by Sherry Jones
I thought nothing of others’ opinions, but wanted only my beloved’s presence even more keenly after the baby’s birth. Our beautiful son, whom I named Pierre Astralabe, offered some new delight every day. Abelard did not witness the time when first, under my tickling fingers, our boy laughed, a sound more delightful than the music of angels. He could not note the alertness of his gaze at an age when, Denise said, most infants stare blankly, as though the world were made of shadows. He did not cheer, as did I, when our son first lifted his head and pushed his chest up from the bed, determined, it seemed, to crawl.
Declining a wet nurse—when Abelard came for us, I would need to feed our boy—I kept little Astralabe close under the cloying eye of Denise, who could not forbear offering advice on every aspect of his upbringing. I should not suckle him whenever he cried, but ought to let him learn to comfort himself. I ought to hand him over to her even when he protested, or he would always be diffident with strangers. I smiled and thanked her and clutched him to myself.
When my confinement had ended, Astralabe changed so completely in his temperament that I wondered if demons had stolen him in the night and replaced my happy child with an evil one. Where had his laughter gone? Now he screamed, clenching his little fists until they turned white, his face empurpled with rage. Denise tried to help by making funny faces and, at times, holding him in her arms, which increased his shrieks. For three days he cried, only stopping sporadically to nurse until, at nightfall, he would drink deeply from my breast, and exhausted, we would both fall asleep.
This is how Abelard found me after riding through the gates and crossing the drawbridge to the château of le Pallet that August afternoon: weeping, imploring, praying, walking with our babe in my arms, pleading for peace, for even one moment’s worth of silence, rocking to and fro, patting his back, rubbing his head, thinking for one moment of dropping him into a well, of stuffing a washcloth into his mouth, of finding some way to silence the screams of this formerly delightful child. Having discovered the power crying gave him over me, he now refused to stop.
“Have I come at an inauspicious hour?” Abelard said as he entered my chambers. “Perhaps I should return—in a few years.”
That I heard him at all was miraculous, for our son had redoubled his wails. I stopped pacing the floor and turned to Abelard, my heart lifting like a sail at the sight of his comical grimace, his starry eyes, his arms open wide to my leaping embrace. How long the months had been without my Abelard! He hardly seemed real. If not for the crying child in my arms, I might have thought myself in a dream.
“I am glad that someone is happy to see me,” he said as I kissed him and Astralabe’s screams intensified.
“I do not know what is causing him to cry.” I held him out as if Abelard might know the answer. “I have consulted the healer, the midwife, and the priest, but no one knows how to placate him.”
“Shh.” Abelard bounced our infant so vigorously in his outstretched hands that I feared he might drop him. “Son, be quiet!”
Astralabe continued to shriek.
I took him and pulled him to my breast, where, mercifully, he nursed. Abelard’s eyes bulged at the sight of my bosom and he reached for my free breast, but I pushed his hand away. Being suckled day and night, I did not desire to be touched there even by Abelard.
“I am jealous of an infant,” he said with a grin.
I moved to the bed and lay with Astralabe close beside me, still feeding. Abelard lay down also and slid his arm around my waist. I closed my eyes, relishing his embrace. As he pulled himself more closely to me, his arousal prodded my thigh. I sighed and relaxed into him, my Abelard, beside me at last, his kisses moistening my neck and throat and his hands in my hair, his sonorant voice murmuring, “Beautiful mother, excellent wife.” My blood stirred in spite of my fatigue. I settled our sleeping son in his cradle, then returned to Abelard’s kisses and caresses. He stroked my belly, my thighs, my back, my buttocks. He lifted my skirt and pressed his skin against mine. Blood thrummed in my ears and throbbed between my legs. His breath smelled sweet, like aniseed, over the animal scent of him rising, enfolding, immersing me in heat like the sultriest of nights. My sighs mingled with his resonant moans—and then Astralabe awoke and erupted, again, in cries.
Abelard cursed. “What in God’s name is wrong with him? I thought you said he was a cheerful child.”
Indeed, I said, he had been so until the previous Monday.
Abelard laughed. “On that very day, I left Paris to journey here. The little rascal knew I was coming for his mother.”
10
You are not being fair to me, but have changed your ways, and so trust is not secure anywhere.
—HELOISE TO ABELARD
Although Abelard’s family had fed me well—if resentfully—my months in Brittany had whetted my hunger for discussions such as my beloved and I had shared. Dagobert had little to say to any woman, it seemed. Elona gave me mostly hateful looks, even when I spoke Breton to her. Denise, on the other hand, paid too much attention to me, inquiring so often and so solicitously that I avoided her. Then, after Astralabe’s birth, she showed an interest in him that I thought strange, even unnatural. One day I’d walked into my bedchamber to find his cradle empty—and discovered her napping with him on her own bed. When I’d reached out for him, she had awakened and refused, at first, to hand him to me.
Now that Abelard had come, everyone’s behavior had changed. Denise followed him about as a hen does its chicks. Elona listened with alacrity, hanging on every word, as he and Dagobert conversed. Dagobert spoke more words at dinner on Abelard’s second day than I had heard from him in a year’s time, telling of his villeins’ laziness and their quarrels; describing each of his crops and his successes or failures with them; and complaining of the unseasonably warm and dry spring.
“Father talked of digging a new well in the southern meadow,” Abelard said.
“But he never did so, did he?” Dagobert pursed his lips.
“No, but I always thought he should. I would have done so—”
“If you had not given up your lands.”
“Yes.”
Dagobert said something to his wife in Breton; I recognized the words brother and lord. Denise spoke rapidly in her garbled tongue, her eyes snapping with demands. Abelard lifted his hands in a shrug and, smiling, began a reply, but she interrupted, raising her voice. Soon the two of them were shouting.
Dagobert leapt to his feet, waving his arms. “This is treachery!” he cried in French. “What other man would even consider taking back what he had freely given, and to his own brother?”
Abelard stood, as well. “What other man would deny his brother such a small favor, when that brother has relinquished everything to him?”
“A small favor? Ha! Let us petition the duke. He will decide who would inherit our father’s lands, income, and title—one of his own sons or the illegitimate child you would have Elona bring up for you.”
At these words, I felt a tightening around my heart. Elona, bring up Abelard’s son?
“That ‘illegitimate child’ is your nephew,” Abelard snarled. “And why shouldn’t he inherit our father’s estate? He could surely do as good a job as either of your sons. Had you heard? Three months of age and he already speaks!”
Denise, sitting beside Abelard, smiled and nodded. Although I did not believe her, she’d claimed to teach Astralabe to say Maman—to her, not to me.
“Listen to you, so proud of your seed!” Dagobert folded his arms across his chest. “But you always thought yourself superior to the rest of us.” He pointed a finger at Abelard. “You are too good for le Pallet, too good for Brittany, your home—too good for your own family. You and your soft, scholarly hands, always with your face in a book, indulged by our father and pampered by our mother as if you were Christ himself.”
“Papa and Maman loved all of us,” Abelard said, frowning.
“It did not seem so to me. You never had to do a hard day’s work
, while I sweated in the fields with the villeins and had to practice swordsmanship until I thought my arm would fall off—and why? Because you wanted nothing to do with your birthright. You turned up your nose at all our father offered.”
“Because I was born a philosopher.”
“Because you were too lazy for real work and too cowardly to fight. You cannot bear the sight of blood, especially your own. Admit it!”
“I admit to nothing except having an asne for a brother.”
“Stop!” I jumped to my feet, while Denise held my baby in her arms and kissed his cheeks as though he already belonged to her. “No one is going to bring up my baby except me,” I said, glaring at Abelard.
I turned and snatched Astralabe to myself. Cradling him as if to shield him from a storm, I ran with my wailing infant into my bedchamber, where I fastened the latch against Abelard, against greedy Denise, against all the world, if need be.
“Shhh, poor baby, do not cry,” I murmured. “Do not cry, and do not worry. No one will take you from me. Your mother would die before she would leave you.”
An hour later, when both my son and I had drifted off to sleep in my chair, Abelard’s pounding on my door awakened me. Forgetting my anger for the moment, I arose with sleep befuddling my brain and, after setting Astralabe into his cradle, opened the door.
“Ignore my brother’s bad behavior.” Abelard pushed his way into the room. “He once was a kind and gentle man, but he has changed. I blame that Breton woman he took to wife. Doesn’t Breton stem from the same word as brute?”
At another time, I might have laughed at the clever jest. Abelard laughed enough for the two of us, however, and hooked his arm around my waist to pull me close—but I refused him.
“Are you annoyed with me? Why?” He lifted his eyebrows innocently.
“Because you want to take my son from me.” I stepped over to the cradle and gazed down at his beautiful face.
“I want no such thing. I only asked for my brother’s help should we need it. He said non, so we have nothing more to discuss. But I discovered why my sister has treated you as a leper. She fears Astralabe will take this estate from her own sons.”
“But you signed your inheritance over to Dagobert.”
Abelard shrugged. “My father wrote a provision into his will reserving inheritance rights for my son.” He sighed. “Of course, I never expected to have a child. Papa must have known something that I did not.”
My heart beat a little faster at the thought of living at le Pallet with Abelard and our child, far removed from rumors and scandal and far from my uncle. I imagined picnics on the grass, and singing and dancing together, the three of us, with chains of daisies in our hair as my mother used to string for me.
“To claim the estate, I must become a knight,” Abelard said, having guessed my thoughts. “I would be required to fight battles for the Duke of Brittany.”
I laughed at the notion of him with a sword—but his frown stopped me. “You are a scholar, not a fighter.” I did not add that he would certainly be killed in his first battle—unless wits were the weapon. “Any man can flourish a blade, but your brilliant mind shall alter the world. Where can we go, instead? Paris is not safe for us.”
“That has changed. I am at my ease in Paris now, and you will be, as well.” His smile promised secrets.
“At ease? Have you told my uncle where I am living?”
“I have.”
“And yet he no longer desires to harm you?”
“He will do me no harm.” Abelard appeared so pleased with himself that I had to smile. “Sending you here was one of my more brilliant ideas. Fulbert did not dare lay a hand on me out of concern for you. He thinks that we Bretons are savages.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Haven’t you guessed the answer by now?” Then he attacked me most savagely and most deliciously. I thrilled to the low growls issuing from his throat, his hands rough on my body, his mouth ravishing my skin—but we had matters to discuss.
“So we cannot remain here,” I said, moving his hands from my overused breasts. “Your star did not rise in le Pallet, nor will it set here. But—where shall we go?”
“We return to Paris. My work awaits there, and my students.”
“But if I am there, and not here, what will prevent my uncle from avenging himself against you?”
“I have befriended him, that is what. Ha! Disbelief writes itself across your face.”
“My imagination has reached its limits, I admit. When last I saw the two of you together, my uncle brandished a knife.”
“I have given him what he wants.”
“What is that, pray tell?”
Abelard pulled me so close to him, I could feel the wings of his heart beating against my rib cage. “You and I are going to wed.”
I laughed at his jest. “Thusly you demonstrate that intelligence is not the same as wisdom.” Abelard frowned as if confused, so I added, “You ought to know better, by now, than to make false promises to my uncle.”
“False promises?” He kissed me. “Let me remove those words from your lips for all time.” He kissed me again. “I intend to marry you as soon as we return to Paris.”
I extricated myself and walked to the window. In another life, I might swoon with pleasure to hear the man I loved begging for my hand, as I imagined the joys of children, shared meals, and my own household to command. Marriage would bring neither pleasure nor joy to Abelard and me, however, but the opposite: censure, scandal, and among his scholars, disillusionment.
“What are you doing there?” Abelard asked.
“I am searching for your good sense, since you seem to have lost it.”
“To marry you makes perfect sense to me.”
“And now, I think you must have misplaced your mind, as well.” I turned to him. “Had it not occurred to you that I might wish to be consulted in this?”
“Is that the reason for your anger? Please, come to me.” He held out his arms and I relented, letting him pull me back into the bed. “I am consulting you now, sweetness. Will you marry me?” His eyes gazed not with questions, however, but with answers—all of them in his favor.
“Non.”
He laughed and kissed my lips. “My darling contrarian. Have you forgotten that I read the Ovid before you? ‘We can’t stand sweetness: bitterness renews our taste.’ But he was not speaking of me, I assure you.”
“And I speak not from Ovid, but from the promptings of my own heart.”
“Have you lost your love for me, then?”
“Did you read my letters?”
“Every word is imprinted in my memory.”
“Then you know that I have pledged to love you eternally. I, for one, honor my promises.”
“If you love me, then you must marry me.”
“Because I love you, I cannot marry you. Abelard, you know that marriage would destroy you. A wife and children would diminish you in the world’s eyes; you would never know glory.”
“But you are wrong. Not to marry you, the mother of my child, would destroy me.”
“If you do, the fruits of your labors will be lost—your reputation, your new book, perhaps even your position at the school. Not just your students, but all the world would be deprived of your brilliance.”
“I must compliment you for originality. Never have I heard of a woman’s refusing a suitor with such high praise.”
“But I am not refusing you, my love.”
“Are you not? To my ears, non sounds very much like a refusal.”
“And have we not established that I will love you eternally? I am refusing marriage, not you.”
“And when we return to Paris? Where would you live?”
“Why can’t I live as your mistress? Many canons keep concubines. Given your fame and the scholars you attract to the cloister, the Church might even accept the arrangement. You might rent a house for Astralabe and me and visit us often.”
He snorted. “Making you my mistre
ss would placate Fulbert?”
“Not at first, no—but he would soon adjust.”
“Having pleaded with your uncle for my life—for both our lives—I must disagree. And lest you say that we need not consider his opinions, let me remind you that he has already threatened to remove my testicles.”
“Which he did not do, in spite of the knife in his hand.”
“But he will kill me if I do not marry you.” Abelard left the bed to pace the room and run worried fingers through his hair. “Everything is settled. Fulbert and I have reached an agreement. If I marry you, he will be appeased.”
“You reached an agreement without consulting me?”
“I never thought you would object.”
“In all the time you have known me, have you learned nothing of me? I prefer love to chains.”
“I thought you might prefer to save my life.”
“You overstate the danger. My uncle is not a murderer. And if we wed, you would lose your position at the school as soon as Galon heard the news.”
“He will hear nothing. You and I shall marry in secret, with only your uncle, Etienne, and Agnes as our witnesses. Fulbert has agreed.”
“A secret marriage? Now I know that you have lost your mind. Such an arrangement would never satisfy my uncle.” Would a secret marriage end the talk about Abelard and me? Certainly not—in fact, the whispers would increase once everyone knew of my child with eyes the color of dusk and an indentation in his chin as a finger makes when pressed into clay.
“Fulbert and I have discussed the matter over many flagons of wine. He was reluctant, at first, to accept a marriage made in private. He talked endlessly about honor and his family, especially your mother and the scandal she caused. He blames her for his difficulties.”
“Scandal? Mother kept me a secret all her days. Not even Robert of Arbrissel knew.” I told Abelard about my visit to the Fontevraud Abbey and the state in which I found Robert. “Petronille of Chemillé worked beside my mother every day for years, and she did not know of my existence. Any scandal accompanying my birth exists only in Uncle’s imagination.”
