by Marion Meade
Heloise rode in through the iron gate, Astrolabe at her side. But when she had dismounted and was about to ascend the broad stone stairs leading to the hall, the boy suddenly took fright and insisted that he would remain with the horses. She left him behind finally and went in alone. The dark hall buzzed ceaselessly with knights and courtiers, everyone's mouth going. Heloise, wondering how a sick man could mend amidst this commotion, stepped inside and announced herself to a chamberlain. Gesturing her to follow, he began pushing through the crowds. When they reached the dais at the front of the hall, the chamberlain halted abruptly. A knot of barons surrounded the king, and at the foot of the divan crouched a blond boy, his eyes sad and lost. When he noticed Heloise, he flashed a delicate smile, as if to say, This is all too noisy for me. He was about Astrolabe's age, a year younger, she thought. She smiled at him and inclined her head slightly. The gentle boy did not look like a king.
All at once, someone's voice rose sharply, the barons and the prince quickly dispersed, and there remained only one person at the king's side, the short, stolid Abbot Suger. In a loud voice, the chamberlain bellowed Heloise's name. She gulped a large breath and started toward the dais.
Just behind Louis's head, Suger was staring at her. He gazed from Heloise to the king, and back to Heloise once more. Heloise knelt briefly. "Sire—"
"Lady Heloise," Louis said formally, "venerable abbess of the Paraclete. Lady, your immense renown echoes through our kingdom."
Blushing, Heloise got to her feet and looked at him. Never before had she seen such a fat human being. Vast mounds of flesh rippled in waves over the couch, so that it was impossible to imagine a frame of bone underneath. He bore no resemblance to the plump, robust man she had met so many years ago in the palace garden. Suger handed him a goblet; Louis drank, his hand twitching with palsy. He beamed at Heloise. "I've been wanting to meet you."
"Sire, you would not remember, but we have met once."
"Really?"
"Years ago. In your garden. I twisted my ankle, and you got a horse to take me home."
"Really?" he repeated. "I don't remember."
"Oh, of course you would not. I was a young girl then."
Louis smiled, his bleary eyes bubbling among the folds of flesh. He waved a page to bring a stool. "Please. Come up here and sit."
Heloise went up two steps and sat down. A foul smell suddenly lashed at her nostrils and she tried not to sniff. Near the king's couch she noticed a chamber pot and quickly darted her eyes away.
The king handed his goblet to Suger. He said to Heloise, "The Paraclete. This place was wilderness when you arrived."
"True. It was not inhabited."
"Rumor says that you yourself plowed the fields and constructed shelters. Is that true?"
"Aye." She grinned at him. "I have become a passable plow-woman."
Louis nodded. "Like our sainted Abbot Bernard. He built Clairvaux in the same way. Lady, tell me this. Does your vineyard prosper?" Heloise looked over to Abbot Suger, who was appraising her with expressionless eyes. It was impossible to know if he remembered her from Argenteuil, but surely he must. She turned back to Louis. "We prosper, Sire, because of the love and goodwill of our neighbors. If it were my choice, the Paraclete would remain a small house. But we are flooded with applicants, and it seems that the Lord sends more women all the time. We are forced to expand, and yet we have not the means to do so." Louis nodded again.
"Our requirements grow faster than I can meet them."
Suger bent close to Louis's ear, whispering. The king said to Heloise, "Lady, I have promised to help you—"
Suger broke in. "We mentioned duty exemption on all goods bought in the kingdom. I believe that was the gist of the grant." He spoke in a clipped voice, without looking at Heloise.
"That would be a tremendous help," Heloise said fervently. "Equally helpful would be exemption on any goods we might wish to sell." She stared at the floor, swallowing at her boldness.
Louis glanced at Suger and said, "Of course. They must have exemption on both buying and selling. I'd forgotten that. What do you think?"
Suger sniffed. "That sounds reasonable," he said haltingly. Shifting his weight, he gestured to a cluster of clerks standing against the wall. One of them ran up with a table, another with parchment and ink. Louis began to dictate. When the royal charter had been prepared, a clerk carried it to the couch for the king's signature. The great seal of France was brought, the scarlet wax melted on a small brazier, and the document completed. The king smiled. "And your lord, my dear abbess. Is he in good health?"
Surprised, Heloise managed to answer coolly, "Splendid health, Sire."
"He teaches again in the Ile. We are delighted to have him back."
"Yes, Sire." A chamberlain appeared at her elbow. Heloise rose and bowed and thanked the king. Behind his head, she saw Suger watching her with tight lips. The chamberlain beat a path for them through the courtiers. At the main door, he said politely, "Lady, may I fetch your horse?"
"Thank you, no." She went out into the brilliant sunlight and looked for Astrolabe.
For another week, she stayed on in Paris, although her business had been completed. She was waiting for the arrival of Abelard's nieces, Agathe and Agnes, from Le Pallet. The two sisters wished to become novices at the Paraclete, a decision that caused Heloise some concern. "Are you positive they want to?" she asked Abelard. "This may be a childish whim. Have you spoken to them?"
"Agathe is determined to take vows. And Agnes goes wherever her sister does. They're inseparable." Abelard moved around the lecture platform collecting books and notes. "But you should speak to them just the same. Better to make sure of their minds. They're young."
Youngsters. She watched as two young men bounded into the hall, grabbed tablets they had left on the floor, and raced out again, yelling in a peculiar accent. "Those boys " she said to Abelard, "where are they from?"
"England."
"Oh. No wonder they speak so strangely."
Merry, he laughed over his shoulder. "That's Norman French, for your information, plus a smattering of Saxon. A linguist like you should be interested—you might ask them to give you lessons."
She smiled. "Mayhap I will. What are their names?"
"Tom Becket. And John of Salisbury. Good lads."
They went outside. It was a mild, amber morning. From the road came a rising chant of rumbustious voices yelling for Master Peter. Enveloping him, the boys began firing a torrent of questions. Heloise stopped at the corner and waited.
She thought, Tomorrow, or the day after that, I shall go back to the Paraclete and I'll be alone again. Once I would have dreaded the parting, but now it does not seem so terrible.
Abelard sent the boys away, and Heloise followed him down the hill. Before they reached his door, it opened and Astrolabe waved at them furiously. "Mama, hurry up! I'm starving."
24
Heloise stood at the rectory window behind the church in Quincey and watched the sun trying to stab feeble rays against the dun-colored sky. In the road, villagers had begun to gather with the tapers they would carry later in the procession. Down near the marketplace, an entourage of richly dressed horsemen wheeled their mounts in capering circles. Wearily, she turned back to the room where Ceci and Astrane were anointing the body. The twisting fragrance of balsam stung her lids. She thought, Blessed man with your onions and angels. No doubt you must be with those celestial ladies now.
She had ridden to Quincey in the middle of the night, in time to see Father Gondry receive extreme unction. At the last, he had asked to be laid on the ground, on a haircloth sprinkled with ashes, and he had departed smiling. ("Sweet lady, pray for me when you kneel in your chapel—the Lord smiles upon you in your humility and kindness.")
From the day she arrived, even during those times of agony when Abelard had turned from her and when she had longed for death, he had been her rock. His voice counseled reason, assured her that she would survive. And so she had, somehow.
"This is nearly finished," Astrane said. She wiped ointment from her hands and arms.
Heloise smiled at her. "Sister. You are weary." Astrane's eyes were puffy and red. They had all wept, earlier. But now they concentrated on the work to be done. In the corner, on a narrow bed, stretched the linen shroud. Carefully, she lifted it and carried it to the table. Ceci and Astrane rolled the priest to the edge; Heloise spread the shroud flat.
"All right," she said. The body was positioned in the center of the cloth and then, methodically, they began to enfold it like a parcel that must be protected from the rain. Outside, the crowd had grown; sounds of wailing broke jarringly into the room. Heloise's mind drifted. Her thoughts ran back to one day last summer, when he had come to see her. No, it was not last summer, but the one before that. That very hot summer when Louis the Fat had died and Prince Louis had gone to Aquitaine to wed the magnificent Duchess Eleanor. That had been a worrisome time, because the sun blazed every day and the fields lay cracked and dry. They had prayed for rain, which came finally. Not in time, though. On one of those miserable days, Father Gondry had come to her office, his round face puckish as a squirrel's, and told her that he had made his will. To the Paraclete he was giving his property at Trainel, a large manor house with fields and vineyards. It was, he suggested hesitantly, an ideal place for a convent. She might consider opening up a daughter house, but, of course, she could dispose of the property as she liked. He would not presume to tell her what to do.
Someone rattled at the door. Heloise could hear Ceci whispering with Payen the saddler, and then she came back with a sheet of deerskin. Once more they lifted the corpse and wrapped it up. With needles and lengths of leather string, they started to lace the ends together.
The wind smacked against the shutters. Heloise stabbed the needle into the soft skin, pulled it out, stabbed again. From the corner of her eye, she watched Ceci's cheek bent over the table; suddenly she saw that Ceci was no longer young. Thirty-seven, she must be. Or at least thirty-six. They did not keep track of natal days. Ceci had always seemed a babe, a little black-eyed maiden who jogged at her heels. Yet, under the wimple, Ceci's black curls were silvered with gray; her full, pert face must have thinned long ago, but she, Heloise, had not noticed. She was thankful they were not permitted mirrors—the shiny steel would have reflected a face she could not acknowledge as her own. Last year, she had lost two teeth, rotted slowly during years of poor diet and empty stomachs, slipped out of her mouth as easily as an icicle dissolves in a spring shower. She had been surprised.
"Payen is bringing the coffin," Ceci said hoarsely.
They sewed silently until the strings had been snipped and tied. Needles put away, Heloise looked around the dingy room one last time. Bed, chest, a bowl of onions gilded by the candlelight. There was nothing to put in order.
'The new priest," Astrane murmured. "He's young."
"It won't be the same," Ceci said.
"No." They filed to the door and went out. The rest of the women from the Paraclete stood in the road, waiting. Some carried crosses and censers; Gertrude held the sacred books. At a nod from Heloise, Payen and Arnoul went into the house and emerged moments later, the coffin hoisted on their shoulders. They laid the box across two wooden poles that served as a bier. Chanting, the new priest walked to the coffin with measured steps, draped it with a black pall, fell back. Arnoul and the saddler lifted the poles. The keening cortege shuffled into the church, leaving a trail of muddy footprints inside the chancel gates.
Father Aime started the dirge. He had a good, bold voice. Dry-eyed, Heloise stared at the draped box. Father Gondry had not lived his span. Last night, someone had told her that he was only forty-three. He had appeared old. Yet Abelard, who was much older, seemed ageless to her.
The priest was sprinkling holy water on the coffin, bobbing his head as he went. Ahead, in the front row, Heloise caught a glimpse of Lord Milo and two of his sons. Father Aime chanted the antiphons of forgiveness and deliverance from judgment. The cortege began to reform. "Move aside there," someone hissed. "Let the Lady Abbess through." Heloise walked to the head of the line. Astrane handed her a wooden cross, which she braced against her chest. She moved off, followed by the bumping coffin, the file of nuns, the villagers in their black tunics. The light was failing rapidly—if they did not hurry, it would be dark before the grave was completed.
At the entrance to the burial ground, Heloise halted and waited for the cortege to catch up. Candles bobbed rosy in the dusk. She started to move again, swerving toward the shadowy back wall, where a shallow trench had been dug in the shape of a cross. After making the sign of the cross, Father Aime threw handfuls of holy water, and the gravediggers bent over their shovels. Sister Hermeline's voice, calm and crystal in the winter twilight, started the psalms.
After a while, the mounds of moist earth were heaped high; the coffin disappeared. Silence. People coughed. The final collect for forgiveness. Hastily, the shovelers began cramming the earth back into the hole. In the matted leaves near her feet, Heloise saw a mouse slither desperately for shelter in a thorn hedge.
The priest turned and went past her; people began to stumble into a queue of sorts, and children whined for their suppers. Very slowly, Heloise inched against the wall where it was darkest. The November blackness fell silently on the tombstones, save for the funeral torch that smoked at the head of the grave. For the hundredth time that day, she thought of Abelard and of their son, who was now grown— tall, well formed, sweet tempered but for his occasional moods of silent apathy. If she could only hold the two of them forever. These last years had been good to her; hurriedly she corrected herself—God had been good to her. And to Abelard. Without bowing her head, she prayed: Almighty Father, do not still that golden voice too soon—I'm afraid to live in this world without him. A mouse—the same mouse?— brushed the hem of her habit. Darting her eyes among the shadows, she hunted for the tiny creature, but all she glimpsed was her own insecurities, old companions that would follow her to the end of the road.
The snow had stopped. The sounds of romping children echoed across powdered roofs. Heloise sat in the bishop's court at Troyes, waiting for her case to be called. Across the chamber, Abbot Norpal ate apples and crooked his arm around his monks. They talked loudly, without much interest in their surroundings. Now and then, the abbot would glare in Heloise's direction. Shortly after sext, one of his monks came to her.
"The abbot wants to give you a chance to drop your complaint," he announced.
"The abbot has delayed this case for two years," she said quickly. "He wastes my time and the court's time. I want the matter settled." If she dropped the case, she would have to pay a fine.
"And who told you to sue the abbot?" the monk demanded angrily. "It's you who have wasted our time." He strode back to the abbot of Vauluisant.
She ate bread and cheese from her bag, and then the bishop's steward called her to his table. After the oath-taking, he asked her to state her plea. She explained that the oak wood lying south of the Bagnaux road had been given to the Paraclete by Sir Ralph Jaillac in the year of Our Lord 1136. The following year, she discovered that the abbey of Vauluisant was cutting firewood and feeding its pigs on her land. When she brought this fact to the abbot's attention, he had informed her that the wood had been the abbey's property since the time of Sir Ralph's grandfather. She spoke slowly, very careful to follow the traditional wording for her charges. Finally, she handed Bishop Hatto a charter confirming her right to the wood, and swept back to the bench.
The steward called Abbot Norpal, who could produce no charter of ownership but claimed that everyone knew the wood belonged to Vauluisant. Drawling, he reminded the court that Bishop Hatto himself, while visiting the abbey in 1132, had hunted fox in that very same wood. And so on. The abbot, smiling, drowned the courtroom with wind. Bishop Hatto nodded from time to time.
Heloise leaned back, impatient. She wanted to get home.
Halfway up the empty rive
r road, she reined the mare to a walk. Through a rolling veil of snowflakes, she could see the chimneys of the Paraclete smoking gently. The land and sky were white, shredded, comforting. Every time she rode back from Quincey or Saint-Aubin, she felt compelled to have a long look. There was a new gate, and within the snowbound walls, kitchens, infirmary, library, and a guesthouse with a special wing she had added for Abelard. New buildings had gone up swiftly, old ones had been expanded and renovated, including Abelard's original chapel, which was now a sizable church. The Paraclete was larger than Argenteuil, it suddenly occurred to her. She nudged the mare forward.
"They've cut pine branches to decorate the church," Gertrude told her. "And Cook says she is making beef and raisin pies."
"I thought it was anise cakes," Heloise said. Christmas pilgrims were singing around a bonfire, filling the yard with a rousing carole. "Where's Master Peter?"
"Writing."
"How can he work on a lovely day like this?" Gertrude wrinkled her nose into a smile. "He asked for you a while ago.
"And my son?"
"I've not seen him today," Gertrude answered.
Heloise made her way slowly to the east wing of the guesthouse, past women eager for her blessing and men who dropped on their knees in the trampled slush to kiss her ring, all the formalities that accompanied the position of abbess. There were children, too, and they chattered like blackbirds and squeezed around Heloise with running noses and snow-dusted bonnets. The air smelled of fish soup bubbling in marjoram and dill, and that bland wetness that comes with a fresh snowfall. Under Heloise's boots the snow squeaked. Her feet were dry, but ber cloak bad become crusted with snow. Outside the door, she flung it off and shook the snow from it. She knocked and went in.