Too Like the Lightning (50 page)

Carlyle:
“I do when you claim to be a nun.”

Heloïse:
“Then you too advocate clerical celibacy?” Her voice grew bright, as if she had just discovered they shared the same home town.

Carlyle:
“I do
not
advocate clerical celibacy, but I don't advocate of mocking it, either.”

Thisbe:
“Carlyle!” Thisbe's anger threatened to bring her boot down sharp upon his toe. “I think what my sensayer is trying to ask, Sister, is, if you don't mind a mildly indelicate question…”

Heloïse:
“I have scrubbed bile from the floors of sickrooms—what are words to that?”

Thisbe:
“Well, are you a prostitute who's dressed as a nun? Or are you actually pursuing a celibate lifestyle while living in a house of prostitution? You can understand my confusion, I mean, don't nuns prefer to live … with other nuns?”

Heloïse:
“You're thinking of the Tibetan and Vatican Reservations? Those nuns are not my order. And the business of prostitution is limited to certain sections of this house.”

Thisbe:
“I see. But even if only in parts, isn't that a bit … incongruous?”

Heloïse:
“I see no incongruity in it.”

Thisbe:
“No incongruity in a nun being around so much … erotic activity?”

Heloïse:
“On the contrary, what could be more appropriate? Celibacy is the most extreme of sexual perversions, after all.”

That one floored even Thisbe. “What?”

Heloïse:
“Sexual desire is the purest and most natural of animal drives. To suppress it in favor of an intellectual and theological satisfaction is a perversion of nature in the most extreme sense. Why, even to fornicate alone, or with many people at once, or with a machine, or an ass or hound, is closer to Nature's intent than abstinence. Do you not agree?”

A long pause. Very long.

Carlyle:
“Diderot.”

Thisbe:
“What?”

Carlyle:
“You're quoting Diderot, that bit about celibacy as the most unnatural thing.”

Heloïse:
“Quite correct, Father! Mademoiselle Saneer, has your sensayer not yet told you of
le Philosophe
? Denis Diderot was a great philosopher, the leader of the Encyclopedia project!”

I wish now, reader, that I had myself introduced you to
le Philosophe
in some lighter hour. Grant me, if you will, a moment for his noble side, before you associate him forever with this house. Once upon a time there was a bright young atheist named Denis Diderot. In his Eighteenth Century, atheism was just blossoming, and keen libertine minds hungered for a firebrand to stir and lead them. He could have made himself the Pope of Atheists, but he refused, for Diderot, while denying any afterlife, dreamed of worldly immortality, not for himself, but for the dead, the dreams and achievements of ages past, and for his world. His Philosopher's Stone would be a book. The second half contained technical plates illustrating all the technologies humanity had achieved: weaving silk stockings, annealing metal, baking bricks; so with a single copy even the lowest peasant could reconstruct all the tools of civilization. The first half was the same for thought. Thus, if a new Dark Age should fall upon on the Earth, but a single copy of this book survived, every achievement of the human race—from bronze to Liberty—could be restored. Diderot named this talisman of immortality
Encyclopédie
, and, fearing that his personal beliefs might bring the wrath of the authorities upon the project, he voluntarily suppressed his own work, publishing nothing of the revolutionary atheism which like-minded doubters of his age so hungered for. The public who named Voltaire ‘
le Patriarch
' dubbed Diderot ‘
le Philosophe,
'
the
Philosopher, guardian and caretaker of all thinkers and all thought. The grand title of ‘Arch-Heretic,' which he deserved, he left to others, to Machiavelli, Hobbes, misunderstood Spinoza, or de Sade. Can you imagine a nobler act, reader? Sacrificing his own chance to add his voice to humanity's Great Conversation to safeguard the Conversation itself?

“And he went to jail for writing porn about nuns.” Carlyle snapped it, with a cutting glare.

Heloïse sat unfazed. “True, indeed. Rich, beautiful, philosophical pornography about nuns. I have read it several times.” Heloïse turned her sincerest smile on the sensayer. “Fear not, Father, I do not mock those whose robe I imitate. Though sex of all sorts occurs here, I am not involved. There is music here too, art, scholarship, and discourse, and if there are also earthly pleasures, then they are pursued only in harmonious consort with the others, and in sections of the house which I do not frequent.”

Carlyle gave up on goading her here, sensibly, for it is madness trying to anger Heloïse. Anger, like envy, impatience, greed, and lust all melt from her like frost from flame, and she takes modest pride in crushing such little demons underfoot. One thing, though, he would not give up on: “I told you not to call me ‘Father.'”

“I'm sorry, do you prefer Doctor?”

“Neither. I'm a sensayer, not a priest.”

Her brows, where the wimple did not cover them, seemed sad. “Have you not dedicated your life to your God?”

Thisbe forced the brandy into Carlyle's hands. “Drink. You need it.”

Both women watched, expectant, but Carlyle just stared at his reflection in the amber spirit, as if trying to take refuge in the only thing in the room which was not mad. “Dominic Seneschal spends time here too, don't they?” he asked. “Do they work here?”

Sister Heloïse's face grew light and frantic at the same time, like a mother desperate for rumors of a runaway. “Do you have word from Brother Dominic? We've been so worried!”

“
Brother
Dominic?”

Thisbe forced a smile. “I'm sorry, Sister Heloïse, we don't know anything about where Dominic Seneschal is, or where they've been the last few days. We've been seeking them too.”

“I see,” Heloïse answered, unable to stifle a sigh.

“You know Dominic well?”

“We grew up here together.”

“You both work for Jed … Jehovah…”

“Here you may call Him the Prince D'Arouet, if His true name makes you uncomfortable.”

“Either way, you and Dominic work for them?”

“Work for
mon Seigneur
Jehovah? Oh, no. We worship Him as a God.”

Even Thisbe could only feign so much calm. “What?”

“Dominic's path is his own. As for myself I have consecrated my virginity to
mon Seigneur
Jehovah, and dedicate my hours to the contemplation of His divine Mysteries and the exercise of Good Works in His holy Name. It is a vocation which fills and overflows my every thought and deed, waking and sleeping, and since
mon Seigneur
Jehovah himself has accepted my devotion, I count myself the most fortunate of women, though not in the least deserving of such fortune.

“I was in my early days a very wicked child,” she continued, “proud, self-involved, and filled with the most perfidious jealousies. I grew up in this house, not among the common children but one of the elect, raised in the strictest discipline and with the care of many wise and generous tutors, whose efforts on my behalf I never appreciated as they deserved. They offered for my education music, geometry, mathematics, natural philosophy, the historians, poets, orators, Latin, Greek, French, all the authors whose works are proper for the eyes of a sensitive young lady, yet I began to spurn all in favor of the flattery of men. Puffed up by vacant words, I vainly thought myself the most beautiful of my peers, a double vanity, both because I judged myself superior, and because I placed value on appearance, as if true Beauty lay in face and flesh. Wretch that I was, I cared nothing for the logic of the Philosopher, the morals of the Orator, or the light of the Theologian (she means here Aristotle, Cicero, and St. Thomas Aquinas) when I had suitors to taunt and rivals to defeat.”

Here you object, impatient reader.
Mycroft, thou hast lapsed too much into thy Eighteenth Century. This life story poured out all in one ramble might fit in the fabricated dialogues of thy Patriarch or thy Philosophe, but not in a history. No sane person disgorges her autobiography before perfect strangers, and no listener, even one as stunned as Carlyle and Thisbe, would sit through this in silence.
You do not believe, reader? Then come, I challenge you, come to her offices, ask good Sister Heloïse to tell you of her vocation, and see if you have the strength of will to interrupt a nun.

She continues: “In the course of things I was betrothed to a good and worthy man, and I endeavored to direct the entirety of my affection toward my intended. Yet, as I felt youth begin to flower in me, I found my passions directed, as uncontrollably as water gushing from a spring, not to my fiancé but toward
mon Seigneur
Jehovah. Naturally all in this house, from my sisters and brothers to the lowest scullery maid, hold
mon Seigneur
Jehovah in the highest awe, for He is the Pillar and Scion of our world, the noblest of princes, most infallible of logicians, most compassionate of statesmen, and most penetrating of philosophers, yet I, and others around me, easily saw that my affection far outstripped the common worship of the crowd. There were days when my sole hope in rising from my bed was that I might glimpse Him passing in the hall, and any day His offices did not allow Him to return home left me in the most profound despair. Knowing my duty, I tried to drive this love from my rebellious bosom, and that battle claimed my happiness and health, for I soon succumbed to a wasting sickness which consigned me to my bed, and very nearly to my grave. I was at first unwilling to confess the cause of my illness, but I was not so impious a child as to stay silent before Madame when she pleaded with me with a mother's tears. With her encouragement I revealed the truth to my fiancé, explaining that, while he retained forever a treasured quarter of my heart, my love for him had been transformed now to a daughter's devotion to her father rather than a lady's for her lord. So kind and compassionate is the heart of that great man who was almost my husband that he forgave me, accepting my filial affection in place of wifely love, and to save his newfound daughter from the grip of sickness he agreed to go to
mon Seigneur
Jehovah, whom he was accustomed to approaching with the intimacy of kin, and tell Him of my love.

“The ways of my Lord are mysterious. At first He answered nothing, and neither my newfound father nor Madame nor any in the house could understand His actions as He sequestered Himself in His library, where none but the most trusted of servants were permitted to intrude. I, in my despair, slipped into a sleep so close to death that my nurses thought me a dozen times lost, but I was saved when
mon Seigneur
Jehovah emerged from His isolation and, to the great jealousy of my sisters, who had never enjoyed more than a few syllables from His blessed lips, presented me with a Commonplace Book compiled by His own hand, every page filled with quotations from the wisest ancients and most refined of commentators, interspersed with pieces of His own divine Wisdom, explaining in a hundred voices that happiest and harshest Rule, all but abandoned in this selfish age: the monastic calling. I saw at once my folly, that in the heat of youth I had imagined He could be the inspiration of a base and Earthly love. That fire within myself, which I had mistaken for common passion, was in reality the first dim flickering of the truer flame of spiritual devotion which, if fed with the good fuel of discipline and virtue, might be cultivated into some semblance of that ethereal brightness which marks mankind as the most fortunate of beasts, for we alone of all the creatures of this Earth may aspire to the understanding of the Divine. All rejoiced at my vocation, and my return from death's door, and Madame saw at once to my initiation into monastic life. I have lived so ever since, consecrated to My Lord God Jehovah in a chaste union far more powerful than any Earthly marriage, and I have never strayed nor thought to stray from this severe path, which is to me the greatest happiness.”

She fell into a prayerlike silence as she finished, the expression on her face a portrait of delicate, spiritual joy. They had no questions. Or, more likely, they brimmed with questions, but none they thought this madwoman could answer.

“
Sœur
Heloïse, please step away from the intruders.”

Carlyle and Thisbe were not the only ones who had been unable to interrupt the nun, but, now that she had finished, both doors, main and hidden, opened, and gentlemen filled the entrances like floodwaters. I cannot remember how many there were, say five or seven as you prefer, all costumed as the house demanded: silk at their throats, trim waistcoats, swallow-tailed jackets, britches, rich fabrics with richer tailoring and swords (half-decorative) at every belt. Their breeches were tight, far more precisely tailored than the sexless fashions of the outside world, and yesteryear's style made the conspicuous lumps of their sexual members catch the eye, even on those who had nothing more to display than a woman's crotchbone. Yes, reader, half these gentlemen were female in body, breasts tucked snugly under the waistcoats, but with such rearing there was no more of the female in them than there is canine loyalty in a pup raised among wolves. The fiercest, though not the largest, led the pack, his coat and breeches black, his waistcoat copper-embroidered green, his skin European pale, with hints of reddish fire in his hair.

“Chevalier,” Heloïse greeted him. “Is there a problem?”

“These two have entered under false pretenses,” he explained.

“What?” Thisbe cried in false dismay. “Oh, I forgot to share my credentials. How silly of me!” She began to call them from her tracker.