by Sherry Jones
Abelard’s gaze held mine—for only an instant, before returning to the red-haired girl. “Heloise is no harlot, but the most learned woman in Paris,” he said.
“Of course.” Etienne bowed. “Who has not heard of Heloise, our fair-sex scholar?” He introduced Agnes as his niece, who embraced me and declared me “the Minerva of Paris.” The reference was flawed, for that goddess represents wisdom rather than knowledge—but I was wise enough, at least, not to contradict her.
“Now that we have all done our duty and gone to Sunday services, you must come to our house for dinner,” she said, tucking her arm into mine. “Pierre will bring you—but only if you will divulge your secrets.”
“Secrets?” I glanced at my uncle, whose fierce stare warned me to divulge nothing. Your mother hid you away with good reason, he had said this morning. Her sins would have brought ruin and shame to our family. A single hint of scandal and I will never be promoted—never!
“Your secrets—yes! I especially want to know how you provoked that sour-faced Bernard to glare only at you, when I stood at his feet.” Agnes laughed, a sound as rich as butter. “I felt more than a pang of jealousy, I admit. I had anticipated the roll of his eye over me, daughter of Eve that I am. I even dressed for the occasion.”
4
Love does not so easily forsake those whom it has once stung.
—HELOISE TO ABELARD
In the hours between Bernard’s sermon and Agnes’s supper, she had transformed herself. Abelard and I entered Etienne’s spacious house overlooking the Saint-Etienne Cathedral to find her even more breathtaking than before. She exuded the fragrance of roses. Her copper hair curled in ringlets against her flawless skin. Abelard stood more closely to her than necessary and breathed her in as though the roses embroidered on her gown were real. I looked on with a smile so broad it pained my face.
“You should have come sooner! You have missed the excitement,” Agnes said as Abelard pretended to shield his eyes, dazzled, he said, by the sun. She had adorned herself in saffron from the boots whose toes curled up and around like ram’s horns to the turban perched like a sunlit cloud atop her curls. Saffron! I caught my breath at the sheer extravagance. In my linen tunic of pale green—my favorite, until that moment—I felt like a common weed. As she lifted one perfumed cheek, then the other, to Abelard’s smiling lips, I vowed to ask my uncle for new clothes.
“Which sultan did you charm into giving you his cap?” he teased as she led us across a Persian carpet of red and gold into the great room. There, Etienne stood with another man before large windows overlooking the city. Below, I saw the pale, bald Bishop Galon; Bernard, in his coarse, hooded tunic; and an elderly bishop with a stooped back all trotting away on horseback, talking and gesturing, oblivious of the crowds milling to and from the banks of the Seine.
“Do not tease! You know the count brought this turban from the Holy Land,” Agnes said to Abelard.
“The count?” I asked.
“My grandfather Guy, the Count of Rochefort.” She shrugged, as if everyone’s grandfather were a count. “You should have come sooner, Pierre. The bishop of Paris has just departed in a rage with Yves, the bishop of Chartres. He and Bernard screamed at my uncle.” Her voice rippled with pleasure.
“Did they come to discuss the bishopric in Amiens?” Godfrey, the current bishop, was said to be near death, Abelard told me, and Pope Paschal II wanted to name his successor—a privilege the king of France had always enjoyed. Bernard, Suger, and Yves, prominent reformists all, had come today on the pope’s behalf, hoping Etienne might influence the king for Paschal.
“It was hardly a discussion,” Agnes said. “Bernard foamed at the mouth, or nearly so. He spat every time he spoke the word investiture.”
Seeing my frown, Abelard explained the situation further: The reformists, determined to enforce the former pope’s decrees, insisted that the Church, not the king, must appoint bishops. King Louis did not agree. Bishops controlled vast domains, collected large sums in taxes, and commanded many foot soldiers and knights. The king would not relinquish his power to appoint bishops loyal to him.
“The pope cannot win this battle. He might as well try to move a mountain as to change King Louis’s mind,” Abelard said.
“So said Uncle Etienne. I thought Galon would excommunicate him and my father both.”
“Galon did not expect an argument?”
“Yes, but he didn’t expect my papa. Uncle tried to reason with them, but Papa was not so inclined. He said that, were it not for the king, Galon would not be bishop of Paris, but only the wiper of the pope’s asne.”
Abelard and Agnes laughed over this tale, while I cringed to imagine such abuse heaped upon a man of God—and a bishop, no less.
“Galon’s insults were surprisingly imaginative for one so dull witted,” Agnes said. “He could not compete with the bishop of Chartres, however. Yves called Uncle Etienne a gambler and a womanizer, and my father a drunkard.”
As we reached the window, Etienne embraced us and introduced me to Agnes’s father—his brother, Anseau, seneschal to King Louis. So alike were they that they might have been twins, except for their attire. Etienne had changed from his ceremonial robes to a fashionable bliaut of saffron silk with a blue, sleeveless cotte adorned with garnets about the neck and hem, while Anseau wore green silk embroidered with gold thread and trimmed in ermine.
“I hear that you have angered the bishops again,” Abelard said to Etienne, taking the henap from him.
“Today, my brother is the devil’s vassal,” Anseau said. “His own bishop says it, so it must be truth.”
“Galon is calling everyone ‘the devil’s vassal’ except for me,” Abelard said. His voice held a plaintive edge.
“Oh, but everyone knows that you are the devil himself,” Anseau said.
Etienne took my hands with his soft, manicured ones and welcomed “Paris’s famous woman scholar” to his home.
When I demurred, Anseau grunted and said he wished Agnes would apply herself to her studies with more diligence. “She thinks only of her wardrobe.” He gave his daughter a pointed glance, but she heard only Abelard’s whispers into her ear. “And, unceasingly, of marriage.” Not marriage to “Pierre,” surely, I wanted to say. The Church would never allow it.
A servant blew the dinner horn and we gathered around the table, Anseau and Etienne on one bench with Agnes between them, and Abelard beside me—directly across from Agnes, who gave him wanton looks as we washed our hands, her face bright with suppressed laughter. My stomach tightened. I had at first declined Agnes’s invitation, stunned as I was by Bernard’s hateful sermon, and wanting time alone to ponder the tide of sentiment rising against women in the Church. But Abelard had convinced me to join the gathering, saying a friendship with Etienne might help me gain the position I coveted at Fontevraud. Now, watching Abelard cast amorous glances at the beautiful Agnes, I wished I had remained at home.
“Bernard possesses very little learning and disdains books completely,” Abelard said. “He actually boasts of his ignorance. ‘Everything I need to know, I learned in the fields and the woods,’ he says. As if God did not give men minds for a reason.”
As the talk continued, I noticed that Abelard, who sat less than a hand’s width away, had barely glanced at me. Yet, when he’d arrived at my uncle’s house to fetch me, he hadn’t been able to tear his gaze away.
“Heloise glows like a ruby in the sunlight, doesn’t she, Jean?” he’d said to my uncle’s servant.
Jean’s eyes had narrowed in response. “A valuable jewel must be jealously guarded. She who makes herself a ewe will be eaten by the wolf.”
“I will keep a special watch for wolves tonight.” Abelard’s laughter had struck a false note through my uncle’s great room—as it did now at Etienne’s table, after he declared that philosophers lacked time for women.
“Unless, of course, she is the most brilliant scholar in Paris.” He smiled at me.
“No time f
or women, Pierre? I have seen how they flock around you, in love with your music and your blue eyes,” Agnes said. “Take care, Heloise—this man breaks hearts.”
“Has he broken yours?” I could not help asking.
“Many times,” Agnes said, giving Abelard a sly look—which he returned. His hand dropped under the table to brush mine, but I pushed it away. What had he written to me yesterday? The burning flame of love compels me. Even knowing that the letter was only an exercise, I had allowed myself to linger over the word love. I wanted to leap up and run from the table.
“My lessons with Heloise are never dull,” he told the Garlandes. “I would give my benefice to have her join my classes.” His knee brushed mine again. I moved my leg away.
“Why, then, don’t you seek permission for me to attend the school?” I asked.
He shrugged. “One might as well try to teach an ass to sing as to convince Galon to mix the sexes in anything.”
Servants glided into the hall with bowls of soup and plates of bread. Abelard’s hand dropped under the table to rest on his knee, his fingertips barely touching my leg and yet commanding all my thoughts.
“Galon is worse than Saint Augustine, frowning on carnal pleasures as though Christ had never enjoyed even a back scratching,” Agnes said.
“Or a woman’s anointing his feet, then drying them with her hair,” I said.
“Or a cup of wine,” Etienne said, lifting his henap.
“Or two,” his brother said.
The servants replaced our soup with trenchers bearing salmon, lampreys, and bowls of buttered peas. As Abelard leaned forward to take some fish, his legs fell apart so that his left knee touched mine. My pulse quickened even as I moved away.
“Saint Augustine openly admitted his weakness for women,” Etienne said. “But who in the Church dares to acknowledge Galon’s vices?”
“Let Galon incur the bishop of Chartres’s displeasure and we would hear accusations soon enough,” I blurted, then blushed at my own irreverence.
As the others laughed, Abelard reached for bread at the same time as I, deliberately brushing my hand with his fingertips. Agnes lifted her eyebrows.
Abelard stretched his legs; Agnes giggled. I forbade myself even to glance down. Was he touching her foot with his? The bishop of Chartres had called the wrong man “womanizer,” it seemed.
The meal went on, lamb and beef and lettuces, pastries and cherries and fine white bread, and conversation that flowed as copiously as the wine: Guillaume of Poitiers’s new, scandalous song, which Abelard performed to great merriment; the king’s marriage to Adelaide of Maurienne, rumored to be quite ugly with a nose as large as a goose’s beak; the declining health of the Amiens bishop Godfrey, with the men placing bets on the date of his death. I would have thrived on the riposte if not for Abelard. With him sitting beside me, his thigh pressing mine, his eyes on another woman, I had to force myself to listen. More than once, I reminded myself that others inhabited this room—this world—besides Abelard, Agnes of Garlande, and me.
O Abelard! The very name filled my body with yearning—to hear him whispering into my ear the words of love he had written to me, always to be loved more than anything, and to feel his breath hot on my cheek, the slide of his palms around my waist, and, yes, even the press of his body against mine. Every night prompted sweet imaginings and restless turmoil, and, now, the pain like a knife in my stomach as he glinted his eyes at another girl.
“Of course King Louis opposes the reforms.” Etienne tore off a piece of bread. “The Church will do anything for wealth—even prevent clergymen from bequeathing their lands and titles to their sons.”
“He opposes the reforms because they are unreasonable,” Anseau said. “Forbidding bishops to marry was bad enough, a certain provocation to sin, for God bestowed urges upon men—but priests and canons, too? These so-called reforms tear families apart. They leave women without anyone to provide for them.”
“And think of their children,” Agnes said. “They will inherit nothing, not even their father’s name. How will they marry? The poor things will have to join the abbey.” She shuddered. “They might as well send them to the prison. Abbeys should not be permitted to accept oblates—children! Heloise, what do you think? You grew up in the Royal Abbey at Argenteuil, non?”
I frowned at Abelard. What had he whispered into Agnes’s ear? She smiled, expecting to hear me speak ill of my childhood home, I knew. In truth, I had never felt so glad to leave any place. On the day my uncle had arrived for me, only his restraining hand stopped me from running out the door.
Under the table, Abelard’s hand slid off his leg so that the backs of his fingers touched my thigh. I cleared my throat and shifted, causing the dishes to clatter on the table. He placed his hand back on the tabletop.
As the servants brought in eel pies—my favorite dish, and delectably seasoned—the conversation turned to Robert of Arbrissel, the founder of the Fontevraud Abbey, where my mother had worked. He had agreed to preach a sermon in Paris, Abelard announced, pulling my attention away from my meal. Robert, coming here! Surely my uncle would take me to hear him speak. Perhaps Robert might tell me something of my mother—including what I most wished to know: my father’s name.
“Robert declined to preach in the Saint-Etienne Cathedral, but will speak in the city, instead,” Abelard said. “He said his message is meant not for the men of the cloister, but for all God’s children, sinners as well as saints.”
“Robert has a particular fondness for sinners, I hear,” Anseau said. “Especially those of the fairer sex.”
“He has ceased the practice, admittedly bizarre, of sleeping among the women.” Abelard sent me a worried glance, noting my widened eyes. I had never heard of Robert’s sleeping with the Fontevraud nuns. “His intentions were pure, at least. He did it to strengthen his resistance, he said.”
“Who among us believes that tale?” Anseau said with a snort. “Being born a cat, he pursues mice. And the women love him—even more than they love you, Pierre. Prostitutes, widows, beautiful virgins—they stream to Fontevraud to touch the hem of his filthy tunic. They liken him to John the Baptist with his long hair and ragged clothes. They wait in line to wash his dirty feet, then give him their coins and their adoration. What man would not take advantage?”
Having reached the limits of my endurance with Anseau and his winking pronouncements—how odious, to take such pleasure in others’ misfortunes—I could hold my tongue no longer. “Women join the abbey to escape from men, not to pursue them,” I said, glaring.
“Our fair guest speaks the truth,” Etienne said, “which makes Robert’s betrayal of these women all the more reprehensible. They come to him in trust, and he uses them for his own pleasure—perhaps, yes, Pierre, only to tempt himself, although I agree with my brother that his tale is unlikely.”
“Three thousand followers, and most of them women,” Anseau said. “He must be a stallion in bed.”
“Think about what you are saying!” I cried, looking around the table in horror. What monstrous creatures were these people, passing judgment on the cruel world from their cocoon of velvet and silk? “You malign one of our holiest men, as well as the women who seek refuge with him. Where is your Christian love? You sound like the very reformists whom you despise.”
A long silence followed, during which everyone, including me, ate without so much as a murmur. Seeing all eyes cast downward, I realized that I had spoken too harshly, and without gratitude for my host’s hospitality.
“Please forgive my outburst,” I said at last. “I should have controlled my temper.”
“There is no denying that Robert of Arbrissel’s soft spot for women has gotten him into some trouble,” Etienne said.
“I thought his hard spot was the cause for concern,” Agnes said, every bit her father’s daughter.
Everyone laughed again, except for me. What did these men or the spoiled Agnes know of the desperation of women’s lives? I had seen it for myse
lf at Argenteuil: women born to the highest rank as well as the lowest, repudiated by their husbands, replaced with wives younger, richer, more beautiful, more fertile—or, simply, new.
“Many of the women at Fontevraud are the discarded wives of clergymen, for whom you expressed sympathy moments ago,” I said. “Robert of Arbrissel provides them with shelter, food, and the solace of God’s love. What have you done to help any of them?”
Abelard patted my arm, attempting to calm me, which infuriated me even more. He smiled, but with his lips closed, reminding me of my uncle’s grimace when I had disgraced him before the bishop. My cheeks burned. I doubted that Abelard would ever bring me back to Etienne’s house, or that, after this day, he would want to see me again at all.
“Heloise’s mother was the first grand prioress of Fontevraud,” Abelard explained.
“Who was your mother, child?” Etienne said. When I told him, he brightened. “Hersende of Champagne? Hear that, Agnes? She is a Montmorency! On your father’s side,” he said to me. I cringed inwardly, waiting for him to realize that I was far too young to be the daughter of Lord William of Montsoreau.
“My mother is a Montmorency,” Agnes said with a smile of delight. “I knew we shared a special bond.”
She stood and walked around the table, then held out her hands to me. “Cousin,” she said. I gave her a thin smile as she sat between Abelard and me.
“Oui, I can see the family resemblance: those large, dark eyes; that generous mouth,” she said. “You are a true Montmorency beauty.” As the men around the table regarded me, I felt myself blush. Of what consequence was the color of my eyes? God sees not our bodies, but the soul within.
Agnes tugged at one of my braids. “You have the family’s dark hair, as well. I am the outcast in that regard. But where”—she pointed above my left eye—“where did you acquire that streak of white? It must have come from your mother, non?”
My mother’s hair had glistened like spun gold—but instead of responding, I lowered my eyes. Please, let her change the course of her conversation, I prayed. Soon, someone must realize that I was not her uncle’s daughter.
