Peter Abelard

by Helen Waddell

  For a long moment, silence kept the valley. Then the mare, impatient to be home, pawed the soft ground and tossed her head with a jingling of the bit. At the sharp sound in that quiet place, Heloise raised her head, and saw a strange horseman on the track beside the stream. The light was in her eyes. She put up her hand to shade them, but in that moment he had leapt to the ground and was striding towards her, his cloak streaming behind him in the old remembered gesture. She did not move to meet him, because she could not: but as he came nearer he cried aloud, not to greet her, but at the glory that was in her face.

  CHAPTER III

  The two men, Abelard and Hugh the Stranger, sat on for a while by the hearth after the women had gone to bed. No one, not even Heloise, had asked him what brought him to break his purpose, and come back to Le Palais before the summer. But it was a house where his comings and goings had never been questioned: as for Heloise, he judged that she had sufficient answer in her own heart. For himself, he was strangely loath to break the trance of peace that had held him all day. Paris and his lodging in the Maison du Poirier and the dark house in the Rue des Chantres had fallen illimitably far: they had nothing to do with this simpler, less complicated, less urgent world. Hugh asked him if he had noticed how far the ploughing was on round Beaupréau, and if he had seen the way Hucbald was letting the rushes spoil his pasture; he had no care for the clogging of his drains. He had heard snipe drumming on the bog: now that the close season was over, Abelard and he might have a day or two’s fishing, if he could stay. It was queer, said Hugh, how Lent and the close season for trout should so often overlap, but thank God to-morrow was Easter Day. If all had gone as it should, they would have been christening Denise’s last to-morrow, but he had only breathed long enough to be baptised. Hugh crossed himself. Denise had fretted a while, but it was a mercy young Peter Astrolabe was on hands, and in the end she had taken him from his mother, for Heloise was growing thin with suckling that great boy. But I’m keeping you up, Peter, he said, suddenly remembering, and stood up to go to bed. Abelard went with him through the solar, paused to say good night to Denise lying half asleep with his son pudgy and comfortable on her accustomed arm, and opened the door that led from it to the stairway to the keep.

  The great hall and the solar had been new built by his grandfather on the gentle western slope of the hill, and no one coming up the causeway that climbed to it from the village, over the drawbridge and into the green courtyard, would have dreamt that the eastern face broke in a shaggy cliff almost sheer to the river. But the keep up which Abelard was climbing was older far: they had built it out of the hillside almost as the cliff-swallows might, story after story hewn in part from the rock, and the battlements that crowned it were continued round the grassy mound of the cliff-top. Even in Berengar’s time the three small rooms, one above the other, had been little used, unless for stores, the lower two for sacks of grain, the topmost for a kind of armoury: and when Abelard had made the demand, unheard of for a youngster of twelve, that he might have it for himself, instead of sleeping with his brothers in the great hall-bed, as comfortable as a basket of puppies, the household thought the boy was bewitched. But Berengar was an indulgent father: he had the carpenter make him a box bed and a table and a great chest. The windows in the four-foot walls were no wider than arrow-slits, but the landscape glimpsed through them had a queer wizard quality of remoteness, and above all the stairway led up a few steps into that walled and grassy place, a natural rampart that no one could reach unless by his consent, and that was a well of sunlight all the summer long. Not even the bleakest January nights could drive him from his eyrie to the frowsty warmth of his brothers’ bed; and even when he came back, a distinguished stranger, he had been firm in refusing the state-bed for visitors in the solar, beside the master’s bed where Denise and her husband slept. It was to his eyrie that he had brought Heloise, and there she had slept till in November Denise had refused to allow her to go any longer up and down the dark uncertain steps. For the boy’s sake, she had stayed down for the winter with Denise, but now that he was taken from her she had gone back to sleep among the battered shields and boar spears. The walled grassy space high under heaven had the same enchantment for her as for Abelard: she would sit there with Peter Astrolabe by the hour, exulting that even the wheeling pigeons would not come so far.

  So, when Abelard reached the topmost stair and felt rather than saw that the room was empty, he knew where he would find her. But for a moment he hesitated, standing in the dark. Confident as he had been all the long days of riding, and steady as his purpose was, he had a misgiving that he could not understand. Would Heloise feel as he did, or rather, as he had, for the peace of this day had in some queer way shaken that earlier, stranger peace? He would gladly put it off till the morning, if he could: but he had felt before the day was ended that she was aware of some undercurrent in him. He straightened his shoulders, and climbed out under the open sky.

  She had been watching for him, puzzled by the long wait in the empty room below, and was about to rise to come down to him when the dark figure suddenly loomed up between her and the stars. Abelard heard the little catch in her breath, and all the trouble of his errand was forgotten in a surge of tenderness that brought him to the ground beside her, his arms about her knees. She stooped over him, holding his head so tightly in her hands as almost to hurt him. Then, relaxing with a long sigh of content, she sat back; he knelt beside her, his arms about her body, his head against her shoulder, and she gathered the folds of her cloak about them both.

  For a long time they sat, unwilling to speak or move, their mood as quiet as the April night. Then suddenly Heloise spoke, her voice cracking a little.

  “Abelard, I cannot bear to ask you, but it is tearing at me. When must you go?”

  “The day after to-morrow, little heart.” His arms tightened about her as he felt her quiver. “But——” he hesitated, and plunged, “I shall take you with me.”

  “With you!” It was a cry of pure ecstasy. She thrust him away from her, to look at his face, laughter bubbling in her throat. Then she grew suddenly grave. “But, dearest, how? What could you do with me?”

  “It is going to be all different, Heloise. Before I came away, I went to see your uncle.” He felt an uncontrollable shiver go through her, and again his arm tightened about her. “Dearest, he will not touch you. He will never touch you again. Heloise, your heart would break for him if you saw him, he is so little and broken and old.”

  He got to his feet. It was being unbelievably difficult.

  “I saw him one day.” But how could he tell her, how make her see the agony that had shown him all men’s agony: he could hardly remember it now himself: it was a thing that might have happened to another man.

  “I had been reading. I was thinking about you. And I saw him from the window, so shabby, not looking at anyone, hurrying to get home. I could not bear it. And I went after him and he tried to push me away. His hands . . . And I asked him if it would make it better if I married you.”

  He turned at the further end of the parapet to look at her. She was sitting quite still, her eyes fixed straight before her. Yet even in the faint light he recognised the look that was in them. He had seen it before, the same attitude, the same stare; it was when he looked back from kneeling beside Fulbert, with the candle rolling, still burning, on the floor.

  “Heloise,” he came across to her, the words tumbling from him, “you must not look like that. You must listen to me.” He was stooping over her, he had caught her arms, almost shaking her. “What is there to be afraid of? Fulbert—if you had seen him. Oh, my dear, he cried with happiness. And I—I was so happy too.” His voice broke in spite of himself; he looked like a bewildered child.

  A little sound broke from Heloise, half laugh, half sob. She caught him to her. “Oh, my little one,” she said, crushing his cheek against hers. “Oh, my little one,” and for a moment she crooned over him, still laugh
ing, but her tears hot on his face. Then suddenly she sat up and held him away from her.

  “Dear, I am sorry. I will be reasonable. Sit down, or walk up and down if you like, and tell me about it.”

  He stood up with a relieved shake of his shoulders, like a retriever come to land.

  “Well . . . there isn’t much more to tell. Somehow, it all seemed easy, after that. I said I would come here for you, and bring you back with me, secretly, and you would be with him, just as if you had never been away. And then we would get married, and you would go on living with him, just as you used to. Only that he will let us see each other as much as we like.”

  There was a silence for a while. It did not sound to Abelard so credible as before.

  “Do you remember Evrard and his house-keeper?” said Heloise, almost casually.

  Abelard flushed. “That was different. That—— But I forgot to tell you. Fulbert promised—he gave me his oath—that he would keep our marriage a secret. It is only for his own peace of mind. He does not care about anything else if he knows that we are married and not—not living in sin. He does love you, Heloise,” he ended wistfully.

  “I know. He did.” The edge of bitterness had gone from her voice and left it toneless. “But—you do not understand, Abelard. You did not live with him for months and months after . . . after he knew. He—it isn’t the same man. We killed him, that night. And now something else walks about in his dead body.” She was shivering, but her voice was steady enough. “Sometimes the old Fulbert comes back. That was what made it so terrible. But it was a ghost coming back. The string is broken. Only, if a hand it knows touches it——” She ended in a little moan.

  “But, Heloise, if you had seen him. He put his arms round me and kissed me, when I was coming away. And he took his oath as solemnly as if it were on the Host. He does not want to ruin me. I could swear he does not. And he knows it would ruin me if—if this were known.”

  She shook her head. “Abelard, you do not know the power you have over people. When you are with him, he is what you think him to be, gentle and magnanimous, and old. But I know. Gilles knows, ask Gilles. He is mad. Did you,” her voice was suddenly eager, “did you tell Gilles?”

  “I did.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said, Quem deus vult perdere. He said too,” Abelard was determined to be honest, “‘Take Heloise my greeting, and tell her I agree with every word she will say.’”

  Heloise made no comment. Suddenly she rose, and going across to him, put her hands on his shoulders and looked into his face.

  “Abelard, will you listen to me, and not think I am putting my will against yours? Not think that I am only a woman talking? No, do not kiss me. Not yet.”

  “Beloved, could I ever think you only a woman talking?”

  Heloise was looking over his shoulder, as if she heard an echo from some forgotten sunny morning of childish grief. And the day will come when I am no more Heloise but just a woman—and then she had heard Abelard’s foot on the stair. She drew her mind away.

  “Listen, Abelard. It is not a question of whether or not Fulbert will keep his word, and keep our marriage secret. I know he will not. But this is what matters, that you should do a thing that will put it in his power to ruin you—do a thing that would be your ruin, if he, or anyone else, chose to say it aloud.”

  Abelard moved restlessly. “You speak as if marriage were adultery.”

  “It is a kind of adultery,” said Heloise, “for you.”

  He looked at her, mutely questioning: here was no moment for quick answers.

  “I know what you could say, you could say that marriage is a sacrament. I do not know. Perhaps it is for a layman. But it is not a sacrament for you. I cannot tell you, cannot explain to you, what I mean. I cannot explain it to myself. It is not only that you would be breaking faith with the Church, it is breaking faith with something you pledged yourself to, long before you were tonsured, or took the canon’s vows: the Civitas Dei, only it is wider than Augustine’s—Plato would know, and Socrates—it’s the spirits of just men made perfect, a kind of community of noble souls.” She stopped breathless.

  He looked down at her, worshipping, but honestly perplexed.

  “But, Heloise, if this is true, I break faith—and I know I break faith—every time I take you in my arms.”

  She looked at him fearlessly. “I know you do. I know that we are living in what the Church calls fornication and uncleanness, even if to me it has burnt up heaven and earth into such a glory that I cry out to God in an adoration for it, when I should be on my knees repenting it. And I know they are wrong, St. Paul or St. James or whoever it was. And yet I know, I feel in my heart that they were right.”

  Still he did not speak.

  “But I have accepted that. If—if it had been different, if you had not been sworn to a diviner thing, I might have married you and gone on my knees for the blessing of the Church, and felt our nuptial mass was not a lie. But I know that this is our sin, which is also our glory. And what we must not do is to pretend that it is not a sin, and sprinkle it with holy water and cover it up with holy words, until it rots us.”

  He stopped her then.

  “Heloise, you do not know. You never knew your father and mother. You were brought up in a convent, and then by an old man, among churchmen. If you had known my father—but think even of Denise.”

  There broke from her a little wailing cry. “Ah, if we only could, if we only could.” She buried her face in his breast.

  He took her in his arms. “But, little love, we can. Why should we not live as happy as they do?”

  She sprang away from him. “Because we cannot. Because we must hide and lie, and lie and hide. And even then it will be of no use, and the truth will come out and I shall have smirched the proudest name in Christendom. Do you think I have not heard what they say? Do you think I have not read what the Fathers have said about women—what men have said about women—since the beginning of the world? Do you think it is easy for a woman to read over and over again that she is a man’s perdition? Oh, my love, were there ever two great lovers, but they ended in sorrow?”

  “But, Heloise, what of your name? You that talk of smirching mine?”

  She looked at him a little while without speaking.

  “Beloved, do you not know that I would rather be called your harlot than be empress of Christendom?”

  He dropped on his knees at her feet, hiding his face in her dress.

  “But,” she went on, “you must let me choose. I want nothing from you but you. I will have you bound by no bond but your love only. I am not ashamed to be called your harlot. I would be ashamed to be called your wife. I shall do you no harm as your harlot. They’ll only laugh a little and sing the Chanson d’Aristote: and now that I am away here in Brittany, they will forget. And I know—I I know already how much better it is for your work that you see me seldom. Sometimes,” her voice shook, “you will come here, and we shall still be happy. Think of this morning. And if it is agony, your going away, I sometimes think that perhaps God will let it be our expiation for whatever is unlawful in our joy.”

  For a long time neither spoke: he knelt, his face still hidden, her hand touching his hair. Bewildered, half-convinced by her wild logic, shaken to the soul by her amazing generosity, he had no words. His mind went round and round the weary circle. But of one thing only he was sure: that when he had given his word to Fulbert to marry Heloise, he had known it was the one thing he must do. How grievously he had sinned against the Church or Heloise or himself, he did not know: but as to the quality of his sin against Fulbert he had no illusion: it was the supreme betrayal. While Heloise spoke, he had seen the world under lightning flashes of glory and terror, but not this plain sin between man and man. He had betrayed the house that sheltered him: he had played on the credulous affection of an innocent garrulous old man. For t
he sin of his flesh he would stand up and take whatever punishment God was pleased to send him, but this he could not face. He was Berengar’s son: and he had failed in the point of honour.

  He got to his feet, and drew her over to her seat against the parapet. He could feel her trembling with exhaustion and reaction, and he himself was deadly weary, but they must make an end this night, if it killed them.

  “Will you listen to me, beloved?” he began, speaking very quiet and low. “You will not let me take you in marriage. Secret or open, you say it is a sin: secret or open, you say it will destroy me. By this time I think my enemies have found that it is hard to destroy me. At any rate, whether our marriage is kept a secret or whether it is blazoned on the housetops, I know that I must have no more thought of high place in the Church. I shall not live a lie to myself. But, if Fulbert keeps his word, in a few years I shall have made myself such a name in Europe that an open avowal of my marriage will not even mist my fame. And whether he keeps his word or not, I must keep mine.”

  Heloise had been listening with drooped head and half-closed eyes, but at the sudden ring in his voice she looked up startled. For the first time she was seeing him, neither lover nor scholar nor master of debate, but the son of an ancient Breton house. That was what Gilles meant when he called him the Palatine.

  “How God looks upon our sins together, I am too bewildered to think, for I ask myself how can that be evil when all the good that is in me is bound up with my love of you. If it is evil, there is penance for it. But one thing I have done, and there is no penance for it. Thinking by myself alone, away from you, I saw that I had done a thing for which a heathen Saracen would spit at me. I betrayed the man whose bread I had eaten. You were his ward: he trusted you to me, and I defiled you, eating at his table and sleeping under his roof. I wounded his honour, but I wounded my own, nigh to death.”

  Still she was silent.

  “Do you not see, beloved?” he went on, troubled. “It is not only between you and me. It is between me and him. And I have given him my word.”