by Sherry Jones
The surge of energy Pauline’s footsteps had produced now caused me to pace my floor from window to door and back again. If Abelard did not come to me when he arrived, I would approach him. I imagined the scene: his sorrowful eyes; my assurances that all was well; our joyous reunion. I tried to read, but not even Seneca could distract my thoughts. Minutes became hours; hours became lifetimes. The night deepened.
At last, I realized that Abelard would not return to my uncle’s house that night. Perhaps he felt too ashamed to face me. Or perhaps Agnes had been right. What had she said of her future count? Once he has taken what he wants from me, he will lose interest.
I returned to my window, seeking Abelard’s form on the street, but saw only shadows and stars. Even the dogs slept at this hour. What if I never saw him again? Of course he would return to me, whom he loved. But what if he did not? I knew where he taught; I knew where, in all probability, he spent this night. Tomorrow, if he did not come to dinner, I would find him—and, God willing, I would soothe his anxious heart and bring him back to me.
I did not have to wait long for word from Abelard. The next morning, after my uncle had left for the cathedral, a message arrived. Are you faring well? I replied that I was, and that I wished to see him—but he did not respond. Was he faring well?
That afternoon, I ventured to Etienne’s house in search of him. At the door, Ralph, Etienne’s cold-eyed servant, turned me away with a face as impassive as stone. I stood in the gusting winds, hair stinging my eyes—for winter had swept in suddenly—watching his lips form the word non. Abelard was not there, he told me. I did not believe him, but what could I do? I would not see him that day, wherever he might be. The wind shifted course as I walked, pushing me home.
I returned to Uncle’s house to find Agnes there, her expression eager under her hat of snow-white ermine, her rosy cheeks reflecting her bliaut of blood red.
“I have news for you,” she said into my ear as we embraced. “Take me to your room?”
“No fire is lit, and Jean is out feeding the horses. It will be quite cold.”
“Not cold to me, not under all this fur.” She lifted her mantle. I marveled: ermine lined her cape in white, save for the black-tipped tails of the creatures, which lined the border. She also carried in her hands an ermine muff, similarly trimmed with tails.
“All that ermine must have cost your father a fortune.”
“Not at all.” She winked. “It was a gift from”—she slid her glance about the room—“someone else.”
Not being so endowed with expensive fur, I led her with reluctance to my chilly room. I took up my pelisse, lined with lowly squirrel, and pulled it over my woolen gown.
No sooner had I closed the door than did she take my hands in hers. Her eyes shone. “Amaury and I talked all night after the feast.”
“How unfortunate that he has a wife.”
She lowered her voice. “He will not be married for much longer.”
“But not even a year has passed since his wedding.”
“How long does a man need to realize that he has erred? She not only lacks beauty, but also fire. She is more sister to him than wife, he told me.”
I snorted. “He invents a convenient excuse for his own depravity. He wants you, and so he seeks reasons to repudiate her.”
Did I truly expect to see Agnes cringe with shame? Instead, she dimpled and batted her eyelashes and smiled with pleasure.
“Amaury wants me? Do you truly think it is so?”
I lifted my brows. “So you talked all night. Did you come especially to bring me this news?”
She laughed. “Non, my dear. I have much more interesting—and important—information. Amaury’s sister, our former queen, knows your father.”
I withdrew my hands and placed them over my open mouth. “Queen Bertrade knows him? She is acquainted with him?” My thoughts raced. That would make him, in all likelihood, a nobleman, who might claim me as his own and save me from the confined life my uncle had ordained.
“She won’t talk about him, or so she told Amaury. But she has invited you to visit her. Will you go? Amaury has promised to escort us. Behold your pale cheek, Heloise! Are you faint?”
She embraced me and I clung to her, steadying myself.
“Do not fear, ma chère: we shall persuade the queen to talk,” Agnes said. “She will reveal everything to us. And then, at last, you will know the truth.”
14
I am guilty, who compelled you to sin.
—ABELARD TO HELOISE
Of course my uncle entertained a guest that night: Roger, his assistant in the library, best known in the cloister for his wagging tongue. For a man who everyone knew could not keep a secret, he seemed privy to the most lurid details of people’s lives—which he shared freely with us that evening. Canon Gaspard had fired his housekeeper after he’d dreamt of fornicating with her; some monks from Saint-Denis, visiting the Argenteuil Royal Abbey, had been discovered spying on the nuns in the bathhouse; Bishop Galon was said to be secretly married to a girl from la Marche; King Louis’s most constant bed companion was not his queen, Adelaide, but his favored monk, Suger.
“That tale is ridiculous,” I said. “I attended a feast in the court last week, and the king could hardly tear his gaze from the queen. Anyone who sees them together knows he loves her.”
“You may be right, you may be right, indeed! And what of the queen, hmm? Does her head truly ache at night, or is she avoiding her conjugal duties? King Louis has already divorced one wife for failing to provide him with heirs.”
“The monk is even less likely than Queen Adelaide to bear him a son,” I retorted, causing my uncle to dismiss me.
I went to the study and opened Ovid’s Ars amatoria. I read, Make us believe (it’s so easy) that we’re loved. For this, the poet recommended displays of emotion: tears, feigned jealousy, protests over the lover’s long absence. I sighed. Tears might, indeed, help me coax Abelard back to me—if only I could summon them. But I had used up my supply years ago, crying for my mother.
The moon shone full and fertile. Jean set up my bed and built a fire, and still my uncle drank and gossiped with Roger. I took my book to bed and waited for him to sleep and imagined Abelard looking at me from under those curling eyelashes and calling me singuläris as he had done so often. You are unlike any other woman, he would say. By God, Heloise, none can compare. Now that he had conquered me, was I the same as every other woman? Perhaps that, and not guilt or shame, was why he had left me. I would find out soon enough.
When Roger had departed and Jean gone up to bed, I pulled on my cotte and slipped out the door, shaking my head to refuse the lantern boy, and slid through the shadows to Etienne’s house. Ralph’s eyes glinted as he again refused me entrance. I gritted my teeth and told him I would not depart, but would continue to knock each time he closed the door until he took me to Abelard. At last he relented, saying I would find the master in the guest quarters, in back of the main house. He took a lantern and led me to the gate.
“Does your uncle know where you have gone tonight?” he grumbled as he unlocked the gate. Without awaiting my answer he returned to the house, leaving me without any light but only a sliver of moon to guide me.
I could almost hear my heart knocking against my breast as I stepped into the large courtyard with its trees reminiscent of skeletons and masses of shrubs resembling creatures poised for attack. Etienne’s large house loomed on my left; on my right stood a confusing jumble of buildings whose functions I could scarcely discern in the dark.
Walking through the doorway of the first building, I inhaled the aromas of hay and manure and quickly discerned myself in a stable; next door, a steeply pitched roof and narrow, rectangular windows identified a chapel. As I stepped toward the third building, I heard Abelard’s voice shouting a curse so foul it made me hesitate: Was he, again, intoxicated? Strong drink might produce such outbursts in my uncle, I reminded myself, but not in Abelard. He became jolly and effusive un
der the influence of too much wine, and his affections increased. My skin turned hot at the memory. I pushed open the door—in time for an object to fly past my head and hit the wall behind me with a crack.
“Abelard! Do you now wish to kill me?”
“Heloise!” Abelard leapt from his seat and beheld me with eyes as wide as if I had risen from a grave to haunt him. He wore not his usual purple and gold but a short tunic of pale gray wool and heavy stockings of a darker gray, with brown boots of calfskin, a brown leather girdle, and a green woolen cloak and matching cap. The puffed skin under his eyes told me he had not slept any more than I. But his eyes shone as brightly as if he had just awakened from a beautiful dream.
He sprang across the room and pulled me into his arms. His fervent lips on mine told me all I needed to know, and more.
“You have come.”
“Oui. I could not keep myself from you.”
“Even after what I have done to you?”
I shook my head. “We committed the act together.”
“Your virginity. I took it from you.” His shoulders slumped and his hands dropped from my waist.
“I gave it willingly. Or—I would have done so, had you asked.” I gave him a smile, which he did not return.
“But what about your vows?”
“I have not made them, as yet.”
“And when you do?” He raked his hands through his hair. “Will you become the bride of Christ after having slept with a man?”
Many women did so, just as formerly married men became monks—but I held my tongue, not wanting to remind him of the vow he had broken. For a moment, I thought I would tell him of my decision not to go to Fontevraud, but I decided against that, as well. Too many uncertainties already lay before us.
“You possess my body,” I said. “God wants only my soul.”
Abelard gave me a crooked smile, one that, in combination with the cleft in his chin, gave him the appearance of a mischievous boy. “Are you certain? He has a reputation for jealousy, you know. But—Heloise, what of you? I have robbed you of your virtue.”
“Losing my virginity means nothing to me. But if I have lost you, then I have lost everything.”
“I am yours, Heloise,” he murmured, and kissed me. Then he stepped over to the door and stooped to gather the broken tablet from the floor.
“I may be the one who loses everything,” he said as he returned. He handed the pieces to me. “Voilà.”
Sinking into his chair, he watched, his eyes wild and red-rimmed in the dim lamplight, as I examined the wax. I could not read anything written there, for each word had been scratched out at least once and, in some instances, several times.
“What is this?”
“I cannot write.” He averted his face. “This has never happened before.”
“Urania is capricious, Abelard. Has the Muse hidden herself from you?” I kept my voice light as I sat on the edge of his bed, across from him. “She shall return.”
“Capricious, ha! The description is too kind. She beckons me with the shade of an idea and then, at the moment I reach for her, dances out of my grasp.” His dark look made me shiver. “I think she is jealous of you.”
“So I am to blame?” I could not help my wounded tone. Hadn’t Abelard pursued me, singing to me in the place, bringing me gifts? Love had been the farthest thought from my mind on the day we had met.
Abelard groaned and sank to his knees before me. “Of course you are not to blame. I don’t know what I am saying. I have—I have not been myself of late. I can think of nothing but you, Heloise, and everything we have said to each other, and all that we have done. I cannot fall asleep, and when I do, I dream of you. I lost control of my body with you—that has never happened before to me, either, I swear—and forced myself upon you. I disgust myself!” He covered his face with his hands, which I covered with my own. “What has happened to me?”
“Love,” I whispered, afraid to utter the word he had given me lest he take it back.
“Yes! As God is my witness, I do love you.” He removed his hands and lay his head in my lap, grasping my thighs. “Will you love me even when the world has forgotten me?”
“That shall never happen to you, the most renowned of men.”
“My reputation hangs in the balance.” He lifted his face to me again. “Bishop Galon came to me today, investigating an allegation that I had engaged in carnal relations with you.”
“God help us.” A lump formed in my throat. “What did he say?” How could the bishop know of our nights together when even my uncle did not suspect us?
“He said that if the charge proved true, he would dismiss me from the school.”
“Dismiss you?” My heart began a slow, ponderous drumming like a roll of thunder. “For loving me? The bishop himself has done worse.” Rumors said he lusted after young boys. “He ought to pull the log from his own eye before pointing to the speck in yours. When did the Church ever require continence of a minor canon?”
“When the canon is a teacher who seduces his scholar.”
I opened my mouth to protest; he had not seduced me, but I had loved him willingly—from that first day, I now realized, when he had sung to me in the place. But when he hung his head I forgot my protest, wanting only to console him.
“Galon can offer no proof,” I said with more conviction than I felt. “He cannot discipline you without evidence.”
“He commanded me to sing ‘Heloise of My Heart’ for him.”
“I feared this would happen.” That song had been performed in every place in the city. Everyone in Paris knew it. “Why did you allow Daurostre to sing it in the king’s court?”
“When did royal fetes or their amusements ever interest the Church?” Abelard narrowed his eyes. “Suger complained to Galon, I am certain.”
The reformists despised Etienne for supporting King Philip’s marriage to Queen Bertrade, Abelard told me. Bertrade having taken his mother’s place, and her crown, King Louis had hated his father’s new wife. Suger now used that hatred to his own advantage and whispered poisonous words to the king against the Garlande brothers.
“He wants to take Etienne’s position in the court and gain power for himself and his reformist friends,” Abelard said. “Tainting me with scandal would aid his cause.”
A chill crawled down my spine. I had not liked the malevolent gleam in Suger’s eyes as he had watched Abelard and me, both before and after the feast. He would harm Abelard, if he could. I stepped over to my beloved, reaching for his hands. How had Galon responded to his song?
Abelard grinned. “By the time I had finished it, he was scratching his head and wondering what had come over Suger, to see evil in such innocent verses. I shrugged and said that, as I recalled, the king’s wine had flowed more freely than usual that night.”
I widened my eyes. Galon had not thought the song a confession of guilt? “Did you sing ‘May the day’s risen light be the last that I see, if there lives a woman I could prefer over you’?”
“I did—and altered the words.” He puffed out his chest. “ ‘May the day’s risen light be the last that I see,’ ” he sang, “ ‘if there lives a girl endowed with greater virtue.’ ”
While yet the final note of his song hung in the air, he gleamed triumphant eyes and erupted in a great roar of laughter.
“He—he loved the song, Heloise, and—and he—he commended me for praising that which—which ought to be praised!” Abelard hiccuped, and tears streamed from his eyes.
A lightness rose through my body and, for the first time in ten years, laughter bubbled from my lips. I felt like a cup overflowing with joy.
“Hear your beautiful laugh!” Abelard cried. He embraced me and I knew again: I wanted this. We held each other until time stood still. I lifted my mouth to his. The only sound in the room was that of our mingling breaths, and, when the long kiss had ended, my sigh.
He turned and gathered his tablets and stylus and placed them in the pouch on
his girdle. “Let us depart.”
“Depart? But the hour is late.”
“Oui.” He took my hand, smiling into my eyes. “It is time for us to go home.”
15
Hour by hour I am bound closer to you, just like fire devouring wood; the more devouring, the more plentiful its fuel. . . . You glitter, with perpetual light and inextinguishable brightness immortally.
—ABELARD TO HELOISE
I slept past my usual hour the next morning, awakened by the sound of horses outside my window and Agnes calling my name. In the next moment, Jean had opened the door to her and she bounded into my room, exclaiming at the sight of me lying in bed, a smile on my lips as I recalled my time with Abelard the previous night. He had come back to me. I am yours, Heloise.
“Had you forgotten our plans for the day?” Agnes said, hands on her hips. In fact, I had forgotten—but now I arose in a hurry and pulled on my clothes. Today the seigneur Amaury would escort us to the Hautes-Bruyères Priory for an audience with the former queen Bertrade. On this day I might, at last, come to understand all that had happened to me, and why.
“Hurry!” Agnes said as she helped me braid my hair. Queen Bertrade expected our arrival midmorning, and we must not keep her waiting. We would take dinner in the abbey if the queen permitted it, Agnes said, as if I could even think of food.
“Where may I tell the canon that you have gone?” Jean said, frowning, as we stepped out the door. I gave him an explanation that I knew would please my uncle—that I hoped Queen Bertrade, having founded her priory and given it to the Fontevraud Abbey, might influence Robert of Arbrissel to make me his abbess.
We embarked on our journey not long after sunrise. Agnes eyed my dark-blue bliaut, which was, by now, familiar to her. She wore under her ermine cloak yet another gown that I had never seen: simple and flowing, of pale green silk embroidered with green leaves over a long-sleeved chemise of pale, fine linen, with a neckline that, for once, revealed not a hint of cleavage. When visiting an abbey, one must attire oneself modestly. Yet she had dabbed a hint of ocher on her lips, and on mine, as well. When meeting with one of the world’s great beauties, one must appear at one’s best.