by Sherry Jones
“I would like to open my own school for girls. Now that the Church has forbidden oblates, where will girls learn to read and write?”
“And do you think Bishop Guibert and William of Champeaux and Abbot Suger would approve of this school? The very idea of thinking women makes them quake. Now, I am beginning to see why.” He peered at me from under knitted brows. “And you have set a bad example for your scholars by fornicating with your teacher.”
Seeing me flinch, he increased his attack.
“You hadn’t considered that effect, had you? Heh-heh. The consequences of your actions go far beyond your own constricted world—far beyond it! And now your babe, too, is harmed. He forced you to leave the boy in Brittany, you say? What will he do next? He must be stopped.” Uncle rubbed his hands together. “And I know exactly how it must be done.”
“If you touch even one hair on his head, I will tell Guibert of your sins.” My voice shook but I glared in defiance, thinking only to save Abelard from disgrace.
“My sins?” Uncle’s face reddened.
“Yes. I will tell him how you drink to excess every night, a flagon or even two of wine that you steal from the Church . . .”
“Steal? First you call me a liar, and now a thief?” He leapt up, kicking aside the bench, and lunged across the table at me, then grasped both my arms and shook me with such violence that I feared my neck might snap. “I see the disdain in your eyes. You think yourself better than I—I, who could destroy you—destroy you!”
“As you did my mother?” With a mighty effort I wrested myself free from his grip—then had to restrain myself from attacking him. He was the reason for my misery all these years, the cause of my abandonment, perhaps the cause of my mother’s death. Hadn’t Petronille said she died of a broken heart?
“You cared nothing for Maman,” I said. “You thought only of your reputation—which, should you lay even one hand on Abelard, I will quickly destroy.”
“Impudent chienne!” My uncle’s smiting hand swatted me to the floor. I lay still, my ears ringing from the blow, curling up to protect myself.
“This is how you repay me for all my kindnesses?” Grasping the collar of my tunic, he lifted me up like a rag doll and bared his teeth. “Not even your mother dared to utter threats against me. But she knew, yes, how the sight of blood only quickens my own.” He drew out his blade.
“You would not kill your own flesh and blood.”
“You are half kin to me, true, but what is in the other half of you? A piteous leper? A common highwayman? Or even Satan himself?” He turned the knife so that it reflected light into my eyes. “Perhaps I will cut out your tongue. You would tell no tales against me then.”
I remained limp against his arm, not daring to struggle for fear of the blade. I must live, not for my own sake, but for that of my son, who needed his mother. Dear Lord, help me to think.
Then it came to me, how to defeat my uncle—using not my strength, which could never prevail against his, but my cunning. My words.
I looked him in the eyes. They flickered with uncertainty. I seized the moment God had given to me.
“Canon Fulbert!” I barely heard Jean’s cry. “Non, non! I implore you to stop!”
I lifted my chin. “I am the daughter of Robert of Arbrissel.”
His grin sent a shiver through my very bones.
“I know,” he said.
4
Pity me, for I am truly constrained by love for you.
—HELOISE TO ABELARD
My horse wandered like a ship without moorings. In the saddle, I struggled to keep my eyes from closing. Sleep had eluded me these past two nights, or, rather, I had eluded sleep. To sleep was to dream of Argenteuil, and I would not enter that dreary place any sooner than necessary.
“We have not much farther to go,” said Jean, riding up beside me and taking my horse’s reins. “I see the chapel spire in the distance.”
I closed my eyes. Argenteuil. “I have slowed our journey. You will not arrive home before my uncle tonight.”
“I serve Canon Fulbert no longer.”
“No longer?” I sat up, alert. “But you have been with him for so many years.”
“His drinking has pushed him too far. He may shout at me and beat me all he wishes. I allow it for my own reasons—but for him to harm a delicate young woman? Non. This I cannot abide.” His jaw ticced.
“Jean, you have served my uncle too well to abandon him now. He needs you.” He needed Jean’s influence in my favor, I wanted to say, especially now that he had turned me out of his house.
Yes, you are Robert’s daughter—the product of an unholy alliance, Uncle had said. An abbot and his abbess? He spat on the floor. Filthy—filthy! Even more so than a teacher and his student. Sin, he said, was in my blood. You defile my house. Let your husband care for you, as he ought to do.
When, an hour later, I appeared on Abelard’s doorstep with Jean and my bags, Abelard tried to send me back. “This could not have occurred at a worse time,” he said, pacing from one side of his chambre to the other, and back again. “Guibert has heard the rumors of our marriage. I met with him today. ‘She lives with her uncle, as always,’ I said. But what will happen when he finds out that you have come here?”
“Uncle threatened to tell him about us, Abelard. If he does so, it will not matter where I am living.”
His shoulders slumped. “If that happens, Guibert will remove me from my position. He said, ‘A man cannot devote himself both to scholarship and the duties of the marital bed—as you should know, given your own students’ complaints against you.’ Ha! He has been waiting for months to make that insult.”
When Abelard swore that he had not married me or anyone else, Guibert suggested Abelard end the rumors by taking a public vow of celibacy.
“A public vow, in the cathedral before all! By God, am I a respected scholar or a brainless monk?”
“Next he shall command you to become a eunuch and sing in the choir.” Was I to pity him now?
“No, he shall forget me in a day or two, when some other, more pressing issue demands his attention. Unless, that is, he hears that we are living together.” Abelard covered his face with his hands.
Perhaps the time had come to establish me in my own home, I suggested. Then I could bring Astralabe from le Pallet and begin the life that we had planned. But Abelard shook his head: The time was too soon. Because of Roger, the rumors about the two of us had not diminished, but had grown. Months must pass—five or six, he said—before Paris turned its watchful eye away from us again.
“Six months? No, Abelard, I cannot wait that long for our son.”
“Then do as I say.” He revealed his plan: I must enter the convent.
“Fontevraud? But it is far from Paris—so far from you. I do not want to be separated from you again.”
“Not Fontevraud, non. I want you closer to me than that.” He pulled me close and kissed me. “Didn’t God say, ‘It is not good that man should be alone’?”
“I will be alone no matter where I go, if I go without you.”
“And I will hunger for you constantly. But you need only be there for a short while.” I would live in the abbey as a secular canoness, not taking the veil, free to depart whenever I chose. “Your going to Argenteuil may convince Bishop Guibert that I spoke the truth and quell the malicious talk about the two of us.”
“And my uncle? What will he think?”
Abelard put his arms around me. He pulled me close and kissed my cheek, then held me for a long time. “Fulbert cannot harm you there. Please go, heart of my heart, flesh of my flesh, soul of my soul.”
“And you?” I pulled back to search his troubled eyes. “What will he do to you for sending me away?” Showing him the bruises my uncle had made in seizing my arm, I told of his threats.
Abelard cursed, and his eyes filled with tears. “This is all the more reason why you must do as I ask, sweetest.” His voice trembled. “Do not worry yourself about me—
I have Jean as my guard. But if you remain, and Fulbert touches you again, I won’t need to call anyone. I shall kill your uncle myself.”
So, agreeing that Argenteuil offered the most practical refuge for the time being, we arranged a place for me in that donjon to which I had vowed never to return. Now, as Jean and I approached its stone walls and high chapel tower, bells tolled like a dirge heralding death, or my arrival. My stomach churned.
The silent faces of the sisters, their lips sealed with suffering; the seep of water in the walls’ crevices and its dripping, when it rained, from the ceiling; the chill emanating from the stones to permeate my skin; the faces, lined and exhausted, of the nuns who worked in the fields; my own constant fatigue from being awakened throughout the night for prayer: Was this how God intended his creatures to live—in deprivation and hunger, silence and cold?
I had argued until I’d depleted my store of words. But where else could I go? I knew no relatives, not even my own brother, with whom I could seek refuge, nor any friends except Agnes. Her father, along with Etienne, had fallen from the king’s favor since the monk Suger had been appointed the royal chaplain. The brothers from Garlande could not involve themselves now in any dispute with the bishop of Paris or take any risk of scandal.
I have never believed in the climate as a sign of anything, yet the banging of the heavens by Jove’s bolt seemed appropriate as we passed through Argenteuil’s gates toward where Abelard awaited in the courtyard. The flash that accompanied the fearsome noise, causing my horse to jerk its reins from Jean’s hand and turn about, might have portended a knife, or the fires of hell, or a rainstorm, or nothing. I laughed as my mare trotted away, but Jean urged his horse after us and, when I had dutifully pulled in the reins, led us around again toward my destiny and Abelard.
“Yours is a timely arrival.” He grinned as he helped me to dismount. When I said nothing, his gaze turned sorrowful, and he kissed my mouth. “Do not fear, Heloise, the sisters will take care of you here. And I will come to see you tomorrow.”
The chapel door opened. A smiling priest whom I did not recognize stood within, beckoning us to enter. Clinging to Abelard’s outstretched hand, I stumbled toward the door, leaving Jean to tend to the horses and my belongings.
“God’s head, Heloise, you are not marching to your doom,” Abelard whispered. “They are helping us, or had you forgotten? You ought to strive, at least, for gratitude over sullenness.”
Gratitude over sullenness; sweetness over anger; smiles over tears; Abelard over Heloise. But to be severely afflicted by one’s own misfortunes is the token of self-love, not friendship. And so I did his bidding and summoned a smile for the father; then, in the guesthouse, I thanked the abbess—not Basilia, who had died the previous year, but Beatrice, the prioress who had comforted me when first I’d arrived at Argenteuil as a child.
“The Montmorency family has endowed our abbey so generously over the years,” the Reverend Mother Beatrice said when, after pressing my lips to her hand, I said I hoped God would bless her for giving me shelter. “Providing aid to one of their daughters is the least we can do. The magister has told us of your troubles.” I glanced at Abelard: What had he revealed to her? “But we are pleased that God has sent you back to us. When you left, you had met all the requirements for taking the veil. Perhaps you will consider doing so now?”
“I—” I glanced at Abelard again, but could not discern anything from his frown. “That would be impossible, Reverend Mother. I am married, and have a child.”
She lifted her eyebrows. “You are married? This is most unusual.” She turned to Abelard for an explanation.
“Yes, yes, she is my wife. We were married in secret—for obvious reasons.”
“A secret marriage?” She pressed her hands together and brought them to her lips, pondering. “We must not violate God’s law. We must not encourage sin.”
“We were married before God, Reverend Mother, in God’s own chapel,” Abelard said. “And as I have told you, Heloise needs a place of safety from her uncle, who has developed a taste for strong drink.” He gestured toward the blooming bruise on my cheek. “Is it a sin to help a woman escape from danger?”
“ ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil.’ ” Beatrice took my hand. “Welcome back to Argenteuil, Heloise. You may abide here for as long as you wish.”
“My stay will be brief,” I said when Abelard did not. “My husband plans to find lodgings for me and my son near the Nôtre-Dame de Paris Cloister as soon as possible.”
“Oui, oui.” He nodded. “As soon as possible, oui.”
5
At the beginning, you certainly aroused my hunger for your letters, and you have not yet fully satisfied it.
—HELOISE TO ABELARD
Except for the absence of the Reverend Mother Basilia, life at Argenteuil had not altered since I had walked out its front doors for the first time and, I thought then, the last. Argenteuil had not changed, but I had, which made cloistered life not only difficult for me but nearly unbearable.
The silence, always annoying, now threatened to drive me mad. No one spoke except by using signs or in the night, when whispers and muted giggles could be heard drifting through the dormitory. I longed to join those gatherings and was invited to do so, but dared not for fear of losing my residency. So I suffered through each day without speaking a word, in spite of the inquisitive eyes asking why I had returned.
I had always hated rising from bed in the middle of the night for prayers; now, doing so was a torment. Settling back to sleep had never been easy, but now the turnings of my mind, like a spinning wheel, prevented my doing so. Why hadn’t Abelard written to me? When would he visit? What of our son—was he faring well, was he still, as Dagobert had written, “hale and robust”? Did his hair curl? Had his eyes remained blue? Would he know me at all when, at last, I held him in my arms again?
Adding to my discomfort was the work that I had to do.
Abelard’s one benefice, a parcel of wild ground near Champagne, yielded no income, unlike those my uncle had acquired during his years as canon. Because my husband could provide only a small amount to pay my expenses at Argenteuil, I knew I would have to perform extra work in the abbey. I had assumed that, given my education and background, I would work as a teacher or even a copyist or illuminator of manuscripts. Sister Adela, the nemesis of my youth and now a prioress, had other ideas.
“Given some notice, we might have arranged a position for you indoors.” Her eyes glinted like needles. “We placed Sister Marguerite in the kitchen last week—but you were never an accomplished cook. The sewing room might be possible—but you are not a seamstress, non?”
“I speak Latin fluently,” I said, although I knew she needed no reminding. She had been Mother Basilia’s favorite among the oblates, but I had bested her in the classroom and gained the favor of Sister Beatrice, our teacher and, now, the abbess. Adela had spent most of our childhood in sullen resentment, trying without success to influence the other girls against me. Now she wielded power at last.
“Sister Helene helps me in the classroom.” I forbore remarking that Adela must certainly need assistance, given her poor command of Latin. “We have no need for more teachers at present.”
I suggested that I might become a scribe or illuminator, but her smile only widened. “The monks at Saint-Denis have taken those duties,” she said brightly. “But we need workers in the vineyards. You always hated the darkness of the abbey, didn’t you? Now you’ll have sunshine and fresh air every day. Except, that is, when it snows.” She laughed as if she had made a clever jest.
I might have complained to the Reverend Mother Beatrice about my assignment, but could not bring myself to do so. Was I superior to the other vineyard workers? Birth counted for nothing in the abbey unless one brought a dowry, which I had not. And besides, the life that I had led with Abelard made me less worthy than the nuns, most of whom had never sinned with a man.
> So I bent and pulled and pruned in the vineyard with the sisters who, like me, had nothing to give to the abbey but painful toil, and the sweat of our brows. My body ached so acutely that first week that I could not move without wincing, as if I wore Robert’s iron tunic. Blisters formed on my hands, and calluses, roughening my skin as though I were a villein or a man. At last I decided to petition the abbess for a change in my work assignment, but found that she had gone to Saint-Denis to visit the deathbed of the Argenteuil provost. I felt grateful that I could not cry for I would have shed many tears of self-pity, insulting the women who worked beside me.
My real sorrow, however, came not from Argenteuil’s hardships but because of Abelard’s neglect. Although he did come to me the day after my arrival—and made exquisite love to me in the guesthouse, where we had found privacy—his too-brief visit left me more bereft than before. Then he disappeared. One week passed, then two, without any word from him, in spite of the letters I sent at every opportunity and at great cost until my small supply of coins had trickled away. The cold and your absence have turned my heart to ice, if not stone, I wrote, and also, If the vineyards do not break my back, your neglect of me will break my spirit. Still he did not reply.
In those weeks, all my accumulated knowledge and the wisdom of the sages faded from my mind. I thought only of Abelard and my son, longed for them, prayed only for Abelard’s imminent return so that I might share life with him at last, and with our apple-cheeked little boy.
Was it pity I saw in the eyes of my sisters as I sat by the courtyard, watching for messengers? The firm foundation of my trust in Abelard began to erode, leaving me as unsteady as a house built upon sand. Put out of his sight, I seemed to have vanished from his thoughts, as well. Shut off from Abelard, from our child, from love, from life itself, I felt alone as never before. I wandered the halls in silence, unable to cry, forbidden to speak, haunted by memories, taunted by doubt. Abelard, who had promised to love me forever, had abandoned me. And I, believing his promises, had abandoned our child as my maman had done to me.