The wave of omnipotence was receding. Abelard dropped on the chest by the window, his head resting on the sill. He knew only that he was very tired. Denise in Brittany used to hold his head between her hands when he was like this. Odd that when one was tired it was the only thing that brought some ease. Was that why the dying go more easily if someone will hold their hands? He shook himself, and stood up, to go to bed. The moon was higher now, and the shadow of Notre Dame had moved, revealing something that had shown only as a blot of darkness against the wall of the Cloister. It stirred: the shadow became two shadows: for a moment the moon shone on a girl’s upturned face, blanched in its light. Then the other shadow stooped over it, and they were one shadow again. Abelard stood looking down, his mouth contemptuous. Yet there was a quality in the rigidity of those silent figures that held him. He could not reach them. Time was with him. Eternity flowed about those two.
Twelve. At the first stroke the two shivered apart. The girl ran like a lapwing across the steps of Notre Dame, and towards the Rue Sainte Marine. The man came steadily enough across the Parvis, and under the projecting houses. A moment later, and Abelard heard his stealthy foot upon the stair. So it was Guibert who had inhabited eternity a moment since. With a hearty reaction of disgust, Abelard flung open the door, and an avalanche of malediction volleyed down the stair.
CHAPTER II
Gilles de Vannes, Canon of Notre Dame, sat sunk in his great chair asleep. His massive chin lay in creases on his chest: every line of him sagged downwards. On the table at his elbow stood a pasty, a surprisingly small segment of it cut: beside it, an empty flagon. Abelard, looking down upon him, wondered for the hundredth time how he could so love anything so gross. Yet there was an innocence about the Canon as he slept: the watcher’s heart softened. Almost he could forbear to waken him. But he was restless: he had come for conversation and he meant to have it. He turned to kick the log upon the fire, for the unwieldy bulk in the great chair took little exercise, and was chilly, even in June.
“Not a pleasant sight,” agreed a rich voice behind him.
Abelard started, and turned. The small, shrewd eyes twinkled up at him, pin-points of intelligence in the vast encompassing of the flesh.
“Yet awake,” the husky voice went on, “the eyes do but increase the resemblance to the pig.”
Abelard took it manfully. “I did not come here,” he said, “to hear my own thoughts repeated to me. I came for yours.”
“You are an honester young man than when I first knew you,” said the Canon. “But you will never be as honest as myself. What did you come for? Your dinner?” He indicated the pasty.
Abelard sat down, and pulled it towards him. “I was not hungry,” he began.
“But you are now,” said the Canon. “Guibert had made you an omelette, and the grease stood on it in flakes, and it tasted of hen’s turds rather than of hen’s eggs.”
“It is true,” said Abelard. “I do not know why all his food tastes so. I have seen him wash the platters, and even the pots. For a long time I thought it was that.”
“But he does not wash the cloth that washes the pots,” said Gilles. “There is no flavour quite like it.”
“There is no flavour like the flavour of this pasty,” said Abelard. He was eating ravenously.
“It is a pleasure to feed you, Peter,” said Gilles. “Not only because you have the air of a hungry hawk, but because you have discrimination. A sensualist, like myself.”
“God forbid,” said Abelard, his mouth full.
“It is true,” said the Canon. “That you live on herrings’ tails with that scarecrow of yours across the way is but an accident.” He had risen with difficulty, lumbered over to the dresser, and was carefully filling a goblet for his guest. “Some day you will put your mind to good living. You have the palate, and the disposition for it. Everything but application. And opportunity.”
“I do not know,” said Abelard, reaching for the cup, “why I visit you.”
“To do you justice”—Gilles let himself down in his chair—“it is not only for the food. But you find in my conversation the same quality that you find in that pasty. It is high, but there is pimento in it. Also you see in me the satisfaction of your own desires. Vicariously, you savour in me the richness of living that your wits deny you.”
“You have wits enough, yourself,” said Abelard.
“Not for philosophy, young man. I took to the classics. For I am a sensualist in my mind as well as in my body. That is where we differ. Your mind snuffs up the east wind. That is why you are as lean as the kine of Pharaoh. But there is hope for you. I was once as lean as you, and fasted, I dare be sworn, a deal more often, till I was past grace.”
“I have wondered sometimes,” said Abelard, “if you ever knew it.”
“Grace?” said the Canon. “Aye. But—is it Jerome, or Ambrose? ‘The sirens have the faces of women, because nothing so estrangeth the heart from the love of God as the faces of women.’ Not Jerome. Too crude. The Blessed Gregory, perhaps. And after that, there was this.” He indicated the empty flagon with finger-tips of surprising delicacy. “Messer Gaster, we despise him in youth, but though the amorists will not have it, he is the master-organ of our pleasures. He is the first thought of our infancy, and I verily believe he will be the last of our age.”
Abelard moved impatiently. “I do not believe it,” he said. “Anyhow, not of you. It is the movement of your wits you live by, that itching tongue, that rubs itself against the bark.”
Gilles reflected. “It seems to me,” he said meditatively, “that I fill my mind even as I fill my belly: bonnes bouches: jelly of quinces and salted almonds . . .
“Mere breath of flutes at eve,
Mere seaweed on the shore.”
The husky voice was suddenly resonant. Abelard sat motionless. This was the incantation for which he came.
“A jar of the Albana, nine years old,
Still a full amphora. And in the garden
There’s parsley, Phyllis, for twining coronals,
And trails of ivy
To bind your shining hair.”
There was a long silence. The Canon’s small eyes turned from the fire and rested, very kindly, on the man opposite him. The impatient hands were still, the nervous frown had gone from between the brows, but wistfulness still hovered. Thirty-seven? A schoolboy, thought Gilles, a schoolboy of thirteen. But to be humoured.
“Your last lecture to-day?”
“It was.” Abelard roused, awake.
“I heard it,” said Gilles, “or rather, the effect of it. The like of the hubbub was a scandal. Is it true that they took you in your chair upon their shoulders?”
“They may have thought,” said Abelard gravely, “of putting me in the Seine. But they set me on my own doorstep instead.”
“And then you made them a speech?”
Abelard flushed. “I did.”
“I heard it,” said the Canon, chuckling gently. “Very pretty, my dear, very pretty. The human reason the habitation of God with men? John Scotus Erigena said something very like it, three hundred years ago: but with less grace. They killed him for it in the end, you know. Stabbed him to death with their pens. Like Hypatia. And that reminds me, what think you of our own?”
“Our own?”
“Hypatia. Heloise. And the lovelier name of the two, after all.”
“Heloise? Fulbert’s niece? He was hours telling me how she was coming home from the convent. Tedious old man. Well, what of her? Priscian in petticoats?”
Gilles was looking into the fire. When he spoke, it was as if to himself:
“Mere breath of flutes at eve,
Mere seaweed on the shore.”
“And what,” said Abelard, unreasonably irritated, “precisely do you mean by that?”
“The same texture,” said Gilles, still brooding. “I
t is not colour, it is not even line; it is the surface that is perfection. Though there is line: too straight at the moment, but she’s young. Seventeen, they say. Not much colour, and she does not yet amend it. I like a white-faced wench myself. The eyes show better, so. Why do fools say, black as night? There’s more colour in a night sky than ever there is at noonday. Stars, too.”
Abelard rose to his feet. He was frowning.
“You seem acquainted with this Phoenix,” he said drily.
“Her uncle has brought her here,” said Gilles placidly. “She borrows my books. She has my Persius now. A strange taste in a woman. Difficult too. But not for her.”
“She reads with you, then?”
“Aye. And old Fulbert sits there, doting on her, till he sleeps.”
“Hence your knowledge of the texture,” said Abelard.
The Canon meditated, balancing two orders of thought. The impishness vanished from his eye.
“Young man,” he said suddenly, “are there finger-marks in my books? Winestains, and the smudge of a greasy thumb?”
“There are not. My own are a deal the dirtier of the two.”
“I can imagine it,” said the Canon drily.
Abelard came across the room to him. He was crimson.
“Sir,” he said, “forgive me. It was unpardonable. I thought——”
“The foulest pig of the Epicurean sty?” said the Canon gently. “In short, that I was I?” He dismissed it with a gesture of the finger-tips. “But look here, Master Peter. You say you find Fulbert tedious. You have said it, I think, of every one of our canons, barring, I believe, myself. And you are justified. But a man makes enemies so. And a philosopher can have as many enemies as the Prince of Darkness. He thrives on them. But bishops do not, nor the great ones.”
“I believe,” said Abelard slowly, “that you have the Prince of Darkness himself to fetch and carry for you.”
The Canon shook his head. “Not the Prince of Darkness. Original sin only. They are not to be confounded. So have a care. Moreover, it might be as well now and then to come to chapter. You miss some good things, else. This morning——” He chuckled ruefully. “Poor Evrard!”
“He that married his housekeeper?”
“Aye. The Bishop had written to Ivo of Chartres for his finding. You know Ivo?”
“I have seen him.”
“I was at the schools with him. That was a man. A face like a rock. I never knew the man could tell a bawdy story to Ivo of Chartres. But kind. There was a girl would not marry the man her parents chose, and they brought her to Ivo to force her. ‘That is not marriage,’ said he, ‘which is the coition of two bodies, but the union of two souls.’”
“And which,” said Abelard blandly, “does he find the union of Evrard and his housekeeper?”
Gilles’ eyelids flickered. “Our Bishop had not concerned himself with that aspect, but with the question of Evrard’s emoluments.”
Well?”
“Ivo says that the canon who marries loses his benefice.”
“And privilege?”
“Not privilege. They cannot take the tonsure from us for marriage. But the profit of it, yes. Ivo’s argument is that the faithful layman does not support us to live precisely as he does.”
“I think,” said Abelard slowly, “that I am with Ivo.”
“You would be,” said the Canon. “And so am I.” He met his friend’s astonishment with a tranquil eye. “What puzzles me,” he went on meditatively, “is his marrying her. That he should have found it necessary.”
CHAPTER III
“You may go your ways, Fulbert. You may go your ways. Not one foot will you get me from my chair this day.”
“But consider——”
Gilles de Vannes twinkled up at the little agitated figure through half-closed eyelids.
“And do not wag your finger at me. What does the man look like? A wasp trying to convert a caterpillar.” He subsided into rumbling chuckles.
“A wasp?” Fulbert stiffened, his face pink. He flushed easily, for he had the exquisite sensitive skin of the aged ecclesiastic.
“There, there, Fulbert. Not a wasp: a bee. Man, it is the consecrated metaphor for the good ecclesiastic. Apis humilis, casta, indefatigabilis—but you must not sting, Fulbert. It does not matter for wasps: it is their function. But bees die of it. Lord, Lord, do you remember poor Evrard’s first letter, begging to be received? From Liége, I think. ‘Having, as an unworthy pup, licked up sufficient crumbs from under the table here, I would fain enter your lordship’s hive as an obedient bee.’”
Fulbert received the pleasantry with an inclination. He had a little relaxed, but formality never left him. “I have never understood,” he said, “the circumstances in which Evrard became one of us. Whatever our faults, we were, I think, a body not without distinction.”
Gilles’ eyes caressed him. It was a joy to see anyone derive so much innocent pleasure from his office. “His guilelessness,” he said briefly. “It was in Fulco’s time, you remember. And Fulco, may God assoil him, needed an animal of some kind in the chapter. Evrard was the only one of us who did what he was told. He has been like a lost dog since Fulco died. Nobody ever tells him anything. And so—— Poor Evrard!”
“I confess,” said Fulbert, “that I have some difficulty in comprehending your position. You gave your vote with the rest of us in chapter, after the reading of the letter from Ivo of Chartres?”
“I did.”
“Yet you refuse to attend the chapter which deprives him.”
“I think,” said Gilles thoughtfully, “that I have always preferred theory to practice.”
“You do not then, in your heart, agree with Ivo of Chartres?”
“With all my heart,” said Gilles fervently. “God forbid that the Cloitre Notre Dame should become a nursery of squalling brats.”
“In that case——”
“I tell you, Fulbert,” said Gilles, roused to brief energy, “I have no liking for executions of justice. Doubtless it is a bad conscience. For I am never the executioner or the spectator, but the wretch that is tied to the pillar.”
“This is no question of the discipline,” said Fulbert stiffly. “Evrard is a canon, and not a choir-boy. And a simple act of ecclesiastical deprivation——”
“I never liked,” said Gilles, “to see a man ashamed. Odd,” he continued, musing, “for I have never in my life been ashamed of myself. Except of course,” he added gravely, “on such occasions as the rubric demands it.”
Fulbert nodded approvingly. He rose.
“I am to make your excuses, then?”
“You are a good fellow, Fulbert,” said Gilles gratefully. “Tell them it is a profound sciatica. It was the truth yesterday. Only yourself will know it is a bad conscience.” He sighed. “Not many of us, Fulbert, are like you, with a conscience as candid as your hair.”
The sensitive face flushed to the silver ring of the tonsure.
“There,” said Gilles tenderly, “I have embarrassed you with my praises.”
“I shall be late,” said Fulbert piteously. He looked about him in distress. “Where did I—— Surely—— Heloise!”
The girl reading at the further window laid down her book and came swiftly down the long room. Gilles sat watching her as she came. She wore green, girdled low; her hair fell on either side the oval of her face, and swung in long plaits to her knee.
One of the dead queens, alive and young, the stone queens for the west portal of Chartres: one of them, the loveliest and saddest, wore her hair so. But here there was no sadness yet: the laughter that sprang in her at sight of these two together rippled in her face as light glances in water. Gilles glanced at Fulbert, and mentally absolved him. This radiant creature could never have been begotten by the spinsterish figure nervously fidgeting with its hood. She was beside him now, touching
him with her light fingers, turning back his over-long sleeves, settling his collar: and the creature stood there happy and quiescent, blinking, thought Gilles savagely, like a tomcat on a sunny wall.
“Thank you, my dear, thank you. You always know what I want. You will go straight home, sweetheart?”
“Must she go, Fulbert?” said Gilles abruptly. “Leave her with me while you are in chapter. There is a fair draft of the inscription for the lapidaries to make, and gout in my thumb, and Heloise has the best clerk’s script in Paris.”
“Surely, surely,” Fulbert babbled with pleasure. “You think the girl writes well, Gilles?”
“If Adam does but copy in stone what she writes on vellum, it will be a rare marvel,” said Gilles.
“I will come back for her,” said Fulbert, “when chapter is over. And then I can tell you, Gilles, tell you all about it.”
“That was my hope,” said Gilles gravely. “But I had not liked to ask it of so busy a man. It would be a great kindness. And indeed, Fulbert,” he called, as the Canon fumbled with the latch, “I would come with you to the stoning of Stephen if I had the courage.”
“Not Stephen,” corrected Fulbert kindly, “Evrard.”
“I grow old. I grow old.” Gilles sank back despondent in his chair. His junior by five years beamed upon him, making deprecatory noises, and the door latched behind him. The two pairs of eyes met.
“Heloise,” said Gilles de Vannes suddenly, “you are the only contemporary I have.”
Peter Abelard Page 2
