Heloise

by Hager, Mandy

  As evening comes, a sweet young novice brings lemon balm and honey to soothe her cough while she finishes tallying the Paraclete’s accounts. Now more than ever, Heloise’s memories come alive, the old feelings so real she sometimes weeps, though the sight distresses those who treat her as their touchstone.

  She did not seek to act as star upon this earthly stage, but each night, as she conjures up her past, too many scenes play out with her the pivot. Though she has made many varied and influential friends, and has been graced with much positive recognition, she tires of such responsibility. These days, she wishes a return to the Heloise of old — her love for learning, her eye that could spot the smallest nib of a new spring shoot as it first breaks to air, her passions, her privacy, her writing, her body’s bliss.

  There are times she feels she failed in every role, and blames her heart for bleeding far too easily. Since Abelard’s death, she has grown indolent as a scholar, allowing the community’s daily needs for provisions and buildings to swallow her time. In defence, she strove to live in humble service to her nuns and push her needs aside as best she could, though saint she is not; her emotions are still as much the ruler of her actions as her head. Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.

  Night gathers its cloak around her as she fends off the disappointment that still occasionally befalls at her. Abelard was felled by it, less able than she to turn its tartness into a more digestible bittersweet. The right way to act, the right will, St Augustine said, is well-directed love, and the yearning to have what is loved is called desire, which if relished enables joy; a thought perfect in its simplicity. It still frustrates her that the clergy dismisses such obvious truths. True love, bodily or otherwise, binds to the heart like a vine sending tendrils to a tree that grow into its very bark. In time, over the course of knotty twists and turns, scarifying, endurance, heat and chills, the two merge into one. The downside, of course, comes when one dies and the other, cut off from emotion’s sap, wilts and must continue on alone.

  Lovely Venus, what’s to do

  If the loved loves not again?

  Beauty passes, youth’s undone,

  Violets wither, ’spite of dew …

  That she has lived these twenty years past Abelard’s death astounds her, though she is thankful to continue sufficiently long to witness Astrolabe and her nuns grow strong — and finally have her role confirmed as that of abbess. It is a comfort to see one’s life work carried on by the best of her pupils; they take up her staff with much aplomb.

  She still led the nightly lessons until this wretched illness stole her energy and the coughing made prolonged speeches impossible. On her final night, sensing her life force ebbing, she tried to encapsulate all she had learned over the long reach of her life.

  ‘My dear sisters,’ she had said, the warmth of their attention encasing her, ‘a few final words of advice from this old head. As I have shared my life with you, now I would like to sum up the learnings I have taken from my life’s lessons — not so much my journeying to find God’s grace, for each of you must travel this alone, but rather my human journey.’

  That night, more than ever before, she was aware of the expectant hush; she felt gratitude for their reception and humbled that they still found her musings of any value. She took a sip of water and willed away the tickle in her throat.

  ‘First, I must acknowledge that the perceived dangers inherent in unfettered thought still see our kind unwelcome in the scholars’ halls. God forbid we wield with any power a mind of our own!’

  Several sisters snickered and many a head nodded wryly.

  ‘All my life, I have fought for freedom — of thought, of choices, of control. But I fear, sisters, that nothing has truly changed. True, through Abelard and Thibaud’s generosity, we have carved out a haven here, but make no mistake: those at the top still grasp tight to the old ways, just as my good friend Stephen de Garlande asserted many years ago.’

  A cough had bent Heloise double. She could feel the concern radiating from her nuns but waved away Agatha’s moves to tend to her. Lord, give me strength. She would get this out if it were the last thing she did. The role of mother, once taken up, persists for life. When the spasms stilled, she had continued under her sisters’ anxious observation.

  ‘But all is not lost! If one seeks a way to peace, in time a path will open up, a different route for every soul. Even Abelard achieved some calm before his death, if only by a hair’s breadth.’ She remembered his final scribblings about the wildflowers in bloom, glad for him. ‘The road I took has taught me that when one starts to look and truly see, with no urge other than to view the world through eyes coloured by love, all life takes on a different hue. It was a lesson hard learned and one still ongoing … Although, in truth, I am yet to find any love for our oppressors!’ She crossed herself. ‘May God forgive me!’

  The women laughed despite many also shedding tears. Heloise paused. Took another sip of water. Tried to still her shaking hand. When she finally felt the tightness in her chest ease a little, she carried on, aware her energy was waning.

  ‘St Augustine said one should seek out truth for transformation; that information, of itself, is not enough. Humility must play a part. He claimed that when one truly understood, the heart knew long before the mind.’ She tapped the bony cage that held her heart but, instead of simply illustrating her point, it dislodged the mucus foaming inside. She could not go on, unable to control the coughing.

  What she wanted to say, what her body refused to allow, is that she agrees with St Augustine’s words, although of late there are days she sees only the gravity of these times in which they live — and often her heart drums with unspecified fear. She is afraid for the sisters who come after her. There is no certainty when popes keep changing: Abelard’s erstwhile friend, Guy of Castello, on his ascension was poisoned by the very men boasting the closest ear to God. So, too, she has seen the horrific costs of war and stirred-up hate, the wounds still bloody to this day. Perhaps it is best her frailty now renders her silent.

  Agatha had to help her to bed that night, and it was the last time she sat with them all together, these women who had built a family around her as the world went mad.

  Heloise coughs again now, the pain in her chest and across her shoulders fiery. Where once she ran through fields at midnight, trying to outpace her lust, now it costs all her fortitude to sit here at the window of this tiny cell. Her age-old coffer sits beside her. It stows her clothes, three sack-cloth gowns of charcoal black, threadbare scraps of underthings, one tired woollen cloak and a heart-shaped stone plucked up from Argenteuil the day she left. On its top, a lock of Astrolabe’s baby hair is pinned to the back of Abelard’s image.

  She has it still, that portrait from his younger days, his prouder days, the days he loved her loudly with coded songs designed to ring from others’ mouths but always meant for her. The paint is worn by her finger’s constant touch, her tender strokes from ear to cheek, to wide brown eyes, to lips so soft and a brow in which was stored such wealth. She retrieves it from the coffer and places it on the desk in front of her. By some strange alchemy, she can feel his presence in the room and she whispers to him now, addressing those beloved eyes.

  ‘So, here we are again, old friend. How many times have I wished you back, even for just one day, to chew upon the years gone past?’

  There is a shift in the air, a cold draught seeping in through the shutters. She shivers and reaches, groaning, for the cloak that has slipped unwittingly from her shoulders, a luxury her sisters gifted to hold back the cold from her bones. Lined with rabbit pelts, it is a reminder of the myriad skills her good friends mastered to ensure their survival here — like Clotild, now gone, who fought her soft heart and transformed into a huntress even the goddess Diana would have smiled upon; and quiet Douceline, at first so secretive and withdrawn, who
turned out to be the Paraclete’s most able seamstress, fashioning fur goods to sell at Thibaud’s annual fair. She died that terrible winter when they were overrun by the casualties of Louis’s and Bernard’s so-called ‘holy’ war.

  ‘My darling,’ she says, running a finger along the curved line of Abelard’s lips, ‘I fear I prayed that Bernard’s part in your demise and in Louis’s bloodbath would weigh heavy on his mind. Was that a sin? I tried to dredge up charity for him but sorely failed. He should have advised compassion and prudence, rather than war.’

  It was as much a campaign of hate as weapons; an excuse to attack all people at odds with those of Bernard’s fundamental zealotry. Heretics, Jews, Cathars, Muslims, all targets of Christian swords and spears. Dear God, there were acts of terror and slaughter so foul they wiped out entire innocent populations … and many of the poor souls who faithfully answered Bernard’s call died pitiful deaths on foreign soils. And it was not only war that killed Louis’s subjects … poor Arnold of Brescia they hanged then burnt.

  She winces as these thoughts bring back the host of nightmare images that beset her at the time: weeping women, weeping men, whole lives torn asunder by a Church and State that did not care. She has no time for trumped-up hate, people damned for beliefs judged different. Should not the weighing up of worth, the good and bad, be left to each believer’s end? Decent men like Peter the Venerable, and, in his own way, Garlande; Thibaud, too; and Abelard, for all his faults; and Astrolabe and Denyse’s Hugh, of course — all shone like rare gems in an endless sea of dross. They serve as a hopeful reminder that oppression does not have to be the natural bent of men.

  Abelard’s likeness watches her, as if holding his breath in wait for her to speak again. If she whispers, lips barely moving, she can hold the cough at bay. To voice the worst of her memories helps to ease them.

  ‘Dear lord, Abelard … all those orphans, all those poor souls beaten and raped, abused by mobs of warring men, broken themselves …’ She swallows back a sob. Yes, they had all converged on her doorstep. Thank God for their neighbours, who worked with the nuns as the war tolled on. While nearby landholders donated goods to help feed and provision the Paraclete’s swelling ranks, she toiled all God’s hours to counsel those most broken.

  They remain vivid, those nights spent comforting the ill and wounded, days spent scraping together all they had to serve their new sisters’ needs. She was as footsore as a pilgrim, always stretched, always on the edge of weary tears, each and every story lodged as an internal scar.

  She sees now in her mind’s eye the group of nine who came knocking just as the bell for Vespers promised respite after a day of desperate foraging for late windfalls. Three women with six poor children, full of fear and incomprehension, damaged, forced to watch their mothers raped and fathers slaughtered for refusing to hand over their meagre stores.

  Abelard’s steady gaze attends her. ‘What kind of church sanctions such monstrous outrages, my love? If you had been there, you would have spoken out, I have no doubt. But I had no such luxury; our survival relied on acts of stealth.’

  As if there were not stress enough, they were overrun by others fleeing hardship, some falling foul of dowry or inheritance laws that rendered them homeless. She was forced again into the role of beggar, as in their early days, always pursuing alms to keep their community fed and to move ahead with their expansion, a desperate necessity, no longer choice.

  Her Abelard would have been so proud to see their first sister house in Trainel dedicated to the Magdalene, and the five more houses that followed, all but one within a day’s walk. She still gives thanks for his advice that a close, like-minded community would ensure greater security. It has been proved many times over, one of his numerous enduring gifts.

  ‘Oh, that you had been here to see your Paraclete grow …’ She brushes away a tear. ‘Oh, that you had been here, finis.’

  She thinks back to the turning of 1152, which brought with it Thibaud’s sudden end and poor Matilda left heartbroken. Every month, Heloise rode over, one day arriving to find her more than usually fraught. Her son Henri, Thibaud’s successor and the same who worried her as a child, now deeply troubled her.

  ‘He refuses to allow me a say and has forbidden my signing orders for properties I own by right. The more I ask, the more stubborn he grows; more threatening.’

  ‘Are you safe?’

  ‘I think so, though I now fear to speak my mind.’

  ‘Will not Thibaud’s old advisors give you support?’

  Her laugh was brittle. ‘They cluster about Henri as flies to dung.’ Matilda swiped at a tear impatiently. ‘To be betrayed by one’s own son leaves a bitter taste.’

  ‘Come to us. It will be far less comfortable, but you will be treasured.’

  ‘It is fortunate you suggest this …’ The smile that dawned on Matilda’s face was unforgettable. ‘I would like to fund a sixth sister house and live there myself. What do you think?’

  ‘Good heavens! Are you aware of the enormous cost?’

  ‘Trust me, if I do not spend the money Thibaud set aside for me, Henri will soon find excuse to claim it. Besides, I grow bored and sit too much alone. I would welcome the task of seeing the construction through from start to end.’

  ‘We are surely in need of it. But you would have to take the veil, you do know that? Though it would mean your son is forced to speak to you with a much more charitable tongue!’

  ‘I would welcome that.’ Matilda held out her hand to Heloise. ‘Then let us agree. It is good to have a plan.’

  And what a plan it was! La Pommeraye, at its completion, was the Paraclete’s most decorous sister house. With Matilda to aid her, Heloise amassed what stands as the Paraclete’s wealth today: farms and forests, mills and vineyards, goods and properties through many villages that bring in regular tolls and tithes. If only Abelard had lived to see this accomplishment for which she feels such satisfaction; this securing of well-being for the many women congregated in her care.

  Could she have achieved as much if she had acted as wife and mother instead? Perhaps, though she does not believe it. Abelard’s shunning turned her from needy and compliant mistress to self-sufficient gatekeeper and protector of others’ battered souls. It is a role so precious and empowering, it tempers all other regrets. She is humbled to have been allowed such a significant gift.

  When Matilda died three years ago of terrible festering, she lived just long enough to see her daughter Adele marry Louis the Fat’s son, King Louis the church-burner, who invaded Thibaud’s lands and laid siege to Vitry; over a thousand souls were incinerated as they sheltered, screaming, in God’s house. Poor Matilda often raked over these terrible coals between her bouts of pain, outraged by Adele’s betrayal of Thibaud’s memory.

  This is the scourge of a life that lingers into old age: Heloise has outlived nearly everyone she loved. St Jerome claimed surviving over seventy was akin to being at war, all one’s friends either going or gone; like walking amid a battlefield strewn with familiar dead. She struggles with the notion she is soon to be seventy-one; inside her still dwells an overly sensitive girl in love with love’s idea.

  The time will come, when you, who now shuts out lovers,

  Will lie through the darkness a cold and abandoned hag,

  You’ll find no one hammering at your door at night,

  Nor strewing roses on your threshold in the morning …

  Their old friend Stephen de Garlande had lived only five years past Abelard, his last days spent in reconciliation with his faith. She saw him a week before he died, called to Paris to say her goodbyes to this man whom first she loathed. She sat beside his bed with the most faithful of his daughters, the good Jehanne, and read from a copy of the poem Abelard wrote for Astrolabe. Though they had chortled over some of his obscure advice, she loved the warmth of its tone and his good intentions:

  Astrolabe, my son, your father’s sweet joy,

  I bequeath a few words for your instruction …


  Do not seek a higher place in paradise;

  Whatever corner you have will be enough.

  Don’t curry people’s favour by wearing a habit …

  They can tell the skin of a sheep from the hide of a wolf …

  Garlande had smiled at the reading’s end. ‘Many a wolf I have met disguised as sheep. One cannot walk the halls of the palace without stumbling upon marauding packs.’

  ‘Do you recall I used to think you a fox?’ Heloise remembers softening this with a grin.

  ‘Indeed I do.’ He had smiled and fumbled for Jehanne’s hand. ‘I dare say you did, too, child?’

  ‘You fish for compliments, Father. Let me instead tell you a story.’ Jehanne plumped the pillows behind him and then she began. ‘When I first lived with you out in the country, I watched a he-fox carry his kits from one burrow to another as a farmer ploughed the field that housed their den. He clutched each tiny ball of fluff most tenderly with his teeth, each of the five hanging limp between his jaws in absolute trust.’ She smiled. ‘Can you guess the moral?’

  ‘Go on,’ Garlande said, ‘enlighten me.’

  ‘It simply is this: that a predator to one is gentle father to another. All have within them the capacity for love.’

  This, as much as anything else that day, is what has stayed with Heloise. How Garlande’s eyes had welled as he drew Jehanne to him to kiss the face he once had claimed to be the visible manifestation of his guilt. ‘I fear this old fox has swapped his fine silken coat for that of rough old goat.’

  Jehanne left the room with a laugh to fetch him water. He turned to Heloise. ‘Promise to take her when I go. Although my family has accepted her, I fear their greed will shut her out in the cold. They are ever Garlandes, may God forgive me.’ He hoisted himself onto one elbow, grunting as he rummaged under the bed to produce a good-sized purse that he thrust into her hands. Only later did she discover it held a wealth in gold. ‘Take this and see she is well kept — and you. If I give it to her myself, I know she will refuse.’ He fell back against his pillows, his face as blanched as a Cistercian robe. For a moment, he panted before he could go on. ‘Though I love the others, you two I most regret leaving … and hold most dear in my heart.’