Stealing Heaven

by Marion Meade

  Heloise swiveled her head in exasperation. "Ceci, when did you—"

  "Shhh." She patted Heloise's arm.

  By the fight of the fire, the jongleur rolled his pick across the lute strings. He began with a Provencal poem about Raymond of Saint-Gilles and Bohemond and the great crusade. Adventure. The siege of Antioch, the capture of Jerusalem. Ida, margravine of Austria. More adventure. Without realizing it, Heloise began to smile. Afterward, the crowd clapped and whistled, and somebody shouted, "Let's have Chanson de Roland, boy."

  The jongleur ignored the request, apparently preferring to make his own selections. He broke into a merry little tune, "I rose up yestermorn, before the sun was shining bright . . ." His voice was husky and sweet, and he played tolerably well. Before long, the crowd, conquered, was clapping in rhythm and tapping feet on the freezing cobbles. Ceci, weaving back and forth, hummed gently. A well-dressed matron called to the jongleur, "Can you play something of Abelard's?"

  Heloise lurched against Ceci's shoulder, but the girl did not notice.

  The jongleur bowed gallantly. "Madame," he shouted, "I can play anything you like of Abelard's. Name it."

  "The 'Dawn Song.'" She smiled provocatively.

  Snapping her eyes shut, Heloise listened and let the tears roll from under her lashes.

  Ceci poked her. "Heloise, isn't that pretty? Raimon says that Abelard's songs are so popular that even villeins sing them."

  "Shhh."

  When the compline bell rang, the nuns began to walk rapidly toward the cloister gate. The jongleur drank a few sips from a wineskin and started a sad, slow canso. Ceci stood stock-still until Heloise tugged at her sleeve.

  "I'm coming in a little while," she protested.

  "You're coming now." It was an effort to make her voice firm.

  "Heloise, please."

  "Holy Mother, what's the matter with you? Are you crazy?"

  Ceci nodded. "All right." Her voice was sullen.

  The evening office: Psalm 3 and after it Psalm 94, chanted simply. They did the Ambrosian hymn, followed by six additional psalms with antiphons, and then Lady Alais read three lessons. It went on, interminably. Heloise moved her lips automatically, her mind on Abelard and the turret room in the Rue des Chantres.

  Afterward, she went to bed and lay awake until matins, Aristotle curled under her arm. At the far end of the dormitory, a group of sisters were sitting on Sister Blanche's bed, chattering and drinking wine. The jongleur had made everyone giddy; suddenly, keeping the rules did not seem very important. Half intending to reprimand them, Heloise got up and went over. Before she reached them, she had changed her mind. It was none of her business. Sister Blanche, not a worldly woman, had been a nun for thirty years and infirmarian more than twenty. If she wanted to drink wine in the dorter at Christmas, she knew very well the penance for such an infraction. Heloise felt that discipline had grown very lax at Argenteuil, with Madelaine dying and Lady Alais tipsy much of the time.

  The nuns were talking about jongleurs they had seen, or heard of, and debating the virtues of their favorite troubadour poets. Heloise stood by them for a while, sipping the wine when it passed to her. When the conversation turned to love, she left. Passing Ceci's bed, she noticed that it was empty. Shivery, she dived under the covers and hugged Aristotle who had not stirred. Finally, she dozed.

  In the morning, nose still dripping, she paid her daily call on Madelaine before shambling to the schoolroom for classes. At mid-morning, she sent one of the children to fetch more handkerchiefs from the wardrober. She felt badly, but her nose was only half the problem. She knew why. Today was the eve of Christmas, her son's natal day. He would be three today. No, she corrected herself, actually he was born on Christmas Day. But her pains had begun on the previous evening and in her mind she ran it all together. She wondered if he missed her. Probably he thought of Denise as his mother. Something in her gut flopped over.

  The children were running around, smacking each other and pulling hair. She bundled them off to Sister Judith for their embroidery lesson and settled down at Madelaine's table. There were letters to answer. A baron from Compiegne wished to enroll his daughter as a novice. Would Argenteuil be willing to accept a small gift of money now and, on his death, a sizable donation to cover the installation of a rose window in the abbey church?

  Heloise did not see how Lady Alais could refuse the offer, even though she knew that this particular baron had an evil reputation; he had been at odds with the Church for years and once had been excommunicated for pillaging a church in Normandy. Tainted money, she thought. No matter. Lady Alais would take his daughter. Heloise tossed the letter aside, remembering Astrolabe. What would become of him with no mother or father? She could not imagine Denise reading Plato or Seneca to him.

  Astrane hobbled in, looking sour. She was carrying a tablet and stylus. Heloise forced a pleasant smile. She had had a hard time feeling comfortable around Astrane since she had discovered her relationship with the abbess. "God's greetings, Sister."

  Astrane mumbled in her throat. "Sister Heloise," she said, scanning the tablet, "the sacristan informs me that Sister Cecilia has not reported for work this morning." Quickly, she darted a sharp gaze around the room, as if Heloise might be concealing Ceci in a cupboard.

  "Isn't this her day in the infirmary?"

  "I've looked there." She rapped the stylus against the tablet. "And Sister Marguerite missed chapter meeting. And Sister—"

  Heloise cut her off. "I've seen no one but Sister Madelaine and the children since we broke fast."

  That night, the nuns sipped spiced wine and ate almond cakes, their traditional holiday treats, and went to midnight mass. Argenteuil celebrated Christ's birth with three masses—midnight, dawn, and Christmas Day. In Heloise's opinion, the proper for midnight mass with its five chants, along with the eight great "O" antiphons sung at vespers during Advent, was some of the most moving church music ever written. Abelard once told her that it dated from the tenth century, but recently she had found evidence that it went back much farther, probably to the reign of Pope Vitalian in the seventh century.

  In the cloister, Heloise joined the line snaking into the church. Behind her, somebody laughed. "I like snow for Christmas—it doesn't feel like Christmas without snow." Heloise bundled her hands into her sleeves. She wondered if Astrane had finally caught Ceci napping. It would mean another punishment, because Astrane went strictly by the rule book.

  The church was full. People stood in the aisles and sat in the transept. As Heloise passed Lady Alais, the abbess grabbed her arm.

  "Sister," she whispered, "would you mind waiting after mass. I wish to speak with you."

  Heloise took her place in the choir stalls. It was hard to concentrate. She kept thinking of Christmas at Notre Dame and Agnes's roast goose, Christmas mass in Brittany with her belly cramping and the muffled snow coming down flake by flake. Dominus dixit ad me. Why did Denise never reply? She wondered if Denise hated her, and decided that she must. The Lord said to me: Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee. Gloria patri et filio.

  The introit completed, they began the gradual. Abelard, that first Christmas after he moved into Fulbert's house. She remembered that they had walked home from Notre Dame, all smiles, and Jourdain had been with them and he had kissed her. Happy times, she thought, too lovely to last. That jongleur—Raimon was what Ceci had called him —that jongleur sang well, but nobody could sing Abelard's songs as well as Abelard. Nobody but the angels. In splendoribus sanctorum. In the splendor of saints, from the womb before the day-star have I begotten thee. Thoughts of Abelard and his songs seethed in her mind. Ah God, ah God, how quickly comes the dawn. Oh, how quickly came the end of their loving. Gloria patri et filio. The nuns rose and filed from the choir.

  Near the door, Heloise dropped out of line and waited for Lady Alais. When the last of the women had disappeared up the dorter stairs, the abbess approached. Her face looked grim. Tonight she was sober.

  "Child,
" she said, "Sister Heloise, what precisely do you know about the whereabouts of Sister Cecilia?"

  "Well—nothing, my lady. I've not seen her today."

  "No one has seen her today."

  "Oh." Heloise stood motionless, a sick pounding beginning in her temples.

  "When did you see her last? And where?" The abbess sighed impatiently. "Think carefully."

  Heloise knew that Ceci had not been in her bed after compline. Had she attended matins? Heloise tried to remember. "She was in the yard last night, listening to the jongleur. And then we came to compline together."

  "And after that?" Lady Alais still looked grim.

  "I've not seen her since. Don't worry, my lady. She must be here. Where could she have gone?" Suddenly the jongleur's feathered cap battered into her head. Ceci knew a lot about him. He had come from Ventadour. She leaned toward Lady Alais and feigned unconcern. "Sister Cecilia is mischievous, you know that."

  Lady Alais looked away. After a silence, she said to Heloise, "Tomorrow after chapter meeting—we must search the entire convent and grounds. Every corner, every inch. Do you hear?"

  "Yes, my lady." Heloise knew it would be a waste of time. By now Ceci must be leagues away, riding pillion behind a jongleur in a green cloak. She followed Lady Alais into the cloister, her hands shaking.

  In the early spring, after Ceci had been gone several months, Madelaine finally died. Heloise was elected prioress, a foregone decision since she had been handling Madelaine's duties for nearly two years. There were halfhearted grumbles, of course, some of the elderly sisters declaring that Heloise was far too young for such a high position. But her experience could not be denied.

  Once, Heloise went to the woods, to a place where she recalled that violets and lilies grew, and she picked a nosegay to lay below Madelaine's cross. After that, she made a habit of bringing flowers every Sunday morning, for no other reason than that it made her feel better. With neither Madelaine nor Ceci there, she felt stripped. She told herself that she had never loved either of them that much, Madelaine the stern taskmaster, Ceci the malcontent. She hoped that Ceci was happy now, wherever she might be, and she prayed for Madelaine's soul. Still, she cried. It was no use trying to deny that everybody she had cared about had left her—Abelard, her son, and now the prioress and Ceci. And Fulbert. Once she had cared about him. She wondered if he were still alive, he and Agnes together in their farmhouse.

  On Maundy Thursday, she received a thick letter from Jourdain and suddenly realized that he had not entered her mind for months. Instead of opening the packet immediately, she slid it into her girdle, and in the late afternoon she went to the rock. She was unsure why she put off reading the letter, except that pleasures came so infrequently that she liked to prolong them. If only Abelard had written to her, she would have been the happiest woman in the world. What he wrote would not have mattered, even if he had scribbled the alphabet. Merely to know that he remembered her would have been enough.

  Wreaths of clouds drifted away toward Saint-Denis. Out on the Seine burst a shaft of sunlight, gauzy and radiant, staining the surface a hazy gold, and Heloise could see the sky reflected in the water. There was something ghostly, deceptive, about the way the light fell at Argenteuil—silently it softened and rounded the contours of objects so that one seemed to be gazing at the world through a mist of diaphanous fabric. She kept seeing a small, unhappy girl, dreaming, and she thought bitterly, Well, I have no illusions now.

  Aristotle sprinted headlong down the embankment and sniffed cautiously at the water. When a frog croaked, she began to yap furiously. Laughing, Heloise shouted, "Go get it, beastie! Go on!" The dog looked at her uncertainly. "Aaah, what kind of a fighter are you?" She hoisted her onto her hip and climbed up the rock. "Sit. Aristotle, sit."

  After a dozen repetitions, Aristotle gave in, reluctantly. She hunkered on her hindquarters and stared out at the water. "Good girl, good Aristotle." The dog rarely left Heloise's heels and even tried to follow her into church for the offices. Since this was strictly forbidden, Heloise usually tied her up. She was a plump little creature, probably because Heloise overfed her.

  Smiling, Heloise nudged her with a toe. "Hullo, sweeting. A long fast is what you need. That's right—a fast." She took out the letter, breaking its seal with her thumbnail. The first part was devoted to Count Thibaut and some insult he had received from Count Ralph of Vermandois, who was King Louis's cousin. Since Heloise knew nothing of the feud, she could make little sense of its significance. If there was any. Jourdain sometimes liked to include trivia if they were sufliciently titillating. More gossip: William the Troubadour had installed a leman in his palace at Poitiers. His wife had withdrawn to Fontevrault Abbey, where she died of a broken heart. Heloise laughed skeptically. Jourdain could be terribly melodramatic. Broken heart indeed. No doubt the duchess had some bad fish.

  At the bottom of the sheet, her eye caught the words "Master Peter." She skipped over the Duchess of Aquitaine and got to Abelard. Jourdain explained that he had written a book on the nature of God—Discourse on the Trinity. According to Jourdain, who said he had read the treatise several times, it was a distinguished piece of writing. Still.

  When Heloise read the word "still," she sensed trouble. Apprehensive, she skimmed the page. Names of churchmen: Roscelin, Alberic of Rheims, Lotulph of Lombardy. The latter two, she recalled, had been fellow students when Abelard had studied at Laon under Anselm. They had been jealous of him. Why was Jourdain being so poky in getting to the point? She knew there must be one. On the next sheet there was a defense of Abelard's book—he was only trying to combine Christianity with human reason. His students demanded explanations.

  "My dear friend," Jourdain went on, "Master Peter intended to say nothing heretical, nothing that is not already implied in the Church's teachings. But he has never been cautious, as you well know."

  She knew. Spine stiffened, she raced on. These two enemies, Alberic and Lotulph, charged that Abelard had preached and written that there are three Gods. They had denounced him as a heretic.

  "Oh God," Heloise moaned aloud. "When will you have done torturing this man? Leave him be, for pity's sake."

  "Dear Heloise, he is summoned to a Church council at Soissons, in July I think, and ordered to bring his book with him. I see no cause for worry, friend; there are few who can debate with Peter Abelard and win. Besides, he wrote me that if there is anything in the tract that dissents from the faith, he will readily correct it." He had written Jourdain? Jealousy stabbed at her. "Set your mind at ease. There is nothing in the book to condemn him."

  There was more. The White Ship, King Henry's royal vessel, had been wrecked off Barfleur, slammed into the rocks by a drunken helmsman—Prince William had drowned and now there was no heir to the throne of England. She folded the letter and tucked it into her sleeve. To accuse Abelard of heresy was utterly mad. These enemies of his must be very stupid men. Pulling Aristotle onto her lap, she sighed and closed her eyes.

  16

  The new abbot of Saint-Denis was short and fat, like a gargoyle with its chin encased in lard, and the top of his tonsured head barely reached Heloise's shoulder. His silk vestments were embroidered with stiff gold thread, and on each of his fingers flashed a precious stone. When the portress announced the arrival of Abbot Suger's retinue, Heloise had accompanied Lady Alais into the courtyard. The abbot's splendid livery, the gilded spurs and fringed saddles, rivaled anything that a king might own. Heloise stared with intense curiosity at the little man. She had seen him once, when he had come to visit Abelard after the castration. In the bedchamber of Abelard's quarters, she had served them goblets of wine, but Suger had not bothered to glance at her, as if she were a varlet. "God's greetings, my lady abbess," Suger said briskly. "A fine house you have here. Venerable. It was once a house for men, you know."

  Lady Alais made a deep bow and sank to her knees. "Why, no, I— no, my lord. I didn't know." She went on, stammering, "Of course it has been owned by Saint-Denis for
centuries, but Theodrada, er, the daughter of Charlemagne—"

  Suger broke in tightly. "I know who Theodrada was." He stretched forth a chubby hand. For a moment, the abbess stared in confusion, unsure which ring to kiss, and finally settled on an enormous garnet. Standing, she gave the abbot one of her dimpled smiles, wrinkled up her nose, and fluttered her lashes helplessly. At fifty-five, Lady Alais was no longer adorable, the fact of which she was unaware.

  Abbot Suger paid no attention to the dimples. "I hope you've made no elaborate preparations for my visit," he said, waving his escort to come forward. His rings flashed in the sunlight.

  "Why, no, my lord," Lady Alais squeaked. She turned away and led him over the bleached cobbles toward the cloister gate. Groaning to herself, Heloise followed. For a week, the convent had been in a frenzy preparing for this day, and a sumptuous dinner would be served in the dining hall reserved for royalty and other distinguished guests. Kids had been roasting since dawn.

  "This morning,'' he said sharply, "I will inspect the buildings, the tenant farms, and the vineyards. Later we shall review the convent's financial affairs."

  "Yes, my lord."

  "And of course I shall wish to view the sacred tunic and any other relics you own."

  "Certainly, my lord abbot. We have the collarbone of St.—" Her voice trailed off; the abbot had turned his attention to his secretary, who was whispering into his ear.

  The yard glistened under a hard blue sky. It was spring again, the universal season for pilgrimages, and the roadsides were choked with daisies and lemon cuckooflowers. Already visitors were coming in a steady trickle, and in a few weeks there would be hordes, palmers who had spent the winter grayness crowded around their hearths and shivering in dim garrets, now liberated, feet propelling them toward Saint-Denis, Compostela, Rocamadour. Mouths to feed, Heloise thought, and she wondered how Argenteuil would manage until the first harvest came in. If the squat little Abbot Suger could suggest solutions for their money problems, she would count this a blessed day. But she doubted it. The abbess was trotting to keep up with Suger, and Heloise took her elbow, steadying the old woman as she stumbled over the crannies between the cobbles. For a fat man, who virtually waddled, the abbot moved fast. Wheeling around, he suddenly said to Lady Alais, "Is that meat I smell cooking?"