Heloise

by Hager, Mandy

  His words move her. ‘You are a good man, Stephen de Garlande. Thank you for your steadfast friendship.’

  He blushes, something she never thought she would see. What a strange thing life is, and how wonderful that Garlande has discovered the power of love — and that it was Jehanne who held the key.

  That night, when all are tucked up in their beds, Heloise creeps out through the gates and along the lane to the middle of a nearby field. Here she releases the howls that rise in waves from the pit of her belly into the sky. She thought she had passed the years of crying, sick of her own vulnerability, but this, oh this, it feels as if her heart is tearing apart. How can she live without him? One way or another he has defined her for the past twenty-seven years, good or bad, so where does this leave her now?

  So many losses … And the irony is that loss teaches her to treasure those she has, so when it happens again — and again, and again — each hurts all the more. If there is a lesson in this she does not like it. That loss is innately paired with love and therefore to risk love is to welcome loss is a curious thing. As Aristotle would say: the gods are fond of a good joke.

  Slowly she collects herself, breathing through the pain until she is left with a silent ache. She kneels in the long meadow grass, then rocks back to hug her knees. Above her the stars pierce the velvet dark and a crescent moon shines so bright it bleeds a rim of silver that maps its complete orb. Farewell, my heart, my body, my love …

  In the following days, not a moment goes by when Abelard is not foremost in Heloise’s thoughts, and she is filled with gratitude for what her life with him has taught her. Now she even appreciates the pain he caused. Just as alchemists transmute base metals into gold, so did he transform her through trials by fire: those griefs, those challenges that pushed her mind and forced her to find her own way to contentment.

  Cluny’s Peter the Venerable writes her a moving letter describing Abelard’s last few days, still at his work.

  He was engaged on such occupations when the visitor of the gospels came to find him, and found him awake, not asleep like so many; found him truly awake, and summoned him to the wedding of eternal life … And so Master Peter ended his days. He who was known all over the world for his unique mastery of knowledge. God cherishes him in his bosom, and keeps him there to be restored to you through his grace at the coming of the Lord.

  In a final act of compassion, and at odds with Cluny’s laws, Peter adds a postscript to say he is sending Abelard’s body home to be buried at the Paraclete. He asks Garlande to accompany the remains, and thus Heloise prepares with her sisters to give Abelard the farewell he deserves.

  On the day Garlande is due, Heloise rallies her composure and busies herself with preparations. She has overseen the digging of the grave in a spot that overlooks the rolling fields, and the masons have readied his stone in the days before. She sends Agatha and Agnes to gather yellow lilies to lay around his graveside. Yet she does not want to believe the man who has so changed her life is really dead. She dreads his arrival and fears the sight of his coffin will undo her.

  She is speaking with Rhecia in the kitchen when word arrives the cart has come. Heloise wills up the strength to carry her through this day, and then walks out to meet Garlande and his most precious of cargoes.

  To her surprise, he is not alone. Jehanne sits alongside him, jumping down before the cart has come to a stop. She runs to Heloise, eyes luminous with tears, and clasps her tight. All Heloise’s preparations for calm are swept aside as silent sobs jolt through her, feeling her friend’s body shake along with her own.

  ‘I could not stay away,’ Jehanne murmurs in her ear.

  Heloise blows out a steadying breath. ‘I did not think this day would see me smile, but you have proved me wrong.’ She kisses Jehanne and then holds her at arms’ length. Her friend has aged, as has she, but Jehanne still glows with the open warmth that first defined her.

  ‘It is to be a day of surprises then,’ Jehanne says, tears still wet on her cheeks as she lets loose with an enigmatic smile.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Just wait,’ Jehanne says, her faced filled with the mischief of old.

  Garlande approaches now, and Heloise steps forward to embrace him. ‘Thank you so much,’ she says. ‘I can think of no greater kindness.’

  ‘It is my privilege.’ Garlande takes her face between his hands. ‘Ah, my girl. I wish I was not the bearer of such a terrible load.’

  Heloise kisses his cheek. ‘I am glad to receive you all the same.’

  Over his shoulder, she can see the box on the cart, draped in bleached cloth. It looks smaller than she expects, as if it could not possibly bear Abelard’s human remains. Beyond, another carriage approaches and she turns to Garlande for explanation. Abelard’s burial is supposed to be on the quiet; she could not stand for Abbot Peter’s thoughtful gesture to create trouble for him — or them.

  ‘Who else comes?’

  Garlande checks behind and smiles. ‘Thibaud and Matilda wish to pay their respects.’ He turns briefly towards Jehanne and then away.

  As the carriage draws up behind the cart, Heloise sees that another sits with them. A tall young man in a modest robe — with Abelard’s striking forehead and searing eyes — stares back at her. Dear God! Heloise grips Garlande’s arm, her other hand slapped to her lips to hold back the emotion that threatens to upend her.

  Thibaud and Matilda watch with beaming smiles as Astrolabe climbs down from the carriage and walks towards her. He even moves like his father, taking long loping steps as she starts to run, arms outstretched, with no care for the keening that breaks from her unchecked. When they meet, she throws her arms around him and feels his tightening around her. She buries her face in his chest, breathing in the scent of him, knowing him, loving him. He is hers. Oh, thank God, he is hers and he has finally come.

  It is such a sense of comfort, Heloise struggles to pull away. She winds her fingers into his hair to caress his head, remembering its newborn form and the curve of his perfect ears. Through her sobs, she finally manages to dredge up words.

  ‘Oh, my son. Never has a grieving heart been so uplifted.’ She pulls back to kiss his cheeks, his nose, his chin, before he can take breath to speak. That he has come all the way from Nantes moves her greatly.

  There is a flush to his cheeks. ‘Lady Heloise—’ He stops and swallows, then starts again. ‘Mother. I wish we had met before this saddest of days.’

  Heloise cannot keep her hands from him, stroking his face as she studies his features. He has her upturned mouth and lips, and perhaps her nose, but his eyes are Abelard’s alone: intense, alert, brilliant. ‘I can think of no more fitting way to farewell your father than to have us all together to see him on his way.’ She clasps his hands, his fingers long and shaped just like those of the man she has loved for nearly three decades. ‘Thank you. You have no idea how much this means to me.’

  ‘Me, too.’ He blushes. ‘I mean, I feel the same.’

  Through her happy daze, she hears the sounds of sniffing, reminding her they are not alone. Thibaud and Matilda stand arm in arm, Matilda crying as she smiles. This day, which Heloise thought to travel through holding her emotions tight in check, has turned from quiet tragedy to something warm and all-encompassing. Every person she cares for is now around her. The Lord is truly good to send her such kind comfort.

  Not for one moment does she release her son. She welcomes Thibaud and Matilda and ushers them all inside, leaving Agnes and Agatha to sit with Abelard until her guests are refreshed and Father Pelfort arrives to take the service. As they chatter around her, all she can think is my son, my son.

  Now they go together and carry Abelard’s simple box into the chapel, her sisters gathered to sing the hymns he composed for them, and they commend his soul to God. At the service’s end she, Astrolabe, Garlande, Jehanne, Agatha and Agnes carry his box to the grave, lowering it into the earth as Father Pelfort conducts the committal.

  As the pr
iest speaks, Garlande produces several quills and styluses and drops them onto the shrouded box. Until this point, Heloise has held together, the ceremony’s structure working to calm her, but now, as they start to throw the clods of earth on top of the box and the instruments that poured forth his genius, the finality hits. She starts to weep, her tears sliding freely as through her mind washes a host of memories: that first lecture when his eyes met hers, the first unexpected kiss, the wonder of the night in Garlande’s vineyard, his declarations of love, the look on his face when he first saw Astrolabe, his pride when she argued her points and won, that last sad parting at Sens where he opened his heart and spoke its truths …

  She feels an arm wrap around her shoulder and looks up to her son. How can one heart be filled with so much grief, yet at the same time, utter jubilation?

  As night draws in, her friends depart to lodge more comfortably with the monks at St Ayoul, but Astrolabe opts to stay. Now at last they can talk, and she leads him to her office and pours them each a glass of wine.

  She cannot stop looking at his face, watching its shifts and the shadows of her and Abelard lurking at its edges. ‘Tell me,’ she says, ‘can you forgive me for my desertion?’

  ‘There is nothing to forgive.’

  She shakes her head. ‘Believe me there is. I should have fought harder for you. I should have—’

  ‘Mother, please. I had a fine childhood and was treated with kindness. And you have no idea how your letters have sustained me. Perhaps we know each other better for this — I find it easier to put my feelings into words on the page or into music than face to face.’

  ‘The need to write, I hope you get from me; the music comes most definitely from your father.’

  ‘I wish to take it further, but right now I cannot see a way.’

  ‘I am sure Cluny’s Peter could find a position—’

  Astrolabe holds up a hand, smiling. ‘If I need help, I will ask! Trust me, I have no doubt you are on my side.’ He sips his wine, his focus shifting inward for a moment. ‘Tell me, do you think my father deserved to be judged a heretic? Living within the Church, I find it hard to carry the weight of this.’

  Heloise’s day-long tumble of emotions, together with the wine, free her tongue. ‘Of course not. They wanted him gone, those fine upstanding men who call on us to act in accordance with God’s laws, but instead impose their own. They took a mind — so stellar as to break apart and magnify God’s mysteries solely through reasoned thought — and crushed it because he showed them up.’ As she speaks, his eyes open wide. ‘They value cunning over good intention and do not treasure logic or creativity but venal acts of wealth accumulation, prostituting ethics in their ugly race for power.’

  ‘These are strong words from one also bound by their laws.’

  Heloise laughs. ‘My old age gives me gnashing teeth!’

  ‘You are hardly old.’

  ‘Next year, I will have lived half a century. But in many ways old age is freeing. I no longer compromise my private thoughts to serve the vanity of others. When we are young, we women dwell at the very centre of men’s gaze, slipping to their peripheral vision by midlife, until we vanish altogether from their eyes and, therefore, thoughts — and perhaps they would be surprised to know how much we relish it. Their games are tiresome. The likes of Bernard lecture us on the evils of seduction, yet if we do not flatter him he is incensed.’

  ‘I was at Nantes when Bernard came to open the new monastery at Buzé. I have to say, I found his ideas persuasive.’

  ‘I, too, if not for his zealotry and hypocrisy. I like his call for simplicity and self-sufficiency, and most of all his focus on the gospels that preach of love. In fact, in many ways our practice here more aligns to the Cistercians than Benedictines. But I see no proof in his actions of the same compassion he preaches. He hounded your father for all the wrong reasons, his talk of love a sham.’

  ‘I once tried to speak with Father about Bernard’s new ways. He wrote me a very long poem of instruction, and tried to steer me away from what he saw as wrong-thinking.’

  ‘I hope you kept it. It is proof, should you need it, of his absolute love for you.’

  ‘Do you really think so? Whenever I saw him, all he did was talk at me and correct those faults he thought he saw.’

  ‘Take this as a sign of his love. He took his role as father and advisor very seriously. I have no doubt he was proud of you. How could he not be?’

  ‘It is not always easy being Peter Abelard’s son. He seems to have more enemies than friends.’

  ‘I know. He asked too many awkward questions and argued with any who contradicted his ideas. Uninquisitive dullness enraged him.’ Heloise thinks of the way he used to rant about his students. ‘And, yes, in truth, he was also ambitious, outspoken and all too ready to inflame. The disadvantage of his brilliance was it overheated his mind. But how can one illuminate Heaven’s secrets if shaded by Earth’s old and stagnant thinking? It smacks of mockery towards God’s gifts if we never strive beyond the mercenary nor seek more light than that given by incurious, artless thought.’

  ‘And yet these are the very traits that ruined him.’

  ‘I still believe he was right to pursue truth. We must not let them intimidate us. In the end, we have only one earthly life and must attempt to do it justice. Socrates said that the only good is knowledge and the only evil ignorance. Abelard’s God-given talent was for thinking, and to fail to use this to its utmost capacity would have disrespected He who gave it. If you have a gift for music, you, too, must follow it. Believe me, there are no rewards for sharing one’s deathbed with a lifetime of regrets. Though I have learned this the hard way, I am grateful to know it while I still have time to make amends.’

  ‘Do you have any copies of his books?’

  ‘Of course. I have them all, hidden away for safekeeping, and continue to teach from them. But if asked by anyone other than you, I will deny it!’

  ‘Might I have copies so I can fully understand the nature of his thinking?’

  ‘It will be my pleasure. Though you must ensure they are never discovered.’

  ‘Thank you. I give my pledge.’ He pauses for a long moment before he speaks again. ‘Tell me, are you happy?’ His earnestness leaves her no room for dodging.

  Is she? ‘I am now. I hated to see your father so broken and ill, so haunted by his phantoms. And to lose him — and you — nearly broke me, I admit. To meet someone and know he thinks the same as you, and shares your spirit’s great sincerity, and together you find happiness in joining, is that really such a sin? I still do not believe it. I have railed against this unfairness but dwelling upon it gave little peace. It has taken me far too long to reach this point — the way painful and circuitous — but, yes, I have a home, loving friends, and I see proof every day of the growth and healing I can gift my sisters. Most of all I am happy at last to know you.’

  ‘As I am you.’ His smile warms and fills her like the first mouthful of fresh-baked bread.

  ‘How long can you stay?’

  ‘Perhaps another two days or so, if you will have me.’

  ‘Oh, that you could stay for life!’ She takes his hand. ‘But do stay a few days more — I have someone you would find most stimulating to meet.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Guy, the abbot of Cherlieu, a Cistercian house not more than two days’ ride from here. He is a brilliant musician and has taken it upon himself to revise the Cistercians’ plainchants. I think you would find him fascinating.’

  ‘You are on first-name basis with the Cistercians?’

  Heloise laughs. ‘Of course! Better to be on good terms with one’s neighbours. We are, after all, brothers and sisters in Christ.’

  ‘I would very much like to meet him.’

  ‘Then consider it done!’

  Heloise guides Astrolabe to their modest guesthouse. When she is sure all are settled, she slips outside in her winter cloak and crouches next to Abelard’s grave to have some tim
e alone with him. She tells him again of her love, and of the beauty and sweetness of their son.

  Before she leaves, she lays one perfect white rose on the mound of soil, and whispers her farewell. He is hers; she is his. He will always be her teacher, lover, husband, brother, father, friend …

  Happy the man who boldly dares to defend the object which he loves … Happy is the man who asserts his liberties by bursting the chains that gall his breast, and once and for all ceases to grieve.

  Epilogue

  * * *

  Nineteen

  THE PARACLETE, 1163

  Heloise slumps over the desk in her small private bedchamber as the day’s last slivers of light are cast through the window-shutter’s cracks. Winter has swooped in suddenly, the leaves with little time to turn before wind’s blast stripped branches bare, now smothered beneath a mantle of thick snow. She feels its bite in her chest; a cough that started as a tickle has now become the bark of Cerberus. Her laboured breathing triggers much concern in her dear sisters. They fear her death, while she instead most welcomes it. Better to die with the mind still relatively clear; too often over this long stretch of years she has seen others sink into confusion. I am ready, Lord.

  She smiles. It seems she is in part Penelope after all, her faithful wait to glimpse again her true love finally drawing to its end. She often dreams of their reunion; of Abelard waiting with arms outstretched. The twenty years since his death have flown as swiftly as wind-scuffed clouds.