Stealing Heaven

by Marion Meade

  The morning, like all previous ones, dragged by sluggishly in a tiresome round of embroidery and gossip, most of which concerned persons that Heloise did not know. The laborious idleness, as well as the tattoo barking of the castle dogs, made her head throb, but she purposely said nothing.

  At noon, she was relieved when Alis suggested they take a few of the squires and go to play in the meadow. The day was bright; glazed snow glistened in the fields. Over the top of the forest hung a few ragged clouds, clouds that for some reason made her think of the sunsets over the Ile. She felt sick with the memory.

  Alis insisted that they must build a castle of love. When it was finished, they could all climb into it and pretend the squires were knights trying to rescue them. For most of the afternoon, they worked in a frenzy, but when they'd completed the snow castle, there was room for only one person to crawl inside. Heloise scrambled to the top and looked out. Two horsemen were approaching the drawbridge, and she could hear them hailing the gatekeeper.

  At the sound of the voices, Alis began to squeal with pleasure. "Jourdain, come here! Jourdain, look at our castle of love!" She laughed happily. "What a fine day. Jourdain's here!"

  Ambling toward them, smiling good-naturedly and dodging Alis's snowballs, came a young man with a stocky frame and an old-fashioned face, square, cherubic, his cheeks dusted with freckles. Heloise waited to be introduced, but Alis was too busy rolling up her eyes coquettishly through her lashes. She clung to Jourdain's arm like a thirsty leech.

  He looked up at Heloise and grinned with a sheepish shrug.

  She grinned back. "Are you another cousin, then?"

  He shook his head. "My father's fief adjoins Saint-Gervais. All of us grew up together." He added hurriedly, "I'm surprised to find you here, lady. I've seen you often on the streets of the Ile."

  "Oh?" Heloise frowned. "How do you do that when you live in the next fief?" She nodded toward the forest. "You must have very sharp eyes."

  Alis answered for him. "He lives in Paris now. Our Jourdain's a scholar." She said it in a mocking, flirtatious tone.

  Jourdain leaned over and kissed Alis's cheek, then promptly ignored her. "I have student's lodgings on the Rue Saint-Pierre," he told Heloise. "You should see my landlady, she's a dreadful old witch. But sometimes I stay on the Left Bank with my master. He gets lonely and likes to have someone there in the evenings, and I—"

  Heloise cut in. "Tell me something, friend, which master do you study with? If only you knew how I envy you!"

  "With Master Abelard, of course." He laughed a little self-consciously.

  His laugh pleased her; she liked his voice, by turns grave and then merry as a cricket. "Why do you say 'of course'?"

  "Because he's the best teacher in the world. He has more than three thousand students." He laughed again. "What can I say? Believe me, there's no way to describe such a man. He's a prince, a reincarnation of Socrates, a . . ."

  Alis turned away with a loud cluck of annoyance. "God's blood, can't you talk about anything but your poxy master!"

  "Poxy to you," Jourdain flared, "because your head is empty. I'm very proud that he's my master—and my friend."

  Making a face, she snorted at him and ran off to play with Claude.

  Heloise leaned over the top of the snow castle. Perhaps this trip could not he counted a loss after all; it might even prove to he fun. "Come up," she said to Jourdain.

  "No room. Come down."

  She slid to the ground and crawled out through the tiny opening. "Your master sounds splendid." She had heard others speak admiringly of Peter Abelard. Even Fulbert, who tended to be critical of other people.

  The afternoon shadows were lengthening. The hunting party clattered over the drawbridge, leaving a trail of blood on the hard-packed snow. Those in the meadow followed slowly. In the ward, Heloise's cousin Philip stood by his steaming horse, and as they passed, she was surprised to see him shoot Jourdain a look of venom.

  "Still kissing ass for Peter Abelard?” Philip said with a grin.

  Jourdain jolted by without replying. Upstairs in the hall, Heloise said, "He doesn't like you."

  "No." His voice was quiet and controlled.

  "Nor Abelard?"

  "No. Philip hates anyone above him."

  That night, for the first time since her arrival at Saint-Gervais, Heloise found herself feeling contented. Alis had been right about one thing: the arrival of Jourdain had turned the day splendid. Heloise felt easy with him, and as her tongue loosened, out rolled stories about Sister Madelaine and Ceci, critiques of Lucan and St. Augustine, her fears of marriage to some old, toothless lord, all the misty unsaid debris littering some segment of her mind.

  "But don't you want to marry at all?" he asked, obviously curious.

  "Not very much." When she saw him staring, she added quickly, "Oh, I suppose. Later. Much later." She laughed. "St. Paul said it's better to marry than to burn."

  On the morning after New Year's, they rode back to Paris with Jourdain accompanying them. The sky was overcast, and a sleeting wind kept conversation to a minimum. Heloise had worried about Fulbert's reaction to her friendship with Jourdain, but he did not seem overly concerned one way or another, nor, in the weeks that followed, did he object to Jourdain's visits. At least once a day, the boy appeared at the Rue des Chantres, sometimes bearing a book for Heloise, or merely to sit in the kitchen and drink a cup of ale with her and Agnes. He had a stock of stories, rumors, and humorous gossip, all of which Agnes adored, and she stuffed his book bag with cakes. For Heloise, his cheerful face brought a predictable bit of fun into her day; his mere presence was like a draft of healthful tonic, good for whatever ailed her.

  It was some time before she realized that Jourdain brought with him into Fulbert's house the unseen presence of his master. Since he spent many hours of the day in Abelard's company, both in class and at his lodgings, he was forever chattering about the minutiae of his teacher's personal life: Master Peter threw his servant down the stairs because Galon had bought four-day-old turbot and pocketed the remainder of the shopping money, Master Peter had a cough—could Agnes recommend a soothing posset?—and Heloise had made up a small jug of licorice and anise wine. She was beginning to feel as though she knew Peter Abelard, and in a vague way she did. At least, she knew that he suffered from bad headaches and his undertunics needed mending and that once he'd had a breakdown that sent him back to his home in Brittany for three years. It was some time, however, before it occurred to her that the garrulous Jourdain, with all his infectious tales about his friends, might be a two-way channel.

  On a sudden impulse one day, she demanded sharply, "Jourdain, you're always telling us about Master Peter. By any chance do you talk to him about us?"

  He flushed and began to stammer. "Uh, well ... I suppose . . . you might say that. But he's always asking. You don't mind, do you, Heloise?"

  She did mind, but was not going to admit it. “I guess not.”

  "He'd like to meet you."

  "Uh-huh." Surely Abelard was merely being kind to poor Jourdain. She had heard that he dined with kings and archbishops. Such a man could not truly be interested in an inconsequential person like herself, a nobody who was also a girl.

  Jourdain was smiling earnestly at her. "It's true, Heloise. He did say that. And he asked me to describe you."

  "And what did you say?" Immediately she regretted asking; she had no desire to hear herself described.

  "That you are not unattractive and—"

  Simmering, she swallowed and said, "Gramercy, fair friend, for nothing."

  Jourdain bounded to her side, his eyes cloudy. "Come now, lady, can't you tell when I'm teasing? I told him you are comely and brilliant." He turned soft, smiling eyes on her. I described you just as you are. Please don't be angry."

  The next morning while filling Heloise's tub, Petronilla calmly announced, "Jourdain wants to fuck you."

  "God forfend, what language!" Many times she had seriously considered reporting
Petronilla's shameless outbursts to Agnes or Fulbert, but she always restrained herself in the end. She had no wish to get her into trouble.

  Petronilla went on. "It's no secret, you know." Humming, she poured boiling water into the tub. "Anybody with eyes can see. The way he looks at you."

  "You're mad. Jourdain is like a cousin. And he's only a boy."

  "He has a pizzle, doesn't he?" She grinned, pleased with the irrefutability of her logic.

  Suddenly Heloise remembered a time last summer when she had wakened in the middle of the night. She had had to use the chamber pot but, after fumbling about in the dark, realized that Petronilla had forgotten to bring it up. Muzzy with sleep, she groped her way downstairs to use the garden privy, a facility she normally avoided as it housed a large family of water bugs. At the door a noise stopped her; from the direction of the herb beds came the sound of a man's laughter, followed by hoarse panting, and then a girl's voice squealing in a queer way that she had never heard before. The last voice was Petronilla's, that she had been certain of, and she had fled into the house. By morning, she'd forgotten the incident, but now it came back to her.

  Petronilla opened her mouth, but Heloise would listen no further and sent her downstairs to her mother. For the rest of the day, she was in a foul mood, and when Jourdain came by just before vespers, she instructed Agnes to tell him that she was unwell. For several days, she managed to avoid him. Then, just when the lewd images sown by Petronilla were fading and she felt able to face him without blushing, he stopped coming. Strangely, three days went by without a visit, something that had not happened since they'd met, and she felt horribly guilty. Twenty times a day she reproached herself; he must feel that she didn't want to see him, he was staying away because she had hurt him. A week or more went by, a week of mounting loneliness, for she missed his bright face, until she resolved to visit his lodging and tell him she was sorry.

  When she came down for breakfast the next morning, Agnes handed her a letter sealed with purple wax. "A student left this for you a little while ago."

  "What student?"

  "Nobody I've ever seen before," Agnes mumbled.

  Heloise raced back to her room and tore the seal. Quickly she glanced at the signature, but to her disappointment the scrawl was not Jourdain's. She went back to the beginning and read, "To the Lady Heloise, greetings. My young friend Jourdain has asked me to notify you of his recent illness. To be precise, he was out of his head with fever for several days. He is feeling much improved, but still weak, and I thought it best that he leave the city to recuperate. I have sent him to his friends at Montboissier, and I'm sure he will be back soon, fully recovered. He was concerned that you should know all of this. Farewell. Pierre du Pallet."

  Relief flooded over her and she sat down hard on the bed. His feelings had not been hurt; he was only sick. But now he was better. His thoughts had been of her!

  It was not until halfway through breakfast that she realized Pierre du Pallet must be Abelard.

  All through Lent, the city shivered under below-freezing temperatures. Everyone said it was the coldest spring he could remember, and if the weather didn't break soon, the ground would be too hard for the first planting. Heloise carried her books down to the kitchen, and Agnes set up a small trestle table for her near the hearth. Even so, it was difficult to work, because Agnes was incapable of keeping quiet for more than three consecutive minutes, and if she wasn't jabbering to Heloise, she was screeching at Petronilla.

  Near the end of Lent, Queen Adelaide gave birth to a son. The prince was named Philip, after his grandfather, and the Ile reverberated with the pealing and tinkling of bells. To celebrate the new heir, people built bonfires on every corner. Heloise dragged bundles of kindling to the quay and lit one of her own, and she passed out mulberry wine to the half-frozen fishermen who still loitered about die Port Saint-Landry. She longed for Jourdain's return.

  Sometime during that cold period, she began to keep a journal of sorts. In a sense, it was a substitute for Jourdain; she had become accustomed to having someone for her confidences, and now there was no one. As much as she loved Fulbert, they were, after all, a generation apart and there was only so much she could tell him. Then too, during this time, she experienced a return of those fantasies that had warmed her childhood at Argenteuil, and these disjointed reveries she jotted into the journal as well. Whereas once her daydreams solely concerned herself, her adventures, her triumphs, now they began to emerge in a completely different form. She kept imagining another person, a man, and not merely any man but a romantic figure who clearly fell into the category of lover.

  The night before Maundy Thursday, she dreamed of this person, and at daybreak, still seeing him clearly, she felt able to write down a fairly detailed description. She hurried down to the kitchen. Agnes was cleaning a duck for dinner and the feathers kept drifting across Heloise's table. They made her want to sneeze. Struggling to keep her mind on the dream, she ignored Agnes's comments about the weather and the high price of ducks, and tried to reconstruct the man on parchment. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with curly black hair and a melting smile that revealed even white teeth. She realized, surprised, that he was not young but in the vicinity of Fulbert's age. What his face might look like in repose she couldn't tell because in her mind she imagined him smiling.

  By midmorning, she was deep into a volume of Origen. The kitchen had quieted at last, Agnes having given Petronilla a bucket to scrub the solar tiles and she herself huffing upstairs to air the beds. The room was full of the sound of bubbling broth and the smell of onions and marjoram. She yawned. After a few minutes had passed, she gradually became conscious of another sound, a very faint thumping against the shutter of the garden window. At first she ignored it as only a rattly branch, but the tapping grew crisper and finally shattered her concentration altogether. Sighing, she went around to the garden door and pulled it open. There was no one in sight, no sound but the tinkle of melting icicles. But in the hard morning sunlight she sensed a fluttering movement to her left, and then she saw someone flattened against the wall of the house.

  "Heloise, is it you?" Ceci ran toward her. Heloise pulled her over the threshold and closed the door.

  "Dear God in heaven, what are you doing here!"

  "Heloise, don't be angry."

  Exasperated, she dragged Ceci to her with an awkward hug. "Come now, why should I be angry with you? Seeing you startled me, that's all. I don't— Why are you in Paris? Hiding in—" She stared at Ceci's pinched white face, then down at her feet. Out of one slipper poked a bare toe; the other foot was wrapped in rags.

  Heart pounding with dread, she led the girl into the kitchen and sat her down next to the hearth. She brought bread and poured a cup of ale. Ceci ignored the ale; she tore off hunks of bread and stuffed them into her mouth with both hands, swallowing them without chewing.

  Heloise stared at her. "How many days?"

  "Two. Almost two. After nones, day before last." She reached for the ale and drained it wearily. "I would have been here last night but I lost my way. Took the wrong turn near Saint-Lazare. Heloise—"

  I’mlistening."

  "You've got to help me." Her face was wrinkled with fear. "Please, no one but you can help me."

  Heloise tapped her fingers impatiently against the table. "What happened?" She did not have to ask, but she wanted to hear it anyway.

  "Lady Alais read me the letter. I'm not going home again. They want me to stay at Argenteuil."

  What chilled Heloise was the girl's speech. Everything was said in the same toneless voice. "It—" The word stuck in her throat; she swallowed and gulped it down. "It won't work, you know."

  "It must. I won't go back. Surely you can understand that."

  "I understand. All I said was it won't work."

  "It did for you."

  Her face sagged. At last she said, "It was different for me, don't you see? I had someplace to go. People to look after me."

  "Heloise!" cried
Ceci. "I have you!"

  Heloise pretended to pull a knot out of her hair. She could hear Petronilla slamming the bucket against the tiles. There was a stream of soft curses, then silence. Slowly she walked over to Ceci and pulled her head tightly against her hip. She cradled her and stooped down to brush her lips against the dark hair. Rocking back on her heels, she squatted down next to Ceci's stool. "Listen, sweeting, listen well. You think—I don't know what you think, but you're wrong. I can't make miracles."

  Ceci was staring off blankly into a corner.

  "I'm not the mistress of this house. Are you paying attention? Right now Agnes is upstairs airing the beds. There's a servant just down the hall. In less than an hour my uncle will walk through the front door. How is it possible to hide you? I can't even get you out of this kitchen without somebody noticing." When she glanced at Ceci, she saw that her face wore a queer, flat look, as if someone had applied a coat of paint.

  Looking past Heloise, she pointed to a pan of anise cakes cooling on the table. "Can I have one of those?" she asked.

  Heloise brought a cake in each hand. They did not speak for several minutes. Then Heloise sighed heavily and said, "All right."

  Ceci followed her out the garden door and around the house, down to the Port Saint-Landry, where Heloise left her with a fisherman she knew slightly. She ran back to the house and seated herself next to the hearth. When Agnes came downstairs, she glanced around curiously. "Thought I heard you talking to someone."

  "I was reading aloud."

  At noon, Fulbert came home. Heloise picked at her duck; once the full enormity of Ceci's act had struck her, her stomach had shrunk to a knot.

  In the afternoon, Agnes went out to buy dyes, and Petronilla curled up under the kitchen table and fell asleep. The moment Heloise heard Petronilla snoring, she hurried back to the quay and got Ceci. Quietly they climbed to the third floor, and Heloise opened the door to a room across the landing from hers. She had been in this room only once before. As a bedroom it had stood unused for years, but recently Agnes had begun regarding it as a storeroom for Fulbert's relics, the less important ones that needn't be locked in the cellar. Heloise dragged the dustcover off the feather bed. There was only one thin mattress, but still it was better than sleeping in the fields. She wanted to open the shutters and air the mattress, but she was afraid of attracting attention. The room was choked with dust.