Stealing Heaven (19 page)

Moaning, his fingers tightened around her neck. Very gently she wrinkled back the frills of flesh and sucked lusciously, like an adder in a honeycomb.

"Oh God!" he cried out hoarsely, and she looked up to catch a glimpse of his face, naked with a kind of holy ecstasy. They lay, at last, with their tongues in each other's mouth. Hotly, she felt him press his body into her.

 

With a soft explosion, the candle guttered and sent the room black. Through the shutters, a shaft of moonlight silvered a thin horizontal ribbon across the bed. She stirred voluptuously under him, drawing the coverlet around his shoulders.

He grinned down at her. "And you were never going to lie with me again."

 

During the next few weeks, she and Abelard reorganized their daily routine so as to live more nearly like normal people. Sometimes, now, Heloise left him shortly after matins and crossed the hall to sleep in her own bed. She insisted that he prepare new lectures for his classes and that he also set aside two hours a day for his own studies. The tension that had electrified their lives began to dissolve so that a new feeling of relaxation and companionship became possible.

All during Epiphany a play based on the Book of Daniel was being performed in the porch of Notre Dame. Fulbert, having already viewed the work, pronounced it suitable for an unwed girl and promised to escort Heloise. But at the last moment he pleaded a pressing appointment, summoning Jourdain to accompany her in his place.

The piquancy of the rhythms, the courtly procession with its banners and immense orange gonfalons, the piercing shrieks of the trumpets and vielles, all welded together into a pageant that left the audience in a mood of wild intoxication. Afterward, Heloise and Jourdain reeled home chanting the Te
Deum
and growling at each other like the silly lion-actors who had shuffled on the porch steps.

Heloise invited Jourdain into the house for a hot drink. From the hallway, she noticed Fulbert and Abelard talking together in the solar. Both men were smiling quite amiably, but something about the set of Abelard's mouth made her feel uneasy. She sent Jourdain home and went into the parlor.

"Fair niece," Fulbert said, "we've just been talking of a matter that concerns you."

She advanced toward him, reassured by the warmth of his smile. Without looking at Abelard, she said eagerly, "What a marvelous play, Uncle! Thank you for allowing me to go."

"Yes, yes." He brushed aside her words with an impatient wave of his hand. "There is something I must speak to you about—"

She stared at him expectantly. From the corner of her eye, she could see Abelard gazing at the arras with apparent casualness. He seemed almost bored.

Fulbert cleared his throat several times. "It has come to my— An extremely unsavory fact has come to my attention. That is to say"— he cleared his throat again—"it seems there is gossip in the Ile—" He trailed off and stopped.

"Gossip?" Heloise felt herself stiffen. She gripped her wrists together behind her back.

Fulbert grunted. "Filthy whispers about Master Abelard's residence in my house! Why now? That's what I don't understand. He's been here more than a year. If there was anything untoward about his living here, I should think there would have been talk last year. No, but
now
some people with nasty minds suddenly start to—" He rattled on, complaining about the small-mindedness of the burghers, the depravity of the students, the way certain pernicious wretches, immoral themselves, saw evil in the most innocent events. And so forth.

Heloise kept shooting half glances at Abelard. He was nodding his head in agreement, punctuating Fulbert's tirade with sympathetic murmurs of "shocking" and "absolutely." She did not enjoy watching his performance, although she did have to admire his skill. She supposed that she should follow his lead but wasn't sure what to say.

"Are we barbarians?" Fulbert demanded of no one in particular.

"Mark me, my dear Fulbert." Abelard broke in with a jab of his finger. "Great minds of every age are smeared by the rabble. Consider the case of Socrates—"

"Quite right," sighed Fulbert. "Against the highest peaks, the storms will break."

Watching them, Heloise thought that all along Abelard had read her uncle correctly; of course he refused to believe any evil about either of them. Whether this counted in his favor, or whether he deserved contempt for his stupidity, she didn't want to ask herself right now. She had long given up fretting about her own crime in deceiving a man who loved her and had never treated her with anything but kindness; for her behavior there could be no excuses, nor did she attempt to make any. All she could think of now was that, apparently, everything was going to come out all right. "Uncle," she broke in cautiously, ignoring Abelard's signal to remain silent. "Uncle, what has all this to do with me?"

Fulbert stood to throw another log on the hearth. Laughing nervously, he said over his shoulder, "Never mind, little one. Monstrous filth, bibble-babble, that's all. I wouldn't repeat it before a maiden."

Suddenly Heloise's hands began to shake. She sat down on a chest under the window and curled them under her skirt. She wondered who had been Fulbert's informant. "God help me, I'm not a child anymore."

"Keep quiet, lady," Abelard said between his teeth. "There's no need to be so inquisitive. Your lord uncle and I have discussed the situation and made our decision."

Heloise looked from Abelard to Fulbert. Both of their faces appeared calm. For one wild moment she believed the crisis had passed.

Fulbert smiled at her. "I think," he said, "it would be best if Master Peter found himself another residence."

"Leave?" Heloise staggered to her feet.

"It would be prudent. Under the circumstances."

Very pale, Heloise turned to Abelard. He was gazing into the corner. She kept her eyes on him and cried to Fulbert, "Uncle! You can't!"

"Hush, child."

"My lessons!"

"Aaah, Heloise, you have no more need of lessons. Master Peter admits as much himself. Don't you, my dear Abelard?"

Abelard nodded grimly. He turned to look at Heloise. ''Your uncle is far too diplomatic, lady. My presence here is bringing dishonor upon your name—"

"And what of your—"

"—and that cannot be tolerated. The only solution is my going."

"I don't care about my name!" Heloise gasped, unthinking.

"Lady!" Abelard roared, striding toward her. He gripped her elbow so hard that she almost cried aloud. "This childish petulance is unworthy of you."

Uncertain, she wrenched her arm away and stepped back. Fulbert was watching her, shaking his head miserably like a man who wishes himself elsewhere. At last, controlling herself, she said, "God's pardon, Uncle. I forgot myself." Her breath was coming quickly. "Of course. You're quite right. Master Peter must find other lodgings."

Fulbert started to wring his hands. "Dear God, the best-laid plans —don't fret, little one. No harm has been done. I hope."

Her legs were trembling so that she could barely control them. Carefully she walked past Abelard and dropped on a stool before the hearth. Life without him was beyond envisioning. Beyond, even, bearability. How, she shrieked inside, how could God have permitted such an appalling error? She said, calmly, "And you, Master Peter? Surely this will be a great inconvenience."

He smiled thinly at her. "Don't vex yourself, lady. There are hundreds of lodging houses in Paris." He threw a cool grin at Fulbert "Although none that can match Agnes's cooking."

A log falling in the hearth ricocheted a trail of sparks onto the tile floor. Heloise kicked a burning ember into the fire. Outside, very close to the window, she heard feathery footfalls and an unknown mouth whistling a cheerful tune; she recognized it as one of the melodies from the Daniel play.

Fulbert started telling Abelard about a Canon Victor, who had doubled his prebend income in less than two years. When he had finished with Canon Victor's business acumen, he began to talk about an abbot named Bernard of Clairvaux, who had founded a new Cistercian monastery in Champagne, saying that this Bernard was a fanatic who made his monks eat boiled leaves. Abelard's eyes grazed past her head and focused pointedly on Fulbert; he told an amusing story about the monk Suger, who was Louis the Fat's favorite confidant and who slept on silk sheets. It was all very cordial. Both men appeared to have forgotten the discussion. Heloise got up and went off down the hall to the kitchen. Agnes was on her knees scrubbing the floor.

"Is there any raisin wine?" Heloise asked her.

"In the pantry."

"Agnes-"

Agnes lifted her head and stared. "What's wrong, lamb?"

"Nothing."

'Tell Agnes."

"Master Peter is leaving." She rocked backward and forward against the wall, her hands flapping loosely at her hips.

Awkwardly, Agnes wobbled to her feet and dropped the rag into the bucket. She walked over and laid a wet hand on Heloise's hair. "Well, mayhap it's for the best," she sighed. "You've been working too hard."

Heloise turned her face to the wall.

 

It had never occurred to her that she and Abelard would not go on and on, playing at being a couple in Fulbert's turret. As the months had slipped by safely and he had become almost a member of their family, the likelihood of his leaving had become more remote. Somewhere at the back of her mind, she had acknowledged the possibility of irremediable change, just as she understood that a person might be struck by lightning or trampled by a horse. But these annihilations, acts of God as they were, happened to other people. It was not wise to dwell on calamity, or it would, unerringly, seek one out.

Now everything had gone askew. By the following Monday, Abelard was gone, his books, his armchair with the carved arms, transferred to one of the hives of lodging houses on the other side of Notre Dame. The room across the landing stood vacant, peopled only by cobweb memories, and Heloise could not bring herself to open the door and look in.

He did not come back. The endless days slithered on around her, and finally it was Jourdain who came to see her. She half expected him to make some reproach, but he looked at her as if nothing had happened. "I've been to visit my friend Peter of Montboissier," he told her evenly. "You know, the one who's a monk at Cluny."

Jourdain seemed in no hurry to finish chronicling his journey to Cluny.

After what seemed like an eternity, he sat down on a chest and fell silent. "I have a message from Abelard," he said, studying her intently. "But first I must ask you something."

She widened her eyes expectantly.

"Do you wish to see him again?"

"How can you ask?" Heloise cried in a low voice. "I've been in hell, can't you see that?"

"I thought mayhap you wished to end it now."

Jourdain did not look at her, and finally she had to remind him about the message. Then he fumbled laboriously in his girdle and brought out a letter sealed with purple wax. When he saw that she would not open it in his presence, he made some excuse to say farewell.

Upstairs, she forced her fingers calm so as to avoid ripping the parchment. The letter said little. Nothing personal. Only that she was to meet him the following day at Master Adam's classroom on the Petit Pont. He wrote that Jourdain would call for her at sext and take her home afterward.

The lecture room used by Master Adam, Adam du Petit Pont his students called him, was on the second floor of a house halfway across the bridge. A goldsmith owned the building and practiced his trade on the street floor; above, connected by rickety stairs, was the room Adam rented for his classes. At noon on Tuesday the chamber stood cold and silent. Straw littered the plank floor, as well as cushions that students had left behind.

They coupled quickly, without speaking.

Afterward, she found Jourdain downstairs against a shopfront, whistling softly. He suggested that she might rethink what she was doing. Without becoming angry, she assured him that nobody was forcing her to do anything. On the way home, he talked about the weather, and she said nothing.

Quickly, she and Abelard settled into a curious pattern of letters (delivered by a resigned Jourdain), meetings in the temporary refuge of deserted classrooms, and, from time to time, predawn visits to his room, although the latter Abelard considered unsafe. Heloise failed to understand his apprehension. At his room, at least, nobody could break in on them; they could take off their clothes and hold each other. It was amazing, though, how many opportunities they invented for meeting, sometimes every day, at the very least three times a week. Heloise closed her eyes to the risks, although sometimes she wondered idly what Fulbert would do if he found them out. But this was not a thought she wished to dwell upon for very long.

Days when she did not see him had to be lived somehow. Agnes was making bliauts for Petronilla. Dyes had been purchased, red and a brilliant green, and the linen colored in a
vat of boiling water near the stable. Then Agnes stretched the cloth over her dress patterns and cut out backs and fronts and sleeves. This sort of preparation for Petronilla's wardrobe was unusual, and there was, of course, a practical reason for it. The girl was sixteen and should have been married long ago, but Agnes, loath to give up her only source of household help, had postponed the day as long as possible. Now, still reluctant, she had an opportunity to betroth her daughter to the son of a fishmonger from the Greve. Even though Agnes had offered to part with 120 sous for a dowry—more than the man deserved, she said—the fishmonger nonetheless wished to have a look at Petronilla before closing the deal. Hence the new bliauts.

Heloise helped with the sewing. She flashed the needle back and forth through the fabric, listening idly to Agnes humming and Petronilla prating incessantly about her unknown boy. She couldn't stop talking: he would love her, she knew, he'd buy her a feather bed and ribbons for her hair. She tried, without success, to imagine what he might look like. It didn't much matter because she loved him already. Agnes laughed. "Idiot!" she said.