bed, jangling the keys she wore on her girdle and screeching at the servingwomen for having neglected their chores.
"Lazy wretches," she grumbled to Heloise. "When I'm in childbed, they take it for a holiday."
Heloise watched as she opened her bliaut and guided the infant's mouth to her nipple. She looked at the color of Agnes's face; it was a queer reddish purple. She looked as if she had been boiled. "Does it hurt badly?" she asked impulsively.
"What? Giving suck?" Denise gave her a blank look. "Of course not."
"No, I meant having it." After listening to Alienor's shrieks, she had steeled herself when Denise's time had come. But Denise had done little more than whimper.
"It hurts," she said. Seeing the dismayed look on Heloise's face, she quickly added, "But not always. It depends. Don't think about it."
"I can't help thinking about it." Denise's second youngest child crawled between her feet. She hoisted Agathe into her lap and bounced her. The child, giggling, clawed with plump fingers at her plaits.
"Don't worry. Alienor's an excellent midwife."
Heloise hesitated, then said, "Alienor told me that I'm too old to have a first babe. Is that right?"
Denise smoothed her free hand wearily across her forehead. That single gesture reminded Heloise of Abelard, that and the thick dark hair; otherwise she would never have taken them for brother and sister. Denise answered reluctantly, "Well, eighteen is old. But I wouldn't worry. Just pray it comes out alive."
There was an inflection of mild rebuke in her last words, and Heloise fell silent. Although Denise invariably spoke to her in tones sweet as honey, she sensed a trace of something sharp behind them. She bit her lower lip and lowered Agathe to the floor. The child let out a howl, which Heloise ignored; she had wet through her napkin and left a damp patch on Heloise's skirt. After a moment: "How old were you when you married William?"
“Thirteen."
Heloise smiled. "How very young to be in love."
"In love? Believe me, I wasn't in love." Denise lifted the infant to her shoulder and rubbed her back. “I cried for a week. My lady mother kept threatening to beat me if I didn't stop weeping."
"You didn't want to marry?"
Denise corrected her matter-of-factly. "Didn't want to marry William."
"Why ever not? He's a worthy man."
"And poor." Denise laughed.
"What difference does that make?" Heloise said. "A man's worth depends on his merits, not on wealth or power."
"Oh, I suppose." She stood up and laid the infant in a basket of unmended clothes near the hearth. "But it's better to have a rich worthy man t
han a poor one."
Watching Denise's face, she felt a crackle of revulsion at the woman's mercenary attitude. What kind of marriage could Denise have? Keeping her voice neutral, she said, "Don't you think that a woman who marries for money is offering herself for sale?"
Denise straightened with a glare that she quickly amended. She said, rather carelessly, "Rich, poor. Who had a choice? I was given to a poor man, that's all."
"Yes, but—"
"Lady, it's all very well for you to talk." Denise's lips quivered with annoyance. "You have a rich man."
Struggling to keep from shouting, she deliberately folded her arms over her stomach. "Abelard isn't rich."
Denise's eyes rounded, disbelieving. "What are you talking about?" she snorted. "Mayhap he's not rich to you, but I call him rich."
Heloise looked beyond her, at Agathe poking a finger into her sister's mouth. Her temples were beginning to pound. She should have known better than to start this discussion with Denise. Now she could only try to maneuver herself out of it before any great damage was done. Finally she said, "Of course you're right."
Denise stood before the hearth, face flushed, hands clamped on her hips. This was the first time that Heloise could recall seeing her hands idle. She was staring down at her feet, as if some question were forming in her mind. Whatever it was, Heloise didn't want to hear. Smiling, she hoisted herself to her feet and started to walk away. Over her shoulder, she could hear Denise calling her name. She turned back, bracing herself slightly. The rushes crunched under her feet.
"I was wondering—" Denise cleared her throat. "In the letters I've had from my lord brother, there was no mention of when he plans to visit us."
Stiffening, Heloise said quickly, "Nor in mine."
"Christmas, do you think?"
"Mayhap. I don't know."
Denise rubbed her hands together fretfully. “I hope you don't mind my asking. But preparations must be made for the wedding, and if I know in advance I—"
"Wedding?" The lone word heaved itself involuntarily out of Heloise's mouth and hung in the air between them.
Abruptly, Denise began talking of slaughtering and baking, of special decorations for the chapel, and of how many casks of wine she would distribute to the varlets. She planned to invite the surrounding countryside and perhaps, she said, the duke.
Replies washed up to the end of Heloise's tongue, and she kept swallowing them down. When Denise paused for breath, she said, "There isn't going to be a wedding."
Denise looked at her. "What did you say?"
“I said we're not getting married."
She laughed uncertainly. After a moment, she said, “I don't understand."
"It's very simple. We don't wish to marry." She went past Denise and stood so close to the hearth that her hands felt fried.
A flaming log collapsed with a spattering of hisses. Denise jerked her chin toward Heloise. "But surely you want your child to—"
Impatient, Heloise cut her off. "There is no great dishonor in illegitimacy. But the child has nothing to do with it."
Denise said, as if she had not been listening closely, "You mean, my brother does not wish to marry you."
Heloise shook her head politely. "I've never discussed the subject with your brother. I'm only saying that I do not wish it."
"Why?"
She might have made an attempt to explain herself to Denise, but abandoned the idea as futile in advance. As one shouts a message into a gale wind, expecting it to be instantly lost, she said tautly, "The title of mistress is sweeter to me than wife."
Denise burst out with a wordless gasp. Then she said severely, "If you think of yourself as a concubine, you can't expect people to respect you."
“I know what I am," she said with a certain amount of grit in her voice. "What people think of me is not something I lose sleep over." She looked over to see Denise absolutely motionless, watching her with barely veiled contempt.
"My lord brother," she told Heloise, "is an honorable man. He will marry you." She clapped her hands together for emphasis. "Yes! There will be a wedding."
Mildly, Heloise said, "I will refuse."
"Refuse?" echoed Denise, wagging her head fiercely. "Lady, you have some outlandish ideas." She stalked through the hall in the direction of the kitchen. From the hall, Heloise could hear her racketing at the cook about some fowls he had forgotten to pluck for dinner.
The pains started early on Christmas Eve. They were mild, and she saw no reason to mention them yet. Shortly before midnight, everyone filed into the ward and walked to the chapel through deepening soft snow. It was a fine night. The snow silenced the sound of footsteps, and above a fleet of stars gentled down the sky. Inside the chapel, Denise was marshaling the children into formation—the smallest ones in front, Justin must not sit next to Maria because they whispered, and so forth.
The priest began mass. It was cold in the chapel, but Heloise's palms were sweating. The pains in her belly grew more insistent. After a while, she could not concentrate on the Latin words and tried to think of something else. Before the first snowfall, a peddler had come to the castle, his saddlebags stocked with a surprising assortment of goods, and she had purchased an ivory toothpick for Abelard. Now she began making a mental list of the peddler's wares: pins and needles, gloves, linen handkerchiefs with embroidered flowers, ribbons, tweezers—her mind began jumping around, and she gave up. She said a prayer, urging God to make the babe a boy. A little while later, she canceled the request. Thy will be done, she said, and asked forgiveness for her sins.
Back in the hall, she took her place at the trestle. When William heaped her plate with goose and capon, her stomach swam with nausea. Between contractions she smiled politely at Alienor's eldest son and answered his questions about Socrates. The boy was beginning to annoy her; he was asking questions only to hear himself talk. It was hot and smoky in the hall, and she gripped the edge of the trestle until her knuckles whitened.
Alienor came around the table and stood behind her. She said, "You should go upstairs now."
"Later."
"When did it start?"
"After vespers."
Alienor's narrow face twisted into disapproval. "Don't be a fool. Go up and lie down."
Upstairs, she crawled under a fur and lay like a child with her knees drawn up. Below in the hall, they were singing and clapping, and somebody was banging a spoon against a kettle. She wondered when Alienor would come up and how long this whole thing might take. Hours, possibly. She dozed for a while, and when she awoke, she could feel Alienor and Denise next to the bed.
"When will it be over?" she asked without opening her eyes.
Denise laughed. "That's what they all ask the first time."
Heloise opened her eyes. Half a dozen women scurried around the bed, some of them trying to look busy but the rest merely staring. Anger gagged her. "Get out!" she whispered hoarsely. "Leave me alone." Nobody moved. She shut her eyelids tight, swallowed up by a wave of unspeakable pain. Suddenly she was afraid that she would die.
Alienor sat on the side of the bed and unclenched Heloise's fists. "It's worse when you tense your body," she said. "Try to relax."
“I can’t.”
"Relax between pains."
"All right." She gulped a deep breath and forced her body limp. Several times she opened her eyes and looked at the women. None of them seemed to be upset, or even terribly concerned. After a while, she forgot the women, forgot her vows to be brave. Some time later, a long way off, she could hear someone screaming and understood vaguely that it was herself.
The sun was just coming up when the baby was born. Alienor brought it in a blanket and laid it next to Heloise, and then, almost as an afterthought, she told Heloise it was a boy.
"Ah, yes," said Heloise and plunged into sleep.
All day long there was a great coming and going at Le Pallet. The castle's tenants and their families brought the Christmas rents—firewood, bread, hens, home-brewed ale. I
n return, Denise gave them Christmas dinner, mainly the food they had provided. Bonfires crackled in the ward, and everyone gathered noisily around the flames, talking, singing, some dancing. At noon they were allowed to enter the hall with their cups and trenchers, and the kitchen varlets carried out enormous platters of cheese, stewed hen, bacon with mustard, and loaves of white bread. And as much ale as they could drink.
Washed and combed and propped against the pillows, Heloise held the baby gingerly in the crook of her arm. She could not take her eyes off him. Again and again she tentatively inspected his fuzz of light hair, the tiny fingers, the pearly rose mouth. The dark-blue eyes staring back into her own seemed otherworldly, as if his body were there but the rest of him with the angels. There was an expression around his eyes and mouth that awed her.
All afternoon, people had been climbing the ladder to look at the new babe, and Heloise had smiled at the visitors and accepted their clucking and aahing. Finally, Denise came up with a plate of bread and cheese, her face red from the heat of the kitchen.
She said, "You can hold him tight. He won't break."
"Denise, he smiled at me a little while ago."
She laughed indulgently. "Silly. New babies don't smile." She leaned over to stare into his face. "A fine boy. He looks just like you."
Heloise pursed her lips indignantly. "Certainly not. He looks like Abelard."
Denise straightened with a grin. "If you say so." She set down the plate on the bed near Heloise's elbow. "See, it wasn't so bad now, was it?"
T guess not." It was bad, she thought.