Stealing Heaven (16 page)

"Stop," she hissed, jerking his head up to the pillow. "Don't!"

He lay still, one hand thrown lifelessly over his eyes. "Very well," he sighed. "You are quite right. Forgive me."

She looked away, not knowing what to say and waiting for him to go on. His breath was coming in slow, harsh sighs until she thought he must be dozing. Then she realized that he was shaking. She could feel him shaking and sighing. She wrapped her arms around his neck.

"Do you want to lie with me?" She pressed him close, stroking his hair. "Will it make you happy?"

"Lady, lady, ladylove—" Groaning, he wound his arms around her hips.

She would do it if it made him happy. It was not in her power to say no. She whispered aloud, "I love you so much. Oh, you don't know— I'll do anything for you."

He sat up, his mouth working in distress. "Your uncle—"

"Don't speak of him!"

"We must. He's an idiot but he could—"

She broke in. “I know the dangers." She yanked his mouth against her and began to kiss him, at first only to stop his words, later with furious desire. She pulled him on top of her and thrust her tongue deep into his mouth until she felt him shuddering. She wanted to swallow him.

At last he curled his head in the curve of her throat. "Heloise."

"What, my love?"

"Are you sure?" Abelard asked.

"Aye." She kissed the top of his head. "Do you doubt I know my own mind?"

"I want to make certain you won't be sorry tomorrow."
 

"I won't be sorry," she said, smiling.

They curled together and listened to the night hurtling noisily against the shutters. At last he inched out of her arms and slid to the edge of the bed.

"Don't leave me!" she cried. "Where are you going?"

"Hush." He grinned. "To remove my clothes."

"Oh." Then: "Must you?"

"It's customary, I believe."

Unable to watch, she lurched on her side and waited, repeating over and over to herself in a kind of astonishment,
Then he loves me, he loves me.

When she heard the mattress creak, she squirmed to face him. There was a flash of pale lemon light from the candle before he jerked the bed hangings. Behind the rosy cloth, shadows plunged as swift and light as fishes. He stretched himself along her body, like a river rushing to meet the sea; her eyes widened at the softness of his skin. Again his mouth pressed against her and his fingertips began drawing wavery lines on her breasts and flanks, propelling her into the whirlwind.

"Your feet feel like ice," she told him, her words slurred.

 
"Love me," he breathed against her ear.

For a long time, they touched and stroked until they forgot to think at all and gave themselves up to the fire.

 

 

 

7

 

 

At prime
, while the sky was still a dirty white, she tiptoed barefoot across the landing with her clothes over her arm. On her bed, the coverlet and pillows lay smooth and unwrinkled; she pulled down the covers, slid in, and rolled about vigorously for a few minutes. Then she rose and put on a fresh bliaut and combed her hair. In the looking glass, she inspected her face for changes. There seemed to be none, but the color of her skin was ruddy and flushed. She splashed water on her face and went down to breakfast.

Agnes was standing at the hearth, stirring a kettle and tossing in liberal pinches of cinnamon every now and again. "Good morning, lady," she mumbled, fretful with sleep. "Did you rest well?"

"Thank you, yes."

"Porridge? It's well spiced." She licked the cinnamon from her fingers.

Heloise shook her head. "Bread. And ale. I'm thirsty."

She ate slowly, careful to make appropriately sympathetic replies to Agnes's complaints about the pains in her knees. When she had finished, she went to hunt for a book she had left in the solar. She was climbing the stairs when Abelard's door opened. She stopped and waited. On the second-floor landing, his hand caught her arm. In a loud voice she boomed, "Good morning, my lord."

"How do you, lady?" he asked in a dignified tone.

"Well." She glanced at his face for the first time. "And you?"

He was grinning at her. "I think," he whispered, "that my equipment is broken," and quickly scrambled past her.

She bit her lip to keep from laughing. At the bottom of the steps he wheeled and silently mouthed the word "tonight" up at her. The door banged and he was gone.

In her chamber, she settled herself by the window and opened St. Jerome to the place at which she had stopped yesterday. The sun came out strong, as if it didn't know that it wasn't really spring yet. At midday, she was still sitting there, having turned not a single page. Her cheeks burned with memories; in the silence of her mind she played over and over the scenes of their lovemaking, the words he had whispered to her, what she had answered, until her groin began to throb and she wanted him badly.

She went on re-enacting scenes, arguing, talking to herself. It was clear that she had taken a violent leap into some foreign country. She supposed that a wise girl would have resisted a man who tried to take her maidenhead without marriage—no wonder Sister Madelaine had called her a noodle—but she,
la tres sage Heloise,
could not be wise about Peter Abelard. The only thing that alarmed her was whether or not she had committed some mortal sin. Abelard said no, and she wanted desperately to believe him, but in her heart there were misgivings.

She sighed deeply. Was it God's will that she should love Abelard? Certainly it must be so; he was her destiny, and it seemed fantastic that God should not condone their loving. First this way and then that, she turned her mind in circles, constructing a jumble of syllogisms and letting them melt:

God willed our love.

Our love caused us to lie together.

Therefore, God wills our lying together.

She sighed again, reminding herself that Abelard would do nothing evil or harmful, and it followed that he would be incapable of guiding her into sin. Still, there was Holy Scripture, which said . . . Insoluble dilemmas demanding solutions. What could she hope to settle? She didn't want to think about them now. Later—she would think about them later.

 

They stood at the window in the half-light. Gently he rested his fingers over hers. "Dearest love," he whispered, "give me your hand. What say you, shall we fly straight out, over the tops of the trees?"

"Above the river," she murmured, "high over the Petit Pont. And then to what country shall we go?"

"Oh, far away." He laughed. "Most assuredly far away. Past cities and towns, beyond night and day. We'll follow the fading star until we reach morning."

"We won't set down until we reach the sea sands, hard by a dense forest. Deep in the greenwood we'll come to a glade, the perfect place that has been planned for us—but oh, Abelard, really I care nothing where we go—"

"Shhh." He caught a handful of her hair to kiss. “I'll build you a bower of lilies."

"Roofed with leafy branches."

"Aye. And with the freshest grass for a floor."

"We'll live together in our little kingdom—"

"Forever," he said and stroked her head. "My ladylove."

She closed her eyes and leaned very quiet against his shoulder, not thinking. In a little while the great bell of Notre Dame sounded, and she heard him cry, "Oh God, how quickly comes the dawn."

 

Every night she went to his bed. Sometimes, when they had spent themselves and sprawled in each other's arms, he told her lewd tales about priests taking women behind the altar, and once a hilarious story about a pregnant nun named Rosala who claimed to have been raped 440 times by Jesus. From Ovid he read aloud erotic passages on how to prolong their pleasure; he called her ladylove and teased her about the pretty little garden between her thighs, her oyster, her jewel, her little pink bud. In the spring, they opened the shutters and let the breezes lave over them, and one night he showed her a lute he had just purchased. After that, he wrote poems for her and set them to music, most of them love lyrics but others so bawdy that she could not help squirming with delicious embarrassment.

That year, it did not turn really warm until St. John's Day, and then nearly every day was humid and stifling. She went around the house barefoot, in her undertunic, and still perspiration rolled down between her breasts. In the afternoons, she found a shady spot in the garden, and, even though Abelard had abandoned all pretense of lessons, she continued to read on her own, just in case Fulbert asked. She discovered that she could live quite well on little sleep, but in the great heat of the afternoons she found herself gradually dozing, her book sprawled on the hot pebbles at her feet.

Much of her attention, in one respect or another, was devoted to her body. She badgered Fulbert into colored hose embroidered with gladioli and bliauts in the latest fashion, her knowledge about these matters garnered from Abelard's observations of what the court ladies were wearing. Her lover gave her a gold ring, set with an amethyst, but since she dared not wear it, he bought a Limoges casket with a lock and key and she kept the ring hidden. She also acquired a crisping iron for curling her hair, although Fulbert grumbled about all those crimple-crispings and christy-crosties sending her straight to the gates of hell. She ignored him and sat in the kitchen, Petronilla holding her looking glass, and made herself a headful of ringlets. That hot summer when she was seventeen she felt as though she were the most beautiful woman in Christendom.

About that time, too, Abelard's former servant, Galon, began skulking around their stable. Soon, growing bold, he crept into the garden and banged at the kitchen door, snuffling like an old hound for food. He was a small man, short in the thighs, with a lumpy pudding body and little neck to speak of. He appeared ragged and genuinely hungry, and Heloise felt sorry for him. Agnes, however, called him an able-bodied wastrel who could work if he wished. At first, she grudgingly handed out stale bread, but after that, when he started showing up every day, she slammed the door in his face. Curiously, he never came when his former master was there, although one day, finally, the two men met more or less by chance and Abelard cursed him furiously, calling him "ball-less turd" and threatening to send for the king's bailiff. The end of it was that he gave Galon a purse of deniers and ordered him to stay away. Far from grateful, the man snarled "Pinch-arse" at Abelard and ran off howling.

Afterward, Abelard told Heloise that Galon had once been possessed by demons and that he, Abelard, had arranged for exorcism. The angry words with Galon upset him, and he went to bed with a headache. Heloise covered his brow with a wet cloth and sat on the edge of his bed, not speaking. At midnight, opening his eyes, he reached up and slid his hand under her skirt.

She pushed him away. "Don't. It will make your head worse."

"On the contrary." He grinned. "It will do wonders for my head."

"Surely there are some times when it is best to refrain—"

He broke in. "Undoubtedly. And canon law is quite specific. Wednesdays, Fridays, the eves of feast days, the whole of Lent . . ."

"Nay, by God!" Heloise stared at him. "I don't believe it. Where did you hear this?"

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and began pulling off his shoes. "My dear little girl, everybody knows."

"I'm not little. Listen to me. I swear I've never heard of these prohibitions." She blinked at him in bewilderment.

"That's understandable. Technically you're still a maiden. If you had done things in the usual way, a priest would have told you all about it on your way to the marriage bed."

This was the first time she had heard him mention wedlock, and she shot a quick glance at him. His expression had not altered. She stirred uneasily. "Now listen, in future we must abide by the—"

"You listen. Those rules are absurd. Nobody obeys them."
 

"Are you sure?"

"Certainly. I wager even your uncle ignores them."

She jerked to her feet. "What do you mean by that!" she roared.

Abelard had not moved. He made a face at her. "I said that I have no doubt Fulbert—"

She threw herself across the bed and grabbed his arm. "You're mad. Uncle is chaste."

"Uncle is
not
chaste. I beg to differ."

"How do you know?" she demanded. "Tell me."

He shrugged. "Common knowledge. Every canon in the chapter knows that Fulbert has been fucking Agnes for years."

"No."

'Yes." His head wagged cheerfully.

Heloise burst into wild laughter. She rolled on the bed in spasms until she began to hiccup. "Agnes!" she howled, wiping her eyes with the hem of her gown. "Agnes and Uncle! God's toenails, what a fool I am!"

"And he gives her a sou every time he fucks her, or so Petronilla told me." Abelard spoke with the impish air of a small boy who had just told some outrageous secret.

"Petronilla told you that!" Suddenly all the pieces dropped into place, and she stopped laughing. What a blind fool she had been all these years. She said to Abelard wearily, "Is anything what it seems?"

He grinned at her. "Flesh is weak." He pulled his tunic over his head and thrust it at her. "Here. Hang this up."

Heloise shook the gown and draped it carefully on a wall peg. She looked at him over her shoulder. "What else don't I know? For God's sake, tell me quickly."

He groaned. "How am I to know what you don't know? Ask me specific questions."

She walked back to the bed and stared down at his naked body, at the soft stick curled between his legs. Suspicion suddenly gnawed at her. "You," she said softly, "were you not chaste before you came to me?" At once she was sorry she had asked.

"Ah, Heloise, sweet heart," he murmured, pulling her over him. "You know I was."

But she could not let go of the doubt. Upon reflection, he had known what to do, and had done it well. Fulbert had said he was a virgin, but Fulbert could have been wrong. "You've had women before me!" she insisted in a hot, querulous voice.