Stealing Heaven (54 page)

"And who told you to do that?"

"It may not be common usage, but I don't see anything wrong in it. It's a literal translation of
epiousios."

"Don't argue with me. This is your innovation?" He was shouting at her now. "You presume to change the wording of Our Lord's prayer?"

She was at the point of shouting back. "I—we use those words because the founder of our convent suggested it." Furious, she turned and walked out into the cloister, Bernard grunting at her back.

By the time they reached the north walk, he had cooled off. "About this supersubstantial bread—I've never heard of anything so silly."

Heloise shrugged, anxious to get rid of the man. "It's an ancient practice, I believe."

"Ancient or not, it sounds stupid. You tell Abbot Peter I said so."

"I'll do that." No use saying anything more to Bernard.

Suddenly he shrugged and smiled, angelically. "Ah, well. What else can you expect from a man who spends his time arguing with boys and consorting with women?"

Heloise felt her face grow hot. Amazed, she watched him trot to his mule and pat its nose.

 

"Are you certain?" Heloise asked, and gave the woman a penetrating look. "Are you quite certain that you want to make this decision?" She leaned forward, riveting her eyes on Hermeline's elegant forehead as if to peer into her mind.

Hermeline sat very straight on the stool. "I've given it thought, if that's what you mean."

"You're young and very pretty. And you've been wed." She folded her hands in her lap. Some of the best nuns were widows, but only those who had lived out the span of wife and mother and wished to withdraw from a life they had sucked the juice out of. Heloise had reservations about accepting a childless widow who was a mere twenty years old. She said, "How did your husband die?"

"Killed in a tourney at Rouen."

"Did you love him?"

Hermeline met her eyes. "More than my life."
 

Heloise nodded. "But surely you want children. There will be another man—"

"No." The word thudded against the stone wall behind Heloise's head like a boulder toppling onto an iron plate. There was a fierceness in her tone that made Heloise go weak-kneed.

She said carefully to Hermeline, "Do you have a sincere desire to serve God? Or do you merely hope these walls will dull your memory?"

The young woman's gilt hair was drawn back tightly under her wimple, and when she moved her head the room smelled of rose water. She whispered, "No walls could dim those memories." She paused. "I will tell you this, lady abbess. I will serve God with the same devotion that I served my lord. More I cannot promise."

Nodding again, Heloise stood up. "Go home, lady Hermeline. On the first day of May, if you still feel inclined, you may return and I will accept you as a novice."

With a sweep of yellow silk, the woman fell to her knees, kissed Heloise's hand, and went out. Heloise stood silently for a moment. This one knew her own mind, which was more than she could say for most of the applicants she interviewed. Astrane said it was a wonder they took any new members at all, so mercilessly did Heloise grill them about their motivations. Even so, the convent of the Paraclete now comprised some twenty women, and they continued to come in a steady stream.

She went to the window. In the cloister, Ceci was talking to Astrane, grinning sarcastically, waving her hands in Astrane's face. Maybe they were arguing again. Or perhaps not; they had, over the years, come to terms with each other. When Astrane turned away with a shrug, Ceci stood a moment before walking slowly toward the river. Heloise followed. When Ceci saw her, she called, "There you are! And what did that fine lady have to say?"

"She wants to join us."

Ceci began to smile. "She's a very rich widow, if I recall correctly."
 

"Yes, she is."

"She owns the vineyards at Crevecoeur—"

"And woods and meadows at Lisines and property in Provins and much more. She would bring a considerable dowry to the Paraclete."

"Havo!" Ceci let out a long, admiring whistle. "God's nose, sweeting, you didn't let her get away, did you?"

Heloise walked past her and sat on a tree stump near the water's edge. Suddenly dizzy, she bent over and plunged her head between her knees. Her shoulders began to twitch silently.

Slowly Ceci came to her. "Heloise. Heloise, what's wrong?" She reached out and grazed her palm against Heloise's head.

"Nothing," she mumbled.

"You've been ill these past months. Don't deny it."

Before Christmas, when she had received Abelard's brutal reply to the letter she had written in the summer, she had been violently sick at her stomach for two days. The vomiting had passed, but she still suffered from periodic attacks of faintness.

"Sweeting, tell me."

"No. You won't understand."

Stiffly, Ceci jerked away her hand. She did not speak. After a few minutes, Heloise reached into her girdle, reluctantly drew out the letter, and handed it to Ceci. Slowly she pulled herself up and walked to the water, her shoes slipping in the mud. She had never shown Abelard's letters to another soul, as if doing so would have been a kind of betrayal. But it did not matter now. She strode back and forth, gulping cold air.

Behind her, she heard Ceci saying, "This is the writing of an old man."

Heloise spun around. "It's from Abelard."

"That's what I mean." Ceci was sitting against a tree, reading slowly. She did not look up. From time to time, she muttered under her breath. Once she remarked, gravely, "He would have you without memory."

"How can I stop remembering!" Heloise cried. "Just because he doesn't remember—"

"Ah," said Ceci, "you're wrong there. I think he does remember. But it pains him. Stop pacing up and down. It makes me nervous."

Heloise settled herself on the stump. Ceci growled, "Idiot."

"Who? Him or me?"

"Him." She grimaced. "But you, too." A moment later, she yelped, "Mother of God! Can you believe this? He says that you were born to be the instrument of his salvation. Wait—let me read that again. I can't believe he wrote that."

Heloise murmured, "He wrote it. Ceci, mayhap it's true. We don't know God's will sometimes."

"That's right. But neither does he. You would think he held daily conversations with God."

"Ceci, please—"

"Shhh. I'm nearly finished." She read silently, and when she had completed the last page, she folded the letter and balanced it on her knee. She sat chewing her lip a while before saying, "Heloise, remember Sister Madelaine? She always used to say that it does no good to beat a dead mule."

Her eyes brimming with anger, Heloise yanked her head away. She should have known better than to confide in Ceci, with her old hatred of Abelard and her rough expressions.

"But I would say this mule is still breathing."

Startled, she said, "What do you mean?"

"He still loves you. Doesn't he say somewhere"—she tapped the letter thoughtfully with her forefinger—"doesn't he say he loves you beyond counting?"

"He said loved. Past tense."

"Oh, well." She shrugged. "He talks about being parted in this world and united in the next."

The bell for sext rang. Ceci stood and walked alongside Heloise.

She handed back the letter, and they hurried toward the chapel. Finally Ceci sighed. "Sweeting, don't grieve.”

The novices were lining up outside the chapel door, waiting for her. Heloise forced a smile and moved toward them.

 

That afternoon, she worked at her writing table. A pile of letters waited to be answered. Walter of Courcemain wished to give the Paraclete eight quarts of rye annually. Thierry Goherel donated the quitrent from one of his meadows, amounting to twelve deniers annually. Bishop Hatto of Troyes asked if she could use beeswax candles for Candlemas. And so on. One by one, she wrote replies steadily and set them to one side.

There was another letter, too, one she had saved for last. Her cousin Louis of Saint-Gervais wrote that Canon Fulbert was dead at Christmas; in his last testament he had specified that his books, amounting to a sizable library, should go to his beloved niece, Heloise.

Something sharp turned inside her. With tired eyes, she reread Louis's announcement, bloodless and brief. With Fulbert's passing, something had ended. She could not define it and did not try. The sun creeping through the open shutters was warm; she yawned. She thought of the dead, of Sister Madelaine and then of her mother and Fulbert, and of Astrolabe, who was as good as dead to her. Perhaps wisdom only meant the ability to recognize endings, to accept them and go on somehow.

Heloise reached for the ledger that she used as a necrology. She dipped the quill into the inkhorn. "December 26. Death of Fulbert, uncle of Abbess Heloise.'' With finality, she closed the book.

 

 

 

23

 

 

In the spring
, after Lent was over, she replied to Abelard's letter.

"Since I would not want to give you reason for finding me disobedient in anything, I will set a bridle upon my lips. Thus in writing at least I may moderate what is difficult, or rather impossible, to suppress in speech. For nothing is less under our control than the heart . . ." God help me, my golden falcon, I love you.

"I will therefore stop my hand from writing words which I cannot restrain my tongue from speaking. Would that my heart would be as ready to obey as my writer's hand!"

That reassurance made plain to him, she continued to write until her wrist sagged. Once, when someone rapped at her door, she pretended not to hear. When at last she had finished, a stack of forty sheets lay in a heap on her table, each of them impersonal, businesslike. She told him that she was experiencing problems in administering a community of women under rules that had been originally devised for men, which was true. Scarcely a month went by without the appearance of applicants eager for novicehood, and many Heloise had to turn away; she had no place to put them in the overcrowded dormitory. The buildings that had seemed so spacious a year earlier, the gifts that had appeared to offer a solution to their financial troubles, suddenly shrank, and Heloise again faced the prospect of borrowing money. With the community strained to a breaking point, she realized for the first time that the Paraclete would survive, not only for her lifetime but perhaps for generations to come. While she had definite ideas of her own about what kind of religious house she wished to create, still she was open to suggestions, and therefore she asked Abelard to compose a new Rule, one that would apply to females.

To her surprise, he responded enthusiastically, and that summer and fall she received, in installments, a treatise on convent administration. His concern and care overwhelmed her, for there was no small detail that he overlooked, even down to what sort of undertunics the women should wear. Abelard also wrote for them sermons and over a hundred hymns, magnificent, sensitive works that might have been composed by some holy troubadour. If something between them had ended with the exchange of their intimate letters, a new beginning had been made. Of that Heloise had no doubt. It almost seemed as if the writing of Abelard's troubled letter to "a friend," and his letters to her, had acted as a catharsis in a way that she could never have imagined. His letters to her now were full of good humor, affection, news of their son, even light gossip.

"He jests," she said to Ceci one day in amazement. "What do you think of that?"

"I think"—Ceci grinned—"that there's life in the old mule yet. Although God knows he doesn't deserve a second chance after the hell he put you through."

Heloise retorted, "God doesn't know any such thing." She leaned forward and thumped Ceci on the shoulder. "God in his mercy sees into his heart and knows him for what he is."

"Good," said Ceci dryly. "I'm glad to hear it."

There was, of course, a reason for Abelard's buoyancy. Perhaps because of Heloise's urgings, he had requested permission of Pope Innocent to relinquish his abbacy at Saint-Gildas and return to teaching. By the following summer, in the robe of a monk, he was back on the hill of Sainte-Genevieve in Paris. Jourdain wrote to Heloise, saying that people told him it was as if Master Peter had never left the city, so enormous was his popularity. While Jourdain had not actually gone up to the Ile to see for himself, he had his sources; Abelard, he said, was teaching and writing and drawing to himself, as before, thousands of awestruck young men. One of these youngsters was Astrolabe.

Now sixteen, Heloise's son was personable, earnest, and intelligent. Or so Abelard wrote to her. Denise having died the previous Michaelmas, he felt it was time for the boy to leave Le Pallet and begin his serious education; he had brought Astrolabe to live with him on the Left Bank. What Abelard failed to mention was whether their son ever spoke of his mother, and this Heloise feared to ask.

In early July, after sheepshearing, she made Astrane prioress of the Paraclete, or rather she made it official. At the same time, Ceci was designated cellaress, Gertrude portress, the elegant Sister Hermeline sacristan, and so forth. The next morning, Heloise handed Astrane the ring of keys that always jingled at her girdle and, with Sir Arpin of Mery-sur-Seine and a band of knights for escort, she struck west for Paris.

Despite Abelard's insistence, in his new Rule, that the abbess remain cloistered, Heloise had not paid strict attention to his wishes; the previous winter she had gone to Troyes and, for that matter, she had made several short trips throughout Champagne. Secretly, she adored to travel, although she was not as bad in this respect as Lady Alais had been, and she took care never to venture out of the Paraclete unless there was a good reason for doing so.

For months—in fact, ever since Abelard had returned to the Ile—she had shamelessly sought an excuse to visit Paris. Now she had one. At the prompting of the bishop of Troyes, King Louis had been moved to grant an important tax privilege to the Paraclete—perpetual exemption from the payment of duty on anything they might buy throughout the kingdom of France. This was, to put it at its mildest, a considerable coup for Heloise, and she notified the Royal Curia that she would come personally to accept the king's charter.