by Marion Meade
"Garin, my lady. I serve Lord Jourdain, who is castellan of—"
Impatiently, she gestured him to his feet. "Yes, yes, I know all that. You have some message for me?"
Garin stood up. "My lady," he said, uncertainly, "I'm bound for the court at Troyes. My mission is to deliver this, er, letter—I mean document—to, er, Count Thibaut." He swallowed several times. "I can't tarry because I've been delayed, you see. The snow—" He began describing the drifts around Sens when Heloise broke in.
“I don't understand. What does all this have to do with me?"
"Oh, yes. Well, it has something." Scratching his chin, he glanced at Gertrude and then back at Heloise. "Lady, I'd better start again. I’m getting confused."
"I'm sorry. Go on." She waited.
"My lord Jourdain has given me this packet for Count Thibaut. I'm to show it to Lady Heloise. She may read it, but I am not to leave it with her. It's for the count. You see?"
Heloise nodded, smiling slightly. “I see." Garin did not move. "Well then, suppose you give it to me."
Garin crossed to a saddlebag that had been dumped by the door. A moment later, he handed Heloise a package wrapped in skin and bound with a string. "This is a treatise of some sort?"
"No, my lady. A letter."
"Really?" She tugged off the skin and saw that the bundle contained perhaps a hundred sheets of parchment. "A long letter. And when am I to read this?" She smiled at him.
"Why, now," Garin said. He yawned into his beard.
She smiled at Gertrude. "In the middle of the night?" In her opinion, the lad was a little simpleminded. She glanced at the first page; the handwriting was neat but unfamiliar. There was no inscription, but at the top left corner she noticed a few small words in Jourdain's hand. Abelard's letter of consolation to his friend. Heloise's throat dried up. She gasped, "This is a letter of Abelard's?"
Garin nodded.
"But it's not his handwriting."
"A copy, my lady."
She sent Gertrude to the kitchen to get food and drink for Garin. There was little in their stores, barely enough for one meal a day if they ate sparingly, but she trusted Gertrude to find some morsel. Garin dropped on a stool. Shaking with excitement, Heloise glanced at the opening lines of the letter.
"There are times when example is better than precept for stirring or soothing human passions; and so I propose to follow up the words of consolation I gave you in person with the history of my own misfortunes, hoping thereby to give you comfort in absence." Heloise frowned, wondering to whom Abelard had written these words. "In comparison with my trials you will see that your own are nothing . . ."
"When she looked up, Garin's chin was slumping on his chest. "Sir Garin, I'll go now and read this. Sister Gertrude is getting food. You can sleep here—" As she turned toward the door, he called after her.
"I forgot something," he said. "Lord Jourdain said to be sure and tell you—he does not send the letter to hurt you. You may not like what you read, but he thought you would like to see it." He added solemnly, "My lord got furious over it."
"Good night, Sir Garin," she said, and went out with Abelard's letter pressed to her chest.
In her room, she lit a rushlight and began to read:
"I was born on the borders of Brittany, in a town called Le Pallet . . ."
The first twenty or so pages seemed to be purely autobiographical, describing Abelard's early years as a student, his disputes with various students and teachers, and then going on to recount his arrival in Paris and his rise to success as a master at the cathedral school. Something about the tone of the narrative jarred Heloise slightly—it was boastful, even bombastic in places. He constantly disparaged his teachers and colleagues, as if he felt determined to prove himself superior. Heloise thought, There is no need to do that; what need has he to exaggerate his achievements? When the lauds hell sounded, she reluctantly blew out the light and went out into the dark cold, to the chapel. The office dragged, as if time had slowed to a crawl. The chattering of Astrane's teeth echoed against the stone walls. Heloise's mouth opened and closed automatically; she did not bother to concentrate on the psalms. At the end of the service, she got up quickly and hurried back to her room.
Eagerly, she found her place on the page. More about Abelard's success. There was a rambling paragraph on pride, which disturbed her a little. Flipping the page, she was startled to see her name jump up. "There was in Paris at the time a young girl named Heloise, the niece of Fulbert, and so much loved by him that he had done everything in his power to advance her education in letters." Heloise blinked uneasily. "In looks she did not rank lowest, while in the extent of her learning she stood supreme. A gift for letters is so rare in women that it added greatly to her charm and won her renown throughout the realm. I decided that she was the one to bring to my bed, confident that I should have an easy success . . ." Involuntarily she gave an indignant gasp, reaching out one hand to steady herself against the writing table. Cold air from the cracks in the shutters whistled about her ankles. Angry, she pushed the page closer to the rushlight so that she did not miss anything, and, shoulders hunched forward, she kept reading.
When Heloise turned over the final page, it was still dark outside. She pushed the manuscript aside, blew out the light, and violently slammed her face against the oak slab. Tears crept down the sides of her nose, onto the table. Whole sentences came back to her, cutting, brutal words that denied their past together, rejected her as if she had been less than nothing to him. It was all there: the intimate details of their lovemaking, her pregnancy and the birth of Astrolabe, and then the marriage, castration, and taking of monastic vows. And so forth up to the present time. He had omitted nothing and he had omitted everything. His distortions and omissions burned at her memory. It didn't happen that way, she thought, you loved me once.
I am thirty-two. For half my life, my soul has loved you. And now you say that it was only an itch in the groin . . .
She concentrated on muffling the sound of her sobs. She was abbess of a convent and her daughters slept in the next chamber. She could not shriek and pound her fists against the wall like a seventeen-year-old girl. Clear your head, she commanded under her breath, think rationally. It was possible that Abelard's mind had been affected by his dangers at Saint-Gildas. He intimated as much himself, because the last ten pages of the letter centered on the attempts of his monks to kill him. They had put poison in the chalice during mass; they had held a dagger to his throat, forcing him to flee to Nantes. God knew, he might be dead at this moment. She sat up, dizzy with fear.
"A fugitive and a wanderer," he had called himself. "I carry everywhere the curse of Cain, forever tormented by quarrels and forebodings without and within."
He suffered. In comparison, her own pain was nothing.
Soon it would be prime; sniffling, she collected the sheets into an orderly pile and wrapped them up again. Darkness blanketed the cloister. When she came into the gatehouse, Garin was drinking soup. She said, "Sir Garin, perchance do you know the contents of this?” She laid the package next to his bowl.
He mumbled, "Aye."
Heloise's face reddened.
"Many have read it," he said, not meeting her eyes. "Lord Jourdain's clerk made this copy. There are more in circulation."
"How many?"
Garin shrugged. "Impossible to say. My lord got his copy from the Count of Dreux."
"But"—her voice cracked—"this is a letter to a friend. What kind of friend would circulate a private letter?"
Garin drained his bowl and set it down. He wiped his beard on his sleeve. "My lord believes that it wasn't written to anyone in particular. He believes—" He began picking his teeth with a nail.
"Yes?"
"—he believes that it was only a—a—"
"Rhetorical device?"
"That's it." Garin got up and took the manuscript to his saddlebag. Heloise followed him.
"I don't understand," she cried. "Why would Abbot Peter do
such a thing?"
Garin shrugged again. "Mayhap to make known his plight at Saint-Gildas. He seems to be in danger. Lady, can you spare some hay for my mount?"
"Are you saying that Jourdain thinks this letter will release Abelard from Saint-Gildas?"
"Mayhap. Who knows?" He was not paying attention. Heloise sent Gertrude for hay; by the time dawn had broken, she had given him instructions for reaching Troyes and he was gone.
After prime, she went to the chapter house, where she had set up a makeshift office in the corner. The Paraclete had grown; now they had seven novices, a wall and cloister, and a refectory, dormitory, and chapter house. The new buildings were still in various stages of construction, but as long as they had roofs and four walls, they were used. What the Paraclete did not have was food; the harvest had been meager the previous summer. Bishop Manasses had promised her a portion of the tithes from the diocese of Meaux, but she doubted if it would amount to much. When half the district was going hungry, people had nothing to give the Church, not even for the salvation of their souls. Heloise opened her account ledger. She sat at the table, adding and re-adding and subtracting, until midmorning, when the novice Alys brought in a peasant with his daughter, a girl of about twelve. Both the man and his child were emaciated, the skin stretched tightly over white faces. The man began pleading with Heloise to enroll his daughter as a novice. He was not the first such father to appear that winter, nor would he be the last. In the end, Heloise sent him away, saying that the Paraclete had no food. His child would be no better off than at home. As they went out, Heloise watched the girl's eyes flash brilliant with relief.
At noon, they sat down to their daily meal: acorn soup, one small piece of barley bread, water. It was gone quickly. Afterward, Heloise's stomach was still rumbling. She wondered if she should make another trip to Nogent; Lord Milo had purchased grain from Flanders, and perhaps he would make her another loan. She decided against it, since she was already deeply in debt to him.
A weak sun came out for an hour, melting the snow along the north walk to a gray slush. The nuns worked in the refectory, as they had for weeks now, and cemented tiles on the floor. She wanted to tell someone about Abelard's letter, share it with another person as a kind of poultice for her wounds, but there was no one. She glanced over at Ceci on her knees near the kitchen door. Not Ceci— she would call Heloise a fool. She bit her lip and listlessly laid down another tile.
Ceci looked up. "Heloise," she called, "remember the white bread we used to eat in Paris? Remember Agnes's lamb with garlic sauce?"
Heloise laughed grimly. "Cheese pasties. That's what I remember." All of them daydreamed constantly about food. She slid a tile into place and pressed her weight down hard against it. Frantically, she struggled to keep from crying again. It would be impossible for her to go on each day without responding in some way to Abelard's letter. She could write to Jourdain, but probably he knew nothing. If he had had information, surely he would have entrusted it to Garin.
During vespers that evening, she made up her mind to write to Abelard, even though he did not want to hear from her, and afterward she closed the door to her chamber and took out parchment and ink. Once the blank sheet was before her, her mind froze. Presently she made an effort to begin, to put down something.
"Not long ago, my beloved, by chance someone brought me the letter you sent to a friend to comfort him. When I saw the superscription, I knew at once it was yours and I began to read eagerly because the writer is so dear to my heart. But nearly every line was filled, I remember, with gall and wormwood . . ."
At first she tried to conform to the formalities of good letter writing; she worried about her style and tried to keep her tone neutral. But in a while, she forgot to be careful. Her words were emotional, she knew, and she also knew he would not like that. She pleaded with him for a letter, as she had done when she first went to Argenteuil, and she stressed his obligations to the Paraclete. Since his life was in jeopardy at Saint-Gildas, why did he not return to her and cultivate his own vineyard? And she said other things, too, things that had rankled with her for years.
"Tell me one thing, if you can. Why, after our entry into religion (which was your decision alone), have you so neglected and forgotten me that I have neither a word of encouragement from you when you are here nor the consolation of a letter in your absence?" Nor had he sent her the psalter and abacus he had promised when they had parted at Sens. But she did not mention those items.
"Tell me, I say, if you can. No, I will tell you what I believe and what indeed the world suspects. It was the flame of lust, not love, that bound you to me. Therefore, when you could no longer have what you desired, all your show of tenderness vanished too." Had it been show, could anyone, even Abelard, have acted that role so perfectly? She considered whiting out the phrase but decided to let it stand.
"This, my beloved, is not merely my opinion—it is everyone's. Would to God it were my belief alone and I could find someone to defend you, for that would comfort me a little. I only wish that I could find some explanation to excuse you and conceal the way you hold me cheap."
Write me, she thought, restore yourself to me somehow, so that I may find the strength to stay here and serve God. I have no love for this life. If you do not acknowledge my labors here, who will? I can expect no reward from God, for certainly I have done nothing yet for love of him. I would follow you to the flames of hell but I can no longer continue without your help.
Dear God, that was all wrong. She sounded weak and cranky.
"When in the past you sought me out for sinful pleasures, your letters came to me thick and fast, and your many songs put the name of Heloise on everyone's lips. Every street and house echoed with my name. Is it not far better now to summon me to God than it was then to satisfy our lust? I beg you, think what you owe me. Hear my plea, and I will finish this long letter with a brief ending. Farewell, my only love."
She read it over several times. There were many things she had neglected to mention. The wall was almost completed and he would not recognize the place; the harvest had been a disaster; she did not know how they would manage until summer. Had he seen Astrolabe? Abruptly she sealed the letter. Why bother? He would not answer; he never had.
The letter remained on Heloise's table for a week, until Father Gondry took it, and others, to Nogent, where he gave it to a courier heading west. Deliberately, she put Abelard into a corner of her mind. There was plowing to be done and seed to be sown. Lent began with a flurry of spring showers. When Heloise caught a glimpse of her reflection in a water bucket, she saw a pinched face and sunken eyes. She turned away quickly, knowing that she had become ugly.
Summer came early on a wave of blazing air. By the end of May, the nuns were baking in their habits, and Heloise gave them permission to go without stockings. In the warm evenings, at sunset, they went down to the river to bathe in their undertunics, giggling and floating among the reeds.
Every day now, people came to the gate, either pilgrims or travelers bound for the Troyes fair. The famine forgotten, their wallets and saddlebags were swollen with things to eat. In the Paraclete garden grew lettuce and cress, and the nuns picked tender strawberries in the oak woods. Viscountess Margaret of Marolles sent her beekeeper with a round hive made of twigs, which they set in a corner of the cloister. In July, they removed most of the combs and gorged themselves with sticky fingers. Heloise thought the gift of the hive a good omen.
All of the nuns spent the long mornings in the fields, weeding. Heloise came back at noon and worked at her table, but more often she took her ledgers to the gatehouse so that she could attend the visitors in Gertrude's absence. One afternoon in July, a messenger of Lord Milo's galloped up with a basket of cheeses. The convent entrance was intensely silent, lazy in the soft heat of midafternoon. Only the grasshoppers shrilled in the high grass by the roadside. After she had taken the cheeses to the storeroom, she hurried back with a bowl of cool water. As the man was leaving, he belatedly pu
lled a brown parcel from his saddlebag, apologizing for his forgetfulness.
Heloise took the package into the lodge to unwrap. It was a psalter bound in fine leather and gold traceries, but not until she had opened it did she discover Abelard's letter. When she had read it, she went to the chapel to pray, stunned. Then she returned to the gatehouse and read the letter a second time.
"To Heloise, his dearly beloved sister in Christ, Abelard her brother in Christ." She was surprised that he had placed her name before his; it was contrary to all custom of letter writing. Here was the letter for which she had yearned these fifteen years, but it gave her neither joy nor peace. She had wanted reassurance. It was not there. Only talk of death. If he had choice in the matter, he said, he would come back to the Paraclete. But if this was not possible during his life, then let it be so after his death. He instructed her to find his body, buried or unburied, and bring it to the convent. He asked for the nuns' prayers, enclosing a special supplication for his welfare. There was more, but her mind could not let go the part about dying.
A man and his elderly father came to the gate with begging bowls. In the shade near the gate, Heloise washed their feet and sent them away with cheese and onions. When the nuns and novices returned from the fields, she read them the portion of the letter that pertained to Abelard's difficulties. Gertrude began to cry and the novices imitated her. Ceci and Astrane, dry-eyed, murmured their sympathies.
Ceci said, "I'm sorry for him. I mean that, Heloise."
Heloise stared at the ground, choked with misery. They went to the chapel for vespers.
She lay sleepless that night, thrashing from side to side on the damp sheet. She knew that she should be praying, but she had nothing more to ask of God. He did not bother to listen to her anyway. At last, she fell on her knees by the bed and pleaded for strength to live through that night and the following day. That was all, just another twenty-four hours and then she would worry later about the days to come. Bitterness gagged her when she thought of Abelard's words. He denied that he had neglected her. The fact that he had never written or comforted her should not be attributed to indifference; rather, he had the greatest confidence in her strength and wisdom. That was what he said. He seemed surprised that she felt in need of help, emotional or spiritual.
