Stealing Heaven

by Marion Meade

  "Which side are you on?" Judith glared. A chorus of ayes rang out.

  "My sisters," Heloise broke in. Folding the papers, she glanced at Lady Alais, who was clutching her rosary. She said to her, "My lady abbess, would you like to speak?"

  The abbess did not move or answer. Then, as if in a trance, she slid to the edge of her chair and stood unsteadily, fastening cold fingers on Heloise's arm. Every pair of eyes in the chapter house strained toward her. In a monotone so flat that most of her words were lost, she began to mumble. ". . . willful slander." She pressed her lips together and gazed down at her abbatial ring.

  There was an embarrassed silence. Sister Angelica called out, "My lady abbess, what is to become of us?" Lady Alais did not reply.

  After a moment, Heloise pried her fingers loose and toppled her back into the chair. Turning to the nuns, she said, "The bishop informs us that we are to be placed in convents of good repute, lest any of us go astray and perish through misconduct."

  "Very funny," hooted Judith. "The flock has been scattered, and he worries about us going astray." A rumble of laughter floated through the chapter house.

  Heloise reached for the letter. "Or he presents another alternative. Any nun who wishes may be released from her vows at this time." A gasp went up and, from the corner of her eye, Heloise saw Ceci's mouth drop open. "Of course, that must be your personal decision. I suggest that we adjourn now. In the days ahead, each of us should pray for individual guidance." Nobody moved.

  Angelica's high voice sliced into the silence. "What about the appeal?"

  "It will be made. But to be safe"—she sighed aloud —"it might be wise to apply now to the approved convents on the bishop's list. Then if the synod decision is overturned, we can always—"

  "I'm going to wait and see," broke in Sister Blanche.

  "So am I," squeaked one of the new novices.

  Astrane said, "I wouldn't." Her eyes were perfectly calm—indeed, her face wore a look of satisfaction that was completely at odds with every face in the room.

  "Why not?" said Blanche, frowning.

  "I just wouldn't. Pope Honorius is certain to affirm the decision.

  "What do you know about it?" asked the novice who wanted to wait.

  Astrane smiled. "Nothing."

  Giving the sign for dismissal, Heloise crossed the room to Ceci and swooped Aristotle from her lap. "Come on. It's over."

  Ceci slumped her chin against her chest. "I can't believe it."

  Heloise could not believe it either, although she had seen it coming for years. '"Well, they say that seeing is believing." She lowered her voice. "Anyway, now I have my spy."

  "Heloise, who?" She raised her head.

  "Can't you guess?"

  Ceci blinked. "Old Pisspot, isn't it?"

  "Aye. I'm dead certain." She glanced back at Lady Alais, who was still sitting in her chair, her eyes filmy. At her elbow, Sarazanne stood stiffly on one leg and chewed her nails. Heloise and Ceci went into the cloister, where the sisters were beginning to assemble in small groups. The women made no effort to control their voices as they ordinarily would have, and the close vibrated with tears and curses. Heloise felt too weary to call for order. She staggered to a deserted spot under the eaves.

  Ceci, rubbing her nose, followed. She said bitterly, "Astrane has sold her soul to Suger."

  "Astrane has no soul."

  "Neither does Suger ... I wonder what he promised her. An abbacy, I wager."

  Heloise shook her head. "She's too young."

  Ceci asked, “What are you going to do now?"

  "Do? About what?"

  "We are released from our vows. You can go back to the world."

  "I made my vows to Abelard, not to God. Abelard has not released me." Ceci was staring at her. "But Ceci, listen—there's no reason why you can't return to the world"

  Ceci laughed sharply. She thrust her hands into her sleeves. "Where would I go?"

  "Home. Angers."

  "Heloise, I'm twenty-seven. They won't want me." She looked away, frowning. "Besides, I don't even remember what they looked like."

  "Don't be so hasty. The chance won't come again. Think about it."

  "There's nothing to think about."

  They went in to eat.

  From that day until Easter, the nuns at Argenteuil struggled to restore order to lives that had once seemed the most ordered, most secure, of all women. The children had been sent home. All semblance of discipline vanished, even the celebration of the divine offices being made late and once omitted entirely. The rule of silence that they had observed during meals gave way to half whispers and then to outright chatter. All of them, Heloise included, were waiting for the appeal to reach King Louis, but as the days passed without word, they gradually lost confidence. A few nuns, always in pairs, took bowls from the kitchen and walked out the front gate; they said that they were going to Rocamadour or Compostela. Some did not mention their destinations. To Heloise's surprise, Sister Judith, who had been a nun for thirty-five years, requested release from her vows so that she could live with her niece. And there were other women, young and aging, who renounced their calling, if it could be called that.

  "Sister Astrane," Heloise said carefully, without looking at her, "the bishop wants a record of where each of us plans to go. You have not yet notified me of your plans."

  "I'm going to Sainte-Catherine's."

  Heloise frowned. "Where is that? I've not heard of such a convent."

  "A new daughter house of Mount Sainte-Agnes. Near Senlis."

  "Gramercy." She wrote Astrane's name on her list and, after it, Sainte-Catherine's of Senlis. She felt Astrane's eyes on her.

  A moment later, Astrane was saying, "I'm to be prioress." Her voice was velvety with triumph.

  “I see. Sister, I have work to do now. You have my permission to go.”

  The thirty-day grace period passed. Heloise sent a lay brother to the bishop to ask why Louis the Fat had taken no action on their appeal. The brother came back full of gossip. The king had left Paris for Rheims, where he intended to crown Prince Philip. In spite of her annoyance, Heloise was interested. That was unusual, crowning a thirteen-year-old prince as king while his father still lived. Louis the Fat was taking no chances with the succession. People said that Philip was arrogant, badly behaved, and disobedient, an all-round bad potato, and that the king could do nothing with him. Heloise hoped the king remained in good health for a while. She sent the lay brother to Rheims.

  Uneasiness pervaded the cloister. The feeling of impending calamity grew stronger, and even those nuns, like Sister Blanche, who had hesitated, were applying to other convents. Lady Alais announced that she would enter Notre Dame-des-Bois and that Sarazanne would accompany her. She could not take the parrot; the abbess of Notre Dame forbade animals, and Lady Alais sold the bird to a merchant who stopped the night.

  As for Heloise's own future, it remained a blank. Following her advice to the nuns, she requested admission to Notre Dame-des-Bois and several other houses, both for herself and for Ceci. Nothing happened. Either she received no reply, or she got letters politely refusing. Always there was some excuse—no room, or her application was being carefully reviewed and so forth. Heloise marveled at the power of Abbot Suger.

  Ceci gave a lopsided grin. "Sweet, nobody wants us," she told Heloise. "Isn't that a coincidence."

  "The abbot has done a thorough job," admitted Heloise. "But he doesn't control every nunnery in Christendom. Stop worrying."

  "There's nothing to do but worry." Ceci laughed.

  "Tomorrow I'm going to write to the abbess at Fontevrault. It's a fairly new community. Surely they'll be wanting people." She should have written earlier. At Fontevrault there were a convent and monastery together, but both were ruled by a woman, a unique arrangement. Fontevrault had been founded by Robert d'Arbrissel, a Breton reformer who believed that women were more competent administrators than men. Heloise liked the sound of the place.

  The next
day, the lay brother returned from Rheims. Illiterate, he had not read the documents in his pouch, but he had been told of their contents and he arrived weeping. Heloise learned that Louis had endorsed the synod decision on the day of Prince Philip's coronation. Argenteuil was to be evacuated immediately.

  Quickly the nuns began to leave, even though the final decision rested with Pope Honorius and he had not yet passed on the appeal. Nobody believed that he would save them. The wardrober opened her storeroom and distributed to each woman the personal belongings she had brought when she entered the convent. There were gowns, moth-eaten and mildewed, long out of style; faded ribbons and bracelets green with tarnish, dusty packets of letters, rag dolls, even a lute. Everyone got something painful. All that day the nuns wept. In the evening, when they were exhausted from grief, Heloise told the cellaress to make a fire outside the postern gate so that the nuns should be enabled to burn what they did not wish to keep.

  In the schoolroom, she went through her bundle, those things that Abelard had brought on the day she had taken her vows. At the time, she had not opened it, merely handed the parcel to the wardrober. On top were Abelard's letters, tied with ribbon. She would never part with them, or with the Limoges box containing her wedding ring and the amethyst he had given her soon after they became lovers. The rest of the things she took out to the bonfire.

  Heloise stayed at the convent for several weeks, saying that she must leave her records and accounts in good condition. It was an excuse. She thought, I once dreaded coming here and now I dread leaving. Each day some of the nuns departed, in small bands as well as large, and each day the courtyard shuddered with the sounds of weeping. After a while, Heloise learned to numb herself. By the middle of May there remained only the cellaress and three of her assistants. Sister Angelica, who had cared for the grounds and buildings for nearly twenty-five years, thought it her duty to personally hand over the convent to the abbot of Saint-Denis, or his representative. But now that Argenteuil officially belonged to the abbey, nobody seemed in a great hurry to claim it.

  Four days before Pentecost, Heloise told Sister Angelica that she and Ceci would be leaving the following morning, after prime. She wanted no formal farewell, if Sister Angelica did not mind. The cellaress, her eyes pitted with rings of exhaustion, nodded; they kissed. Later that day, Heloise placed a bunch of rosemary on Sister Madelaine's grave, and afterwards she went to the schoolroom for the last time. Opening the cupboard, she took out a map she had been saving and slid it, folded, into her girdle.

  The next day, Heloise and Ceci walked quickly through the cloister, Aristotle prancing at their heels. Already the place felt abandoned—no dogs barking or parrot screeching. Only birds sang. Along the south walk, weeds were choking out the mint; a brown apple core lay near the little statue of the Virgin. At the gate to the courtyard, Heloise kicked at the grille, not wanting to look back. Ceci stopped and turned.

  "Look," she said, "the abbess's lemon tree. She forgot it."

  "Oh, I don't think so. Probably she left it on purpose. You can't enter a convent with a tree." Suddenly she had in her mind a picture of Lady Alais approaching the gate of Notre Dame-des-Bois, trundling the lemon tree in a barrow, a parrot on her shoulder. She roared a wild peal of laughter.

  Ceci jumped. "Sweet Mother of God, what's that all about!"

  "Nothing," she answered, wiping her eyes. “Nothing. Let's go." She wondered who would water the lemon tree. It needed water at least three times a week. Sister Angelica for a while, and then of course the monks. The thought of men inside the gate made her feel funny. "Let's go," she repeated.

  The sun had not been up long, so the air still felt cool and fresh. Crossing to the convent gate, they swung it open and then pulled it shut behind them. The empty road stretched out on either side.

  "Which do you want to carry first?" Heloise said to Ceci. "The bundle or Aristotle?"

  "The bundle."

  Heloise hauled Aristotle to her hip. They started down the road toward Paris.

  It took them five days to reach the Ile. Heloise made that about one mile a day and she had to smile over it. But there was no reason to hurry, no place they had to be, nothing they had to do. It felt good. Heloise's face turned golden tan below her wimple, and Ceci's nose began to peel. They walked slowly, talking to other travelers, enjoying the sights. The weather was fine and warm, and at night they slept comfortably in the fragrant fields with the stars for a coverlet. Seven times each day they stopped, wherever they happened to be, to say the divine offices. They might be nuns without a home but they were still nuns.

  On the road, people were friendly and generous; the begging bowls that Heloise and Ceci thrust forward were always filled with food or coins, and it was a hardhearted person who could pass Aristotle without tossing her a hit of dried beef or a morsel of bread. On the Roman road they felt safe and exhilarated, as if it were a fair day.

  Paris had grown. Fine houses were going up on the Right Bank, and the Templars were putting up a palace for themselves. Across the Grand Pont, on the island, many houses had been torn down and rebuilt; in the open shops along the Rue de la Draperie, merchants stood behind counters swaddled in brilliantly dyed linen and silk. Everything seemed to be colored rose. Heloise had forgotten that the light in Paris is pinkish.

  The bakery where she had first seen Abelard still stood on the corner of the Rue de la Pomme, but the baker was different. Wondering, Heloise decided that the old one had probably died. It seemed unreasonable that everything should not be exactly as she had left it, ten years earlier. She and Ceci stood on the corner with their bowls. They had to watch Aristotle—she was not used to crowds and traffic, and once a horseman narrowly missed trampling her. After that, Heloise or Ceci held the dog.

  They counted their coppers and bought cheese and ham pasties from a vendor. That was a foolish waste of money, because they were not good pasties, not like the ones Heloise remembered. Still, they ate slowly, making the pies last, and drifted east in the direction of the Rue des Chantres.

  Somebody was living in Fulbert's house. She could see wet linen hanging near the stables. Ceci set Aristotle down, and they went cautiously up to the door. Heloise knocked. A sour-faced young man in clerical robes opened.

  "What do you want?" he said.

  "Who lives here?" Heloise asked.

  "This house belongs to the Church."

  "Yes. But who lodges here?"

  Impatient, he answered curtly, "The Grand Penitentiary," and closed the door.

  They backed off, still staring at the house. It looked as if it had shrunk. Ceci said, "What's a Grand Penitentiary?"

  “I’m not sure. He's employed by the bishop. Or the Holy See.

  "To do what?"

  Heloise motioned her around the side of the house. "A sort of inquisitor." She peered over the gate, trying to see into the garden.

  The only things visible were the privy and part of the pear tree.

  "Heloise. Really? You mean he questions heretics?''

  "Ummm. Among others. Cases involving conscience." A suitable tenant for such a house, she thought, and turned away. They went down to watch the boats in the Port Saint-Landry.

  18

  There was a nice feeling in Paris that lifted her—for a while. She knew it would not last. Sooner or later, she would glide up headlong against loneliness, the only thing about the Ile that she could rely upon.

  Heloise and Ceci were too giddy to worry about much of anything. They slept along the river, under the willows, where the salt breeze overpowered the stench of dung and rotting garbage that hung over the Ile's streets. Day after day, that summer, they begged for alms. Most days they got enough to keep their stomachs reasonably full, with a little left over for Aristotle. When they were given little, or nothing, there were always the abbeys on the Left Bank: Saint-Victor, Saint-Germain-des-Pres, even Sainte-Genevieve, which was a bit of a walk. In the courtyards, they would line up with the other beggars and wait for distribution of left
over bread. Sometimes pea soup, but never with meat. By August, they were on friendly terms with the abbeys' porters and knew which days they could count on hot food.

  On Assumption, they began following the Orleans road south, in the direction of Melun. Two years earlier, or perhaps more, Jourdain's father had died, and he had gone home to claim his fief. Heloise warned Ceci that Jourdain knew nothing of their coming, and most likely would not be living at Sancy. No doubt he had returned to Champagne and left the demesne to his stewards. In the end, after many days of debate, they decided to visit him, as they would be passing that way.

  Without crossing the drawbridge, they shouted to the knight on the wall, "God greet you, is your master within?''

  To their amazement, he immediately called back, "Aye, holy ladies. And awaiting you since St. John's Day."

  They slept in beds again. Laughing, Heloise complained to Jourdain that the feather mattress made her back ache, so accustomed had she grown to months of resting on the hard earth. The beamed roof of the hall made her feel closed in, and she would catch herself looking up, expecting sky and clouds. Although Jourdain stayed with them much of the time, this was his busiest season. The villeins were bringing in the harvest, and after Michaelmas wheat and rye were sowed, plowing and harrowing began on the fallow fields, and hedges opened to the harvested fields so that cattle could graze on the stubble. Since it was also the end of the castle's fiscal year, the hall teemed with vassals come to settle their accounts.

  Despite the remote location of Sancy, Jourdain seemed to know all the happenings of the world, and he spent the evenings chattering about the affairs of Church and courts. It was not all gossip. Heloise learned that Suger's expulsion of the nuns at Argenteuil was generally accepted, because people believed the sordid tales of their behavior. Jourdain told her that the Church was growing more corrupt each year, that while Notre Dame had banished her uncle, his name remained on its roll of canons.

  "Why, in God's name?" sputtered Ceci. "He's a convicted criminal."