by Sherry Jones
“Abelard,” I said, sitting next to him, “I came as quickly as I could.”
He curled around himself, drawing his knees up as if to protect himself from further harm.
“Light of my life, how do you fare?” I touched his shoulder, longing to see his face, to pour my love into his eyes and perhaps assuage his pain, which, unbeknownst to him, I had caused. “Abelard!” My voice rose. “Can you hear me? Dear God, have you lost your hearing, as well?”
“As well as what?” he snapped. His bitter tone made me recoil. Did he suspect my treachery? I wanted to throw myself at his feet and beg his forgiveness, but was loath to tell him anything that he did not already know.
“Are you in pain, sweetest?”
“In body or in spirit?”
“Either, my love. But—why speak so harshly to me? I have come to comfort you.”
“Can the cause of my misery bring me ease?”
“My uncle, Abelard. Not I.” My mouth felt so dry that I could barely speak the words.
“ ‘The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.’ ”
“I gave you my love, Abelard. I give it to you still.”
“My position at the school. My reputation, my vitality, my manhood—gone! My life is ended.” He pressed his hands to himself and curled even more tightly as he succumbed to sobs.
“Your life is not over, my soul, but only just beginning. Soon we shall bring Astralabe home. As soon as you are healed, we may collect him at le Pallet as we planned and live all together in our house.”
“Live together?” He gave a harsh laugh that tore at the edges of my soul. “You, our son, and his eunuch father?”
“Abelard, I do not care about that. I love you for yourself.”
“I am not myself. I am not even a man.”
“Do not say that.” How I longed to lie down beside him and wrap my arms around him, to offer him comfort and consolation. When I touched him, however, he pushed my hand away. “You are one of the world’s great men. No one can take that away from you.”
Then, with a sudden movement, he flung the bedcovers from his body and turned to me at last. “Behold your husband,” he said. “Mutilated. Unmanned.”
I forced myself to gaze upon the wound, which, save for a small line of stitches where his testes had been, appeared less a wound than a lack. Jean had performed his task so cleanly that Abelard did not even need a bandage. Yet, the sight of him so diminished, and the contortion of rage and shame on his face, would haunt my nights and days for a long time. He was as altered as I had heard, and I was to blame.
“Behold your uncle’s handiwork.” I looked only into his eyes now and smoothed the hair from his sweating brow. “In stealing my manhood, Fulbert has robbed us of a life together. We are finished.”
“Finished, my love?” I smiled. “How can that be? We love each other. And we have a child, or had you forgotten?”
“My brother and sister have our child, and thank God for that.”
“A child who needs his parents.”
“Parents mocked and scorned by all the world? Dagobert, at least, will protect our son from this shame.”
“Who would mock you, the most brilliant man in all the world?” Even as I said the words, I thought of the scholars outside Etienne’s house who had sniggered over Abelard’s loss. Your lover has nothing for you now. Even Suger had seemed amused, his mouth lingering over the word gelded as though it were a piece of sweet fruit. Yet I could not agree that our son should live in Brittany, far from me, deprived of my love and his father’s because of a scandal that would surely diminish with time.
“From this day forward, none shall remember my writings, or the arguments I won.” He turned his back to me again. “I shall be known as Abelard the eunuch, the castrato. And nothing I write, not my Sic et Non, not even my brilliant work on the Holy Trinity, will ever be disseminated or read by anyone.”
With great effort, I willed my tongue to still itself. Could Abelard think only of himself, of his loss, of his pain? I had not lost a part of my body, but now, in refusing me my son, he threatened me with a greater harm than he had suffered.
“Sweet Abelard,” I said, summoning all my compassion. I laid my hand on his arm but he withdrew it. “How can you think clearly now, after such a horrible night? I cannot even imagine the pain you have endured.”
“Jean drugged my wine. I remember nothing. I awoke this morning with a burning between my legs, yes, and emptiness where my manhood used to be. But my thoughts, I assure you, are as clear as ice. I have never before felt such clarity, in fact.”
“Try not to think. You need to rest.”
“Rest, when Fulbert remains free? Who knows what he will do to me when next I close my eyes?”
“All of Paris searches for him. He cannot escape capture for long. Try not to think of anything except regaining your strength.”
“Yes, I will need my strength to stand tall and look the bishop of Paris in the eyes as he humiliates me.” Abelard’s own eyes glittered. “He will remove me from my post, as you know. All I have worked for, all is lost to me now.”
And what of me? I wanted to ask. My uncle had meant to wreak revenge upon Abelard alone, but he might as well have plunged that knife into my chest.
9
It is not the deed but the intention of the doer which makes the crime, and justice should weigh not what was done but the spirit in which it was done.
—HELOISE TO ABELARD
At last, having coaxed Abelard to drink a glass of wine in which I had slipped a tincture of valerian root, I left him sleeping by a freshly stoked fire. In the great room, Etienne sat in a chair beside the weeping Pauline. One of the canons had brought news of Jean, saying that he had collapsed after hours of whippings and beatings.
“He refuses to confess out of concern for me,” Pauline said. “He does not know that I have escaped.”
Sipping from a cup of wine Etienne had given to calm her, she told us what had happened the night before. As she’d prepared to leave my uncle’s house for the night, he had grabbed hold of her, stuffed a rag into her mouth, and tied her to a column.
“I was so frightened, Your Grace, even though Canon Fulbert promised that he would not harm me. He even sent a message to Jean-Paul saying that I was needed overnight and that I would come home the next day. But then, oh! He made me stand on my feet all night, after working in the house all day long. You could not imagine how my legs ached, the sharp pains. See how swollen my feet are even now! I tried to untie the ropes, but they were too tight.” She held out her wrists to show the red marks the ropes had caused.
“My God! To treat a woman so cruelly. Is he mad or possessed?” Etienne said, leaping to his feet. I sat next to Pauline and took her wrists in my hands, massaging them gently, trying to ease everyone’s pain that day, it seemed, except my own. Alas, no remedy could abate the cracking of my heart, or the shattering of my dreams. Abelard. Astralabe. I had never felt so alone, but, for me, it was only the beginning.
“I wondered the same, Your Grace, but of course I could not ask, my mouth being filled with rags. And Canon Fulbert had been drinking even more wine than usual. He gives me such a fright when he drinks! I usually go home before he has too much, especially since Jean left him to work for Master Abelard and cannot protect me.”
“He had become increasingly violent,” I said to Etienne. “Abelard feared for my safety, or he would not have taken me to Argenteuil.”
“The day your letter arrived, Canon Fulbert came home early from work.” My heart seemed to jump about in my chest, and I had to cup both hands around the henap to stop their shaking. “He had already begun drinking, even before vespers. When he read your message, he threw the tablet against the wall and broke it in two. That evening, Jean came. I did not know why, and he never told me. Canon Fulbert sent me home so they could talk alone. Now I know they were plotting revenge against Master Abelard.”
Etienne tur
ned to me. “What did your letter contain?”
I stared at him, openmouthed, uncertain what to say. If I confessed my error, would he tell Abelard what I had done? Abelard might blame me, then, for my uncle’s cruel deed, and I would lose him forever. But what choice did I have? Were I the most accomplished liar in the world, I could not deceive Etienne, not after all the times he had helped Abelard and me.
And so I told him everything. I told how Abelard had installed me at Argenteuil and then failed to answer my letters, leaving me to believe that he had abandoned me. I told him how Sister Adela had forced me to toil in the vineyards. And I told him of our son, of his secret birth and Abelard’s promise to take me to Brittany on a date that he continually delayed. Although I dared not ask for Etienne’s help, a part of me hoped that he might do what Abelard would not and bring Astralabe home to me.
Instead, he cursed and leapt to his feet, striding toward the chambers where Abelard slept, then turning around and walking back to us, running his hands through his hair.
“A child, born out of wedlock!” With a great sigh, he slumped back into his chair. “This is disturbing news. Who else knows?”
“No one except the two of you—and Agnes, and Jean, who took me to the boat.” We both looked at Pauline, who raised her hands toward heaven and swore before God that, although she knew about the child, she had never told a soul and would not.
“I hope you are telling the truth,” Etienne said to her. To me, he added: “Breaking the vow of continence is punishable in itself, but impregnating his own scholar would cost Pierre everything. The Church would show little mercy for such a sin.”
“Abelard and I sinned, but our hearts remained pure. We loved each other. We could not marry because of his vow of continence, but our souls joined as one from the moment we first kissed. By the time we consummated our love, we had married in our hearts.” At that moment, my soul wanted only for me to join my speciälïs in his bed and hold his wounded and cringing body, crippled by a scandal from which neither of us would recover.
“Married in your hearts? I appreciate the sentiment, but the bishop will not.”
Etienne spoke the truth, I knew. Love, in the eyes of the Church, did not excuse the flaunting of its rules. King Louis’s father, King Philip, had married Bertrade of Montfort for love—setting aside the wife he had taken out of duty. In return, the pope excommunicated him several times, punishing not only the king but his subjects. The realm’s cathedrals closed, depriving even the dying of the final blessings that would allow their souls to enter heaven. Lamentations rent the skies; rioters converged on the royal palace, throwing stones and shouting demands that the king repudiate his whore. No one, least of all the Church fathers, cared whether he loved her. How could we, not royals but mere mortals, expect their sympathy? That we loved each other counted for nothing except in our own hearts, and in the eyes of God—or so I pray.
Now I, too, had been called whore by the students who loved Abelard, and daughter of Eve by others who had forgotten, it seemed, that God is love. In daring to live life on our own terms, he and I now stood to lose all. Indeed, judging from Abelard’s behavior, I might have lost him already. And Etienne, I realized, would not help me to regain my son. He could ill afford to be seen as endorsing our love while the rest of the world, including the king’s favored chaplain, condemned it.
“Has Jean spoken to anyone of the child?” Etienne demanded of Pauline.
“I do not know, Your Grace,” she said, drawing back from him. “We have not discussed it much. After my husband left to work for Master Pierre, we saw each other only on Sundays, our day off from work. We did not spend our precious hours discussing our employers, as I am sure you can imagine.” Her skin colored.
“I must know.” Etienne stood and rang for his manservant, then commanded him to bring three horses to the mounting block. Turning to Pauline, Etienne said, “I shall arrange for you to see your husband.”
Pauline’s eyes lit up. “God bless you, Your Grace! How can I ever repay your kindness?”
“You can find out whether Jean has told anyone of Master Pierre’s child, and whom. And, for God’s sake, ask him where Canon Fulbert is hiding.”
How had I never noticed their love?
The tears in her eyes, the way she lifted her hands to his battered face as though her touch might heal his bruises; his steady gaze, the understanding that passed between them without need of words—how could anyone see Pauline and Jean together and not notice? But my uncle knew and had used their love to his advantage. Holding Pauline as his hostage, he had coerced Jean into committing his crime for him. But my uncle had gone to such lengths needlessly, Jean told me.
“Had Canon Fulbert asked, I would gladly have done the deed before that devil could even think of dishonoring you,” Jean said in the cold stone room set aside for visitors to the prison. He spoke with difficulty through a mouth swollen and bleeding, struck many times during his interrogation by a gendarme’s heavily ringed hand.
“I saw right away what Master Pierre wanted. So did Pauline.” She nodded and squeezed Jean’s hand. “We know too many women whose employers have taken advantage of their innocence, then cast them aside like dogs after the hunt. Pauline was in this situation when I met her. Her employer cast her out when at last she refused his demands. She was fortunate, indeed, that Canon Fulbert hired her when he did, for she had spent nearly all the money that devil had paid her for her silence—and she had a babe to feed.” Jean spat on the floor as if telling the tale had embittered his mouth.
Suspecting Abelard’s motives, Jean had tried to dissuade my uncle from renting a room to him—but Uncle would not listen.
“He fancied himself Master Petrus’s friend, which vaunted his pride to no end.” But pride goes before destruction, and haughtiness before a fall, and my uncle before long found himself utterly humiliated by Abelard’s—by our—deception.
“Drink gets the best of him at times, but Canon Fulbert is a good man,” Jean added staunchly. “He always had the best of intentions for you, my lady. But he didn’t protect you, and he feels bad for it. His only fault is that he trusted that womanizer.”
I frowned. I’d been twenty years of age when Abelard and I first met, hardly in need of protection. What had Jean said of Abelard, or what might he say under the gendarme’s blows?
I hastened to correct Jean: Abelard, I said, had not seduced me. We loved each other. “To change Abelard’s feelings for me, you would have to cut out his heart.”
Jean shook his head, his eyes fathomless pools of sorrow. “I hope you are right. But I fear, for your sake, that you are badly mistaken. No man who loves a woman treats her as he has treated you.”
“It does not matter what we think, my lady,” Pauline said. “You will see for yourself very soon whether his love comes from his heart, or from another part of his body.”
10
I beg you, then, as you set about tending the wounds that others have dealt, heal the wounds you have yourself inflicted.
—HELOISE TO ABELARD
Having gained Jean’s assurance that he had told no one, not even my uncle, of our child—“I would not cause harm to you for anything in this world, my lady,” he said, apparently not realizing that, in assaulting Abelard, he had destroyed me—Pauline and I left him at the prison, where he would remain until my uncle’s arrest. Jean swore that he did not know where Uncle Fulbert had gone, but having been deceived so thoroughly by him before, I did not know whether to believe him.
“Jean,” Pauline said before we departed, wringing his hand, “I have a message for you from Canon Fulbert. He told it to me before he fled. Non!” She stood and pressed both palms against her cheeks. “Jean-Paul! Dear Lord—I have just remembered. I must find him.”
“What is it, Pauline?” I said. “What did my uncle say?”
She turned back toward her husband. “He said that if you were captured, Jean, you must not speak a word against Canon Fulbert. He said, ‘T
ell Jean he must confess to the crime completely. If they ask of my involvement, say I knew nothing about it.’ ” She began to tremble. “Jean, he had tied me to the post. He slid the dull edge of his blade across my neck. He said he would hurt our son.”
“Jean-Paul.” Jean’s strength returned to him. He stood and grasped his wife by her shoulders. “Where is he?”
“I—I don’t know.” She stared into his eyes. “I can’t find him.”
“Go and seek him at home. He must be there! Pauline, you must find him now. I have told the bishop all about Canon Fulbert. I . . . could not endure the torture.” Jean held out his hands to show the bleeding, torn skin where his fingernails had been.
In moments we were riding through the cloister gates, accompanied by Etienne’s manservant, into the city. Rather than turn toward the south, we rode over the Petit Pont and the Grand-Pont to an area in the shadow of the northern wall. This was a part of Paris that I had never before visited. My stomach turned at the squalor we encountered. Garbage littered the streets and alleys, attracting dogs, pigs, and flies, and sending up a stench that mingled with the reek of feces and urine flung from chamber pots and left to rot. Dirty children ran barefoot through the muck, squealing with laughter and smearing their hands and clothes with filth. The houses, made of rotting wood, crowded together, blocking nearly all the day’s light from the narrow street. A woman with arms as muscled as a man’s hung clothes on a line stretched across her window, a child swelling her belly and another in a sling around her neck. Pauline waved and called her by name; when the woman smiled, I saw that she had just one tooth.
“How do these poor people live?” I asked Pauline.
“With hope, always with hope of better times in this life or the next.”
At the end of the street, the neighborhood brightened. The houses turned to stone and masonry; shops, rather than butchers’ stalls, occupied the ground level, selling soap and candles and linen fabric and cooking pots. A lone rooster crossed ahead of us.