by Sherry Jones
When he had ceased his chastening and tears poured from my eyes, I felt Abelard’s lips and tongue tracing the welts he had made, and his hands caressing and kneading pleasure into the places that throbbed with pain. In this way I learned that the boundary between ecstasy and agony can shift in a moment, or even disappear. I began to associate love with a sweet ache, and passion with the crack of my master’s cane and the nip of his teeth.
At what time did his fingers alter their course from caressing the hurt places on my buttocks and legs to probing the area between them? So gradual was the shift that I barely perceived the difference, although the tapping of his fingertips against the door of my chastity did cause me to squirm from under his touch—at first. When he lowered his head to kiss me there, I had to bite my fist or scream in ecstasy. After all that pleasure, is it any wonder that I would want to reciprocate? He guided my hand to his verpa, whose terrible length and girth made me shudder with desire and fear.
What were our studies, in those days? What use were my books to me then, when love had offered herself to me in the form of Abelard? I had only a few months in which to learn love’s arts, and from the most imaginative and skillful of teachers. Sitting beside me at the desk, he would ask me to read aloud from one of my letters, which had become more explicit and love-filled as our daring increased. As I read, he would untie my braids and loosen my tresses, which hung, then, to my knees, then begin the touching and teasing, which always led us to my bedroom. I remember the curling hair on his chest between my gripping fingers, the outline of every muscle in his back, his fragrance like linen, like ink, like the aniseeds with which he sweetened his breath.
How closely we ventured, in those days, to fornication—or, rather, to manifesting physically the full extent of our love for each other. His bliaut lifted and the proof of his virility pressing hard against my thighs, he begged me for permission to enter. I sensed that to say no was a sin, as it was a wholly selfish act. Yet I could not bring myself to take that final step, to plunge into that fire from which neither of us could emerge unscathed.
11
What need is there for more words? Aflame with the fire of desire for you, I want to love you forever.
—HELOISE TO ABELARD
It should have been Abelard whose breath quavered, he whose pulse fluttered, as we dismounted our horses and entered the royal palace. A minstrel would perform Abelard’s songs that day before King Louis and Queen Adelaide and all their court; he, not I, would sup with them at the royal table. Yet, as the guards patted his clothes, searching for weapons, Abelard jested and laughed while I steadied myself with a hand at his elbow. My stomach felt unsettled, as though I had eaten something disagreeable, although I had not taken even one bite at dinner that day.
“I hear the king treats his guests very well, and his queen is said to be friendly,” my uncle had said while Abelard drank Pauline’s brewet with his usual appetite. “But the courtiers can be vicious, non? Like vipers, I hear—vipers!”
How would they regard me, a girl from the convent with almost no knowledge of their world? Only two things matter to those people: blood and money, my uncle had said. How would I fare under their scrutiny?
“Speak to no one—no one!” Uncle advised. “They will sink their fangs into your innocent heart.” Abelard laughed: Uncle sounded as though Abelard were escorting me to a snake pit rather than a royal feast.
“I have found everyone in the king’s court to be delightful—with the exception of the monk Suger. He’s become especially disagreeable since Bernard’s visit, I’ve heard. Of course,” Abelard said, turning to me, “you will not even notice him in his monkish attire, not amid all the splendor. The courtiers will dazzle your eyes with their colors and gold, the ornaments about their necks, their rings on every finger. The Paris court is a garden of peacocks. And you, my girl, will be as a gazelle among them.”
“A gazelle—yes,” Uncle said. “Take care to remain as quiet as one, as well.” His admonishing look told me what he meant: I must speak to no one about my family.
Now, walking through the enormous palace doorway, I clutched Abelard’s arm so tightly that he laughed. “By God’s head, will you faint? Perhaps you would like me to carry you into—Brother Suger! What a pleasant surprise.”
Brother Suger’s stiff, wiry hair; his downturned mouth; his tiny, black eyes, like those of a rat: he repulsed me now as much as he had the first time I’d seen him, at Bernard’s sermon the previous spring. I lowered my gaze lest he see my eyes’ expression. Here stood the king’s former classmate at the Saint-Denis Priory, said to be beloved by him. Offending such an important man was far from my desire. Yet, when I had composed myself and raised my eyes to meet his, I saw contempt. My cheeks burned as though he had slapped them.
“Tell me, magister, how is it that a tonsured canon may disregard his vows in word and deed and suffer no punishment?” he said in the hearing of a dozen courtiers, men and women in velvet, silk, and fur who stood nearby.
“How, indeed?” Abelard said with an exaggerated gasp. “Tell me more of this shameful canon.”
Suger narrowed his eyes. “He has written verses which extol the most venial of sins.”
“Non!”
“Debauchery, drunkenness, fornication—”
“Please, Brother, I beg you to desist!” Abelard spoke more loudly than necessary, out of consideration for his audience, no doubt. With his free hand, he gestured broadly to me. “Have you failed to note the young lady on my arm?”
“And he frequents the company of young girls.” The monk’s eyes glittered at me.
Abelard shook his head. “This is most disturbing.”
“I am pleased that you agree with me.” Suger’s accusatory glance made me want to cover my body with my arms.
“Brother Suger, will this man be at the feast today?” Abelard said, his tone somber.
“Indeed he will, master.”
“I beg you to introduce me. Young girls!” Abelard clucked his tongue. Catching my eye for a moment, he sent me an almost imperceptible wink.
“And what would you say to this errant canon?” Suger’s smirk said, I have trapped him in my snare.
“I would advise him to abandon this pursuit.”
“I would do the same.” Suger folded his hands beneath his stout belly.
“ ‘Why waste your time with inexperienced girls?’ I would say to him. ‘Mature women know how to satisfy a man’s needs and do not need to be coaxed.’ As the poet wrote, ‘They’ve more knowledge of the thing, and have that practice that alone makes the artist.’ It is true, non?” Abelard nudged the monk with his elbow, grinning.
I do not know whose color deepened the most: Suger’s in the face of such mockery, or mine as I wondered how much Abelard knew of mature women.
“My dear friends! How long has it been since you arrived?” Agnes greeted us with kisses, then took Abelard’s free arm and led us away from the scowling monk into the great hall, where servants set up trestle tables with a clatter and tried to revive the fire smoldering in the enormous hearth.
“Forgive me for leaving you to that donkey Suger,” Agnes said with a snort, apparently unconcerned that he might hear her. “He makes life in the court most tedious, with his dour face and somber presentments. The slightest hint of merriment makes him froth at the mouth.”
“He will avoid today’s festivities, then?” I said.
She laughed. “And miss the opportunity to chasten us? No, we’ll see him at the king’s table, as usual, darkening our enjoyment like a thundercloud.”
She took us up the stone staircase to the women’s chamber, a large room from whose ceiling cream-colored cloth billowed like sails and whose walls sparkled with tapestries depicting familiar scenes: Adam and Eve in a brilliant garden, contemplating a piece of fruit; Jason with his golden fleece, spurning the supplicant Medea. Rushes strewn with dried lavender fragranced the room as we stepped across the floor. Near the far wall a man wearing glove
s without fingertips plucked the strings of a harp, while three handmaids laughed and danced in their taffeta gowns, all in the same style but each of a different color: pink, blue, and green. When they saw Abelard, they broke their circle and hastened to kiss and stroke him as if he were a child, or a pet.
“Pierre does look extraordinarily handsome today, non? I rarely see him in blue.” Agnes took me aside to a cushioned bench, where we sat and watched Abelard laugh and tease the maids. Her knowing gaze made me blush. I could not deny that his bliaut of Frankish blue accentuated the color of his remarkable eyes, so much so that I could hardly keep my own eyes from turning to him constantly. Rather than admit to my friend my feelings, however, I changed the topic at hand.
“Is that your gown for the feast hanging on the pole? Agnes! I have never seen anything like it.” Drenched in brilliant blue with sleeves of purple and green, it glittered with emeralds and embroidered peacocks with real feathers for tails. The mantle draping it was a deep, bright green with a bejeweled clasp of gold.
“I have a feathered turban, also,” she said. “Now that we have dressed Queen Adelaide, I can help you get ready, and you can help me. Did you bring a change of clothes? You may have your servant bring them here. But—my dear! You had planned to wear this to the feast?” Frowning, she fingered my fine linen bliaut of midnight blue—a new garment made especially for this occasion, blue being the kingdom’s official color —but then her expression brightened. In a moment she had led me to her chest of clothes and invited me to choose from its contents.
“You look lovely, of course, but that dark color will never do in this court. You must shine, Heloise, must sparkle and dazzle! You want to keep Pierre’s attention on you, non? Every woman here is in love with him—except me, of course. Even the queen blushes when he kisses her hand.”
As I hesitated—a moment earlier, I had felt beautiful in my new bliaut—Abelard came over to bid us farewell. He must meet with the minstrel performing his songs today and would not see us again until we gathered in the great hall.
“Pierre, tell her to listen to me,” Agnes said. “She should not wear this gown. It is nearly black, not suitable for the court at all. Doesn’t she look as though she had just arrived from the convent?”
“She appears perfect to me, as always. But do as you think best. I want my Heloise to shine, especially today.”
I nearly protested—I was hardly “his” Heloise. I belonged to the convent—to God. Here in the king’s court, I was Agnes’s guest and would sit at one of the lower tables, below the salt. No one would notice me at all. Why should I wish to “shine”?
Soon, though, Agnes and the other maids had bedecked me in a blue linen chemise with a neckline that dipped to the swell of my breasts and an equally revealing bliaut of green paile roé silk—from Constantinople, Agnes said—woven with circles of blue. Under her direction, the maids laced my gown at the sides for a fit so tight I could barely breathe and laced my sleeves to the elbow, from where tippets trailed to the floor. They wound gold ribbon around my braids, cinched my waist with a blue silk girdle, and placed a gold band upon my head. Agnes herself adorned me with jewels: a sapphire necklace, gold earrings, rings on both my hands, and bracelets on my wrists. When she approached with a box of white powder and a brush, however, I demurred.
“Do you want to look your best for Pierre’s sake, or not?” she said, planting a hand on her hip. “One would no sooner go to court with a bare face than with a bare asne. You are not a child, but you will resemble one compared to the women here today.” I thought of Suger’s calling me a young girl and relented. She applied the powder, using a cloth, all over my face, then rouged my cheeks and lips with vermilion.
Très belle! the other maids exclaimed. Très sophistiqué!
“Pierre will not recognize you,” Agnes said, her grin sly. When she held the mirror up for me, I hardly recognized myself. I looked as pale as a ghost, nearly transparent, and my reddened cheeks and mouth appeared garish.
When I suggested the cosmetics detracted from my appearance rather than enhancing it, she laughed. “The men will buzz around you like bees to a flower.” With a secretive smile she added, “All except for one, who has eyes only for me.”
When we entered the great hall—where songbirds perched in its high rafters and a fire blazed in the tile hearth—courtiers filled the room, milling about with henaps of wine, their voices echoing off the stone walls as though they numbered in the thousands, not merely a few hundred. As Abelard had predicted, the brilliance of the courtiers’ colors dazzled my eyes. In my modest gown, I would have been invisible—which I might have preferred to the linger of men’s gazes upon my chest and the slanting eyes of women who whispered to one another as we passed. Why, I asked Agnes, did everyone stare at me?
“Because you are new to the court, and beautiful,” she said. But how could they admire my beauty when they saw only a mask, not my face? Perhaps they thought me beautiful because my face was hidden.
A tall, thin man with a bejeweled wooden leg came forth to kiss Agnes’s hand: the king’s astronomer, she said, who had fashioned my astralabe. He dipped his head humbly as I exclaimed over his skill, but his eyes remained on her. Was this the man of whom she had spoken so slyly? But no, Agnes peered over his shoulder, seeking someone in the crowd.
We made our way about the hall, my eyes searching for Abelard, and Agnes seeking someone, also, her eyes as bright as stars. A handsome man with a small, pointed beard and light-colored hair falling in waves to his shoulders—the southern style—stepped into our path to kiss Agnes’s hand and, to my surprise, mine.
“Were not the soft hands of ladies fashioned for the lips of men?” he said when I tried to withdraw.
I sent Agnes a wondering look, but she only smiled. “The Count of Poitiers is not accustomed to hearing no from women.”
I caught my breath. “The poet?” In all the world, only his songs exceeded Abelard’s in fame.
“By you, I prefer to be known as the lover.” He continued to cradle my hand lightly in his own, no doubt so that he could feel my pulse increase as he told me with his eyes all the things he wanted to do to me. “See how she blushes, Agnes. Who is this innocent girl?”
“She is my cousin.” Agnes lied to help avoid questions about my family.
“I am not so innocent,” I said. “Nor is any woman who has heard your Ab la dolchor del temps novel: ‘Let me live long enough, I pray, to bring my hand beneath her cloak.’ That seems a dubious prayer to make to our Lord.”
“I think that God, being male, would understand. He made woman for man’s pleasure, non? And he had a taste of those pleasures himself when he impregnated that tender young virgin.”
My gasp made him laugh. “You are not so innocent, you say? I must disagree.” He lowered his lips to my hand again, but I snatched it away. “I think perhaps you are too innocent. Should you desire a remedy for this malady, come to see me.”
“Poets,” Agnes said as we walked away from him. “They think only of three things: love, love, and more love.”
“Lust is what you mean. And, perhaps in his situation, blasphemy, as well. Has he no concern for his mortal soul?”
“He is a noble, and a man.” She shrugged. “He does, and says, what he pleases.”
Then, we heard a screech, and a woman’s scream. The crowd before us parted to reveal a small, furry animal—a monkey—running across the floor, clutching a woman’s beaded fillet. It leapt onto a trestle table, knocking the board to the floor, then leapt onto another before catching sight of the brilliant blue feathers rising like a fountain, or a bird’s crest, from Agnes’s turban.
“That monkey and I, we hate each other. Can you tell?” She shuddered. “I can’t stand the way it looks. And when it comes close to me, I have to hold my breath. It smells like an old man who hasn’t washed himself in years.”
As if it had understood her, the creature bared its teeth, reminding me of Suger—except that instead of d
isgust, the monkey’s eyes held a fanatical gleam.
“Pepin!” a man shouted, jumping up in attempt to see over the heads of the nobles. “Stop, Pepin! Come to me.” He pushed his way through the intransigent crowd. “Please, allow me to pass. Pepin!”
But the creature had not heard or, if it had, paid no attention to its master. Staring at Agnes’s hat, it ran to the end of the table and jumped, catapulting itself into the air, directly toward her. She stood perfectly still, her powdered face losing all its remaining color as it flew, shrieking like an infant, with arms outstretched and hands grasping. Around us, people scurried, removing themselves from the monkey’s path, but not Agnes. I shouted her name and pulled at her arm, but she did not move. Terror had frozen her.
Everything happened so quickly, I do not know how I did anything while that monkey catapulted toward my friend. I looked to the nobles: Would none of them help her? But what could they do? The guards had taken everyone’s weapons. I grabbed a goblet from someone’s hands and threw it at the creature, but it struck the wall and clattered to the floor.
The cup missed its mark, but a man’s hand did not—the hand of a man wearing costly scarlet cloth of the richest blue, who snatched the monkey from the space above Agnes’s head.
The creature screamed again, struggling, but the man held it fast in his arms. “You are safe, Agnes.”
“Amaury,” she breathed.
The monkey’s keeper arrived and took his pet, which writhed and struggled and screeched for Agnes’s hat. “My poor little Pepin. His mother died two days ago, and he has not been himself since then.”
“Then you should not have brought it here today.” Agnes’s voice frosted the already-chill air. I pulled my mantle over my arms.
“A trainer who cannot control his animals is worse than a nurse with no command of the children,” Amaury said. The trainer flinched under his haughty tone. “Remove yourself from this palace, and your monkey, too. Go at once, before I seize you both and throw you into the prison.”
