by Sherry Jones
“Will you join us?” he said to me. The fingers of his left hand caressed the tablecloth.
I looked to my uncle, who sipped from the bowl with eyes closed in bliss—eyes that snapped open at Abelard’s suggestion.
“We would only bore her with our talk, Petrus.” Uncle’s nostrils pinched themselves together.
“Then we must move to a new topic. Why speculate on who might become the next bishop of Amiens when neither king nor pope asks for our opinion? We might as well predict the weather. Sit, Heloise, I pray.” My heart increased its beating at the sound of my name on Abelard’s lips. He patted a spot on the bench beside him. “Come and tell me which writers you prefer. I noticed the Ovid you brought home.”
I glanced at my uncle: Had he heard? He had forbidden me the Ars amatoria, calling it “lewd” and “inappropriate for a girl,” and, in doing so, had made it irresistible. If he knew I had coaxed his assistant, Roger, into lending it to me, he would take it away. To my relief, he exhibited no interest in our discussion, but appeared lost in his unhappy thoughts, his lips moving in a silent curse. I knew why he fumed: One week ago, I had offended the bishop of Paris at this very table with my assertion that Eve ought not to be blamed for Adam’s error. The bishop had colored several shades of red before abruptly taking his leave. Uncle feared I would embarrass him tonight, as well, no doubt.
“I enjoy Ovid’s poetry, in particular his Heroides,” Abelard said, oblivious of my uncle’s scowl. “I used to prefer Boethius, but lately find his assertions flawed.”
“Do you?” I ventured a step toward him, my appetite whetted no longer for food, but for discourse. “Which of Boethius’s writings do you dispute?”
Uncle leapt to his feet in such haste that he nearly caused his precious wine to tip. “Niece, I beg for a word with you.” He seized my arm and all but dragged me to the stairway. “Do you desire this man as your teacher? Then leave us,” he muttered. The bird flapped its wings. My feet might have left the floor but for my uncle’s grip. To study philosophy with Pierre Abelard would crown my achievements. I would be the most learned woman in the world, and ready to complete the task my mother had bequeathed to me.
I returned to the kitchen, but my thoughts remained upstairs with the men. Outdoors at the cook fire, my face glowed with heat. Would the great master assent and become my teacher? I pulled the pan of simmering fish from the coals and carried it inside. I handed it to Jean, Pauline’s husband, for the table along with a green savory of parsley, thyme, dittany, sage, costus, and garlic, then assembled on a platter the carrots, onions, and garden greens Pauline had prepared. This I carried to the table myself with trembling hands, eager to gain the master’s esteem, yes, but also curious to learn: With which of Boethius’s precepts did he disagree? That ill fortune is of more use to men than good fortune? In my mind, I formed arguments in Boethius’s defense. Good fortune requires nothing more from us than enjoyment. When ill fortune strikes, however, we learn to endure, to accept, even to prevail. Clearly, we benefit more from our trials. Why, then, do we curse Fortune when she sends them, instead of thanking her?
But when I returned to the great room, the talk had moved beyond philosophy. Jean, attending the sideboard and the cup, refilled the henap with wine while my uncle pressed Abelard into service as my teacher.
“The idea intrigues me,” the magister said, lifting his hand to refuse the drink Uncle offered. “To teach a girl! And yet, work already fills my days and nights.”
“No girl surpasses my niece—non, and few men, either,” Uncle said.
“She would need to possess an astonishing mind. Otherwise, why should I waste my time? I might as well teach a dog to talk as train a female in philosophy.”
“You err, Petrus. My niece will become a great abbess—it is her destiny. At Fontevraud, no less—Fontevraud, heh-heh! Her mother was its prioress and would have become the abbess had she lived long enough. She wanted Heloise to follow in her path and finish the work she began. When Robert of Arbrissel meets my niece, he will beg her to join him there. Teach her the art of dialectic, and you will benefit the world—the world! Think of the letters she may write. Think of the arguments she may make, and the funds she may procure for the abbey, all for the glory of God!”
I closed my eyes and willed my uncle to rein in his tongue lest he make fools of us both. Of course Abelard would not desire to “waste time” with a girl. Teaching me would do nothing to enhance his reputation; my writings would never be published, and his detractors—who were many, I had heard—might scorn him for accepting a female student. As if to confirm my fears, he explained the demands on him. Since coming to the Nôtre-Dame Cloister a few months ago, he had expended much effort correcting the inferior teaching of the previous headmaster, William of Champeaux.
“You gasp, Canon Fulbert, but I do not lie,” Abelard said, touching my uncle’s arm as intimately as if the two were old friends. Watching them, I wanted, now, to take Uncle Fulbert aside for a warning. Had this man of intellect truly formed a bond so quickly with my slow-witted uncle?
“William taught my scholars that, in an argument, probable consequences are as true as necessary ones,” Abelard said. Noting my uncle’s bewildered frown, he added, “In other words, he taught that opinion is the same as fact. Let me illustrate. Provide me with an analogy.”
Uncle merely blinked, as if the light of the other man’s brilliance had blinded him.
“ ‘If Socrates is a man, then Socrates is an animal,’ ” I said. Uncle’s frown told me to depart, but, for once, I defied him.
“That statement is a fact,” my uncle said at last. “A man is, indeed, an animal.”
“Only if Socrates is, indeed, a man,” Abelard said. “But the analogy begins with a possible antecedent—if—which can only result in a probable consequence, not a necessary one.”
“But one must infer that Socrates is an animal from the suggestion that he is a man.” My uncle folded his arms across his chest as if he had just checkmated his opponent in a game of chess.
“Truth is based on necessity, not inference,” Abelard said. “The consequence must be necessary to the antecedent.”
My uncle appeared as a man wandering in the dark without a lantern, so I added, “Master Petrus means to say that the antecedent of a true statement could not exist without the consequence.”
“Voilà,” Abelard said, turning toward me now.
“I thought you were helping Pauline in the kitchen,” Uncle Fulbert growled.
“So if we say, ‘Socrates is a man, therefore he is an animal,’ does the statement then become true?” I persisted.
“An astute question, Heloise.” The beam of Abelard’s approval filled me with warmth. “The argument is necessary, and so would appear to be true, but you have stated an incomplete argument.”
“Incomplete because—” I struggled to discern what I had omitted.
“Because it leaves open the possibility that Socrates does not exist.”
“But he did exist, by God,” my uncle said.
“He did exist, yes. But, being dead, he exists no more,” I said.
“Exactly!” Abelard leapt to his feet and grasped my hands. His eyes shone.
“He exists either in heaven or hell,” Uncle grumbled, but neither of us took notice. At the touch of Abelard’s fingers, my pulse had begun to thrum in my ears. I heard only my inner voices, one praising God for sending this man as my teacher and one urging me to run away, as far from him as I could go.
My uncle interrupted our moment. “She forgets she’s a girl, forgets her place—her place! She is her mother’s daughter, impertinent and proud. But I always say women are why God gave men fists, heh-heh!”
I withdrew my hands to myself and closed my eyes, avoiding my uncle’s drunken sneer and, worse, the teacher’s expression of pity. I had hoped to elicit his admiration, but instead I felt like a dog that had just been kicked.
“Heloise,” Abelard said, but I could not meet his
gaze now. Heat flooded my skin. For the first time, I thanked God that I was unable to cry.
“Do you wish to study with me?”
The spoon in my hand clattered to the floor. “Why do you ask me—a mere girl?” I could not resist answering. “One might as well ask a hound whether it wishes to hunt, or a horse for its opinion regarding the bit in its mouth.”
My uncle’s gasp should have warned me, but Abelard’s laughter drew my eyes to him until Uncle leapt up and struck me in the face.
“Impudent girl! Another remark such as that one, and you’ll feel my riding crop on your asne.” My cheek burned. My hands gripped the edge of the tabletop. “Pardon my niece’s manners—very bad! All her years at Argenteuil—and at no small price—failed to teach her respect for her elders.”
I reserve my respect for those who deserve it, I wanted to say—but my years at Argenteuil had taught me the futility of arguing with a tyrant.
“You will need to discipline her, Petrus,” my uncle said. “I grant you full permission to do so.”
But, Abelard pointed out, he had not agreed to teach me. First, he must have my consent. “An unwilling pupil learns nothing except how to vex his teacher.”
A lump formed in my throat. No one had ever asked for my consent regarding anything.
“Sit with us, Heloise, I pray. Then we may become better acquainted and determine if we might work well together.”
“I thank you, but I cannot do so this evening.” My uncle’s slap still burned on my cheek, as though he had struck me with a hot iron. I turned toward the stairs, my shoulders hunched, my arms folded across my chest.
“Niece! I command you to return—return! The master requires your presence,” Uncle said, his speech slurring.
“Some other time, please, magister. My head aches, and I have lost my appetite for food.” How could I sit at table with him now, reduced as I was even in my own eyes? I hastened to my room, a pulsing in my ears like laughter, away from the sound of my uncle’s fist pounding the table and his voice shouting my name.
2
What king or philosopher could match your fame? When you appeared in public, who—I ask—did not hurry to catch a glimpse of you, or crane her neck and strain her eyes to follow your departure? Every wife, every young girl, desired you in your absence and was on fire in your presence.
—HELOISE TO ABELARD
My uncle’s insulting words, his heavy hand—the memories clung to me like a bad smell. I placed a bowl of herbs and ointments in the window of my bedroom and let the scented breeze carry him away, then remembered the volume of Ovid that I had brought home. I might have been the only scholar in the world who had not read his Ars amatoria. The prioress had not taught it at Argenteuil, although we had studied the Heroides and his Metamorphoses. Roger, my uncle’s assistant in the scriptorium, had praised the Ars amatoria as one of the great works of literature.
Now the first task for you who come as a raw recruit
Is to find out whom you might wish to love.
The next task is to make sure that she likes you:
The third, to see to it that the love will last.
What would Ovid recommend—that the man sing to his beloved as she walked by?
I dismissed the thought. Curiosity, not any hope of love, had sent the teacher to me: the novelty of a lettered female. Yet, if a man wished to attract a woman, what better way to draw her eye as well as her heart? Every woman in that crowd had envied me. My shame melted away at the memory, and a smile touched my lips.
Pierre Abelard had sung only for me. Who in the world had not heard of him, the poet whose verses rang out in every place, the philosopher whose brilliance blinded all who dared to peer into his light? As headmaster of the Nôtre-Dame School, he had reached the pinnacle of success. I had known him the moment I first saw him, months ago, surrounded by scholars shouting questions, challenging him, scowling as he drove home the final riposte, sharper than any sword. They always returned for more. Having spent only a few moments in his presence, I could easily discern why.
The memory of his eyes returned to me now, not only their dark blue beauty, like sapphires, but also the intensity of his gaze, as though he beheld my naked soul. When he took the parcels my uncle had so rudely thrust into my arms, his eyes had danced with amusement. For the first time, I’d seen Uncle not as a brute to be feared but as a sort of bouffe, graceless and awkward and as full of wind as a storm—and, as storms always pass, so did his temper. Why hadn’t I thought to laugh at his clumsy antics, his fumbling words? Entering the cheerless convent at such a young age had stifled my joy—until today, when Abelard’s eyes had prompted its return, and I had felt merriment bubbling in my mouth.
But why would a man of his eminence sing in the place for me? My star might rise, but would never shine as brightly as his. A woman, I was only a pale moon in a world of suns, reflecting the light of men but emitting none of my own. What use had the sun for the moon? What use had Pierre Abelard for me?
An answer whispered itself, and heat flooded my skin. Non. If he wished for that, he had only to snap his fingers. Girls and women far more beautiful than I filled the city, any of whom would open her arms—and legs—to the handsome poet willingly, even eagerly. Not I. Scandal would not an abbess make. I would teach girls in my own school—at the Fontevraud Abbey, if Uncle had his way.
A knocking at the door interrupted my thoughts. For a moment, I considered feigning sleep, fearing my uncle had come. Renouncing Gisele, his henna-haired mistress with a laugh like a raven’s cry, had altered Uncle Fulbert in disturbing ways. At first a jolly and loving man who had earned my trust with his kindness, he now drank copiously every night until he either flew into a rage or fell into a stupor, or both. The hours between the commencement of drinking and the loss of consciousness had felt increasingly perilous for me since Gisele’s abrupt departure the previous month.
He had not wanted to send her away. Like so many other men of the Church, Uncle had surrendered to the reformists’ demands for the sake of his career. The bishop had tolerated my uncle’s affair, for he indulged weaknesses of his own, as everyone knew. But the reformists had gained in strength. Thirty years had passed since Pope Gregory VII had revoked the authority of bishops who allowed priests to marry. My uncle, being not a priest but a canon, and not married but keeping a mistress, had enjoyed Gisele’s companionship without penalty—until the fiery young monk Bernard of Clairvaux announced that he would come to Paris to speak. For him to point his finger at Bishop Galon would cause the old man’s ruin. In his frenzy to rid himself of any taint, the bishop had commanded all his clergy, even canons, to practice not only celibacy—remaining unmarried—but strict continence, as well, abstaining from all sexual pleasure.
My uncle had to say good-bye to the woman he had loved since his youth. I shall never forget her tearstained face when she departed our home, all her possessions loaded on a cart and her eyes as empty as if she had run out of dreams. Uncle watched her go without a word, then rebuffed my sympathetic embrace. It had to be done, he growled. I shall never advance to deacon by flouting the Church’s rules. Now the flagon was his mistress, and more dangerous to his advancement than any woman—and hazardous to me, as well.
The knock sounded again, hesitant, not at all like my uncle’s fist, so I arose to open the door. Abelard stood on the other side, his hat in his hands, his eyes searching mine. I touched my fingers to my unbraided hair. Why had he come, alone, to my room?
“You did not say whether you want me for your teacher.” His gaze brushed my cheek where my uncle had struck me, and it burned again. “Please let me in so we may discuss the matter.”
“Does my uncle know that you are here?” I peered beyond him to the stairway. Uncle would punish me for any improprieties, no matter who was at fault.
“Your uncle sleeps.”
“Did he fall asleep with his head on the table?” I closed my eyes against the image.
“He staggered into hi
s room and did not return.”
My eyes flew open. “ ‘Your uncle sleeps’ is not a statement of truth, then, since sleeping is only a possible consequence of his entering his room.” I took pleasure in Abelard’s frown. “Although you stated it as a fact, ‘he sleeps’ is your opinion.”
“I asked his servant to look in on him, and he reported that Fulbert was sleeping.”
“Had my uncle instructed him to do so, Jean would have said, ‘He sleeps.’ Or he might have been dead, and Jean mistaken.”
Abelard combed the fingers of one hand through his curls. “My God, how your mind leaps.” His nostrils flared. “Like a caged animal.”
I retreated into my room, and Abelard followed. “Caged? How so? I move about at will.”
“But not for long, non? What else is an abbey if not a cage?”
“In the abbey, my mind will be free.”
“Perhaps, then, you should liberate your body.” He stepped toward me. “While yet you can.”
“Is this why you have come, then? To discuss my body?” I crossed my arms over my chest and gave him a defiant look.
“I came for your answer. Do you desire me for your teacher, or not?”
“I do.” I dropped my gaze to his feet, but resisted the urge to prostrate myself and beg him to accept me. He had already borne witness to my humiliation. “But why would you accept me, after seeing my uncle’s ugly temper?”
“Forgive me, Heloise.” I lifted my eyes in surprise; now, his was the head that hung in shame. “I should have defended you from Fulbert.”
I shook my head. “Had you done so, he would have abused me more harshly once you had gone.”
“But now? Do you fare well?”
“Of course. I have my book.” I gestured toward the Ovid, which lay on my bed.
