The Cloister

by James Carroll

  “Sister Célestine sleeps soundly.”

  “Perhaps so, Mother. But who of us knows what we do in the devil’s company at night? All children have scruples. The accusatio can awaken them. Your sisters will be humiliated, one by one. Will you permit that?”

  “No, Father. I will not.” Héloïse stepped back, drawing close to the fountain that stood behind her in the center of the Cloister garden. “You have the power to desecrate the souls of the good women here, and I see that you will use it, even taking pleasure in the deed. I will not permit that. I see that it is pointless to resist you. Therefore, we will transfer this foundation, as you require, surrendering our ancient freehold in Argenteuil. But I will not dissolve this community. I am bound by my oath to the preservation of Notre-Dame. I am bound by love to each of its members. Love in your view, perhaps, is salacious. For us, it is sacred. We love the Lord by loving one another. Not Eros but Agape. Upholding that virtue requires me, as Mother Superior, to make a demand of you: before obeying your malign command, I must have time to arrange for an alternative conventual domicile.”

  “You will find no such alternative.”

  “In which case, your burden will be light. But if I do, Saint-Denis will cover the cost of our reestablishment. Not only accommodation for my sisters, but for those of our pledged feudatories who choose to accompany us.”

  “Serfs do not choose.”

  “Notre-Dame’s sworn homage to its servants and laborers stands. I will leave it to them to determine the standing of their sworn fealty. This mutual allegiance carries an obligation that I will fulfill. You will support me in that. Am I clear?”

  Héloïse waited. The power she had over this man resided only in her will. But it was power.

  Finally, Suger said, “Yes.”

  “So—my first requirement is time. My second is provision. My third is discretion. I will not reveal to my sisters what you compel until I know what awaits us. Is that clear?”

  “Yes.”

  “I will inform you when these preparations are accomplished. Now, Father Abbot, if you please…” Héloïse gestured, again, with a sweep of her forearm: This conference is over.

  When Abbot Suger had departed, Héloïse summoned her chief horseman and instructed him to prepare himself for a long journey. She then went directly to her cell. The complications of what she felt made her light-headed, and she had to resist the urge to lie down on her cot. The impending loss of Argenteuil staggered her. Anguish attached to her own flawed character’s having enabled that loss—her cursed reputation!—was beyond reckoning. Suger’s cruelest thrust was true: the sisters had made themselves vulnerable by electing her as Prioress.

  But desolation was only half of what she felt, for in the thick of contention a long-shut door had sprung open in her mind at the thought of the Paraclete—his Paraclete. She had just decided to put Peter Abelard’s name on the page again—at last. Her heart had leapt at that, a kind of levitation. Her flawed character be damned.

  She prepared her materials quickly, then wrote, “Magistro suo nobilissimo atque doctissimo…” She stopped. She knew at once that her choice of grammatical person was wrong: she should not be writing in the third person, but in the first. In her haste, she did not restart the letter, but continued. Peter Abelard would note the change, and would understand it, since—as she now realized for the first time—he had made the same adjustment in the letter she carried at her breast. She wrote, “Fidem meam, et cum omni devocione meipsam quamdiu vivam.”

  “To her most noble and most learned teacher: my faith and my very self with all my devotion, as long as I live.”

  —

  THE WAY IN WHICH the Paraclete had come to Peter Abelard was peculiar, intimately involving, as it did, the catastrophe of his mutilation, as well as, in a wholly other context, a mother’s declaration that her oldest son was an imbecile. Theobald, the second son of Stephen II, the Count of Meaux and Blois, had, as befit his station in the age of primogeniture, taken the tonsure at a young age—anticipating life as a cleric. He was a bright lad, and at Paris he had embraced the ambition of becoming a Master at a school. He had been one of Peter Abelard’s most devoted students, and happened to be passing by that dawn when the frantic Héloïse summoned him and two others to carry the bloodied Master to the physician’s house in the Jewish quarter—a trauma Theobald had never wholly shaken. That Peter Abelard had then disappeared from his life had remained a source of grief.

  Some years later, Theobald’s father died of injuries suffered in a joust, and his mother, Adela, boldly declared Theobald’s hare-brained older brother incapacitated. She appointed Theobald as heir, which is how an Abelard disciple became head of the House of Blois, one of the great dynasties of France. As it happened, that was the year of Abelard’s expulsion from Saint-Denis, and Theobald, hearing of that further humiliation of his mentor, had responded with an irrevocable grant of an extensive demesne in the county over which he ruled—plowland, fishing reserves, and leasehold forest sufficient to support a pious enterprise worthy of the great teacher. The Catholic hierarchy in the region was long subservient to the House of Blois, so the local Bishop of Troyes had no choice but to sanction the benefice. Hence the founding of an oratory as a place of prayer, reservation of the Blessed Sacrament, and celebration of Mass—under the aegis of the infamous Peter Abelard.

  Master Peter welcomed the gift of independence and protection, but, shaken by the forced exile from Saint-Denis, he began at the Paraclete as a reclusive anchorite, renouncing all worldly ambition. He wanted only to be alone. Yet this embrace of ascetic discipline enhanced his reputation with the young scholars who had not forgotten him, and they, together with juniors for whom he was legend, flocked to the Paraclete. The oratory was soon the center of an ad hoc village, part Cloister, part academy, part rough encampment—all sunk in a valley that had been cut over eons by a river that was, by now, a meandering, middling stream. For a time, because of the self-invited scholars, Count Theobald imagined himself as the patron of the first important school not sponsored by a cathedral or centered in a city. That was not to be, for the ever more eccentric Abelard discouraged the lads, and, after only two years, he abandoned the oratory and disappeared. Eventually, word came that he had accepted the commendation, elected as Abbot, of an obscure monastery in the uncharted west. Still the faithful Theobald refused to withdraw support from his mentor. The young Count insisted that the grant held: the Paraclete, and its lands, would perpetually belong to Abelard, or to whomever he conveyed it.

  Now, once again, upon the arrival of the women from Argenteuil, the Paraclete was a hive of activity, with workers busily repairing old structures—the public chapel, hospice, schoolrooms, kitchen, stables—and building new ones, centered on a true monastic Cloister: Chapter House to the east, choir at the crossing, scriptorium, library, refectory, bathing room, and, on a second story, encircling the enclosure, a row of cells for professed sisters. The gray-robed women, with preternatural detachment, observed the hours of the Divine Office, maintained the Great Silence, and visibly upheld the contemplative ideal, as if the spinning world of which they were the mystical center were absolutely still. Indeed, the focal point of that whirl, being built, would be a looming bell tower that would transform the hours into knelling praise.

  This reconsecration of the Paraclete involved dozens of workingmen, who, in a swarm of activity, tended fires at forges and brickworks, hauled carts, turned a water mill. Masons and thatchers scampered on scaffolding. Carpenters and joiners hoisted timbers. Artisans of various guilds supervised the firing of bricks, the smithing of iron, the cutting of stone, the erection of frames, and the application of lime mortar over wattling. These masters, in turn, were managed by the job steward, who met twice daily with Reverend Mother Héloïse in the windowless room adjacent to the Cloister that she referred to as her chancery. Bent over its tables, the nun, above a spread of drawings and ledgers, gave instruction to men who had never before taken it from a woma
n. Because she was as competent and sure of what she required as she was respectful, the steward and his craftsmen honored her by obeying. The monastic commune was accomplishing an astounding reinvention.

  One day, as the steward left her alone in her chancery, Héloïse hesitated. Normally, she would have joined her sisters in the choir for the chanting of the midafternoon office, but she stalled, not knowing why. Spread before her was a finely drafted rendering of the timber inner structure of the new barn, and her eyes were fixed on the angled tracing. Yet she was aware of a numinous presence before any actual sensation signaled it.

  At a soft rap on the door, she said simply, “Come.”

  When she looked up to find Peter Abelard in the threshold, her thought was: At last.

  Neither spoke. They looked at each other unblinkingly. Héloïse was aware of the heat in her cheeks, and she was sure that his brightened face, too, was a function more of feeling than of sun. He was taller than she remembered. The door frame made him stoop. She had always imagined seeing him at this moment as if he were young, his expression glad with the fervor of their just-finished play. But his mouth was unhappily clenched, his skin was blotched, and the dust of an unforgiving conscience, like an unkind wind upon the sea, shuddered across the pool of his eyes. When, finally, he said, “Reverend Mother,” a tremor in his voice made it wholly unfamiliar.

  She surprised them both by laughing. “You call me Mother?”

  He was taken aback. “What then? Sister?”

  Without thinking, she answered, “Call me wife, dear Peter. In my sleep, I call you husband.”

  Now his eyes fell, conveying that this was what he’d dreaded. How quickly she had pierced to their conundrum. “We are full-awake here,” he said. “Wakefulness requires prudence.” This sternness, she realized, was mainly with himself. His brow was lined, and the dark stain of weariness made hollows of his eye sockets. Time had touched him roughly. He said, “Although seeing what you have done with the Paraclete is like a dream. I come here from meeting with Count Theobald. It is no wonder that he is pleased.”

  “Count Theobald is gracious, but you, Peter Abelard, are my true benefactor. I am glad to thank you. It was impudent of me to write to you of my distress. I was desperate. You rescued us.”

  At her gesture, he stepped into her room, so that he could stand straight, but he remained by the door. She remained seated, at her table. He said, “I was appalled to learn of what Suger did to you at Argenteuil. If you had not made your direct request, I would not have dared propose this solution. I am glad of your request.”

  “You proposed your solution through Theobald. It was rude of you not to answer my letter direct to me. All these years…not a word of consolation from you. Nothing. How is that? Once, letters flew between us.”

  “Yes.”

  “I have saved your every one. Have you?”

  “Saved your letters?” he asked.

  “Yes. Have you?”

  He blushed. “It is a womanly thing to do. I am not a woman.”

  “You have not answered my question.”

  “We have not written to one another since…”

  “Your wound,” she said. His womanly wound.

  “I left your letters behind, in Paris,” he said. “With everything of that life. I am fully a monk now. An Abbot. A priest.”

  She smiled. “And I am a fully vowed woman. Doubly vowed. Once to Christ. And ever to you. That has not changed.”

  That he said nothing to this hurt her, but she would not let him see it. She smiled. “You did not write. You did not come. You worry about appearances. The storied Abelard and Héloïse together again, spawning gossip. That is what has kept you away.”

  “I am here now.”

  “Because Count Theobald summoned you. He told me. That is why I am not surprised to see you. His Lordship, in consultation with the Abbot Primate of Cluny, has seen to the elevation of the Paraclete from oratory to conventual priory. But the granting of the monastic charter for women requires the naming of an ecclesiastical patron, whose seal must be applied to the charter, and His Lordship has seen to your appointment as our patron.”

  “Because you insisted upon it,” he said. “Despite the Bishop’s objection.”

  “The Bishop is a fool. The Count is right to ignore him. You have agreed to the appointment?”

  “Yes,” Peter said, and she was relieved. But then he added, “Although I had a condition.”

  “What?”

  “The elevation from oratory to priory. I rejected that.”

  “I required it,” she said coldly. What was this? Peter Abelard undercutting her?

  But she was wrong. “At my insistence,” he said, “the elevation is to a status above priory, to abbey.” He smiled, expecting her to be pleased. “The Paraclete is to be an abbey with canonical exemption. You are to be an Abbess.” He paused, letting the full weight of the good news land. Then he added, “You will have the right to the crozier and the ring.” Abelard’s smile broadened. “You and Suger will be peers.”

  “I care nothing for Suger,” she said, not expecting to be believed. Suger was her nemesis, and this turn would punish him. Her smile matched Peter’s, and conveyed her delighted surprise. “You are the peer I want,” she said. And then, boldly, she asked, “Will you stay with us?”

  “That is impossible, sister.”

  “Appearances?”

  “I am the Abbot of Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys.”

  “Hic sunt leones,” she said. “Your monastery is in the faraway land of dragons and lions, where the language of the Celts is spoken.”

  “Yes. Far away, dear sister.”

  “In the west, well north of Nantes.” She paused, allowing the laden place name to fall between them with all its weight. Then she asked quietly, “What word have you…?” She could not bring herself to mention him, their son.

  But Peter understood. “Lucille has sent word on occasion. He fares well. He folds in fully with the growing children of Marcus. He is beloved and safe. We were right in what we did.”

  “I have him in my nocturnal litany,” she said. “Habitually, I hand him over to the care of our heavenly Father.”

  “As do I.” He smiled. “But by what name? As Peter? Or Astrolabe?”

  “As both.” Héloïse laughed, and then he did. Their bond of love, still vital despite everything, was a triple weave, including their child—evermore.

  Relief had come into her heart, and it prompted her to push him, as she had of old. She said, “I ask for your presence at the Paraclete, and you decline. So be it. But you should be where the influence of Master Peter Abelard can be felt. As it is, in your remote outpost, you are almost ignored. I know that you fear gossip, but you are in danger of being remembered more for the scandal we caused long ago than for your current application of reason to belief. Is this obscurity what you truly want?”

  “My influence is a matter of my writing now,” he said steadily. “I am at my table all through daylight, and even with candles at night. I have scribes at my elbow, taking dictation.”

  “So your monks know Latin?”

  Abelard shrugged, conveying disdain for his own situation. “Some do.”

  “Enough, apparently.” She nodded. “The writing of Peter Abelard travels. Your books are copied, and passed from one scriptorium to another—including mine. I have them. Your Treatise on Ezekiel. Your Theologia. Your Sic et Non. I read you.” The warmth of her regard made her voice full-throated now. “But apart from your most devoted followers, and from disapproving critics, your readers are far fewer than is right. The Master Teacher’s lectern, raised upon a podium, is where you belong, not the scriptorium. You belong in the city, not the edge of wilderness; a school, not a monastery. Your work as a writer will find its future only in your work as a Master. Even more than here at the Paraclete, you belong back in Paris, Peter Abelard.”

  “I am content to make my case on the page.”

  “Your case is too important to
remain there. Limbo, for example.”

  “Limbo? What of it?”

  “You openly question Saint Augustine’s doctrine that unbaptized infants are doomed. And what is your argument? That such cruelty to the little ones renders meaningless the love of God. There’s the key: you use love as the measure of truth—not Church discipline. Not tradition. Not the Sacraments. Love. You must expand upon that.”

  “How?”

  “Moving from infants to infidels. God loves them, too. Make that case.”

  “Infants, by definition, are innocent.”

  “Was the thief on the cross beside our Lord innocent? Was he baptized, for that matter? Yet he was promised paradise.”

  “You have honed your disputation skills, sister.”

  She nodded. She was surprisingly at ease. Her hands were at rest upon the architect’s drawings, a vivid symbol of her authority. Authority braced her tone. “Your own Theologia Christiana points to how infidels, too, can be innocent,” she declared. “Pagan philosophers. Hebrews of old. Jews of today. All of us sinners. The loving Father takes into account what his children intend. All his children. Including your humble servant.” Here she half bowed, with more than a hint of self-mockery. “I learned this lesson well from you, how to trust my own desire. Yes, husband, desire! This is why I refuse to regret who we were to one another. Who, in my case, I still am. Your God, when I knew you, was not a God of law, but of love. I am your living reminder of that.”

  Abelard faced away. Framed by the doorway behind him, he stood tall. He, too, was strong. She was relieved to sense that he was, still, a match to her. He said, “The law is what love looks like, sister, when it comes to us in time and finitude.” He paused. Strong, yes. But not stone. His voice shook slightly when he added, “As for our love, I would that you transfer what you felt for me to the love of Christ.”

  “Not ‘felt.’ ”

  “Still, it is Christ—”

  She cut him off. “My Christ,” she said, “is the Christ I have from you.” Héloïse refused to lower her eyes. She waited for him to turn back to her. When he did not, she said, “Not the God who wills sacrificial suffering, but the Lord who rushes out to greet the wayward child.”