Stealing Heaven

by Marion Meade

  Afterward, Abelard told Heloise that Galon had once been possessed by demons and that he, Abelard, had arranged for exorcism. The angry words with Galon upset him, and he went to bed with a headache. Heloise covered his brow with a wet cloth and sat on the edge of his bed, not speaking. At midnight, opening his eyes, he reached up and slid his hand under her skirt.

  She pushed him away. "Don't. It will make your head worse."

  "On the contrary." He grinned. "It will do wonders for my head."

  "Surely there are some times when it is best to refrain—"

  He broke in. "Undoubtedly. And canon law is quite specific. Wednesdays, Fridays, the eves of feast days, the whole of Lent . . ."

  "Nay, by God!" Heloise stared at him. "I don't believe it. Where did you hear this?"

  He swung his legs over the side of the bed and began pulling off his shoes. "My dear little girl, everybody knows."

  "I'm not little. Listen to me. I swear I've never heard of these prohibitions." She blinked at him in bewilderment.

  "That's understandable. Technically you're still a maiden. If you had done things in the usual way, a priest would have told you all about it on your way to the marriage bed."

  This was the first time she had heard him mention wedlock, and she shot a quick glance at him. His expression had not altered. She stirred uneasily. "Now listen, in future we must abide by the—"

  "You listen. Those rules are absurd. Nobody obeys them."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Certainly. I wager even your uncle ignores them."

  She jerked to her feet. "What do you mean by that!" she roared.

  Abelard had not moved. He made a face at her. "I said that I have no doubt Fulbert—"

  She threw herself across the bed and grabbed his arm. "You're mad. Uncle is chaste."

  "Uncle is not chaste. I beg to differ."

  "How do you know?" she demanded. "Tell me."

  He shrugged. "Common knowledge. Every canon in the chapter knows that Fulbert has been fucking Agnes for years."

  "No."

  'Yes." His head wagged cheerfully.

  Heloise burst into wild laughter. She rolled on the bed in spasms until she began to hiccup. "Agnes!" she howled, wiping her eyes with the hem of her gown. "Agnes and Uncle! God's toenails, what a fool I am!"

  "And he gives her a sou every time he fucks her, or so Petronilla told me." Abelard spoke with the impish air of a small boy who had just told some outrageous secret.

  "Petronilla told you that!" Suddenly all the pieces dropped into place, and she stopped laughing. What a blind fool she had been all these years. She said to Abelard wearily, "Is anything what it seems?"

  He grinned at her. "Flesh is weak." He pulled his tunic over his head and thrust it at her. "Here. Hang this up."

  Heloise shook the gown and draped it carefully on a wall peg. She looked at him over her shoulder. "What else don't I know? For God's sake, tell me quickly."

  He groaned. "How am I to know what you don't know? Ask me specific questions."

  She walked back to the bed and stared down at his naked body, at the soft stick curled between his legs. Suspicion suddenly gnawed at her. "You," she said softly, "were you not chaste before you came to me?" At once she was sorry she had asked.

  "Ah, Heloise, sweet heart," he murmured, pulling her over him. "You know I was."

  But she could not let go of the doubt. Upon reflection, he had known what to do, and had done it well. Fulbert had said he was a virgin, but Fulbert could have been wrong. "You've had women before me!" she insisted in a hot, querulous voice.

  "Think you that I run after harlots!" Abelard flung at her, full of indignation.

  "Some noble lady."

  "Noble ladies require wooing. I had no time."

  "You've never slept with a woman?"

  "Never." He tangled his fingers in her hair.

  "Swear it by the Blessed Virgin and all the saints."

  "I swear."

  Relieved, she relaxed against him. But a moment later, she pursed her lips and teased, "Then how came you to be such a marvelous lover, my sweet?"

  There was silence. Then he said, "I didn't say that I had never experienced the pleasures of the flesh. I simply said that I'd never been with a damsel."

  She stiffened as if he had struck her. "With whom then?" He did not reply. "Who? Answer me." She waited.

  "Men," he replied lazily. "It was nothing."

  Heloise lurched upright and stared at him. The sin of Sodom. Nothing, he called it. She opened her mouth to speak and clicked it shut.

  "Ladylove, don't look at me like that. It was a long time ago, when I was a student. It's not extraordinary." He laughed. "Such things are common for students." He added, "And for canons and for monks. Even for kings. Lady, I could go on but you get the point."

  She choked back her shock and replied, "I didn't know." She bit her lips, wondering, trying to picture two naked men coupling, and the idea was . . . amusing. "How do men do it, then?" she asked, earnestly. "I can't imagine—"

  He pulled her down gently. "Here, I'll show you."

  October storms pounded the Ile. Directly above Heloise's room, the roof began to leak, and when Fulbert summoned a roofer, the man refused to begin work until the rain let up. Agnes positioned a basin under the drip and ordered Petronilla to empty it twice a day. Usually Heloise wound up doing it herself. She didn't mind, because she now preferred to spend most of the day alone, in her chamber.

  Some part of her had irrevocably withdrawn from her uncle's household. She was not exactly sure when this had happened, but she did understand why. After Abelard's revelations about Fulbert and Agnes, she could no longer think of them in the same light. She made excuses for her uncle, but in the end it made no difference. He was the son of a baron—a petty baron, to be sure—but still of noble blood; Agnes was a varlet, and in effect he had taken her as a partner and sired a string of bastards, all mercifully dead save Petronilla. At some deep level within herself, she could appreciate his need to do so.

  And yet she raged at Fulbert for his hypocrisy, and at Sister Madelaine, who had told her lies about the purity of the clergy. She had had a glimpse of the naked world, which so confused her that she longed to have back her precious ignorance.

  The guilt she had felt about her love for Peter Abelard began to vanish; the dishonesty that she had been obliged to practice for Fulbert's sake ceased to trouble her. Hadn't he deceived her?

  The kitchen gossip, the hours of nibbling, drinking, and chatting with Agnes, had gradually stopped. In her room with Abelard's Bible and a dozen other volumes, she hunted for truth. And in these holy works, even, she found a mass of confusion and contradiction. Once, teasingly, she asked Abelard whether it were lawful for a man and woman to marry once they had lain together. Yes, he had answered, quoting St. Augustine. No, she had countered; St. Ambrose likens it to incest. Well—Abelard laughed uneasily—maybe yes and maybe no.

  To add to her disillusionment, she found dozens of instances where conflicting statements occurred in the writings of the Church Fathers, in liturgy, and in canon law. If she located a statement saying that Adam was created inside paradise, without too much trouble she could also find another authority claiming the opposite. At first to amuse herself, a while later painstakingly, she compiled lists of these opposing quotations. If saints could not manage to agree, how in the devil were ordinary folk to understand the divine? One night, before she pinched out the candle, she read several of her Yes or No quotations to Abelard.

  "Heloise, what is your intention here?" he asked. "To question Revelation? To sow doubt in your own mind?" He enjoyed chewing apart her ideas.

  "To understand," she told him.

  "To create problems for yourself, you mean."

  She was annoyed. "Jourdain says you're forever telling your students to think for themselves. So why have you never told me that!"

  "There was no need," he answered matter-of-factly. "And besides, there's no such
thing as conflicting authorities." Now he sounded annoyed. "You've probably taken the statements out of context."

  Heloise knew that she had not, hut he was in one of his arbitrary moods and she had no wish to start an argument. As the months had passed, she had come to better know this man. At times, especially when he was getting a headache, he would be nervous and bad-tempered, and he snapped her head off over nothing; at other times, he was maddeningly preoccupied with himself and appeared to forget her existence. It was a mistake, she had learned quite early, to challenge his opinions and theories.

  "Success," he said to her once, "success always puffs up fools with pride." And on another occasion, quoting Corinthians, "Knowledge breeds conceit." She found these remarks startling, because they seemed to imply some kind of self-analysis, carefully quarried insights into his own psyche, but eventually she realized they were no such thing. The wealth and fame and incredible adulation that life had brought him he accepted as something natural and inevitable for one of his talent. Brilliance, he once told her, is not the result of effort: you have it or you don't.

  His imperfections were, of course, obvious to her: pride, arrogance, intolerance for those of lesser capabilities, lack of tact. But just as he himself towered over the rest of humanity, so too did his faults loom larger than life. There was something positively grand— indeed, heroic—about his deficiencies, and at the same time something almost endearing. Abelard had the air of a man who completely liked himself, and it was only an ungenerous person who could fail to agree with his self-assessment. To her, he would forever be the laurel-wreathed philosopher-poet-prince, a reincarnation of giants who had trod the earth in ancient days.

  The first dry day, she set off on foot for the Rue de la Draperie to buy silk for a veil. After considerable pumping of Abelard, who had recently attended the wedding of King Louis's bastard daughter, Isabella, she had concluded that she looked far from stylish. Fashionable ladies, he had informed her, were now covering their hair. Fulbert had stared when she requested three deniers for a wimple; finally, though, she had got the money without much difficulty.

  At a draper's recommended by Agnes, she managed to buy a length of rose silk, very sheer, for less than three deniers; afterward, with the remaining oboles, she bought pigeon pasties from a vendor and began threading her way back toward the cloister. She felt in no hurry to go home. The day was as bright as a bittersweet berry, and the wind whistled briskly among the crisping leaves. Two weeks earlier, before the rains, the trees had cast adrift only a few leaves; now the streets of the Ile were carpeted in shades of vermilion and umber. As she walked along, gazing around at the swarming and arching of black-gowned young men, thoughts of Abelard forced themselves on her. He made this city, she said to herself. Oh, it must have been a fine place before, but not that much different from Bordeaux or Angers, nothing special. Now it was the center of learning in Europe. Why did they come here, these thousands of young men, not only French but students from all over Christendom? To see Peter Abelard. Paris was his city, and she would never think of it in any other way.

  At the Rue de la Juiverie, she stopped short, Jourdain was standing in the doorway of a tavern, talking to some students. She watched him covertly for a while. When at last he noticed her, he approached with a clumsy smile. "Fair friend, God's greetings to you."

  Heloise had not seen him since early summer, although once, curious, she had sent Petronilla to his lodging, only to learn that he had moved." Am I your friend?" she asked with a wry smile. “You never visit me." She added, "Where have you been?"

  "Here and there," he replied vaguely. "Melun. But you're wrong— I'm still your friend, believe me."

  She gave a small sniff of disbelief.

  "Truly, Heloise." He smiled at her, and even though his smile seemed warm, it was also unmistakably formal. "Lady, would you like to take a cup of ale with me?"

  "But, Jourdain, I can't go into a tavern."

  "I could bring it out," he offered.

  When he returned with the ale, they sat on a low stone wall belonging to the synagogue and placed the cups between them. At the foot of the wall, in a tangle of weeds, a squirrel was fattening itself on chestnuts. For a while they did not speak, and at last Heloise said awkwardly, "You should have come to see me. I missed you."

  Jourdain lifted the cup to his lips and drank. Morose, he put it down slowly, as if the cup weighed a ton, and said, "I couldn't."

  Heloise laughed uncertainly. "Why ever not?"

  "People are . . . talking," he said, not meeting her eyes. "I've heard stories."

  Her smile evaporated. "About what, fair friend?"

  A long pause while he foraged for words: 'You and Master Peter." He rubbed his knuckles across his lower lip. "They say—I mean they claim—that you are his leman."

  Her ears began to tingle. She grabbed her cup and drained it. Jourdain's gaze was pinned to his knees. Defiant, Heloise squared her jaw. "Bibble-babble. People always talk about something. I—"

  "Master Peter has changed. He comes to class half asleep and repeats the same lectures he gave last year. His students laugh at him."

  She jerked toward him, boiling. "Sons of dogs! How dare they? Why don't you fight them?"

  He paid no attention to her. "Master Peter appears to spend his time writing love songs. All of them about women. Pardon me, a woman."

  Heloise pretended that she hadn't heard the latter. "Yes, he writes beautiful lyrics, the finest in France."

  "Oh, yes. Every tavern and boardinghouse in Paris is ringing with them. Ah God, Ah God, the dawn! it comes so soon." He spat the words with waspish bitterness. "Ah, would to God that night must never end."

  She colored deeply, seared to hear those familiar words on a stranger's lips. Leaning back, she glanced at Jourdain from the corner of her eye. She heard him say, "Is it true? Are you his leman?"

  Calm and direct, she stared at him. "Yes."

  He sighed fretfully and scrambled down from the wall. Turning to face her, he said with conviction, "He doesn't love you."

  "How would you know whether or not he loves me!" She was aghast that he had dared judge Abelard's love. "You have no right to say that."

  "I'm sorry. It's true."

  "Don't be absurd."

  "Heloise, he planned to seduce you. He had it all worked out months ahead of time. Why do you think he wanted to live at Fulbert's? It was only to—"

  "You lie!" she screamed at him, leaping off the wall and plumping both feet in the dirt. "He loves me!"

  She saw him examining her, detected the gleam of pity, and her eyes began to fill with tears of rage. She wanted to strike him. Her voice shook. "You know nothing, nothing at all, do you hear me? Mayhap he didn't love me before he came to Fulbert's. But he loves me now. That I know as truly as if the Blessed Virgin had told me." She stopped to catch her breath. "And I love him. More than my life! I would rather be his whore than the empress of Augustus!" Wheeling away from him, her eyes overflowing, she lurched into the crowd of shoppers. Dimly, somewhere behind her, she heard Jourdain calling her name. She ran on.

  At the corner of Rue des Oubloiiers, he grabbed her with both hands and swung her around violently. "Lady! Listen to me."

  "Go away," she mumbled, obstinate. She shook him off and hurried on.

  "Heloise, please." He trotted along at her side. "I can see that you love him. Mayhap I'm wrong about his feelings for you. Would to God I'm wrong, I should never have spoken as I did."

  The bells of Saint-Christofle were clattering vespers. Heloise felt mortally tired. It was an effort to speak to him. "Forget it," she said. "You meant well enough."

  "Forgive me, lady. I was most discourteous."

  She answered impatiently. "Amen. I said I have taken no offense. Listen, Jourdain. As you very well know, he is the grandest of men and I—I am only ... a grain of salt."

  His face was impassive. "Friend, I understand. But I beg you, be careful. Think of yourself."

  She shrugged,
"I? What can I do now? I can only think of him."

  Jourdain asked, "And marriage? Has he spoken to you of marriage?"

  "My dear Jourdain," Heloise said gently, "you are dreaming. You know that he cannot marry."

  "Well, he might. There is actually nothing to forbid it."

  "Except custom," she interrupted. "A married philosopher! Pah!" They walked on silently. "Besides, I have no wish to be a wife. You know that."

  Outside Notre Dame, they said farewell. She hoped that he would go quickly, but at the last moment he kept thinking of something more to say. He warned her that half the streets in Paris were ringing with her name and urged her to protect her reputation. He begged her to make sure Master Peter got more sleep. He promised to visit her soon.

  "Very well," she said several times. "Very well."

  Years later, she was to remember that afternoon, but not because of her meeting with Jourdain. What he said she forgot almost immediately. On her way home, a few hundred yards from the Rue des Chantres, she saw a horseman ride down a small girl, a child no larger than a mite. She sprawled perfectly still in the mud and dung, her neck twisted like a chicken's, her mouth open in a silent scream. But she had not screamed, Heloise remembered that clearly. She couldn't explain why the girl's death affected her so profoundly, as such accidents were not uncommon in the crowded streets of the Ile. Perhaps it was that nobody came to claim the tiny corpse, perhaps some ancient terror of her own. Finally, some women laid the body at the side of the road, as if they would now put her out of harm's reach. Shivering, Heloise kept vigil for a time. Then it grew dark and she went home.

  Three weeks later, Thibaut the Lecher descended on the house in the Rue des Chantres. If it had been Thibaut alone this might not have been so frightful, but he brought with him from Saint-Gervais a sizable entourage: his eldest son, Philip, his squires, varlets, grooms, hounds, even his falcons. Hola, Heloise said to herself, this is going to be bad.

  With so many extra people, the house quickly seemed to shrink to half its normal size. Moreover, within hours of their arrival the place began to take on an uncanny resemblance to Saint-Gervais, and even Agnes complained of the fleas, the sourish smell of unwashed bodies, the noisy drinking, and, particularly, the dogs, who had never been taught the habit of defecating out of doors. As a result, Heloise was forever groaning aloud and stepping over piles of dung.