Heloise

by Hager, Mandy

  ‘Gone?’ She sees a vision of a body in the Seine.

  ‘If you see him, you will act as you would with any other master. But he is as dead to us, and I will agitate to have him stripped of his position.’

  ‘Please, Uncle, if you have any love for me do not speak against him. Remember he brings many students, and to meddle might well rebound on you. I promise that just as you have banished our family from our thoughts, so I will try to do the same with him.’

  Does she believe these desperate words? She dares not look into her heart.

  Over the next two weeks, her cuts and bruises slowly fade. Jehanne reports that Abelard has lodgings in the student quarter and is not harmed. Not surprisingly, Fulbert watches her every move, but by the time she recovers enough to leave the house, he is again caught up in the business of the church.

  Heloise takes short trips to the market for Jehanne, setting her to study and making it seem as if the offer helps her eke out time. Cloaked to preserve anonymity, it is a balm to hide in the crowd, in a chaos that is external rather than that which swirls within her head. Only here, where eyes are firmly fixed on traders’ goods and voices focused on bartering rather than intrigue, can she flee the constriction of others’ judging scrutiny.

  Hoping to see Abelard, although she knows he teaches at this time, she walks to the beat of Cicero’s words: Dum spiro, spero. As long as I breathe, I hope. Heloise hates that if she sees him she will betray Fulbert yet again, but she cannot help it. Without Abelard, she feels buried alive, unable to breathe, her emotions so fervid she thinks of nothing else.

  Three weeks on she is haggling for pike at the fishmonger’s when she is approached by Corbus.

  ‘I am to tell you Master Peter sends his greetings.’ He spits the words as if impatient to be rid of them.

  ‘Thank the Lord!’

  Corbus frowns, fixing his glower over her shoulder, and produces a sealed scroll from the folds of his sleeve. ‘He says to tell you I will be here tomorrow should you wish to reply.’

  Her heart lifts. He still wishes to know her; still cares enough to seek her out. She steals to Notre-Dame’s dark sanctuary before she breaks the seal, so eager to know what is written, she brushes aside the blasphemy of reading by the glow of candles lit to honour the dead.

  To his most brilliant light, who is used to shining in the midst of darkness: may you experience no diminishing of your sweetest light. No one is unhappier than we who are simultaneously pulled in different directions by love and shame … I am paying the price for stupidity, because I am losing that good thing of which I have been completely unworthy, that good thing which I have not known how to keep as I ought …

  Despite his wordplay she can feel his pain. She spends the rest of the day drafting an answer worthy of the risks. Yet every poem, every phrase, every endearment she puts down on her tablet reads as either insincere or whining. In the end, she sends what is uppermost in her heart.

  Ever since we first met and spoke to each other, only you have pleased me and only you have I loved. Through loving you, I searched for you; searching for you, I found you; finding you, I desired you; desiring you, I chose you; choosing you, I placed you before everyone else in my heart … Nobody — except Death — will ever take you from me …

  Letter by letter, poem by poem, allusion by allusion, they reconstruct their clandestine affair, and before too long their reignited passion again exceeds all caution. There is a desperation to their interactions now, a sense they fight together against the world’s unfairness. They take to meeting when they can, late afternoon in a small back room near the daily market. Abelard pays to ensure the owner’s silence and they slip in and out unobserved as barrows are packed, livestock corralled and last-minute buyers haggle for bargains. Corbus stands guard in case there is need to warn them.

  Though the room is crude, there is a hefty bolt and one hard bed. When they meet, they barely pause to speak, scarcely disrobing as hunger overtakes them, a salve for the yearning that blights each day.

  They play this game of hide and seek for several weeks, Heloise’s jitters growing with her guilt. Then, out of nowhere, an illness drops her to her knees, her head stuck over the chamber pot after every meal. She thinks she has sickened from putrid meat or something picked up in the backstreets, but, when the heaving does not stop, she is forced to seek out Jehanne and lay her symptoms bare.

  Not halfway through her description, Jehanne suddenly stands to pour a generous drink from Fulbert’s store of wine and downs it with little pause for breath. She wipes the dregs away with the back of her hand before she slumps into her chair. Heloise fears her disease must be something dire.

  ‘When did you last have your bloods?’ Jehanne asks at last.

  Heloise shrugs. ‘I have no idea. I never mark the days.’

  Jehanne’s stare hooks hers and holds it firm. ‘Can you not tell you are expecting a child?’

  ‘A what?’ Heloise clutches the table’s edge. ‘But I—’

  ‘Have your breasts been tender? Your undergarments tight?’ Jehanne’s hand shakes as she wipes a ball of spittle from the corner of her mouth.

  Heloise nods. ‘Well, yes … but I—’

  ‘Dear God! Fulbert will kill you when he knows.’

  ‘I am to have Abelard’s child?’

  Jehanne nods. ‘Unless there is another …’

  ‘Jehanne! No!’ Heloise hauls herself up and paces the confines of the kitchen, her words reverberating like the tolling of a bell. Abelard’s child … Abelard’s child … I am to have Abelard’s child. Elation hit hers like a lightning bolt. ‘I must tell him at once!’

  ‘If you think he will celebrate, you have lost your mind.’

  ‘You do not know him as I do. A child manifests our love; therefore, he will love it, too.’

  ‘You delude yourself. You have to take this seriously. His position is conditional on his celibacy, you must know that.’

  Heloise will hear no more, retreating to her bedchamber to think it through. She is wrenched between this overwhelming and surprising joy and an all-engulfing terror that Abelard will choose his career over her and a child — and she will be left abandoned by all. The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done.

  She also fears a child will end her own scholarly dreams; that the very qualities Abelard loves in her will be buried under mundane drudgery. To be shackled together with nothing left to share but resentment would be hell. What good is a lively mind without the freedom and good companionship to engage it?

  Heloise frets as she pens a letter asking Abelard to meet her the following day. She decides not to explain until they stand face to face, hoping the hint of her joy will colour what is to come.

  I am carried away by great exultation … no manner of speech nor way with words can sufficiently express how happy I am …

  She hurries to their meeting room early, her daily queasiness further fed by nerves as she worries how best to break the news. She has grown used to Abelard’s shifting moods, one week high on bravado, the next riven with niggling doubts, relieved when he arrives out of breath and shucks his cloak with a smile.

  ‘Fair lady, you look more beautiful every time I see you.’ His hands run up the loose sleeves of her bliaut and slip off her shoulders to trace her breasts. Jehanne was right. They are more tender than ever before.

  Heloise disentangles from him and steps away, in need of a clear head. ‘I have news that cannot wait.’ She smiles and lifts his hands to her heart to feel its happy beat. ‘It seems we are to be blessed with a gift of new life.’

  A frown cleaves his brow as he lurches backwards. ‘New life?’

  She guides his hands to her belly, realisation widening his mouth.

  ‘You carry a child?’

  She nods.

  He jerks his hands away as if from flames. ‘Mine?’

  ‘You think there is someone else?’ Her earlobes blaze.

&
nbsp; I know nothing of women’s intimate business. You are sure?’

  Of all the questions, this one she has not expected. Ovid’s Canace comes in answer. ‘My colour had fled from my face; wasting had shrunk my frame; I scarce took food …’

  He visibly pales. ‘You use the words of an incestuous whore to try to win me over?’

  ‘Win you over?’ Her hand shoots to her breast as if he drives in a dagger. ‘You, who pursued me, who overcame me, who declared your love in every letter and drove a wedge between me and the one man I call family, you would ask me this?’

  ‘Did you not come to my lectures and stand there so enigmatically I had no choice but notice you? You turned those eyes on me, you—’

  ‘Enough!’ She meets his indignant gaze. ‘Observe these eyes now turned on you to witness your stupidity and shame. What can you charge me with but love?’

  ‘Stupidity? Stupidity? This is your work – your work, and that of your eyes, brighter than the fiery stars, and the cause of my burning love. Can you not see how this will tear us apart, as soon as your uncle clears the drink-addled fumes from his head and notices your shameful state? There must be herbs that would see it gone before the time it shows?’

  Heloise backs away from him and keeps on going, wrestling the bolt from its hasp with fingers reluctant to work. Abelard makes no effort to urge her back.

  Yet within the hour, Corbus, instructed to wait for her reply, delivers a tablet to their door. A sneaky act; Abelard knows she cannot risk Fulbert sighting his manservant.

  She reads the letter, sickened by the simplistic nature of the arguments he raises in defence.

  Forgive me, for I admit that I do not love patiently.

  You have conquered me, whom no woman could conquer.

  Thus I burn more strongly, this being my first love.

  My mind can scarcely rest,

  But fortunes and shame and, that which I fear, sweetest,

  The murmuring of people, obstruct my desires …

  Forgive me, since love dictates what I am forced to

  write …

  He goes on to make excuses, underlining the strict observances required of scholars at the cathedral school as if she does not know. Such obtuseness and lack of sympathy underlines her sense of doom. They clearly have nothing left to say.

  Where there is passion and love, there always rages effort, she hurriedly writes in response. Now I am tired, I cannot reply to you, because you are taking sweet things as burdensome, and in doing so you sadden my spirit. Farewell.

  She cannot rid the spectre of her own mother from her mind.

  ‘Do you know of any means to purge me of this child before its presence is obvious to Fulbert?’ she later asks Jehanne.

  Jehanne is up to her elbows in rye flour, kneading dough. ‘Do not even speak of this.’

  ‘I must. What chance will any child have if I am thrown from this house? We both know the path set for fallen women. I beg you, tell me. I have heard whispers of a “prostitute root” that expels all.’

  ‘Worm fern?’ Jehanne shakes her head violently. ‘Dear Lord, but there are many, many dangers with it — as there are with tansy and pennyroyal, too. Countless times at the infirmary we tended women who tried it, most bleeding out their lives along with the baby’s loss. Please, think again. For whatever reason, God has given you this child, it is not for you to send it back.’

  ‘But we both know if I do nothing Fulbert will banish me — if I survive his rage.’

  ‘You must return to Master Peter and demand he lays claim to you and the child.’

  Heloise rises from her chair. ‘Never. I refuse to beg.’

  ‘Did he not risk sending you a letter seeking forgiveness straight away?’

  ‘That was not an apology; it was a glossing over of his sin so he can carry on without regret.’

  ‘Can you not at least give him time to reconsider? Gertrud always said men are slow when it comes to emotion.’

  ‘To what end? You yourself said he will never willingly give up his position, especially now that some talk of him one day chancing the role of pope. If true, he will set his sights on nothing less.’ Until this moment, Heloise has swept aside such idle chatter, but now she thinks it makes sense of his frenetic need for universal love. The thought sits like a stone at the bottom of her gut.

  Jehanne laughs. ‘That is a stretch too far! It is about as believable as that fanatic from Clairvaux bedding a bride!’

  Heloise shrugs. ‘Abelard’s ambitions are limitless — and why would they not be? He is a rare and exceptional thinker.’

  ‘So? Many a good thinker still got caught out by his cock.’ Jehanne laughs at her own joke before falling back into solemnity. ‘Heloise, please promise me you will not take anything that might harm you or the baby. Swear it.’

  ‘What other choice do I have? You know Fulbert will never allow me to stay. And, if I go, how would I survive? Perhaps, yes, I could teach, but who among those with money enough would take me in, given the current climate?’ Heloise knows she has been a fool, time and time again, allowing love to override her sense. What good is education if she is still so easily swayed?

  At this moment comes an urgent rapping at the door. The women look one to the other, a nervousness passing between them before Jehanne goes forth to answer it, slapping her sides to dislodge the flour from her hands. From her seat in the kitchen, Heloise hears a child’s voice.

  When Jehanne returns, there is new colour to her cheeks. ‘It was a boy with a message from Master Peter. He waits by the river to speak with you and swears he will not leave until you join him — day or night, he does not care.’

  The fact that he has left his lecture early sets Heloise’s heart thudding. She embraces Jehanne and races past the privy to the water’s edge, where once before he waited to transport her to a night of love.

  Abelard hunkers in the shadows, his eyes red-ringed and fiery.

  ‘Oh, thanks be to God.’ He reaches out and pulls her close. ‘Forgive me. You are right and I am nothing but a fool.’

  Although she aches to lower her guard, the sting is still there. ‘A fool’s mouth is his destruction, and his lips are the snare of his soul.’ How much easier to hide behind the oblique words of the Proverbs when her own thoughts are so incendiary.

  ‘My dearest, you must listen now and lower your drawbridge to let me in.’ He smiles with such intensity as to seem almost crazed. ‘I will find a solution, just give me time. As you so deftly pointed out, I am slow to learn. Promise to do nothing but wait in the trust that I will solve this.’

  ‘How?’

  He shrugs. ‘I will seek counsel.’

  ‘You must speak to no one. Should Fulbert—’

  ‘I have no intention of allowing that man to harm you again. In this you must trust me. Will you?’

  She wants to, Lord how she does, but her mind spins in circles and time stretches until impatience sets on his face. ‘Yes, yes. Very well. But if—’

  He silences her with a kiss, not pulling away until she has softened in his arms. ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.’

  She is about to question this sacrilege when a piercing whistle so startles her she stumbles backwards.

  ‘That is my young friend,’ Abelard says, already edging away. ‘Your uncle must approach.’ He leans in again to kiss her on the brow. ‘Trust I will return.’

  She watches him skirt around the river’s edge until he is out of sight. Does she trust him? Can she? Should she? In truth, in answer to every variant she is no longer sure.

  Part Three

  * * *

  Ten

  PARIS TO BRITTANY, 1116

  Four gruelling days pass and Heloise’s mood sinks lower. On the fifth evening, Garlande arrives just as Jehanne is serving goat stewed in ale. His presence flusters Jehanne, her cheeks blazing when Fulbert invites him to join their meal. Jehanne makes all haste to leave the room.

  Garlande turn
s to her. ‘Girl, wait!’

  Jehanne stops, eyes lowered like a dog that cringes at its master’s feet.

  Heloise bristles. ‘Please …’ she prompts Garlande under her breath.

  Garlande shoots her a look of surprise, then thankfully smiles. ‘Indeed.’ He looks more kindly towards her friend. ‘Forgive me, my dear. Please stay and eat with us.’ He draws out the chair Jehanne has just vacated and gestures to it.

  Jehanne has always retreated when they are joined by guests; she looks to Fulbert for reassurance and he nods. But she picks at her meal, her gaze never leaving her plate. Heloise reaches under the table to squeeze her knee, and when their eyes meet Heloise tries to convey love to bolster her.

  Garlande turns his attention to Fulbert. ‘I come to seek a favour on the king’s behalf.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Did you hear Barcelona’s count arrived at court today?’

  Fulbert nods. ‘I hear he travels to Rome for prayers before scrapping with the infidels — though why he has travelled this far north is a mystery.’

  ‘He has set his mind to liberate Tarragona and wants Louis’s support should his invasion falter. Louis wants the count seen to the border to ensure he leaves, but care is needed not to upset him. His reputation for turning offence to war-mongering almost equals Louis’s own.’

  ‘So I have heard.’

  ‘You will need to leave at first light tomorrow and travel as far as Melun under the guise of wanting to share his knights’ protection. There, an eager young Norman called Guerin will take over the role. What do you say?’ Garlande looks to Heloise then away.

  ‘I am happy to serve so long as my niece can do without me.’ Fulbert pats her hand.

  ‘As always you will be greatly missed, Uncle, although I look forward to hearing of your travels on your return.’

  ‘Perhaps you would like to come? It would be an excellent addition to your education.’