by Sherry Jones
FEBRUARY 1117
I urged my palfrey over the pocked and rutted road to the Hautes-Bruyères Priory. Nearing death, Queen Bertrade had sent for me.
“She wants to see you at once.” At my uncle’s front door, Agnes had shimmered with excitement for my sake or to see her precious Amaury again, or both. The plain woolen bliaut she wore under her surcotte told me that she had not even taken the time to change her clothes. I sent Jean with a message to my uncle, pulled on a cotte, hat, and riding boots, and departed with her and her servant on the horse they had brought for me.
As we rode, my thoughts scattered like the stones under the horses’ hooves. What if the queen should die before I reached her? Please, God, do not take her yet. No one else except my mother’s dearest friend could answer the questions plaguing me yet about my past.
Amaury greeted us, red eyed, at the door of the infirmary.
“You have arrived in good time. My sister is nearly gone,” he said in a choking voice, and escorted us into Queen Bertrade’s private chambers, where nuns and nobles stood around her bed, waiting like guests at death’s dinner table.
“Thanks be to God,” the queen said when she saw me. “Amaury, please take this morbid audience with you when you go. They are robbing me of air.” Amaury ushered everyone out, including the healer, who sputtered and protested that he must remain near his lady until the priest could arrive.
“Fool. Does he think I would die before receiving the viaticum? I intend to join my husband in Paradise.” She smiled at Agnes and me. “Behold your expressions of gloom! Do not mourn, please. I’ll be in Philip’s arms again before sunset. Now—give me another pillow so I can see you.”
“But—you must not overextend yourself,” I said.
“Lest I die?” She snorted. “I have saved my strength for your visit. After this final task, I will gladly go—depriving the leeches, I hope, of any more of my blood.”
We propped her with a pillow; Agnes took up a comb from a table by her bed and ran it through her hair. I willed myself not to stare at her as the others in the room had done. Although her black eyes’ fire had dimmed to a smolder, her beauty had not. Her long chestnut hair flowed like a river of silk over her shoulders and across her lap. Her skin stretched taut over her cheekbones and jaw, giving her the appearance of a sculpture. She was so pale and had lost so much weight that I thought she might fade away while I watched. Her intelligence had not diminished, however.
“I thought you would have taken charge of the Fontevraud Abbey by now,” she said, a sly gleam in her eyes.
“I did not go there, my lady. Or—rather—I did, but only to tell Robert that I had changed my mind.”
“You’ve changed your mind? Or did God change it for you?” She grimaced. “Amaury told me about your ‘secret’ marriage. It won’t remain a secret for long in Paris.”
“We had only a few witnesses, and all of them vowed never to tell. But we will not need to seal our lips for long. Abelard’s new book will propel him to glory, and then he may do as he pleases.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Indeed? And what of the child?”
I caught my breath and glanced at Agnes, who blushed. “I did not tell her! I confided in Amaury, but no one else.”
“My brother tells me everything,” the queen said, giving Agnes a shrewd look.
I told the queen of leaving Astralabe in Brittany, and of Abelard’s promise to take me to him soon. We planned to fetch him as soon as Abelard’s songs about me had faded from the streets and rumors about us had ceased to wag tongues.
“Your Abelard craves attention too much to be forgotten.” She closed her eyes. “You will never bring that child home.”
“No, my lady, he has promised—”
“And so you follow your mother’s path.” She sighed. “One cannot escape destiny, after all.”
I stared at her, speechless. Of course we would retrieve our son. If I had to do it myself, I would not hesitate. I had journeyed to Brittany before without Abelard and could do so again.
“And did you find your father?” Her eyes opened.
“I did.” At last, we touched on the topic I had come to discuss with her. “He recognized me at Fontevraud.”
Queen Bertrade’s nostrils flared. “And did he tell you all?”
“He was delirious with fever, my lady. He could not tell me anything, and Petronille would not.”
“Because she doesn’t know anything. Hmph. I am the only one who knows.”
Queen Bertrade first met Robert long before my mother did, she told me, while living with her husband, the womanizing Count Foulques of Anjou. When Robert arrived in the court, she cast her eye on his fier form, tall and lean and dark, the streak of white emblazoned like the mark of God in his dark hair, and his gray eyes filled with light. Bertrade determined to have him for herself. When Robert, in her presence, chastised Count Foulques for repudiating his past wives and children to marry again and again—Bertrade was his fourth wife—she fell even more completely under Robert’s spell. “No man had ever treated me with such respect,” she said. In return, Bertrade gave him an apartment in which to live while he pursued his studies in divinity at the Angiers school.
But the handsome priest seemed immune to the charms not only of the beautiful Bertrade but of all the other women who adored him—as many did. They brought him food, cleaned his apartment—he had refused the servants Bertrade offered—and even emptied his chamber pot. In return, they basked in his love, which seemed limitless and pure. None suspected that, under his alb, Robert wore an iron tunic whose sharp blades pierced his skin whenever he moved. When he met my mother, however, he put the iron tunic away so that he would not harm her when he held her in his arms.
“Women were his weakness, and your mother his greatest temptation,” Bertrade said. Mother’s virtue and piety only made her more attractive to him; her intellect made her irresistible. She felt no compunction about loving him, whom God had sent to relieve her loneliness. She saw no reason why priests should not marry; had God desired men to live without women, why had he created Eve?
My mother and father’s conversation began in the Angiers court at dinner with Foulques and Bertrade, and continued throughout the day and into the night while courtly life went on all around them: the servants’ clearing the tables; the petitioners’ filling the hall to await an audience with the count; the sweeping of the rushes and the replacing of them with fresh ones; the lighting of the candles and the replenishing of wood in the fireplace. Through it all my mother and Robert talked earnestly, discussing, debating, laughing, and developing a bond that would deepen throughout their lives.
No love is perfect, however. When their friendship turned to passion, guilt plagued Robert. He who had spent years in Brittany demanding that clergymen set aside their wives now lived in greater sin than those priests.
“He would have married Hersende but for the wife and children he had renounced,” the queen said. His sins, adultery as well as fornication, made him weep many times in my mother’s arms. Then, hearing whispers about Mother, he realized that he caused her to sin, as well, and put on his iron tunic again.
“That’s when she knew he would leave her,” Bertrade said.
Unable to bear the burden on his conscience, Robert fled Angiers in the dark of night without even saying good-bye. Mother wept for months and would have followed him, but no one knew where he had gone. He wandered, a hermit in bare, bleeding feet, in the forests at Craon, lost to her for years.
Near my seventh birthday Mother went to hear Robert preach, and he asked her to build his new abbey. She would not have agreed but for my uncle, who had come to rescue us from poverty with an offer of marriage from a count. When Mother refused, my uncle’s anger rose. When I walked into the salle, she introduced us and he began to shout. From where had this child come? Who had fathered it? Now he understood why she refused to marry. What man of noble birth would want a whore as his wife?
Soon my uncle had arranged a place f
or me in the Royal Abbey at Argenteuil, to prevent my being known, he said, but also for my benefit. Argenteuil had housed many great ladies of France and boasted the finest teachers in the world. I would depart from the abbey with the best possible education, he told her.
“The girl cannot live here in secret for the rest of her life,” he said. “She will be discovered, and the whole world will know—the world!” If my mother wished to keep me with her, she must produce my father, whom Fulbert and her other brothers would force to recognize me.
“Or you can marry the count and beg him to adopt her.” Uncle leered. “Employ your womanly talents.”
Deprived of me and forced into betrothal to a man she did not know, Mother fled to Robert’s side. She worked closely with him for years, devising plans for his abbey and executing them, commanding men. But she never told Robert about me, fearing that guilt would pierce his heart and that he would flee from her again.
“What good would come of his knowing, anyway?” Bertrade said. “He could not claim you; nor, with that white streak in your hair, could Hersende take you along to Fontevraud. Everyone would know that Robert had sinned with her, and, worse, Robert would be reminded every time he beheld you.” She snorted. “God knows what punishments he might have inflicted on himself.”
“But did Robert love Mother?” I asked, remembering Abelard’s sneering words about hermits and monks.
“Who can know what resides in the hearts of men? What we see in their loins is more reliable.” The queen chuckled but, noting my drooping countenance, amended her comment. “Your mother, who did know Robert’s heart, swore he loved her more than God.”
Then Bertrade lifted her head off the pillow and gave me a fierce look, gripping my hand with a force that made her arm tremble. “Hersende would never have given you up unless she had been forced to do so. She loved Robert, but she loved you most of all.”
I sank to my knees and bowed my head, still clasping her hand. “Thank you, my lady. You cannot imagine what your words mean to me.”
“I didn’t speak them for your sake.” Queen Bertrade dropped my hand and closed her eyes. “I’ve done it, Hersende,” she said with a sigh. “Your daughter knows the truth. Now, tell God to end my misery and bring me home.”
2
Having given up everything, I take refuge under your wings. I submit to your rule, resolutely following you in everything.
—HELOISE TO ABELARD
We began the night innocently, lying on Abelard’s blanket and inventing constellations. He discerned a dragon, dubbed Drago; I, a wheel, which we named Fortuna. A chariot shape with two bright stars before it, as though being pulled by them, we named Atalanta and Hippomenes, not knowing how those ill-fated mythical lovers prefigured our destiny.
I reminded Abelard of their story: Consumed with lust, they copulated in the temple of the Mother of the Gods. An enraged Cybele changed them into lions and chained them to her chariot. Likewise, my mother and Robert pulled God’s own chariot, the great Fontevraud Abbey, to which they gave their lives, sacrificing their love.
“Mother never agreed that, in loving each other, she and Robert had sinned,” I said to Abelard that night. Monks such as Bernard of Clairvaux who had renounced the world now preached the most loudly against priests who continued to live in it. And what of the Paris synod that, forty years ago, had declared clerical celibacy to be a violation of human nature and reason? Were those bishops in the right, or did today’s reformists reflect God’s will?
As I told Abelard my parents’ tale, warmth spread through my chest. I had not been conceived in sin, as Uncle had said, but in the purest love. Likewise, the hours I spent making love with Abelard were holier to me than any mass.
“And if you are formed in your mother’s image, as they say, then I know how Robert must have felt about her.” Abelard stroked my cheek, then slid his fingers along my jawbone and across my throat to the space between my reclining breasts. “You are exquisite, Heloise. I loved you from the moment I saw you.”
I laughed, doubting whether he could have loved me without any knowledge of me. Did he behold in my eyes the promptings of my heart that day on the place as he sang to me? Did he discern the ethic of my soul by examining the capon in my hand? Non. Abelard most likely admired my buxom shape and large, dark eyes.
His own eyes crinkled when I said this to him. “Would I sing in the place for hours to meet a pair of breasts, or a set of doe’s eyes? In looks you do not rank lowest, but in the extent of your learning you stand supreme. I wanted to match wits with the famed woman scholar.”
“You hoped to humiliate me, non?”
He grinned. “A magister is only as eminent as his most recent victory.”
“For what do you wait, then? When will you finally conquer me?”
“How do you know I have not already done so?”
“You have wrested nothing from me, but I have freely given all.”
“By skillful persuasion I coax you to do my bidding, though you think your desires are your own. That is the surest form of conquest, non?”
“And so the yearning of my body for your hands is not my yearning, but the result of your ‘skillful persuasion’?”
“Voilà.” He propped himself on one arm and caressed my breasts, sending tiny arrows of pleasure shooting downward. I moaned softly and closed my eyes. “Who is in control? I am. As your magister, I thought you would have learned this by now.” I felt a prodding against my thigh. “But perhaps you need another lesson.”
“A lesson in the pleasures of the body, or the mastery of the heart?”
“Between the two of us,” he said between soft kisses, “there is no difference.”
O Abelard! How exquisitely he made love to me that night, in Etienne’s vineyard beside the Seine. Hidden by the clusters of ripening fruit and green leaves as broad as an outspread hand, sheltered by the ink-black sky resplendent with winking stars, under his mantle sheltering us against the cool March breeze, he unlaced my bliaut and lifted my chemise, exposing my breasts, and reached inside my skirt to remove my underpants. He touched my flower gently, taking care not to bruise the petals. I shuddered and strained against him, yearning for the press of his verpa between my thighs, but he delayed, teasing me, or, rather, torturing me. At last when he filled me with himself, I cried out, lost in the stars, at one with God.
“Quiet, my love,” he whispered into my ear as he took his own pleasure. “We do not want to be discovered.”
Now that he had tumbled me over that precipice, he hastened to it himself, increasing my excitement anew. Mindful of his warnings against being overheard, I bit down on my tongue to stop myself from screaming out, which was what I longed to do, but could not restrain the mewling, like that of a kitten, issuing from my constricted throat. My body, which should have been sated, demanded only more. I wriggled my hips to feel him all over—and he rasped in my ear, then shuddered against me with a great sigh. Deflated, he lay atop me for a long while, his pulse slamming against my chest.
“My perfect wife,” he said at last, lifting himself up and kissing my face. “You have conquered me, my darling, I whom no woman could conquer. I would do anything for you. Anything.” He lay down and wound his arms about me, one around my waist and one behind my neck, cradling me, his fingers in my hair, stroking my scalp. I wanted to purr. The constellations shifted. The planets clicked into alignment. I gazed into his blue eyes, dizzy, drunk. All, all was right in the world.
All except our son, who awaited us yet. “I wish Astralabe were with us now.”
Abelard chuckled. “And I thank God that he is not.”
“You do not yearn for him?”
“Of course I miss him. I also realize that, were he with us, our time tonight would not be nearly so exciting.”
“I would gladly trade an hour of lovemaking every now and then to see the dimple in his chin, and to kiss his fat cheeks.” I pressed a hand to my chest. “Oh, when will I see him again?”
&
nbsp; A horse’s nicker. The bells rang the compline hour. Leaves rustled in the slight breeze.
“Not yet,” Abelard said. “Soon.”
The lap of the waters; my liquid ache.
“So you have said for months now. Abelard, he is growing up! He will forget me.”
“He will not forget you.”
“He will think Denise is his mother.” Her fawning eyes, her grasping hands.
“Denise has a new love, my brother says—a lord of some lands near Nantes. Soon she will no longer cling to our son as she does now.”
“I want to cling to him!” A sob tore at my throat. I glared at Abelard, wondering what he had become. Was our child only an impediment to his carnal pleasures and his glory?
“Shhh! I heard a horse. If we are discovered here, Fulbert will tell the world that we are married.” Abelard covered me again with his cloak. Diminished by our spent passions and by the universe above, we forgot ourselves and began the argument that would change the course of our lives.
“We have already discussed Astralabe and reached an agreement—or had you forgotten?” he murmured.
“Agreement? As I recall, you gave me no choice. Either I leave him in le Pallet or be responsible for your death.”
“And so now you would rather have me dead?”
“Do you truly think that my uncle would do you harm?”
“Have you forgotten the flash of the blade in his hand?”
“But now that we are married, there is no dishonor in our having a child.” How many times had I spoken these words to Abelard these past months?
His reply was ever the same. “Everyone will see him and will know that he was born before we wed. All of Paris will whisper against us—against you, most of all. Your uncle will blame me for the blot on your honor, and on his own.”
“You told him that I was to blame, remember? He will punish me, not you. But I do not fear him as you do.” I glared at Abelard. “I would gladly risk my life to be with our son. Whereas you think only of your own skin.”
