The Cloister

by James Carroll

  “Do you have it with you now?”

  “No. Which surprises me. Since I shared it with you, I have not felt the same compulsion to carry it everywhere….” She shrugged. “I never imagined telling any of this to anyone.”

  “ ‘Givens of the past.’ They never go away, but you change what they mean by putting them into words. All of them.”

  “There are no words for all of them. The worst remains unsaid. And always will.”

  “What could be worse?” he asked quietly.

  Once again, a sharp, cutting look. “Is that a Confessor’s question?”

  “No,” he answered firmly. “Nor is this Confession.” Yet her rebuke jolted Kavanagh, and he was shocked by what came to mind then. She had trusted him because he was a priest, and yet, to himself already, he was a priest no more. Just your average knucklehead—who had glided past what she had told him. The words that Abelard gave the Jew to say returned to him: Indeed, there is no people which has ever been known or even believed to have suffered so much….

  But were Jews nothing more than that? A people whose eternal fate is to endure? Was that her point? The source of her resentment?

  Morally, yes: there was something worse than victimhood. Worse than being slain, surely, was to be a slayer. But that moral horror, he was certain, could not have belonged to her. Kavanagh was not sitting beside a victim or a slayer; beside a “people” or even “a Jew.” He was sitting beside a rare and precious person. A woman.

  He realized only now that he had used her name again—Rachel—as he had shortly before. By what right had he done that?

  She misread the cloud that had come over him. She met his eyes with her own, to say, with a note of apology, “Not Confession. No, of course not. Not at all. And I was wrong in what I said before. It is not your being a good priest that drew me to you. What drew me, despite myself, to say this much…to say…too much…is your simple human kindness. But there is not enough kindness in the world for what remains unsaid.” He heard her as if she were speaking, say, to a fellow traveler on a train, someone in whom to confide precisely because he would never be seen again. She fastened the button at her wrist. “I should get back. Adieu.”

  A week ago, he had imagined them at a threshold together. But they were on its opposite sides. She had not said au revoir. He heard her firm statement as what it was—the closing of the door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Héloïse went round and round, up the spiraling stone shaft to the small chamber beneath the belfry proper, a space to which sentries were dispatched at word of marauders in the region. But to her, the perch high above the Cloister served far more often as her personal anchorite cell, a locating refuge to which she had regularly repaired across eight years of life at the Paraclete. What drew her was not the view of the monastery’s surrounding dominion, distant forests and nearby fields bisected by the meandering stream, so much as the mesmerizing point above the treeline, in an undefined middle distance, the realm of contemplation. Levitating here, in detached solitude, she could be who she truly was.

  But today detachment was unthinkable. She’d come here simply to be alone, again, with the text that had been brought to her three days before, surreptitiously delivered by a seneschal from the Royal Palace in Paris. She’d carried the scroll under her arm as she mounted the stairs. Now she sat on the plain wooden stool, looking out. The stout bell above her was silent. At the mercy of an inchoate dread, she hesitated to unfurl the message once more and reread the foul words. Instead, she took in the view, a closer survey of the Paraclete’s demesne. The stream, swollen by spring rains, was high. In the fields it watered, the monastery’s men were harrowing the rough-plowed soil and sowing the April barley seed. The sun was bright and the air was mild. The soothing mantle of Eastertide had settled on the world, but not on her.

  She focused on the drovers’ road that ran along the ridgeline from which the fields fell away on two sides. On that road, abbey livestock were regularly driven from one pasture to another, and, periodically, harvest crops were carted off to market in Nogent-sur-Seine. Pilgrims appeared on the road occasionally, come to venerate the relics of Saint Angilbert, which Charlemagne’s daughter Theodrade had entrusted to Argenteuil, and which were now housed in the golden reliquary beside the tabernacle in the chapel below. All persons coming to the Paraclete had to pass on that road, and on that road, two days before, she’d sent her messenger riding off to the river, for the barge to Paris, carrying the urgent summons to Peter Abelard. Now she expected him to appear at any moment, riding in the horse cart she had posted for him at the river landing stage.

  She unfurled the scroll and read, He has defiled the Church; he has infected with his own blight the minds of simple people. She had to stop. Whose mind was simpler, Héloïse wondered, than the young fool to whom this brutal indictment of Peter Abelard was addressed—King Louis VII? Eighteen years old, he was on the throne less than two years, and was already wholly at the mercy of the wily White Monk, the letter’s author. The young King’s authority was being tested by burghers in Toulouse, Poitiers, and Bourges. Dukes and Counts were poised to take advantage of a weakened sovereign, with the strongest challenge coming already from Theobald, Count of Blois. Bernard of Clairvaux had convinced King Louis that religious dissent fed the roots of political discord, and the taproot of such dissent was Peter Abelard, who was known, after all, to be a favorite of Theobald’s. Bernard’s solution to the King’s great problem was to scour his realm clean of heresy, and the insecure monarch embraced it. Bernard of Clairvaux was Louis’s ferret and his war dog.

  If Mother Héloïse had been secretly provided a copy of the White Monk’s screed, it was only because the King’s even younger wife—Eleanor, daughter of the Duke of Aquitaine, aged seventeen—was herself in thrall to the mawkish love-fables of the much-storied Abbess herself. The Queen cared nothing for the intricacies of Abelard’s theology, only for the legend of his early life as a thwarted lover. Héloïse disdained Eleanor’s girlish fancy, but thought it harmless, and was prepared to turn it to her own ends. The Honorable Lady had visited the Paraclete. Upon meeting the Mother Abbess, Queen Eleanor had been struck by her unfaded beauty, which was, if anything, made more alluring by being clothed in chastity. The Queen had happily accepted the invitation of Mother Héloïse to become the abbey’s principal patroness.

  The nun steeled herself to read on. He tries to explore with his reason what the devout mind grasps at once with vigorous faith. Faith believes, it does not dispute. But this man, apparently holding God suspect, will not believe anything until he has first examined it with his reason.

  Héloïse had to smile. At least that accusation was true. But Bernard’s purpose was deadly. His letter to the King proposed the launching of a campaign, a rank attempt to undermine the resounding prestige Peter Abelard had reclaimed for himself in Paris. Peter’s new school at Mont-Sainte-Geneviève, on the hilly left bank of the Seine, loomed fittingly above Notre-Dame, from which he was still banished. If Bernard could, simply by this philippic, discredit Abelard, then the young scholars who were flocking to him again would not acquire the Church-sanctioned bachelor’s license recently made necessary to become a Master. Bernard’s mischief threatened, at the very least, the survival of Abelard’s school.

  But Héloïse sensed that more than mere rivalry fueled the White Monk’s assault. The interdiction was ad hominem in the extreme. His venomous books do not lie peacefully on bookshelves. No, they are read at crossroads. His books have wings. He fills cities and castles with darkness instead of light, with poison instead of honey, or rather, with poison in honey. And how? By undermining the very principle of religious and therefore social order, extending beyond the Kingdom of France. More than King Louis VII’s standing was at stake. Bernard was warning of a threat to the universal cohesion that the Church herself had only recently reclaimed after the disastrous papal schism, when a pair of manic Popes had excommunicated each other. Innocent II’s hold on pow
er after his triumph over Anacletus II was still fragile, which meant all of Christendom was fragile. A new gospel is being forged for peoples and for nations, a new faith is being propounded, and a new foundation is being laid. Peter Abelard is a man who does not know his limitations, making void the virtue of the Cross by the cleverness of his words.

  The cross. There it was. Yes, Abelard was making void all that was claimed for the cross as the emblem of what a violent Father required of His only beloved Son. If one Person of the Trinity could so ordain the torture of another, imagine what the Divine Threesome could do to the exiled brood of Adam and Eve. Peter’s argument was simplicity itself. Reason tells us that a loving God cannot be cruel; therefore, cruelty in the name of God, whether in this life or in the life to come, cannot be holy. The cross, cruelty itself, cannot have been willed by God as the mode of God’s redemption. Any theology that says so is wrong. “The virtue of the Cross” is not only void, but a lie.

  What a spacious faith he had. How she loved him. The passion of her youth had never cooled, really, but it had, in these recent years, mellowed into an abiding and affectionate respect. Since he had returned, six years ago, from his hinterland self-exile at Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys to re-engage the great disputes of the Paris-centered scholars, he had carried himself with an equanimity of which he had known nothing in his youth. He had learned to do without antagonism. That was so even as, in the sacred arena of contention, he continued to dispel the obfuscations known as holy mystery with simple common sense. The God of Love loves—that is all. Abelard’s poise in the face of disputation now was a matter of self-acceptance. Loves him!

  Even more than before, Abelard said what he thought because he thought it. He no longer courted magnification of himself in the gaze of his young charges, nor sought he the approval of his rivals. He had her approval, and he knew it. Apparently, for him, that was enough. Hers, she dared believe, was the sacrament of love that graced him. As the ecclesiastical patron of the Paraclete, Peter made two apostolic visitations to her convent a year, and, formal though those canonical encounters were, to her they were enough. He was her sacrament, too.

  The sun had dropped in the sky, and just as she began to think the day would end with his not having come, a horse and cart rounded the farthest turn of the road; one of the two riders wore the black habit of a Benedictine monk. The horse was running at a three-beat gait, less than the gallop of Héloïse’s heart. She let the parchment snap back into its cylinder and, gathering the skirts of her habit, threw herself into the narrow shaft and down the winding stairs.

  By the time she reached the monastery gate, the cart was there. The groom leapt down from its bench and took in hand the bridle of the horse, but Peter Abelard was slow to dismount, which was the first suggestion of the difference in him. The second was the slight tremble in his hand as he lifted his personal satchel, the leather pouch that would have carried his books, candles, tablet, and hard biscuits. He used his second hand to steady the first as he handed the bag to the groom. When he turned to Héloïse, she noticed at once that he was slightly, but uncharacteristically, stooped. Though his habit cloaked his frame, she saw in his face that, since he’d last been here months before, he had shed weight. Time had been striking him hard for three score years, and he looked it. When their eyes met, though, his expression of plain relief at the sight of her could not have been more familiar. He bowed to her, and said, “Holy Mother.”

  She laughed. “Holy” had become his way of teasing her, for, in her letters, she always insisted on—nay, reveled in—her unworthiness. And he knew how she detested the title “Mother” when it came from him. She bent her knees slightly, one invisible foot in front of the other, and said, “Salutations, Peter Abelard. Welcome home, dear man.” To herself, she added “husband.” Unknown to him, beneath her scapular, her hand went to her breast, for the feel of his gold ring, hidden there. She pressed it against her flesh, for the sweet pain. They remained still, smiling at each other, a pose that stood in for the embrace that was forbidden. The bell for Vespers rang just then, which Héloïse welcomed, though she meant to ignore the summons. If she left the rote chanting of the Holy Office to her sisters, she and Abelard would have the Cloister garden to themselves. She led the way there. The setting sun left the quad in shadow, but the air was warm still, and the day’s fading was a poignant caress.

  She had not imagined that anything would come before questions of Bernard’s indicting letter, yet she had noticed, in addition to his tremulous hand and slouching posture, a slight shuffle in his step. She gestured with the scroll, pointing at the hand with which he adjusted his habit as he sat on the bench beside her. “Is that a tremble I see in your hand?” she asked.

  He looked at his hand. “It is nothing. A small pain in the nerves. I have unguent for it. Why have you summoned me? Your message said ‘dire.’ What trouble?”

  She unscrolled the parchment and read, “ ‘Concerning Certain Heresies of Peter Abelard.’ This is correspondence from Bernard of Clairvaux to King Louis. The White Monk dangerously slanders you.”

  Abelard nodded, then recited from memory, “ ‘He has infected with his own blight the minds of simple people….’ ” Abelard shook his head, but calmly. “I have read what Bernard wrote. He sent the same allegations to the Pope, and to the Archbishops of Sens, Rheims, and Paris as well. So much chaff to the wind.”

  “The infecting blight, it says, is Abelard himself.” She slapped the parchment. “This marks Bernard’s long-plotted offensive against you.”

  “But is it slander? Most of what he writes is true.”

  “He calls it heresy. Coming from him, the King’s confidant, that is dangerous, if it goes unanswered.”

  “How do you have it?”

  “The Queen has confidantes, too. I am one. She is enchanted with the rose-water legend of our youth.” Heloïse smiled. “Naturally, she assumes my interest in what concerns you. Her nervous husband showed her the letter. She had it copied. She sent it to me.”

  “I mistook your summons. I came so promptly because I thought you had other news. More pressing news by far than intrigues of the craven Cistercian.”

  “What could be more pressing?”

  “Something that threatens not the reputation of one poor monk, but the moral spine of all Christendom. Have you heard the news from Mainz?”

  “No.”

  “On Holy Friday last, after the Solemnities of the Lord’s Passion in the Cathedral, there was a massacre in the Talmudic academy, situated not far away. Having venerated the cross, devout Catholic worshippers stormed out of the Cathedral to avenge the murder of the Lord Christ. Hundreds of the so-called Christ killers were slain. It is said that many others threw themselves into the Rhine, together with their children. Jews. All Jews.”

  “Hundreds?” Héloïse asked, not breathing.

  “Isaac ben Joseph Benveniste.”

  “Prince Isaac?”

  “Yes. It is said that he stood at the gate of the Vicus Judaeorum, barring the way. He was the first to fall before the mob.”

  “Oh, Peter…” Words failed her. When she saw that he had nothing to add, she said quietly, “Such a thing happened in Mainz before.”

  “Yes. Pope Urban’s war. Then, too—preaching on the day of the Lord’s Passion lit the flame. Now a new War of the Cross is being summoned, and preachers are calling again for the killing of Jews. Christ’s cross must be avenged! God wills it!” Peter was speaking more mournfully than bitterly. After a pause, he added, “It was not only that the Rabbi saved my life. He was my great teacher. He was my friend.”

  “I never saw you hand yourself over to anyone as you did to him. Not even to me, your wife.”

  Abelard nodded. To her surprise, he reached his hand to hers, and rested two fingers on her one. His hand weighed nothing. He said softly, “After Canon Fulbert’s men finished with me, I had no choice but to give myself to Prince Isaac. With you, it had been a choice in every way. But, like you, the
Rabbi received me. I deeply grieve his death. As a man of the Church, I share the culpability, which compounds the grief. Dear Héloïse, I had to come to you with this anguish. I cannot bear it alone. This is why I am here.”

  She put the scroll aside to cover his hand with hers. They sat like that, hands joined in her lap, in silence.

  It was Héloïse who spoke first. She took up the scroll again. “Bernard is the great war-preacher now. Queen Eleanor wrote to me describing his sermons: ‘O mighty soldiers, O men of war, you have a cause in which to conquer is glorious and for which to die is gain.’ ”

  “He puffs himself up with such blood hosannas,” Abelard replied. “To knights and rabble both, he promises the papal plenary indulgence, a sure road to heaven. The cross once again is on battle flags in churches. No doubt, it was in the Mainz Cathedral.”

  Héloïse said: “I have a letter from the Queen in which she says her husband has had his armor tunic marked with the cross. She mocks him for strutting about the palace wearing it, but then she tells of her own intention to accompany him to Jerusalem. For this holy pilgrimage, she requests our monastic prayers.” The nun forced a derisive burst of breath through her nose. “That the Royals love his great new escapade enhances Bernard’s standing everywhere. I did not see this before, but that is why he is moving now against you.” She gestured sharply with the scroll. “And of course his charge indicts you for ‘making void the virtue of the cross.’ Bernard’s cross is a weapon. The God you are preaching, Peter, is not a God who wills such a war.”