The Sharp Hook of Love

by Sherry Jones

  “That place back there is sickening, non? I used to live there,” Pauline said, “before I married Jean.” Jean-Paul’s father, her former employer, had put her there, she said, and, except for the few coins he sent from time to time, utterly neglected her and his son.

  “He was terrified that his father, a count, would find out what he had done to me and force him into the priesthood. And so he hid me there with the lepers, the prostitutes, and the rats.” Her eyes drooped at the corners. She pressed her mouth shut, but her chin trembled. “It was the worst year of my life. You cannot imagine.”

  I stared at her. No, I could not imagine living in such misery.

  Why didn’t she appeal to the man’s father for aid? I asked. Surely he would not wish to have his grandson brought up in such a place.

  “And have Jean-Paul taken from me to be raised in his castle? My son would never have known me. You may think me selfish, but I loved him too much to let him go. He was all I had in the world.” When, at his birth, he slipped into the world like a breath, as thin as a reed and too weak even to cry, she worried that she had made the wrong choice. She wrote to the boy’s father, threatening to tell the count about Jean-Paul unless he gave her more help. In a few days she had a job cooking for my uncle, where she met Jean, who married her and claimed Jean-Paul as his own name.

  “Now it seems my job is finished. Jean-Paul has just begun work as a servant to the new bishop. What will happen to him now that his father is disgraced? What will happen to us all?” Her eyes shone—not with light, but darkness.

  I tried to think of some way I could ease her distress. “Pauline, you are the best cook in Paris. You will find work.” I would help her if I could. Agnes loved Pauline’s brewet and would need a cook when she married her seigneur. “But first, let us find that son of yours.”

  She stopped her horse before a fabric shop, in whose window a rosy-faced man laid out rolls of linen and cotton before a woman in a brown-and-pink gown.

  “Bonjour, Pauline!” the merchant called as we passed, lifting his brows at the sight of my clothes—a saffron chemise and blue bliaut embroidered with golden crosses, my attempt to add cheer to the gray-and-black world of Argenteuil. “Did Jean-Paul find you? He left a little while ago for your canon’s house.”

  “He went to Canon Fulbert’s?” Pauline’s voice rose. She turned to me with panic in her eyes. “What will he do to my son?” she cried.

  We turned our horses and rode as quickly as we dared through the crowded, ice-slicked streets to my uncle’s house, where we found Jean-Paul sitting on the mounting stone and wondering what had become of his parents.

  “Thanks be to God, thanks be to God,” Pauline said softly as the boy stood.

  “Where have you been, Maman? I looked for you indoors but no one is at home. Where is Papa?” He offered a hand to help her dismount.

  “Non, we must go from here, and as soon as possible,” she said to him. “Save your questions. I need you at home with me now.”

  As he untied his horse from the post, she turned to me. “You have done enough for me, considering all you have suffered. I hope you can forgive Jean someday. He only gave Master Pierre what he deserved. Believe me, I know.”

  I did not respond. All the world, it seemed, wished to pass judgment upon us. Who, looking upon a building’s facade, can discern the size or number of rooms within, or the quality of their furnishings? In like manner, none could comprehend the nature and extent of our love. Every marriage, every relationship—indeed, every man and woman—remains a mystery to those outside it, as distant as the stars, as unfathomable as the Holy Trinity. Others might frown and whisper and shake their heads and say that Abelard had used me—but I knew the truth. He had loved me. I prayed that he loved me still. Twenty years after his death—and as my own approaches—none of that has changed.

  When they had gone, I dismissed Etienne’s servant, wanting some time to myself. I sat for a while outside my uncle’s house, its shutters latched against the light of desire, its doors barred against the sweet warmth of love. In the same manner, Uncle Fulbert had closed his heart the previous year, when he had given up Gisele. Those empty chambers, dark and cold, made a fit dwelling for Satan, who eagerly takes up residence wherever caritas is banished—the true abomination of desolation.

  Where was my uncle hiding? Every man in the cloister sought him even now. Did he cower in the scriptorium amid the rolls of parchment and stacks of books waiting to be repaired or copied? Had he fled to someone’s home? I could not imagine who would harbor him except Roger. But my uncle would never trust that tale-teller.

  To hide in the cloister, small and close as it was, would require extraordinary abilities—cunning, a large group of loyal friends, immense wealth—none of which my uncle possessed. Yet, he could not have gone far. Entering the city’s gates with Jean, I had seen sentries posted in double their usual numbers, stopping all who attempted to pass out of Paris. He must be somewhere inside the walls. But where?

  One idea, then another, entered my mind, only to be rejected. Finding him seemed impossible, and yet none of us—neither Abelard nor I, nor Jean and Pauline and Jean-Paul, nor Etienne—would rest while Uncle Fulbert remained free. Why had he sent Jean to fetch me from Argenteuil—so he could make me his hostage and ensure his escape? If so, he had not needed me, after all, or so it seemed.

  The gendarmes had searched his house to no avail, but now I wondered if I might find a clue to his whereabouts. I rose and went to the door. I pushed it open and stepped inside quietly, as if entering a chapel or—I shuddered—a tomb.

  I caught my breath at what I saw. The house had been ransacked: chairs toppled, fireplace ashes scattered as someone had stepped into the hearth, then trailed footprints across the floor. On a shelf lay a familiar knife with a trace of blood smearing its blade. I picked it up and turned it over in my hands, studying the ornate ivory handle with its grimacing demon on one side, a garnet glinting where its eye should be, and, on the other side, a crucified Christ, drooping on an ornate cross. This was my uncle’s knife, with which he had threatened Abelard on the day he’d caught us together—the knife that had haunted Abelard’s dreams ever since. Had Jean committed his crime with it? I could not understand how the gendarmes had failed to see it when searching the house this morning.

  Unless . . .

  “He felt no pain,” my uncle said.

  I gasped and nearly dropped the knife—before my fingers curled around it to grip the ivory, smooth and warm as a man’s flesh. My uncle ascended the final step from the first floor, where he had either come in from the outdoors or, as I guessed, from some hiding place downstairs—perhaps in the cellar. As he walked toward me, I pointed the blade at him, but he only smirked.

  “Jean drugged your lover’s wine at dinnertime—drugged him, heh-heh. Not even the most excruciating torture could have awakened him.” Uncle licked his lips, staring at the knife as though he yearned for its kiss, then turned his strange stare to me. His eyes blazed as red as the demon’s on the knife handle. I wondered, watching him sway, how long it had been since he had slept.

  “But this is your knife,” I said dumbly.

  “None other would do—none other!” He rubbed his hands together as if anticipating a meal. “My blade to avenge my niece.”

  “Jean said that he cut Abelard.”

  “True, true. I could not very well do the deed myself, could I? Jean gelded many a bawling calf when he was young.” Uncle looked around the great room. “Did he bring you here? Where is he?”

  “The gendarmes arrested him.”

  Uncle sucked in his breath. “The cloister gendarmes? Or the king’s?”

  “Suger questioned him this afternoon.” I closed my eyes, remembering Jean’s swollen mouth, lips split by a man’s ring; his bloody fingertips.

  “Holy Mary, Mother of God,” Uncle whispered, clutching the rosary on his belt. “But—Jean would not talk. He swore never to say a word.”

  “He
swore it to whom—you? Or the devil?”

  “To the devil with you, holding a knife against your own uncle.” He lunged toward me to seize the blade from my trembling hand, but I jerked away and, in doing so, cut a long gash in his palm.

  “Ungrateful chienne,” he snarled, pressing the wound to stop the bleeding. “God damn you—damn you! You’re like your mother in every way.”

  “Thank you, Uncle. I consider that the highest praise.” Although my heart pummeled my chest like two frantic fists, my voice resonated with power. The instant I’d felt the blade strike my uncle’s hand, clarity had descended upon me. I smelled my own fear, rising like perspiration from my skin. I heard each labored breath my uncle took as he tore a strip from his alb and wrapped it around his bleeding hand.

  “Or maybe it’s your father in you I see. Simple and pious to the eye; corrupt to the bone. I warned Hersende, but she was as blind to his ways as you have been to Petrus’s.”

  “If you knew Robert was my father, why didn’t you send me with Mother to Fontevraud?” I held the knife high to repel him. “He accepted many women with their children. Surely he would have welcomed his own.”

  “Your mother would not hear of it. He would know you were his child, she said. As well he ought, was my opinion, but she pleaded with me not to tell him, or anyone. You should have heard her weep, clinging to my hem like a beggar. ‘It would ruin him.’ And indeed it would have—indeed! All his followers, then, would know him as a sinner.”

  “ ‘All have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God.’ ” I gave him a pointed look. “You possess weaknesses, as well.”

  “Weaknesses, yes.” His mouth quivered. “I trusted you, for instance. And I believed your teacher when he said he was my friend.”

  Confronted with the sorrow in his eyes, I averted my own, thinking of all the nights Abelard and I had sinned under his roof. We had thought ourselves in the right, justified by love. Were we to blame for the impediments to happiness that the world had placed between us? Yet, we had laughed together more than once, like naughty schoolchildren, at my uncle’s oblivion to that which all of Paris knew.

  “I am no dullard. I had my suspicions, yes. But he called me amicus, and I thought you loved me. Perhaps I am a dullard—or I was one. No longer! Now my eyes are opened, and I know what you truly love, heh-heh.” His eyes narrowed, and then, again, he lunged—and again, I eluded him.

  “I shall have you, eventually.” He took up a fireplace poker and waved it in the air. “I stand between you and the door, you know. That makes you my captive.” He grinned as if engaged in a game.

  “What do you want with me, Uncle?”

  He licked his lips. “To beat some good sense into your head, for one thing.”

  “I am not the one being hunted by the gendarmes. I am not the one in hiding.”

  “Fleeing to the convent is not hiding?”

  “I did so to escape from you.”

  “You went because your husband commanded it!” he shouted, his face now a furious red. “He hid you, not from me but from himself—and from all the world.” He told me how Abelard had laughed with the Countess of Anjou after mass, while I waited in Argenteuil to hear from him. He’d caressed her face with his blue eyes as though he and she were lovers, Uncle said.

  “I knew what he was doing. I’d seen him do the same with you. That woman gazed at him as if he were the second coming of Christ.”

  “Women are drawn to Abelard, but he would never betray me.”

  “He betrayed you the instant he left you at Argenteuil. He betrayed you before that day, when he took your maidenhead.”

  “He took nothing that I did not willingly give to him.”

  “That is what your mother said when I asked her about Robert. Two beans in the same pod, you and Hersende. I only regret that I ever trusted Petrus—that I ever trusted you. I should have known that you’d share your mother’s whorish nature.”

  “I love Abelard, and he loves me.”

  “That’s what Hersende said about Robert of Arbrissel. But he used her, didn’t he? Used her for his own pleasure, then cast her aside. Men like him—like your precious Abelard—are all the same: so charming, so confident, so arrogant. And hungry for adoration—he’s desperate for it! Men like that love no one except themselves. I tried to warn Hersende, but she wouldn’t listen to me.”

  “You were wrong. Robert would have loved me. He did love me.”

  “I should have done more to protect my sister.” His mouth’s cruel twist crumpled to a babyish pout. “I failed Hersende. But, by God’s head, I have not failed you.”

  “You destroyed Abelard’s life—my life.”

  “I did it for you. Petrus tried to destroy you: hiding you in an abbey, telling you any lies that sprang to his lips to keep you there. He never meant to bring you home.”

  “He did. He had found a house on the ruga Saint-Germain. A beautiful little house with a windmill.”

  Uncle’s scowl disappeared. His eyes’ expression softened. “He never went there, or to any other house,” he said gently. “I had a man follow him.”

  “Non!” I cried. “You are wrong. Abelard would not lie to me.” Yet, I could not look at his face, could not bear to see him pitying me, poor Heloise, brought up in the convent and now seduced, deceived, discarded. Poor, stupid girl. I lowered my head.

  And felt the knife slip from my fingers and my uncle’s hand clamp around my arm.

  “I told you I would have you, heh-heh. You thought you could outfox the fox, eh?” He prodded my chin with the tip of the blade. “How readily you believed my tale—as naïve as a child—a child! Who is the dullard now?”

  In my relief to hear that Abelard had not deceived me, clarity of thought returned. “What is your plan?” I said, glaring at my uncle. “You could do no worse to me than you have already done.”

  “You will help me escape. Seeing you at the point of my knife, no one will stop me from riding through the cloister gates.”

  “And what of your honor? Everyone will think you fled in shame over your crime. The whole world will pity Abelard and condemn you.”

  His face reddened. “He will use the situation to his advantage, I have no doubt.”

  “Who would not do so, in his position? He was mutilated at your behest. Now, instead of telling the world why you attacked him, you flee like dog with its tail between its legs.”

  With a sigh, he released his hold on me. “I feel no shame for avenging you. He deserved worse than he got.”

  I stepped backward, just out of his reach. I stole a glance toward the stairs, calculating their distance. If I could only distract his attention away from me, I might run past him and out the door. “If you think so, then what do you fear?”

  “Fear? Who said I was afraid?” He stepped toward me again, forcing me against the wall. I looked him in the eyes, denying all my own feelings so that he would see only peace, and calm.

  He lifted his chin and took my arm again, but more gently this time. “Let us depart.” He began pulling me toward the stairs.

  “Where are you taking me?” I tried to wrest free, but he tightened his grip. What would he do to me now? Inside, I felt as though I were falling. I wished only to go to Abelard, my love.

  “Calm yourself, silly girl. I’m taking you to the chapel.” He dragged me to the front door and threw it open. “It is time the bishop knew, and all the world besides, what that deceiver Petrus Abaelardus did to you, and to me.”

  11

  If everyone kept silent, the facts themselves would cry out.

  —HELOISE TO ABELARD

  My life had ended. This I had known the instant Abelard revealed his wound, his eyes glittering, defiant, as though I had wielded the blade.

  To think that, the last time I had seen him, his skin had burned with passion and his gaze with love, and his entire being had leapt with life. In one brief hour, Fortune shows her darling lifted high in bliss, then headlong plunged in misery’s abyss
. Love, on the other hand, burned as constant in my breast as the sacred fire of Vesta, extinguishable by no human hand.

  I returned to Etienne’s house that night with barely enough breath to sigh. As promised, my uncle had surrendered to the bishop of Paris on the condition that I confess to him all that Abelard and I had done: our love affair, conducted under his own roof—his first debasement, he said; our child, left to Bretons to raise—the second affront to his honor; our marriage, made in secret for Abelard’s sake, and my denial, made falsely while accusing him among his own brethren of delirium; and my letter, which he produced for the bishop’s perusal.

  The bishop had said little as my uncle enumerated my sins, only lifted his eyebrows in surprise with each revelation. Suger, however, had plenty to say, especially against Etienne, who had been summoned to the bishop’s palace to judge our case.

  “What sort of archdeacon would conduct a marriage in secret? Why would he condone such a union, between a teacher and his student?”

  “ ‘He who is without sin among you, let him first cast the stone,’ ” Etienne said mildly.

  “Ah! So you admit that you conducted the ceremony.”

  “Am I on trial?”

  “Canon Fulbert says he was forced to keep his niece’s honorable and legal marriage a secret so that her husband might defy the rules of the Church,” Suger said. “Did you wed them?”

  “I did not know that we would judge Master Petrus today—and in his absence.”

  Suger gritted his teeth. “Did you wed them, or did you not?”

  “Ask her,” my uncle said, pointing to me as if I were not the only woman in the bishop’s chamber. “She agreed to confess everything.”

  I said nothing.

  “Speak, Niece,” Uncle Fulbert commanded. I lowered my eyes to look at my wringing hands, and at my uncle’s tapping foot. “Tell them, by God’s head! Tell them what he has done to you.”