Heaven's Fire (28 page)

“You
are
nobility,” he said with conviction. “You’re the most noble and gentle woman I’ve ever known. The most accomplished, the most...” He shook his head in frustration. “For God’s sake, Corliss, he’s obviously smitten with you. And he’s a good man. Your background would make no difference to him. The woman you’ve become is so... unique. You defy easy categories. That’s why you can pass so well for whatever you set your mind to.”

“Then there’s the most important reason,” she said, rising and strolling away from him to yank a handful of berries from a bush. “I hate marriage. I hate being bound to a man. You know that.”

“I think you should reconsider,” he said, despising the words even as they left his mouth. “You need protection from Roger Foliot, and marriage is the best way to get it.”

“Is that really what you want?”

“I want you to be safe.”

“I want to be
free
.” She turned to face him, the berries crushed in her hand. “I’m tired of being a whore, a
safe
whore. I’ve been a whore since I was sixteen.”

“You were a married woman part of that time.”

She flung the berries away and squatted to wipe her hands on the grass. “I was just as much Sully’s whore as Father’s Osred’s. The Church may have blessed the union, but it was no different. I bartered my body for protection, and lost my freedom in the process. It wasn’t worth it.” She met his gaze, her eyes fiery. “I’ll never do that again. Never!”

“Marriage doesn’t have to mean losing your freedom,” he said. “There are men who value their wives as equals. Look at Abelard and Héloïse.”

She straightened up, tossing her head with a smirk. “How many men are that enlightened?”

“I am.”

The smirk faded.

“And there are others,” he hastily added.

Her eyebrows shot up. “Name one.”

He groped quickly for a name. “Brother Matthew.”

She laughed bitingly. “I don’t suppose you know of any who aren’t celibate.”

“What about Thorne?”

“Or married?”

He tried to think of someone else, but couldn’t.

“You can forget about getting rid of me through marriage,” she said. “Though, if you want, I’ll move out of your house.”

He jumped up. “Nay!”

“But last night...” She bit her lip and crossed her arms, staring at the ground. “Last night, when I asked you if you wished I’d never come to Oxford, you said—”

“Last night never happened,” he said, quietly but firmly. He took a deep breath and added, “Any of it.”

There was a long pause as she continued to look down; then she nodded.

“We’ll return to Oxford and all will be as it was before. Nothing will have changed.”

She closed her eyes and nodded again.

They stood in silence for a moment, and then she looked up. The light had left her eyes. “He said he’s going to write to me.”

“Peter?”

She nodded and began gathering up the remains of their meal. “He thinks he can change my mind.”

“Can he?” He nearly choked on the words.

“Nay. But he’s going to try.”

“What reason did you give for turning him down?”

She stood and shook the blanket out, then handed him one end. Together they folded it. “I told him I wasn’t in love with him.”

Had he just imagined the emphasis on the word
him
?

She stuffed the folded blanket into a saddlebag while he stowed away the food.

“He’s going to write to you, too,” she said as she mounted up.

“To me?” He settled into his saddle. “Why?”

“To ask your permission to press his suit, since I have no family. And to enlist your aid in wearing me down.”

“Wearing you down?”

“Getting me to say yes.”

“Doesn’t he care that you don’t love him?”

“He says he loves
me
, and can’t live without me. He says if one’s love is strong enough, nothing else matters, nothing else has any meaning—that love is all that’s really important in life.” She flicked the reins and guided her mount toward the path. “Imagine that.”

“What’s tonight’s
disputatio
about?” Corliss asked as she and Rainulf left his house and began walking up St. John Street. The August evening was warm, the sky rusty with the setting sun.

“I’m arguing against the notion of an all-powerful God.”

The air left her lungs in a startled little laugh. “Do you never worry about what people think?”

He smiled indulgently and began to say something, but stopped short, squinting at the alley across the street. “Did you see that?”

“Nay,” she lied. She
had
noticed the shadowy movement, but it was probably just Rad, who continued to materialize from time to time on the edge of her vision. She’d hoped her two-week absence from Oxford would cure him of the habit of following her around, but during the past few weeks she’d seen him at least half a dozen times. Twice she’d cornered him and pleaded with him to stop, but he’d stubbornly insisted that she needed his protection. The last thing she wanted was for Rainulf to run him to ground again; he refused to believe that the hulking, pockmarked peddler was harmless.

Rainulf took a step toward the darkened alley, but Corliss held him back. He looked down at her hand on his arm, and she dropped it. Since returning from Blackburn, they never touched, even casually, as if by avoiding physical contact they could pretend that all was as it had been—that he had never come to her chamber and touched her as lovers touched each other.

“‘Twas just a pig foraging for garbage,” she said.

He shook his head. “‘Twas a man.”

“Come. We’ll be late getting to St. Mary’s. You’ll have less time to spout your damnable heresy.”

“It’s not heresy,” he answered automatically.

She turned so he couldn’t see her smile, and continued walking. “The Church fathers might disagree.”

“Some would.” She heard his footsteps as he came up behind her. “Others understand my method of academic argument.”

“You’re saying there are men of the cloth who would justify an attack on the Church’s teachings?”

“Not an attack,” he said, falling in beside her as she strode quickly up St. John Street. “An argument, for academic purposes only. It’s the Aristotelian method. One argues both sides of the issue to reach a solution. In arguing the case against God’s omnipotence, we can actually affirm it.”

She shrugged elaborately as they crossed Grope Lane. “Why engage in tiresome arguments about something you know you’re going to end up affirming anyway?”

“Since when do you find
disputatio
tiresome?” he asked with a smile. “You come to almost all my lectures, and you absorb my teachings like a sea sponge. You obviously enjoy the mental exercise.”

“Aye,” she admitted. “I’m just baiting you for sport.”

He rolled his eyes, then narrowed them on her. “Not just for sport. You brought up all that heresy business to lure me away from that alley, didn’t you? You know I can’t resist an argument.”

She laughed. “‘Tis what makes you such a brilliant teacher. You were born to argue.”

“‘Brilliant’ may be overstating things a bit.”

Progress!
There was a time when he would have insisted that he was completely unworthy to teach; now, he was simply not quite “brilliant.”

“If you’re not brilliant,” she challenged, “then how, in one short summer, did you manage to get me speaking French like a royal princess?”

“You’ve got a facility for languages.”

“But what of the rest of it? How many Oxfordshire peasants know how to calculate the velocity of a body in motion, for God’s sake?”

“You have a very quick mind.” They turned onto Shidyerd, and he nodded to a group of scholars. “The credit lies with you, not me.”

“I think not. All this new knowledge I’ve gained is knowledge you’ve given me. I’ve learned an amazing amount from you.”

He shrugged. “An amazing amount of the sorts of things one can learn simply by opening a book. Those things are easy to teach.”

“Easy for
you
. I don’t think I could do it.”

“Don’t underrate yourself. I’ve learned a great deal from you.”

She snorted. “Such as?”

He smiled enigmatically. “Various things. Important things. More important than fiddling with numbers and perfecting one’s accent.” He fell silent for a while, and then said, “Living with you has... it’s changed me. For the better. And... and I’ve enjoyed your company.”

She looked up at him; he wouldn’t meet her gaze.

He said, “I received a letter from Peter today.”

She groaned. Peter had written to her twice since she left Blackburn, begging her to marry him. Her responses to both letters had been the same—that although she cared for him, her affection was as that of a sister for a brother, and she must therefore decline his proposal.

Rainulf’s expression, like his voice, was strained. “He has a manor of his own, and a much better income than I would have thought.”

“We’ve discussed this already, Rainulf. Please don’t do this. I can’t bear your trying to talk me into marrying anoth—”
Careful
. “Into... into marrying—”

“I don’t enjoy it very much, either,” he said gruffly. “But it’s for your own good. Just think about it.”

“I
have
thought about it.”

“You’ve dismissed it out of hand.”

“Hardly. I have excellent reasons, and I’ve shared them with you.”

She sensed that he was relaxing fractionally, as if secretly relieved by her continued refusal to consider Peter’s suit.

“He’s a good man,” he said, but with little enthusiasm.

“Aye. He’s a wonderful man, and he’ll make some woman a wonderful husband someday, but that woman won’t be me.”

There was a pause. “He claims,” Rainulf said slowly, “to be madly in love with you. He makes quite a case for it.”

“He was madly in love with his lady Magdalen. I just look like her.”

“He insists it’s you he loves, and that he’d do everything in his power to make you happy.”

“My definition of happiness is freedom. A man’s love is the worst enemy of a woman’s freedom.”

Except yours
, she silently amended. Were Rainulf Fairfax ever to love a woman, whether wife or mistress, she would still be free. Corliss knew that now. But most men weren’t like Rainulf.

They crossed High Street in silence. On the steps of St. Mary’s, he paused and regarded her pensively. A swarm of scholars hollered greetings as they streamed into the church, elbowing each other aside for the best benches. “I just want you to be safe. If anything were to happen to you...”

She indicated her masculine garb. “I’m safe dressed like this.” She thought about, but didn’t mention, the dagger secreted in her boot. “And free as well. I’ve never felt so liberated.”

He smiled wryly. “Chausses don’t make you free, Corliss. Or safe. Being male carries risks of its own. ‘Tis a false sense of liberty you feel.”

She smiled, too. “I’ll take any kind of liberty I can get.”

*   *   *

Rainulf and Corliss left St. Mary’s that night amid a throng of departing scholars. She’d found the unorthodox
disputatio
engrossing, and not in the least heretical. Rainulf was truly the most gifted teacher in Oxford; no wonder his students idolized him.

“Good night, Master Fairfax!” called one as he sprinted down the church steps, cappa flapping.

“Another triumph, Magister!” cried another. “Join us at the Nightingale for a pint?”

“Not tonight, boys.”

“Master Fairfax.” They turned to find Thomas coming up behind them, followed, as always, by Brad. “There’s something I don’t understand. Why is it that God can’t move the heavens with rec... rec—”

“Rectilinear motion.” Rainulf nodded toward her. “Corliss?”

“Because a vacuum would remain,” she said. Rainulf smiled, and she felt the glow of pride that always accompanied his approval.

“What’s wrong with that?” Thomas asked.

“It’s never even been established that such a thing as a vacuum can exist,” she said. “And even if it did, its nature might preclude—”

“Perhaps,” Rainulf interrupted, clearly sensing a long debate in the making, “we can pursue these
questiones
at my house, over a pitcher of ale.”

The boys readily took him up on the invitation, but Corliss hesitated. She cocked her head toward Victor, waiting for her with his followers across the street. “I’ve been asked to come to a meeting at St. Frideswide’s.”

“Nay!

Corliss gasped indignantly. In truth, she wasn’t particularly eager to attend the meeting—a strategy session regarding tavern prices—in part because of the late hour and in part because Victor’s fanaticism was beginning to wear thin with her. But Rainulf’s arrogance in forbidding her to go wore even thinner. Drawing herself up, she said tightly, “I’m going,” and strode swiftly away.