by Sherry Jones
“That ‘goat’ bathes himself in livres. He has the king’s ear. And he supports Etienne against the reformists, who would have his head on a platter if they could.”
“So he is Etienne’s friend, and Etienne is your friend.” I narrowed my eyes. “What, in the meantime, am I to you?”
“You are the love of my life, the brightest star in my constellation, my very soul and reason for being.”
I kissed him, pleased with this response. “And you are my closest friend.”
Confusion crossed his face. “I would have thought Agnes would hold that honor.”
“Agnes?” I laughed. “You are the one to whom I reveal my soul. You alone understand my thirst for knowledge, for you share it with me. ‘For he, indeed, who looks into the face of a friend beholds, as it were, a copy of himself.’ How much more alike could any two people be?”
“But didn’t Cicero say that friendship can exist only between men?”
“He lived more than one thousand years ago. Ours is a new era. More and more girls are becoming lettered. Soon we may see girls in the schools, studying alongside men. Why couldn’t friendships form between them?”
Abelard laughed. “Didn’t you hear Bernard’s sermon? The reformists want to banish females from the cloisters and will never allow them in the schools. They might ask questions then, and who knows what would happen?”
“Well, I am a woman of letters, the likes of which Cicero never knew. Certainly he never knew a woman so like himself as I am to you. Our love, Abelard, has roots in the rich and ancient soil of friendship, of equal to equal.”
“You call yourself my equal?” The quick flash of his teeth. The jerk of his chin.
“I call myself your friend.”
His expression changed. He twisted my hair back with one hand and studied my naked face. “Perhaps you wish, then, to be a man.” He turned me around and, pressing me into the mattress, took me from behind, as one man takes another. During that too-short week we had learned everything there was to know of each other’s body, trying every new thing we could devise, limited only by our imaginations. We became artists in the bed, or, rather, musicians, or, rather, instruments of music. Struck by love, we resonated. We hummed and whispered, rustled the bedcoverings, sighed and moaned, hushed one another. Restraining my ecstatic song pushed my voice into a faint vibrato, chiming with passion, mingling with Abelard’s gasps and groans, his murmur of my name in my hair, which, still coiled around his hand, he pressed to his mouth as he made me his in yet another new way. I submitted to him completely, and joyously, gasping with pain, quivering with pleasure, filling the room with our joyous noise—or, as we did not realize then, filling an entire house.
I heard a bang, and man’s voice shouting, screaming, and then Abelard, who lay on top of me, was gone, the cold rushing to all the places where we had touched. I opened my eyes and saw him rising from the bed, and I saw my uncle Fulbert’s face hot like a dragon’s with eyes of bulging red.
“Rape!” he shouted. “Get off of her, you filthy beast.” He lifted Abelard into the air and flung him down. I heard a crack as he hit the wall, and his grunt. My uncle’s eyes ran over my naked body. Fulbert will skin them both alive. I yanked the covers to my chest and he turned away, to where Abelard was rising from the floor. Uncle gritted his teeth and balled his fists. Crying out a warning, I leapt up, but he swatted me to the bed with the back of his hand. I lay, dizzied, my ears ringing.
With a shake of my head I rose again, calling to Abelard once more, but Uncle had already seized him again and thrown him through the doorway, out of my room.
“You have stolen my innocent niece’s virtue and my honor,” Uncle growled. He pulled his knife from the sheath on his belt and pointed it at Abelard. “Now I’ll make a eunuch of you, by God.” Uncle breathed in deep pants, as though he had been running. His eyes rolled, out of focus.
“Uncle, no!” I screamed. “He didn’t rape me! We love each other.”
He turned to where I stood, still holding the bedcovers to my chest. I saw a glint in his eyes before he averted them, his face reddening. “What in God’s name are you saying?”
“Abelard did not take my honor, or yours. I gave it willingly to him.”
“Your mother’s daughter,” Uncle muttered. The anguish of betrayal twisted his features. From the corner of my eye I saw Abelard rising, his eyes watching the knife in my uncle’s hand. Before he could attempt to wrest it from him, however, Jean ran into the room and seized Abelard from behind. Abelard hurled him over his back and onto the floor, where he lay like a bundle of twigs.
“What, now you’ve killed my servant, too? By God, your days on this earth are finished,” my uncle snarled, lunging at Abelard.
Abelard leapt aside, narrowly missing the blade’s point. As he cast about for an object with which to defend himself, Uncle thrust again, aiming for Abelard’s private parts.
“Flee, Abelard!” I cried. “He will kill you. Run, my love; run far away!”
“And leave you? Never.”
My uncle slashed the air in front of him, sending Abelard stumbling backward and tumbling down the stairs. I screamed and would have gone to him, but my uncle warded me off with the knife. “Have you no shame, lupa that you are? Go and hide your nakedness. There is nothing you can do to help your magister now.”
“Uncle, please.” Behind him, Abelard struggled to his feet again. “We have done nothing wrong.”
“You have ruined my life, you ungrateful bitch—ruined it, ruined me!” Uncle yelled. “My honor, my reputation, my chance for a promotion, gone, all gone.”
“Fulbert,” Abelard said, standing now at the foot of the stairs, naked except for his hands, which he held in front of his most vulnerable place. “Heloise and I have spoken of our love to no one. Your honor is intact. And I will yet help you gain a promotion. I have already spoken to Etienne about it.” How easily the untruths sprang to his lips!
“By God, I ought to kill you both—both!” My uncle leveled the knife at Abelard again. “Remove yourself from my house this instant, you Satan. As God is my witness, I’ll make a woman of you.” Uncle headed down the stairs, and I shrieked again at Abelard to run away.
“Should I step outdoors without even a fig leaf to cover me?” Abelard said, yet shielding his testes with his hands. “What would happen to your honor then, my friend?”
“Do not call me friend.” Uncle narrowed his eyes, then shouted a command for me to retrieve Abelard’s clothes. I ran upstairs, donned a bliaut, then took up the hose, boots, and other items he had been wearing and handed them to my uncle, who flung them at Abelard while ordering me, again, to my room. Out of his sight, I gathered all Abelard’s belongings—his beautiful clothes, his lute, his books—and put them into a sack. When I heard the front door open, I ran to my window, flung open the shutters, and dropped his possessions down to him.
“I don’t want to leave you alone with him,” Abelard said.
“I have barred the door,” I said, as my uncle began pounding on it and shouting my name. “But it will not hold for long, I am afraid, as angry as he is. Please, Abelard, hurry to Etienne’s and tell him what has happened. Ask him to send a physician to look after Jean—and send him as quickly as possible, before my uncle injures me, too. Hurry!”
My uncle’s fists beat against my door, and his shouts grew louder. Strength filled me, sent by God, I am certain, and I pulled my bed across the floor to block the door. I slid my heavy desk and chair against the bed, and my chests of clothes. Even so, I heard a loud thud, as though Uncle had thrown all his weight against the door, and the splintering of wood.
“Whore!” he screamed. “I should have known. My sweet niece, holy and pure. You’re nothing but a liar and a slut—a filthy sinner—just like your mother.”
Please dear God, send that physician now. My uncle would not lay a hand on me in his presence.
“Wait until I get my hands on you,” he cried, slamming himself into the door,
cracking it. “You want lessons? Uncle Fulbert has one for you, heh-heh, that you will never forget.”
2
No one is unhappier than we who are simultaneously pulled in different directions by love and shame.
—ABELARD TO HELOISE
Long after the physician had come and gone and Uncle’s attempts to break down my door had ceased, I remained in my chambers, not daring to risk the blunt edge of my uncle’s ire. After pulling the furnishings back into place, I lay on my bed, shutters closed against the night, remembering all that had occurred, shivering in the chill. Uncle’s hurtful words echoed in my mind. Filthy sinner—just like your mother. Had I indeed become like her?
I pray that, someday, you will understand. How could I ever understand a mother’s decision to abandon her child? Had she never realized that, by eating sour grapes, she might set her daughter’s teeth on edge?
Why she had sent me away from her, I did not yet understand. But I had obtained a glimpse, at least, into the reasons why she had “spread her legs,” as Uncle had put it, for my father. Loving Abelard had opened my eyes, my heart, and, yes, my legs, and joyously so. He and I might have sinned in the eyes of the Church, but in my eyes we had fulfilled the Lord’s highest commandment. Although barred by the world from becoming husband and wife, we had nonetheless bound ourselves to each other by virtue of our great, and holy, love.
Yet, we had committed one grievous wrong in betraying my uncle’s trust, and under his own roof. What terrible revenge would he wreak upon us? Would he follow the example of Mars, who, after finding Venus entangled with Adonis, caused Adonis to die? If I could prevent even a hair on Abelard’s head from harm, I would willingly pay any price, even that of my pride. I would tell my uncle and the whole world that I had seduced him, and that, given the chance, I would do so again.
But now he was gone: My only friend, taken. My only love, lost. Never had I felt so utterly alone.
As I stared out the window, seeing nothing except the image of my uncle’s murderous face, I heard a faint knocking.
“My lady?” Jean and Pauline’s son, Jean-Paul, murmured from outside the door. “I bring you a message.”
I pulled open the door. The boy, his dark eyes wide, handed me a tablet of green wax. Write to me, sweetest, about how you fare, because I shall not be able to be healthy unless your well-being provides a reason for my health. Fare well and be happy, for as long as the wild boar loves the mountaintops. The last sentence ran like a blade along my spine: A wild boar, sent by Diana as a favor to Mars, had killed Adonis. Abelard, too, worried what revenge my uncle might take.
“Tell the magister that I am well,” I said to Jean-Paul, whose worried frown reminded me of his father’s injury. How, I asked him, was Jean faring?
“My father lies senseless in the bed of the man who attacked him,” Jean-Paul said. “Please, my lady, do not send me back to that murderer. I could not face him without committing a terrible sin that would break my mother’s heart.”
A correction sprang to my lips—Abelard had attacked no one but had been viciously assaulted and threatened—but I merely sighed. Was this household cursed? Did God now punish us all for the sins that Abelard and I had committed?
I stepped into Abelard’s room. Jean lay on the bed, unconscious as his son had said, his feet and ankles jutting over the mattress’s edge, his thin, gray hair spread on the pillow. I glanced about at the vestiges of Abelard: his desk of rich, dark wood, with its matching high-backed chair and footstool; the hanging tapestry dyed with saffron and embroidered with geometric designs of blue and green; and, on a small table, his astralabe. I picked it up and turned it over, imagining that I could feel the warmth from his hands. How long ago it seemed, that night when he had given mine to me, on the eve of his departure for Brittany.
How would I bear another separation from him, who had become a part of me? Too soon I would leave Abelard forever, never to see him again. We must find some way to be together in spite of my uncle—for I knew that he would use every method in his reach to keep us apart.
Tonight, perhaps, when Uncle Fulbert fell asleep, I might slip away to devise a plan with Abelard. I would return his astralabe, as well, so that we might send our love to each other by way of that bright planet. Venus’s love had doomed Adonis to a bloody death. I shook off the thought. For all his threats, Uncle Fulbert was no murderer.
In the kitchen, Pauline pounded herbs with a pestle as if taking revenge upon them. She grunted when I asked how she fared, but offered nothing more. When I inquired about Jean, she dropped the pestle onto the floor. Cursing in French, she bent to retrieve it at the same time as I. Handing it to her, I saw her reddened eyes, and her glare that seemed to blame me for her troubles. I said nothing, having nothing to say. She resumed her pounding. At last, I asked her to bring some hot water to my room so that I might wash before supper.
My toilette complete, I ventured to the dining table. Although I had no appetite, I needed to speak with my uncle. I must discern his intentions toward my beloved, and I must dissuade him from seeking revenge. He could utterly destroy Abelard, and he needed no knife to do so but only words that I must convince him not to speak.
I found him not on the verge of drunkenness, as I had expected, but as sober as a stone, his mind—and tongue—sharpened only by anger.
“Ah, here is my little meretrix. Gave yourself willingly, eh? Willingly! Not even a thought for your uncle Fulbert, who trusted you.”
“I had thought you trusted me to take care of your household and of myself. I have done both.” I pulled a bench to the table and sat opposite him, wary of his pointed glare, his drumming fingers.
“A fine job you have done of caring for my household, conducting your sinful affair under my roof and risking my reputation.”
“Why should your reputation suffer? It was I who sinned, not you.”
“You have defiled yourself. I am your uncle and patron, and so am sullied, as well.”
“I meant no harm to you.”
“You were not thinking of me.” He brought his fist down on the table, rattling the empty henap, the lighted candles. “You thought only of your own pleasure. It is no wonder that you saw me off so joyously—‘Farewell, Uncle dear! Hurry home!’ Deception—deception! You and your lover couldn’t wait for my departure so that you could begin your rut.”
Heat spread through my face and neck. “I will not allow you to debase our love.”
“Love? Hmph. And listen to your haughty voice. Such pride—pride! Did they teach you that in the Royal Abbey? What of ‘the meek shall inherit the Earth’?”
“What of ‘judge you not, lest you be judged’?”
“I caught you in the act, stupid girl. I have no need for judging when the verdict is clear. Where is your contrition?”
“Contrition for loving Abelard? I might as well apologize for breathing.”
“You ungrateful bitch!” He threw the henap against the wall and it clattered to the floor. Jean-Paul brought in our supper, his neck and ears reddening at my uncle’s outburst as he set down the food, placed the cup on the table, then hurried away.
“After all I have done for you: paying for your schooling at Argenteuil, bringing you to Paris, preparing the way for your entry into a high position at Fontevraud—”
“All you have done benefits you. The more I prosper, the better your chance of success.”
“And when everyone has discovered what you have done?”
Remain calm, Heloise. “How will everyone discover it? Are you going to tell them?”
“You’re damned right I will!” He pounded the table again. “Bishop Galon deserves to know that his headmaster is a deceitful, lust-driven sinner.”
“You would destroy the career of the world’s most brilliant philosopher merely for falling in love? Can you not muster even a speck of compassion for Abelard—and for me?”
“Where is he now, eh? He hides, trembling in fear over the consequences of his foul deeds wi
thout a care for your welfare. Foul deeds!”
“What did he do that countless men have not done before him?”
“What? He seduced his own student, an innocent girl brought up in the convent, one already betrothed to Christ—to Christ!”
“I am twenty years of age, and capable of choosing for myself.”
“I did think so, yes.” His voice shook. He rang for some wine, and Jean-Paul rushed in with a flagon. “You were special, Heloise, a shining jewel of virtue.” The drink Uncle took appeared to steady him. “Now Petrus Abaelardus has tarnished you. He has degraded you. And in doing so under my roof, he has degraded me and all our family.”
“I do not feel degraded by his love, Uncle. I feel exalted.”
“You poor, misguided child. I know you think yourself an adult, but you have little understanding of how the world works. Dear God, forgive me for my stupidity! I should have protected you.” He sighed. “I am as much to blame as Petrus.”
“No one is to blame.” I placed my hand on his forearm, suddenly desiring to comfort him. “From the moment we met, Abelard and I knew we were destined to be together.”
“And how could that be, with you headed to Fontevraud, and he rising like the sun in God’s church? Some say he will become a bishop, as William of Champeaux did before him—a bishop, that serpent of deception! Petrus Abaelardus isn’t fit to kiss the hem of my robe, I who have given up all for the Church and cannot even attain a deacon’s post.”
“And if you tell Galon what we have done? How would that help you, Uncle?”
“It would fill me with joy to see that traitor ruined, as he has ruined you.” Uncle’s smile flickered like a shadow. “Banished from teaching, exiled from Paris—Galon would make it so, and gladly. He appointed Petrus under pressure from the king, thanks to Etienne, but he despises his arrogance.”
“And so—you will tell the bishop about us?” Tears did not form in my eyes, yet I sniffled and wiped my cheek and so deceived my uncle. “You would destroy my reputation, too?”
