Stealing Heaven (47 page)

“I gave Simon your ring to sell."

"Which one?"

"The amethyst." Then: "Please don't be angry. I had no choice."

She slumped against the wall. "Well, it doesn't matter. I hope Simon got a good price." Ceci did not answer. A moment later something odd occurred to Heloise. She asked, "Did you give Simon all the money?"

"Only a little."

“But Ceci—"

In a
rush, Ceci's words rolled out. "Heloise, I hired a man from the village to ride to Saint-Gildas."

"Ceci!"

"Shhh. I thought God was going to take you. I thought Abelard would want to come."

Heloise hugged her arms against her breasts. "But he didn't," she whispered. "See, he didn't come. Oh, Ceci, I could have told you that."

 

She was lying in the yard, under a yew tree, when he rode up to the gate with a young man in a clerk's gown. The two of them looked ridiculously out of place in front of Simon's hut. Throwing his reins to the clerk, Abelard dismounted and walked slowly toward her.

Without speaking, he dropped to the ground beside her and took her hand. A few yards away, in the doorway of the cottage, Ceci stood watching them. At last, Abelard began to ask her questions in a low voice—about her illness and how she felt and so forth. His manner was stiffly courteous.

Heloise broke in. "My lord, I didn't ask for you. It was Ceci who—"

"She did the right thing."

"No, it wasn't necessary. And she sold the amethyst."

He frowned. "What amethyst?"

"My ring. You gave it to me." Jesu, had he forgotten!

"Oh." He nodded slightly. "Oh, yes. That first summer."

There was a long, uncomfortable pause. Ceci went to the road and began talking to Abelard's clerk. Leaning back in the grass, Heloise closed her eyes. Abelard said, "You're not mended yet."

"I'm being well cared for. You needn't have troubled to come."

He looked away, gazing at the corncribs at the back of the yard.

Twisting back toward her, he said, "I want to give you something."

She made an impatient gesture, then let her hands fall slack. "There is nothing you can give me." She thought, I've never wanted anything from you except yourself, and that has been denied me.

He was stammering. "Lady—lady, must you make this difficult for me? You were dearest to me when we lived in the world, and now you are dearest to me in Christ. Our roads have separated, it's true, but we are still bonded together in the eyes of the Lord." He was breathing quickly, pleading almost. "I possess nothing, how could I as Christ's servant?"

Heloise swallowed. "Please. Don't."

"Lady, I own one thing. The Paraclete. It's still mine. Let it be my gift to you."

Dazed, she said the first thing that came into her head. "But what would I do with it?"

He stared at her. "Do with it? Why, build a convent dedicated to the service of Our Almighty Father."
 

"A convent," she repeated.

"I wish that I could offer you more, but it's all I have."

She looked up into his face, into the blue eyes trembling with tenderness or some emotion close to it, and she slowly nodded. So quietly that he did not hear, she said, "God's will be done."

 

 

 

20

 

 

Two
days before
the New Year, their party reached the village of Quincey, which lay only a mile south of the Paraclete. In their baggage train were sumpters laden with kettles, pallets, blankets, candles, as well as sundry items they would need to live.

The great open fields of Champagne were broken by flat-topped blue hills and, now and then, strands of evergreens rising starkly against the chalky soil. The land appeared bleached to Heloise, bleached and silent. It was not an ominous silence, though. It felt reverent, almost dreamlike. Her feeling of unreality vanished once they rode among the clustered houses of Quincey. Lord Milo's bailiff, a barrel-chested man named Arnoul, came out to greet them, his manner displaying the utmost deference and even obsequiousness. The villagers stared with either dull curiosity or outright hostility. Immediately, Heloise sensed that the reappearance of Abelard did not please them, and it made her uneasy. Shivering inside her cloak, she watched their faces as they stood in their doorways, reluctant to leave their warm hearths and bowls of wine, even for the visit of an abbot.

Abelard took no notice of the silent, unsmiling faces. Smiling brilliantly, he waved Heloise, Ceci, and the clerk, Berengar, into Arnold's house, where they sat down to bean soup and red wine.

Arnoul said, "My lord abbot, will you be staying at the Paraclete?"

Abelard did not answer directly. He began quoting the Book of Psalms about refuges in the wilderness, and then he quoted St. Jerome at some length. At last, he turned to Arnoul. "What did you say?"

"Your Holiness, you won't like what you find there."

"Eh?"

"There were brigands up there. Last year, I think it was. They used it to store their loot."

Unconcerned, Abelard grunted, "Well, now they must find another place."

In the midafternoon, they rode north along the river. Abelard rolled from side to side in his saddle, calling out in excitement.

"Wait until spring!” he yelled. "The waters are magnificently green. Cool, pure, the greenest river in the world. And do you know why that is?"

"No." Heloise smiled.

"Because of the reeds swaying in its depths. And reflections from the trees. Homer himself could not do justice to its beauty."

Behind his back, Ceci sniffed and flashed him a glance of disgust.

They dismounted by a knoll. Abelard strode across the field toward the river, and the rest of them followed slowly. Close to the water's edge stood a chapel made of limestone and wood; farther back from the embankment, a hundred yards or so, were two graceless rectangular structures, which looked like empty boxes.

Ceci said to no one in particular, "Is this all?"

"What do you mean?" Abelard asked, raising his eyebrows.

"There's nothing here."

Ignoring her, he said to Heloise, "I wish you could have seen them. Students, thousands of them. They gathered here from castles and mansions. Instead of delicate food, they ate wild herbs and made beds of straw and used banks of turf for their trestles." He sighed happily.

Ceci said, “That's all very nice. But if we are to live here, we can't eat off banks of turf."

Abelard answered sharply, "Sister Cecilia, our Lord Jesus reminded us to think of the birds—'for they sow not, neither do they reap nor store up food, yet their heavenly Father feedeth them.'"

Ceci said, "Well, didn't someone say that Our Lord helpeth him who helpeth himself?" Abelard turned away sharply and went into the chapel. Staring at his back, Ceci whispered to Heloise, "Men. They have no sense when it comes to practical things."

"He remembers it as it once was. Probably it was lovely then."

Ceci looked around skeptically. "I don't see how thousands of people could have lived here. Where? Tell me that." She clamped her lips together.

"They made huts from reeds."

"Where? I don't see anything."

Heloise was beginning to feel annoyed. "Ceci, that was six years ago. They've all blown away."

Berengar came up beside them. He was a bearded man of thirty or thereabouts, unfailingly courteous, with the gallant manners of the Poitevin nobility and the soft, drawling accents of the
langue d'oc.
"Ladies," he said, "if you would feel more comfortable, I can take you back to Quincey for the night."

Heloise shook her head.

He said helpfully, "There's another village about a mile to the north. Saint-Aubin. Mayhap you'd like to go there."

"We'll stay," Heloise said firmly. "Thank you."

Well, she thought, it does not look awfully promising at the moment. But from Abelard's descriptions, she could imagine it as it had been and as it would be again someday. With all those gnarled trees, the land seemed wild and desolate, despite the proximity of the villages. Its loneliness didn't bother her; rather, it gave her the same feeling as her rock at Argenteuil. There she had felt a serenity, a soul-soothing calmness, and she sensed it now too. Something could be done here.

She wheeled and walked toward Ceci, who was tugging at some object half buried in the ground.

Ceci whistled to Abelard's clerk. "Hie, Sir Berengar. Look here. What's this?"

He trotted over obediently and began kicking at the ground with the toe of his boot. After a moment, he bent down and lifted up a rusty iron kettle. He was about to toss it away when Heloise called out, "Save that. We may need it."

After compline that evening, they huddled around the fire that Berengar had made in the west building. Ceci dozed on a pile of hemp sacks, left by the bandits, probably, and Heloise, silent, was busy thinking.

"My lord abbot," she said at last, "these buildings need to be cleaned thoroughly and repaired. Could we get some villeins to help us?"

"Of course you can get villeins." He leaned over and poked at the fire until sparks flared up. "And men from Quincey and Saint-Aubin as well." He dropped the stick abruptly. "My lady Heloise, do you like this place? Tell me the truth."

"Aye, I do. But it needs work."

He nodded and shut his eyes. Heloise wondered if his head ached. There had been times, on the road from Brittany, when she had noticed his eyes glazed over, and then he would hold his neck stiff, as if only the greatest concentration would keep his head from bouncing off his shoulders. He did not look well to her. On his hands were patches of dry and itchy-looking skin; sometimes his face would flush bright red and he would sweat profusely. She pretended not to see. Under the circumstances, she had no choice. These past months, his manner had been formal, perfectly correct. It was as though Abelard and Heloise had died. When he spoke to her now—always in the presence of others, for he took care not to he alone with her—it was the abbot of Saint-Gildas talking to Sister Heloise, future abbess of the Paraclete.

She turned to watch his face. Worry lines grooved his brow. He had started talking to Berengar about the Church meeting that would take place at Etampes on January 20. It was to be an important occasion, because Pope Innocent would be consecrating the high altar at the abbey of Morigny, and other prominent men, such as Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux and Abbot Suger, would be there as well. Heloise knew that Abelard planned to ask the pope for assistance with his monks at Saint-Gildas.

She went back to figuring in her head, only half listening to the men. The room was full of the odors of dust and mold, and there were rat droppings in the comers. This will be my home, she thought, this land belongs to me. The thought made her feel good. A moment later, she realized that she had no idea exactly what belonged to her. Obviously, this property on which the chapel stood, but where did the Paraclete's boundaries begin and end? The field was not large, hardly big enough to make vegetable gardens. The next time Abelard and Berengar fell silent, Heloise said, "My lord abbot, God's pardon for the interruption. But can you tell me how much land belongs to us?"

Abelard stretched his legs. He looked surprised. "Well—enough, I suppose."

"How much exactly is enough?"

"This field." He motioned Berengar to bring him a leather bag. "And some other property in the neighborhood. I don't remember precisely."

Heloise fidgeted while he fumbled in the bag and finally drew out a paper, which he handed to her. "My lord Milo," he told her, "has been extremely generous. As you can see . . ."

While he was talking, she read the charter: "It is evident that Divine providence counsels the rich. . . . Wherefore I, Milo, by the grace of God lord of Nogent . . . wishing to make provision for my salvation, have found it right to dispose for the good of my soul of some of the temporal possessions which have been bestowed upon me . . ."

The charter went on to define the bequest: three cultivated fields, the villeins attached to the land, the use of the forest of Saint-Aubin in perpetuity, all the marshy ground adjacent to the Arduzon. Next were listed by name those whose souls were to be prayed for, mainly Milo and his kin.

Wearily, Heloise slid the charter into her girdle. Probably Abelard was right. It was enough, for now at least.

 

Nevertheless, she was soon to revise that hasty judgment. It was true that they owned three plots for cultivation, but under the three-field system, one of them must lie fallow that year. A second should have been plowed in October and sown with wheat, rye, or barley. But when Heloise went out to talk with the villeins, she found that nothing had been done. How could they have known that Master Peter would return? This all meant that she must wait until March to plow and that there would be no grain until after Lammas. Each day the stores they had brought from Sens were being used up, and while they all ate sparingly, she knew they would never last. She would have to buy grain in Quincey or Saint-Aubin, but with what? Abelard could give them a little money, but he would be returning to Saint-Gildas eventually. Surely they would go hungry before Lent was over.

It was ironic. Never, and certainly never since she had taken vows, had she spent so much time thinking about the material things of this world. Now these things that she needed—wheelbarrows, a proper well, plow, fishing forks—these worldly goods obsessed her so that even during prayers she could barely keep her mind on the words. There were so many things that she needed—and a few that she merely wanted. She struggled to remember that there was a distinction.

"Bees," she said to Ceci. "Wouldn't it be wonderful to have bees?" She craved a bit of honey.

"Aye. And a cow and some hens. Maybe we could get a dog, Heloise."

"No," she answered sharply. "No dog." Deep inside, memory knotted her stomach.

She sent Berengar and Ceci to the woods to gather sticks and fallen timber, and she began to mend the rotten beams under the chapel roof. Abelard helped to the best of his ability, but Heloise had to conclude finally that he had no gift for physical labor, especially not for carpentry. More often than not, he ended by smashing a finger under the hammer, and she dared not allow him to approach the saw.