Heloise

by Hager, Mandy

  In the hour before dawn, she is woken by Jehanne’s gentle prodding at her shoulder. ‘I have missed you so much,’ Jehanne says. ‘Fulbert is broken, his mood a never-ending storm.’

  ‘Garlande promised you were safe. I pray this is true.’

  Jehanne shrugs. ‘At times I feared him, but he did not raise his fists.’

  ‘Thank God. I am so sorry.’

  ‘It is over. I am pleased you are coming home. Look! I brought your gown to cheer you.’

  From a linen bag, she produces Heloise’s one good bliaut. The wool is dyed the vivid green of sunlit firs, its floor-scraping sleeves edged with a band of tapestry Heloise once took many days to stitch.

  ‘I love you, dear friend. Thank you.’

  ‘How do you fare? I mean, given everything?’

  Jehanne cries as Heloise tells of the wrench from Astrolabe and her fears for Abelard’s mental state.

  ‘I am sad — and humbled.’ Heloise wipes away a tear. ‘I wish I was level-headed like you. My head is full of learning but foolish where it counts.’ In her mind’s eye, she sees Astrolabe’s sweet face and her breasts begin to ache. Does he even realise she is gone?

  Heloise wrests the bliaut past the doughy skin at her waist, thankful for Jehanne’s attempt to bring a sense of celebration. Jehanne combs Heloise’s hair and plaits it through with ribbons before coiling it around her head. As a final touch, she pins a white rose to Heloise’s breast to symbolise true love. With her own hand she sets gems upon my fingers and gold in my tresses, and with her own hand places the robes about my shoulders …

  Heloise carries her fragile hope with shaking hands, reaching the altar just as dawn breaks.

  Abelard, too, has changed his clothing and stands, foot tapping, in a gown the hue of ripened wheat, one eye twitching from lack of sleep. He greets her with a kiss to her cheek.

  ‘Never doubt you are most loved by me,’ he whispers. ‘Trust this will settle, and with it so will we.’ He sounds so convinced, Heloise allows a tentative smile although her heart remains wary.

  There is the tread of boots on the flagstones, and she knows by the tensing of Abelard’s face that Fulbert comes. Heloise steels herself before she turns to greet him.

  Dear Lord. He looks so old, so shabby, his beard bedraggled and even greyer. His gaze falls on her, and a smile blossoms as he walks to her with arms outstretched.

  ‘Heloise, dear girl! God is good to deliver you back to your rightful place.’

  She steps into his shambling embrace and buries her face in his chest. He smells of sweat, the hint of wine about him also, but there is such a sense of comfort she wants to howl.

  ‘Oh, Uncle, I am so sorry. Forgive my desertion.’ She whispers this in his ear so he knows the words are genuine and spoken solely for him. ‘You have no idea how much I have missed you and worried for your care.’

  He mashes a bristled kiss onto her cheek. ‘All is forgiven, dearest, now that everything is put to rights.’ He holds her at arm’s length. ‘You have turned from girl to woman in the intervening months.’ He casts about before his gaze comes back to her, bewildered. ‘Where is the child?’

  Around her the others tense. ‘He stays on with my sister-to-be Denyse until I have settled back in your home.’

  She sees his fists clench as he turns to Garlande. ‘Tell me this is no trick, friend. You said she had borne a child.’

  ‘And so she has.’ Garlande’s tone is liquid honey. ‘I thought it best to finalise the marriage first. Once all is right then we can fetch the child and none will be the wiser.’

  By the press of Fulbert’s lips, Heloise knows this does not please him, but he nods and takes her arm, although his fists remain clenched. ‘Let us make all haste to proceed, then. I want her back in my household where she belongs.’

  Not once has Fulbert glanced at Abelard. Her worry heightens, but what can she do? This stage is set by others and the script is not her own.

  With the benediction, their marriage performance begins, Garlande overseeing as archdeacon while his tame priest officiates. Although he is senior in rank, Garlande’s knowledge of the marriage covenants does not match that of his priest, and Heloise finds she agrees with the reformers in respect to simony, if not their zeal at always casting love for woman inherently as sin. Such horse-trading of positions and privileges does little service to the underlying tenets of the Church.

  The air grows thick as the priest asks if they both come to the marriage by free mutual consent. All breath is held, eyes averted. Heloise tries to beat back the denial jostling in her head. It is a farce. Her uncle’s laboured breathing fills the excruciating silence until the priest resumes and guides them through the vows.

  She utters the words required, but in her head Ovid’s Cydippe roars on her behalf.

  Of what avail to you now the formal words of an oath, and the tongue that called on present deity to witness?… If I have willed to pledge my hand to you, exact the due rights of the promised marriage-bed; but if I have given you naught but my voice, without my heart, you possess in vain but words without a force of their own. I took no oath – I read words that formed an oath; that was no way for you to be chosen to husband by me.

  At the ceremony’s end, Abelard kisses her chastely and squeezes her hand. ‘Greetings, wife!’

  ‘Husband.’ The word feels foreign, like the first she uttered in Hebrew or Latin. It hangs in the air, alive and potent, an aberration in the world of Abelard’s dearly loved categories, arguably substance and qualification both at once.

  With no more ceremony than that, Abelard and Corbus take their leave through the chapel’s back door, clambering across the stockpiles of stones and timber like thieves disturbed. After a pause, Heloise, Fulbert and Jehanne leave by the main doors and walk to rue des Chantres. They share no marriage feast; in fact, there is no fuss at all. Instead, Heloise settles her belongings back into her room, alone, bereft of both man and child.

  Jehanne sets about curing Heloise’s ills. She binds her breasts in cabbage leaves to ease their painful swellings and feeds her broths of quick-grass, thyme and roses. At night, when Heloise wakes crying out for Astrolabe, Jehanne is right beside her for the comfort of a living body.

  To Heloise’s relief, Fulbert trims his beard and pays attention to his clothes and, though he still drinks to excess, overall his moods are easier.

  As tension relaxes and her body starts to heal, she and Abelard begin to meet — though rarely. It is hard to escape from Fulbert’s close attention, and to a degree this suits her; it relieves her of the need to lie when met by those who hanker for salacious tidbits in the street.

  When they do meet, Abelard swears undying love and says he will soon bring Astrolabe home. But though she hungers for her child like a starving man for food, days turn to weeks and nothing is done. Her agitation is soon as obvious as Fulbert’s.

  Several times Fulbert is heard to blurt their secret to neighbours and claim that Abelard imprisons their son. When drunk, he questions her to the point of fury, convinced the child does not exist.

  One night as she returns from the privy, he blocks her way to the stairs. The stench of wine rises off him as he turns on her.

  ‘Why do you allow such falsehoods to sour between us? Do you not owe me more?’

  ‘What do you mean, Uncle?’ Her heart makes the run her legs cannot.

  He lunges and seizes her by the neck of her gown. ‘This talk of a child was a lie to soften me to your desertion and then marriage to that cockscomb, was it not? There is no child. Admit it now!’

  ‘Uncle, please. I truly have a son and grieve as much as you that he is not here.’ Every word is an effort to push past his knuckles at her throat.

  ‘You lie!’ He slaps her, his gold ring biting into her cheekbone.

  Jehanne comes running. ‘Canon Fulbert! Stop!’

  Jehanne grabs for his arm but he shoves her aside to force Heloise to the ground. He wrenches up her gown, foot to her throat as he
looks for signs of recent birth. At his sighting of the snail-tracks that mark her stomach and breasts, he roars with heart-turning grief and flees the house.

  Heloise crawls to Jehanne on knees of aspic, huddling until her shaking stops. What a fool to have believed Fulbert would not have welcomed her son. Quite the opposite. Why did she not fight harder to keep him? The fool foldeth her hands together, and eateth her own flesh.

  From this time forth, Fulbert is more lax, bragging of Astrolabe’s existence and their married state. It makes no sense to crow of what most shames him; Heloise can only assume he hopes her father will hear and feel regret. Words run from his mouth like cack from loosened bowels, and the townsfolk love this unfolding tale of concealment and sin. Heloise’s and Abelard’s names are whispered on every corner, they become the talk of taverns, the subject gossiped about after Mass. Heloise feels as if she walks a dangerous precipice, more ground eroding beneath her with every step.

  One day as she follows Fulbert home, head down after the end of the noonday service, two men approach; one she recognises as Alberic of Rheims. He comes at Fulbert with a pitiless smile, while his companion keeps his distance. The back of Fulbert’s neck flushes such an unhealthy shade, Heloise fears for him.

  ‘My dear Canon Fulbert, may I offer my congratulations. I hear you are now family by secret marriage to that most pious of men, Peter Abelard.’

  Fulbert’s initial discomfort transforms, clearly missing Alberic’s sarcasm. ‘Indeed I am, sir, though it is hardly secret! That great man, the finest philosopher of our times, has blessed my niece Heloise not only with marriage but a fine son!’

  How he can say this when in his house he curses Abelard, she does not know. But those around them snicker behind their hands, and Fulbert turns an even more peptic shade as Alberic’s companion snorts.

  Alberic now rounds on Heloise, condescension streaming off him like a loathsome smell. ‘I congratulate you, Madame, on your well-made marriage to that — that — that great upholder of piety at the Church’s school.’

  She knows it is a set-up. Any admission will do Abelard most grievous harm. Those around them eagerly wait for her to confirm or deny Fulbert’s boast. Heloise is caught. If she admits the marriage, they will set upon Abelard like baying hounds; if she refutes it, she destroys her uncle. It is the very dilemma she fought so hard to avoid. Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

  She draws a shaky breath. ‘I fear my uncle’s enthusiasm, sir, has run ahead of the facts.’ She dares not look at Fulbert but feels his rage as a psychic attack. Damn Alberic to Hell.

  Alberic licks his bottom lip. ‘You are not his wife?’ He looks back over his shoulder at his companion; around them the crowd rustles like leaves in the wind.

  She stares at him. His smugness is repugnant. ‘And I can assure you he is a better man than most.’ She lets the implication hang, knowing she digs her own grave but now too angry to care. Curse him. Curse Abelard even as she chooses him over Fulbert. Curse her own foolishness.

  The onlookers’ whispers turn to a battering gale as her uncle seizes her with such force she yowls, the scandalmongers and gawkers all drawing animated breath. What choice did she have?

  ‘She lies!’ Fulbert’s shouting delights his audience. ‘She is bewitched by that wretched man. I saw the marriage myself. Ask my housekeeper — she was there — and that devil’s man, Corbus. They witnessed it. And ask the chancellor. Ask Stephen de Garlande!’

  Fulbert drags Heloise away to the sound of their laughter, and when she trips he jerks her upright by her hair. As soon as they get through the door at rue des Chantres, he thrusts her up against the wall and pins her there.

  ‘Do you know who that was with Alberic, you stupid, stupid girl?’

  She shakes her head. Swallows hard.

  ‘He is connected to your father — and you have just destroyed what I have worked at for the last twenty-three years. Damn you. Damn you! How could you do this?’

  He does not wait for an answer. Instead, he now beats her as viciously as he did once before. She curls into a ball and prays to die.

  ‘You have betrayed me! You and that devil’s spawn who stole the one possession I had left. You are dead to me, do you hear? Dead. Live in my house, so I may never be labelled as foulsome as your sire, but know this: should you ever deny the marriage again, or let that man enter my house, you will beg for a beating such as this. Next time it will be tenfold in its force.’ Fulbert reels away, shutting himself in the parlour to make free with the wine.

  Jehanne does her best to console, and again patches up Heloise. But this time, although her body rallies, Heloise falls into mental decline, unable to eat, her mind revolving over the inaccessibility of Abelard and the loss of Astrolabe.

  From this point on, every small irritation Fulbert finds in her is rewarded with a slap or a well-placed shove, his sanity fracturing before their eyes. Heloise has no means of escape: he pays for guards both front and back, and forces her to use a chamber pot so she has no excuse to leave the house. Only for their daily walk to church is she allowed to leave, and then he speaks to no man, a silent, seething jailer.

  Eventually Jehanne searches out Abelard to tell him of Heloise’s state. Garlande is away and no one will say where.

  It takes him days, but finally Abelard sends word of a plan. The following night, as Fulbert snores, full to his boots, Jehanne slips the guards a sleeping draught and Heloise steals from the house and runs to Garlande’s stable. Abelard is there, again with a habit for her to wear. Together they creep to the river and into a boat to head for Argenteuil, so anxious to hide their identity from the boatman that they barely speak.

  When they arrive at the convent, Heloise is swept by a host of conflicting memories: the joyous times with Sister Saris, the isolation and intellectual loneliness of the rest. She pushes her unease aside to beg Mother Alberea’s successor to give her temporary sanctuary within the convent’s walls, while Abelard passes her a generous purse. Before he leaves, Abbess Basilia allows them a moment together alone.

  ‘I will come back, my love, and see you often. You have my word.’

  ‘But what of Astrolabe? Could I not return to Brittany and live as before with Denyse?’

  Abelard takes her face between his hands as if to mesmerise her. ‘My place is here and I cannot bear the thought of living without you.’

  ‘But you are to leave me here alone and I have barely seen you.’ Fulbert’s accusations return to sharpen her panic. She shakes him off. ‘Tell me right now: do you ever intend to reunite me with my son?’

  Now he will not look at her. ‘What kind of life would it be for him without a proper family? With Denyse he has siblings and a mother who is practised in the art.’

  ‘Mother?’ Fulbert’s blows hurt less than this reassigning of rights.

  ‘My love, be calm. I will make the trip as often as I can. Meanwhile, jump less to conclusions and let your logic guide you.’

  ‘You have forfeited my son!’ Heat consumes her. ‘There are times when one must bow to what is simply right. Do you think it is so easy to bear a growing life for nine long months then let it go without a care?’ Her mother’s absence stings like a nest of wasps.

  ‘Heloise, hush. Enough. Do you think I have not given this much thought? You disrespect me. Thinking is what I do; it is my life’s work — a life far longer lived than yours and therefore better qualified to make this judgement on our son’s behalf.’ The signs of mania are alive in him: the rabid glow that builds in his eyes, the unceasing movement as if he suffers a dose of fleas. He holds out his hands, palms up, unable to control their shake. ‘See what your senseless needling does?’

  That he is ill she can pity; that he plays it against her riles her up. ‘Does my misery mean nothing to you? Astrolabe is part of me; you might as well chop off my arms and legs.’

  ‘I will not be blackmailed by your unchecked emotions. This is his best option.
My brother Porchaire will oversee his education, and Denyse will give him all the love he needs. I have paid a large sum for his well-being. The deal is done.’

  ‘Then you must undo it!’ Heloise beats at his chest, fists pummelling, a pain in her own chest as if her heart explodes. He catches her wrists and forces them to her sides.

  ‘You will thank me for this one day, when you are free to think without the mewlings and disruptions of a child. Is this not what you yourself argued? Think of the work we can do.’

  She gathers her strength to shake him off, but at this moment the Reverend Mother returns. He releases her with a forced laugh. ‘Now, now, my love, no more of your tears. I will see you again soon.’

  He kisses her on the wrist, where the marks of his fingers still throb, and bows to Mother Basilia. Heloise stares open-mouthed as he walks away without so much as a backward glance.

  Heloise is swallowed again by Argenteuil’s cloistered walls, a nun in all but veil and any desire to solely serve the Lord. It is not that she does not love or worship Him, but she does not want to spend the rest of her life any more constrained by the Church’s rules than she already is. As it is, the hypocrisy of the Church has stripped her of everyone she loves. Heloise spends her nights and days plotting, weighing up all possible options to free herself and reclaim her son.

  If she can surmount her disillusionment with Abelard, it is still possible — though by no means probable — they could live some other way and join together openly as man as wife. And Fulbert might possibly reconcile himself to them if they toss away Abelard’s future plans and commit to a less public life. Abelard could resign his tenure at Notre-Dame and find another scholastic occupation; he has, after all, Stephen de Garlande’s backing and a name known across the Christian world. He could live quite comfortably as tutor in the royal court — or in some position within the clutch of Church-run schools whose rules on celibacy are less intrusive and strategic. Perhaps he might find himself better rewarded with a bishopric — handing him a job, status and somewhere to live — than living as an argumentative philosophy master for hire? Her favoured solution, though probably his least, is that he returns to more humble school-teaching, as he did when William of Champeaux first hounded him from Paris. If so, she could reclaim Astrolabe and teach alongside him, as Gertrud did with Master Kalman. Any of these resolutions are possible; none are likely.