Heaven's Fire (15 page)

She tried to walk around him, but he seized her shoulders. “Corliss, don’t.”

She tried to twist out of his grip. “Rainulf, please. Let me go.”

“No.” He held her tighter.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to.” With one hand wrapped around her back and the other holding her head against his chest, he murmured, “I don’t want you to go.”

He could barely hear her when she spoke, but he thought she said, “I don’t either.”

His heart thundered in his chest. “Then don’t.”

“I have to.”

“No you don’t.” He closed his eyes and rubbed his cheek against her glossy hair. “You don’t. Stay.”

“But—”

“I won’t tell you what to do,” he promised in a hoarse whisper. “I won’t tell you where to go.”

She backed away slightly. Her arms encircled him, he realized; when had she returned his embrace?

“Really?” she said. Her warm breath tickled his face. She was so close... He felt her chest rise and fall with every breath she took.

He nodded. “Just promise me... promise me you’ll be careful.”

Those charming little frown lines appeared between her eyebrows. “Nay,” she said, “I refuse to be careful.” He blinked, and she burst out laughing. “You are so dreadfully serious, Rainulf Fairfax. I must try to cure you of that.”

He found himself smiling. “Then you’ll stay?”

“Aye.”

He squeezed her tight and kissed the top of her head. She looked up at him; his gaze traveled from her eyes to her mouth, slightly parted. He felt breathless, light-headed...

I could lower my mouth
, he thought crazily,
until it touches hers. I could kiss her
. It would be the most natural thing in the world.

And the most foolish.

He released her—somewhat abruptly, he realized—and stepped back. “Good,” he said gruffly. “You’ll be safe here.”

A fleeting trace of sadness darkened her eyes, and then she smiled stiffly and nodded.

From beyond the leather curtain he heard the groaning of stairs, and then a voice from the main hall, Luella’s voice: “Father Rainulf? Corliss? Anybody home?”

They drew farther apart, just as Luella flung the leather curtain open. “Here you are! I’ve got nice, fresh bread for dinner, and some lovely sausages. Shall I cook them up now? Are you hungry, Father?”

Rainulf let out a long, ragged sigh. “Do stop calling me ‘Father,’ Luella. And yes, I’m hungry... terribly hungry.”

“Shall I begin?” Rainulf asked, pulling up a chair next to Corliss’s desk and unfolding the sheaf of parchment.

“Go ahead,” she said, “but move your chair back a bit so your breath doesn’t disturb the gold leaf.” He did as she asked. In truth, there was little risk in having him sit so close—except to her composure. During the month they’d been living together, the foolish attraction she felt for him had not diminished in the least; in fact, it grew stronger day by day. To attempt the tricky business of applying gold leaf with Rainulf Fairfax mere inches away was more of a challenge than she felt up to.

He cleared his throat and began to read Abelard’s letter of consolation to his friend.
“‘There are times when a personal example is more effective than advice. I shall therefore elaborate upon the consolation I offered you in person with the history of my own misfortunes, which I hope will comfort you in my absence.’”

“Comfort?” she said as she arranged her tools and materials on the flat desk for easy access. “What made him think his own problems would comfort anyone?”

“Well—”

“Was this a real letter? It doesn’t sound like a letter to a friend. Sounds more like an excuse to talk about himself... to whine about his problems.”

Rainulf gave an astonished little gasp of laughter. “Peter Abelard didn’t
whine
. He was the greatest—”

“The greatest thinker in Europe,” she finished, mocking his sober tone. “A man of extraordinary brilliance. And, it would seem, something of a whiner.”

Avoiding Rainulf’s gaze, she made a show of leaning over the double page on her desk to examine the miniature she was preparing to gild. Hard as she tried, she couldn’t keep from smiling at Rainulf’s outrage. He took everything so terribly seriously. She knew she shouldn’t goad him so much, but he made it so irresistible. A glance revealed that he was smiling, too.
Ah! Progress!

“As it happens,” he said, “you’re right about this being more than a simple letter. It’s generally agreed that Abelard intended it to become public and set the record straight about his supposed heresy and his love affair with Héloïse. I understand it’s been in circulation for nearly three decades, although this is the first I’ve seen of it. I’m curious as to how he’s going to explain away Héloïse. As a teacher, he was supposed to remain celibate.” He found his place in the document. “Shall I continue?”

“Please.”

“‘I was born on the border of Brittany, about eight miles east of Nantes...’”

Corliss took a long, critical look at the drawing she’d inked but not yet colored—St. Luke at a writing desk, with an angel peeking out of a cloud above—and felt inordinately pleased with herself. The lines were fluid and natural, the folds in Luke’s robe the best she’d ever drawn. His face had come out particularly well—handsome yet thoughtful, almost grim. The nose was straight and aristocratic, the jaw strong, the eyes kind and intelligent. Her instructions had been to give the saint long, flowing hair and a beard, and this she had done; but for them, the face staring up at her from the parchment was none other than the face of Rainulf Fairfax.

She glanced from the portrait to the man himself, absorbed in reading his beloved Abelard’s rather self-indulgent
Historia Calamitatum
. “‘Finally I arrived in Paris, where the study of dialectic had long flourished...’”

His face glowed with a light sheen of perspiration. It was dreadfully hot for May, and she’d had to tack parchment over the window by the desk so the warm breezes wouldn’t disturb the gold leaf. He wore an untucked white shirt over his chausses, the open neck of which revealed the dark hair on his upper chest—not wiry hair, as Sully’s had been, but soft and smooth. Just as a creature with silken fur invited petting, so Rainulf’s chest cried out to be touched. Her fingers hummed with a restless urge to stroke it... She ached to lay her cheek against its sleek heat and hear the heartbeat within.

Corliss, you idiot!
Holding her breath, she carefully lifted a weightless, shimmering piece of gold leaf with a thin brush and let it fall atop her gilder’s cushion. It fluttered down like a wrinkled silken sheet, and she gently blew it out flat.

“‘My school was established and I began to develop a reputation for dialectic...’”

Corliss bit her lip as she painstakingly cut the gold leaf with a tiny, sharp knife into the crescent shape of St. Luke’s halo. What an idiot she was to have taken a fancy to Rainulf Fairfax. For one thing, there was no question of her feelings ever being reciprocated, given Rainulf’s disinterest in women. Only once during her stay here had she had cause to question that disinterest—when she’d packed her things and tried to leave, after he’d attempted to restrict her movements. He’d embraced her, kissed her hair, all but begged her to stay...
Have I misjudged him?
she’d wondered, elated by the possibility that he might care for her.

But no... No sooner had she agreed to remain in the house than he once again assumed that distant politeness with which he treated all women. It was clear that any affection he might harbor for her was, at most, that of a brother toward his sister. That this disappointed her shamed her intensely. The last thing she wanted was an affair of the heart with Rainulf. It would compromise her freedom. Yet at the same time, she miserably conceded, it was
all
she wanted, all she thought about when she wasn’t working. Her gaze settled on St. Luke’s all-too-familiar face, and she smiled sardonically, for in truth, the handsome magister appeared to be all she thought about even when she
was
working.

“‘My lectures gained such renown that my own master’s most zealous followers, who were once my strongest critics, now flocked to school...’”

Corliss wiped her brow with her tunic sleeve so that sweat wouldn’t fall on her work, and then leaned close to the drawing and carefully examined the area to which the gold leaf would be applied. The pinkish gesso she had laid down on the halo yesterday had dried, and now she took up another little knife and scraped the raised surface smooth. Bringing her mouth close to the page, she breathed onto the gesso, the dampness of her breath making it slightly sticky. Working quickly, she lifted the little crescent of gold leaf and settled it onto the gesso, then grabbed a square of silk and pressed the infinitely thin gold onto the raised medium with her thumb.

“‘Success, however, will always consume the foolish man with pride,’” Rainulf read, “‘and worldly comforts diminish one’s spiritual steadfastness, tainting it with fleshly temptations...’”

Picking up her burnisher—a dog’s tooth attached to a stick—Corliss rubbed the convex little halo, careful to use just the right pressure. Presently the gold’s rather dull gleam began to take on a blindingly brilliant shine, and she smiled to herself, proud of her efforts.

“‘At this time in Paris there lived a young woman named Héloïse, who was the niece of Fulbert, a canon of the Church, and so beloved of him that he went to some trouble to provide her with an education.’” Rainulf looked up from his reading. “You know, Corliss, Héloïse was a remarkable woman in her own right, even before she met Abelard. At seventeen, she was already renowned for her learning. They say she knew Greek and Hebrew as well as Latin...’” He fell silent. When Corliss glanced up from her work, she saw him staring at the ever-brightening halo, his expression rapt. “So that’s how it’s done.”

Rising, he came to lean over her, one hand on the back of her chair and the other on the edge of her desk. She continued polishing the gold, her eyes on her work, her thoughts on Rainulf Fairfax. His loose shirt hung down, brushing her lightly. With every breath he took, she felt the linen shift against her.

“That’s quite extraordinary,” he said. “Is there anything you can’t do?”

I can’t stop thinking about you
, she wanted to say. Instead she merely shrugged and kept burnishing the gold, even after it had attained its maximum shine.

“You’re exceptionally talented, you know,” Rainulf said quietly. “And very clever. More than clever. I watch you when you come to my lectures... standing there in the back, as if you’re afraid to sit down. You follow every word I say—I can see it in your eyes, that light of understanding, that intellectual curiosity. That’s more than I see in a lot of my students, I assure you. And you’re quite accomplished for a woman, especially one of your background. You know how to read and write. You’re fluent in three different languages—”

“My French is abominable,” she said. “I speak it like an Oxfordshire peasant.”

He sat down again, smiling. “You
are
an Oxfordshire peasant.”

“Not anymore,” she said crossly.

Rainulf sat forward. “I didn’t mean—”

“It’s just that I don’t fancy sounding like one of Roger Foliot’s villeins every time I open my mouth. Everyone in Oxford speaks such elegant French, with no accent.”

He regarded her thoughtfully for a moment. “You could lose your accent. It wouldn’t be difficult.”

“Really?”

“Why not? It’s just a matter of training yourself. You’ve got one of the quickest minds I’ve ever seen. I’ll help you. You can read aloud from books of Frankish literature and history, and I’ll correct your pronunciation. And in the meantime, you’d be learning something.”

She twirled the burnisher absently between her thumb and forefinger. “I wouldn’t mind learning a bit of history.”

He sat on the edge of his seat and leaned on her desk, the light of excitement in his eyes. “You can learn other things, too, if you like. I could tutor you in the
trivium
and the
quadrivium
. Grammar, rhetoric, logic, geometry—anything you want. You could become an educated woman, a woman of letters, like Héloïse.”

She could be like the great and learned Héloïse. Was that possible?

He rested a hand on her arm. “I’d love to teach you. Tell me you’ll let me.”

She chewed her lip. “You want to remake me. To create a new person.”

He removed his hand, shaking his head. “Not a new person. I’m quite fond of the person you are. I just want to... polish you a bit. The way you polish the gold leaf with that tool of yours, to make it even shinier. Isn’t that what you want? Isn’t that why you came to Oxford and sought your freedom? To change yourself? I’d only be refining what you started.”

Corliss nodded slowly. “All right.” She allowed herself a wicked little smile. “Under one condition. You’ve got to let me do something about this hall.”

He shook his head resolutely; this was an old argument between them. “I like it the way it is,” he insisted, looking around at the bare, whitewashed walls. “I don’t want angels and unicorns and trailing ivy everywhere I look.”