Peter Abelard

by Helen Waddell

  She need not think yet. The grey mood of fear that she had wakened with at dawn had gone. She had wakened early often enough at Argenteuil, but dawn in Paris was a horrible thing. She had opened her window and. leaned out in the dread blue light that comes before the first streak in the east, and the city and the river both seemed dead, and both stank, a cold stench, as of ashes and foul water. She had gone to bed dizzy and flaming with his kisses: he had half carried her up the stairs to her room, and standing on the threshold, loath to let her go, he had taken her in his arms again and kissed her, more terribly for the silence they must keep. For many nights he had done that, but suddenly last night he had stood still and with his mouth just parted from hers he had said, “To-morrow night,” and she shrank, and clung to him the more desperately for her shrinking. If he had taken her then before she had time to think, before that evil dawn stood between her and his kisses. But what would it have been like, then, to waken this morning? Would she have seemed to herself as foul as the dead street and the dead river? She had left the window and crept back to bed and said her prayers over and over with her face buried in the pillow, and then slept late, and wakened only to hear him shouting up the stair to Guibert to bring him the Categories instead of the Analytics. Guibert was a poor scholar, and she had run downstairs barefoot, with only her cloak about her, to help him find it, and Abelard, coming up the stairs like the North Wind, collided with Guibert at the turning, and raising his head, saw her standing at the top. Guibert slid like an eel between his master and the wall, and was gone. Abelard stood still, staring up at her. She had never seen desire naked, with no tenderness to mask it, and here as well was something more terrifying than desire, a kind of mastery. Her arm went suddenly across her eyes, and when Abelard pulled himself together and called her a casual greeting before he turned to follow Guibert, she answered him barely audibly. Then she had dressed and gone, hardly knowing what she would ask, to find Gilles.

  And with Gilles it was peaceful and safe, and nothing mattered as much as she had thought it did. And she need not think until she reached Argenteuil, and not even then, for she need not come home to-night.

  The ferry-boat was on the other side of the river when they came to Asnières, and no one about. Jehan put his hands round his mouth and shouted an “Ohé!” that made Heloise cover her ears. Three small urchins ran out of the ferryman’s hut, and ran in again shouting. The mother came, her hand over her eyes, a small, red-haired woman: stood for a moment, and then came down to the boat, with the eldest urchin, and began rowing across. Meantime Jehan had dismounted Heloise, and stood holding the mare by the head.

  “Where’s your man?” said he, when the barge nosed the bank and swung round with the current. He stooped to hold her, and Heloise led the mare on board, reluctant and starting at the sound of her hooves on the wooden bottom. Then Jehan leaped on board, and the barge crept back, against the current this time: Jehan lifted another oar, and set to, with long steady sweeps.

  “He’s in his bed,” said the woman briefly. “And if it hadn’t been that I knew you, and knew you handy with the oar, you might have stayed and shouted your fill. For I can make shift to bring her across, but I can get her back, against the current, no way.”

  “It’s changed days with you, my woman, that you couldn’t get a man to help you,” said Jehan, looking round at her with a slow twinkle.

  “They’re at the harvest,” she said placidly. “They say the weather will break after the Feast. And there’s not so many come this way, since the killing in the woods last May. Are you not feared yourselves?”

  “Eudes isn’t likely to touch a man of Notre Dame again,” said Jehan grimly.

  The woman laughed. “He’d take Our Lady’s self, if he thought he could get her ransom,” said she. “But God help him, indeed he was drunk that day.” The boat had bumped the other bank, and Jehan made it fast and set Heloise on shore.

  “Would you have a drink of milk, mistress?” said the woman kindly. “It’s ill riding in the sun on an empty belly. I was just stribbing the cow when I heard yon ox bellowing, and she very near sent the milk over me at the roars of him.”

  Jehan’s stolid countenance mellowed into a broad grin.

  “Indeed I was thirsty,” said Heloise gratefully. She followed the woman to the threshold of the hut, and out from it came a scattering of hens and a sow grunting, the smallest urchin pursuing with terrific zeal. She took the wooden bowl, white with age and scrubbing, from the woman’s hand and drank, though the warmth of the milk a little distressed her.

  “Do you know,” she said, “it is the same bowl that you gave me a drink out of when I was little, and my uncle was taking me to the Convent. It had the same chip out of the rim, and I wanted to drink out of the chip, and spilt the milk all down my dress, and my uncle scolded me and I cried, and you wiped me up and scolded him for scolding me. Do you remember?”

  “She has scolded too many men since to have mind of that,” said Jehan.

  “I mind it rightly,” said the woman. “I was heart-vexed for you that day. You had the saddest eyes I ever saw in a child’s head. Were they good to you where you were going? Many a time I wondered.”

  “Good to her?” said Jehan. He swung Heloise to her pillion. “You’d have thought she was the one kitling with forty cats.”

  “Indeed it’s true,” said Heloise soberly. She was thinking, with a vague wonder at herself, how little they had been in her mind since.

  “I was reared near Argenteuil,” said the woman. “It’s a heartsome place. They had my mother in at a feast time to help in the kitchen, and I would watch for her coming out, for she’d have the full of her petticoat of pieces of goose and cake and raisins and the like. They’d have taken me in the kitchen myself,” she went on, her eyes on the dancing river that slipped past their feet. “And if I’d known what was good for me,” with a sudden vindictive gleam at Jehan, “I’d have gone there and had no truck with the likes of him yonder.”

  “You’ve never had truck with me, yet,” said Jehan gallantly, looking down at her from the saddle.

  “Quit your loose talk before the young girl,” said the ferry-wife righteously. She looked up at Heloise with a quick, shrewd kindliness. “If you knew as much about them as what I know, mistress,” said she, “you’d stay where you’re going. You’ll be staying the night, itself?”

  “I don’t know,” said Heloise. She felt her face redden, and was glad Jehan’s back was towards her. “You see, Jehan must come back this evening.”

  “And by the same token,” said Jehan, suddenly serious, “if you can’t make shift to get the ferry back from the far side, I’ll set the young mistress and the mare across, and bring it back myself.”

  “And then swim?” said the ferry-wife. “You’re the first man I ever knew handy about a boat that could.”

  Jehan’s face fell and he swore softly. “That means the other road,” he said, “by St. Denis. And as far again. We’ll need to be leaving before Vespers, mistress.”

  “You’ll have about got there by then if you hurry the way you’re doing,” said the ferry-wife with gravity. She took the coins that Jehan reached down to her for their passage, and looked up at him with merry creases puckered about her eyes, a kind of elfin mischief that made Heloise ponder. There was small beauty about her, and she looked, if anything, older than Jehan, and yet Jehan rode jauntily for a while, and even whistled. Then the shadow of the woods fell on them, and the mare’s hooves went softly on the pine-needles, and the air droned with the cooing of the doves that gave the wood its name, and Heloise rode, drugged with the sweetness of the day.

  The bell above the chapel tinkled for Nones. It was barely three o’clock, but the tinkling was persistent and lasted long, for the sisters slept in the cool dorter between dinner and Nones, and on drowsy afternoons were hard to waken. Heloise had gone to the cloister after dinner, protesting that she was not t
ired, and had promised Godric to copy a page from the book of Alcuin’s letters that the Abbot of Corbei had lent. Now at the first tinkle of the bell she fled down the pleached walk, through the kitchen garden and the orchard, to the bees’ garden under the southern wall. The river ran beneath it on the outer side: that wall was the oldest thing in the Convent, for Charlemagne built well. The terrace on the inner side was smooth with grass, white now after the long drought of the summer, but short and soft and thick; and below it stood the beehives, protected from the rest of the orchard by a great box-hedge. The flowers in the bees’ garden were most of them over: but the bees were away all day in the heather and the fading gorse of the bog country that lay league after sunny league by the western-flowing Seine.

  There was a little arbour cut in the boxwood, and in a rough wooden shrine like a dovecote a small companionable Virgin suckled her child. Heloise knelt for an Ave to the archaic friendly countenance, and sat down on the grass at her feet. The September sun slept on the wall, and the boxwood breathed that old kind smell which must, thought Heloise, be the oldest thing in the world, so secret is it and so wise; and from the manuscript on her lap came that other ancient smell, of vellum that men’s hands have handled. Three hundred years, the abbot had said.

  She turned the pages, reading here and there. “I have laid aside the pastoral care, and now sit quiet at St. Martin’s, waiting for the knocking at the gate . . . Send me a sheepskin for the winter, white if you can, for the white has the best wool.” So old and so holy, and yet knowing how cold the winter would be on his old withered arms and thin body. “The time draws nigh when I must leave this hospice of the body, and go out to things unknown.” Then even the Blessed Alcuin did not know?

  “Beside the margin of the white-winged sea

  I wait the coming of the silent dawn.”

  She halted at that, the compassion of youth for remote old age turned into quick reverence: and as if the change in her mood had power on the chance phrases that met her eye, she read with growing wonder.

  “O my beloved, remember me. I shall be yours in life or in death . . . And even if some other place is destined to hold my body, yet I think that my soul shall find its rest with you. And though diversity of merit shall have one live more blessed than another, yet the equality of eternity shall have them all live happy. As one sun shines on all, yet is seen more clearly by some eyes than by others, so shall the kingdom of heaven be . . . This is the blessedness of the life hereafter, that that never is absent which always is beloved. I have spoken too much, but who knows whether it will be given me to write to-morrow, or whether you and I, after to-morrow, will ever hold sweet converse again?”

  She turned the pages more hurriedly: this old voice from a forgotten world had too much power. This was better: Gilles would like it. “Here is an old man weak in the wits asked to scrutinise Heaven, who hath not yet learned the ordinary ways of earth, and to expound the vagabond courses of the wandering stars, who never yet was able to understand the nature of grass that grew.” And this—“The origin of evil is the loss of good.” That was for——. She turned the page resolutely. “To a friend minded to take monastic vows.” Alcuin, she remembered, had died Abbot of St. Martin at Tours, yet most of his life had lived a simple deacon. “Remember that in any place where a good many men are living together, good and evil are found . . . If place could help, never had angels fallen from Heaven, nor man sinned in Paradise. A wise mind keeps its own mastery. There is in men a royal mind——” She closed her eyes. She could fly no further. At every turn she found him. Mens regalis: it was the living image of the man she loved.

  She was going back. Had she not known all along that she was going back? The apathy of the long sunlit ride had stayed with her through the wood, and the second crossing at the ferry beyond Colombes, and up the cobbled street of Argenteuil, and even while they dismounted and Jehan knocked at the familiar gate. Then the broad beaming face of Soeur Laure the portress looked through the grille, and with many exclamations Heloise was drawn in. Jehan set down his load and made his excuses: he was for seeing his sister’s son and was off, panting for a drink.

  “Little one, little one, you’re white,” said the portress. She set Heloise down on the bench. “Sit still, child, and I’ll bring you a drink of water. It’s the long ride in the sun.”

  “I just turned dizzy for a minute,” said Heloise. “If I might lie on the bench——” She slipped face downwards, her arms about her head, and lay there listening to the hurried slapping of Soeur Laure’s wide shoes down the flagged path to the well. It was not the ride in the sun. It was this shut-in place. She was going back. If she could, she would start on her own feet now, before ever Soeur Laure came back. Her body had known it before her mind, had known it at the first smell of the dark little room, the faint perpetual frowsiness of unwashed rags, for the beggars came here and sat till the almoner could see them, and mingling with it the half-sweet, half-sickly scent of the bunch of herbs, dried thyme and rosemary, that hung from the middle of the ceiling, black now with flies. Deadly nausea had come upon her, and for a moment the room went black. But she must be wise. She must live the day through, and talk and smile, and by that blessed chance they must start early, because of the long way round by St. Denis. Her heart sang as she remembered it.

  The well-rope was creaking, the old familiar creak. Heloise rose and went down the path. She was smiling now.

  “It was so hot,” she said. “Let me just drink from the dipper.” She knelt on the mossy stone and drank thirstily; then, in spite of Soeur Laure’s predictions on the risk of it after being overheated, she splashed the water in the bucket over her face and arms, drawing up her wide sleeves to the shoulder. Soeur Laure looked kindly at the young slenderness of them.

  “You’re thriven, little one,” she said. “They are nothing like the sticks they were.”

  Heloise sat back on her heels, laughing, shaking the water from her fingers. Soeur Laure emptied the water that was left into the little stone runnel that ran through the garden in the outer court, and swung back the bucket. The drops from the bottom edge fell a long way into the darkness. Heloise could hear the faint chime of them, very far and sweet.

  “Do you remember, Sister,” said she, “how I used to come and torment you when I was little, for drinks? And all the while it was only to hear that noise.”

  “I couldn’t think,” said Soeur Laure, “how on earth so thin a child could hold all the water you drank. But it was maybe that that gave you your clear skin.”

  “It’s better water here than in Paris,” said Heloise. “You daren’t drink it there.”

  “And how’s your good uncle?” said the portress. “And Master Gilles?”

  “They’re both well. Uncle is thinner, I think, but he says it is the dry weather has dried him up.”

  “It would take more than this summer to dry up Master Gilles, I warrant,” said the portress, chuckling, “or Reverend Mother, either. But there, I hear them. She’ll be scolding me for chattering,” and the wide skirts bustled to the lodge.

  A very deep, very musical voice came through the open chapter-house window. “Now to God the Father, God the Son . . .”

  “Amen.”

  Chapter was over. The door into the outer court opened, and the Abbess came through, a short woman, massive as Gilles but without his height, singularly fresh and fair in spite of the folds of fat, the same shrewd, small eyes, but with points of steel in them, Heloise felt, for the kindly candle-flame in Gilles’.

  Heloise went a few steps to meet her, halted, and then slipped on her knees to kiss the Abbess’s ring.

  “Child,” said the deep voice, “you are a sight for sore eyes. I was for giving you a good scolding, but I have no mind to it now. How did you come?”

  “I rode behind Jehan. Your cousin, Master Gilles, was sending him with offerings for the Feast to-morrow, and he—I begged to come
too.”

  “And where is Jehan?”

  “He went to see his sister’s son. But he set the saddlebags down in the lodge. And of the wine, Master Gilles bade me say that he would gladly have come to sample it with you himself, but that you will please to pledge him, and that he has added the extra bottle that he would, undoubtedly have drunk.”

  The Abbess chuckled. “Gilles and I had always a like taste in wine. But it was a risk to send it in this heat. I must have it down to the cellar straight.” She lifted her white fingers in dismissal—the hands so like and yet so unlike Gilles’, for these were dimpled and plump and a huge sapphire blazed on one—and turned to the Portress’s lodge. In a flash the other nuns, hanging discreetly back while the Abbess talked, were crowding round Heloise.

  “Little one, little one, how you are grown! Have you come to stay? Is it true that Master Peter Abelard says you are the best scholar he has ever had? Is that the way they wear their hair now? And what has kept you all this while? Oh, Heloise, it has been so dull since you went away!”

  Heloise was passed from hand to hand, breathless and affectionate, and in her heart so far off. Did they notice nothing? Did they not know it was a kind of gargoyle that was grinning at them and making agreeable noises? Why had she come? She greeted the last, and then looked round her, suddenly grave.

  “Where is Soeur Godric?”

  “Didn’t you hear about it? She missed the corner step, coming down from the choir—you know how dark it is—and broke her leg. And it isn’t knitting very well, for they say she is too old. So she is in the infirmary now. And Soeur Gisela is mistress of the novices. And Reverend Mother——”

  There fell a silence as the Abbess appeared in the doorway of the lodge.

  “Now, now,” said she. “That is enough chatter for a while. You can have Heloise after dinner, before you go to the dorter. Heloise, go and see Soeur Godric.”

  It was like the scattering of a flock of sparrows. Heloise watched the bowed heads and the meek shoulders disappear, heard the feet in the wide shoes shuffle down the cloisters. Could one have any pride in one’s body if one hid one’s feet in shoes like those? She crossed the court to the door beside the chapel, her head a little higher than its wont, in unconscious protest against those meek shoulders and against the secret fear in her own heart. She did not—she hesitated over the word—esteem Reverend Mother, but she respected her. It was not virtue, it was a kind of native hardihood, with all the self-indulgence. Was that first Abbess of Argenteuil, Charlemagne’s daughter by Fastrada, like that; whelp of the tigress and the lion? She passed the chapel door, and paused. Poor Guibert, he had asked her to burn a candle for him, he did not say for what, and had given her two sous for a big one. Perhaps the sacristan would still be about, and she could buy it and set it alight at once, before it slipped her memory. She passed in, and the curious oppression that had almost stopped her heart in the lodge crept over her again. Yet this time not so purely physical; a bodily memory of restraint along with a mental embarrassment, a kind of hollowness in herself, a struggle to feel something that she had felt elsewhere, but never here. Once in Chartres, she remembered. She had asked Gilles why Chartres had that strange compulsion, as though one’s body worshipped, even before one’s mind did: and he said that it had always been a sacred place, even among the Druids, that most of its Bishops had been holy men, above all St. Fulbert, who had built the Cathedral, and that the very streets were full of his presence still. Heloise had pondered: could the living and dying even of a holy man be remembered by arch and stone? Gilles had shrugged his shoulders.