Stealing Heaven (60 page)

"Aye, Brother. I—I don't know the reason." He was not well, no matter what Astrolabe said. So far as she could judge, he had teetered on the edge of fainting.

"Thank you," said the monk, and turned away.

In the afternoon, she had Mme. Montauban send a servant to find Astrolabe. An hour passed. The man returned, saying that neither the lad nor his father was at the archbishop's guesthouse. Their belongings were gone. Jourdain came, sad and exhausted, and murmured soothing words. She nodded politely, not answering. In the solar, she sat by the window, twisting her girdle into knots and peering into the road for a sight of the boy.

"Don't torture yourself," Jourdain said. "Master Peter said he was going to Rome, and he's probably on the road by now. You should leave too."

Heloise shook her head stubbornly. It could not end this way.

Jourdain said, pleadingly, "Do as I tell you—I'll take you home. The assembly is over."

In the street, a black dog was foraging for scraps. Heloise curled her fingers until the knuckles whitened. "The assembly is over," she repeated dully. "Did they judge him a heretic?"

Jourdain burst into an ugly laugh. "In secret session, may God forgive them. They have sent their decision to Rome. Heloise, friend. It's time for us to be off."

"Please," she said. "I beg you. Go and try to find out what happened to him. If he has truly left Sens, then I'm willing to depart."

Sighing deeply, Jourdain agreed and went out.

She sat at the window a while longer, too tired to climb the stairs to her chamber. The youngest Montauban child prattled hesitantly in the doorway. "Lady," she quavered, "are you going home? Why, lady?"

Heloise smiled vaguely at her. "It's time, that's why." She turned back to the street. Farther down, she heard the frantic pounding of hoofs on the cobbles. When the horseman came into her line of vision, she gasped to see that he was Astrolabe. Before she could get up, the door banged open and the clatter of feet rang in the vestibule. She ran, seizing him by both shoulders. "Where is he?" she cried.

"Gone. Set out for Rome an hour ago." The child flattened herself against the wall, frightened to see the wild-looking youth. "I tried to make him wait—"

They stared at each other. Heloise said swiftly, "What ailed him? Why didn't he speak out against Bernard?"

"He told me that at that very moment his memory completely deserted him. He couldn't remember what Bernard had said, or what he was doing there in the choir."

"Dear God." Heloise clung to his arm. "You should not have left him. He's in no condition to travel anywhere."

"Mama, he insisted." Astrolabe fumbled in his girdle. "He wrote this letter for you. He thinks you're at the Paraclete and he wanted you to get this tonight. Before you had news of—today."

Swallowing, she took the letter, unsealed it, and began to read where she stood.

"Heloise my sister, once so dear to me in the world, now even dearer to me in Christ, logic has earned for me the hatred of the world. The perverse, for whom wisdom is nothing short of perdition, say that I am a master of logic, but I cannot understand St. Paul. They acknowledge the brilliance of my intellect but question the purity of my faith as a Christian.

"I do not want to be a philosopher if it means rejecting Paul. I do not wish to be an Aristotle if it cuts me off from Christ, for it is in his name, and none other under heaven, that I must find my salvation. I adore Christ who sits on the right hand of the Father.

"And so to remove all anxiety, all doubt and uncertainty, from your heart, I want to reassure you that I have established my conscience on the rock on which Christ built his Church. I will give you, in brief, my testimony:

"I believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, God who is one in nature, the true God who comprises the Trinity of person. I believe the Son to be equal to the Father."

She glanced up. "When did he write this?" she asked Astrolabe.

"Last evening."

"You're sure."

"Positive," he said.

"I further believe that the Son of God became the Son of Man and having completed his mission, even unto death itself, he rose again and ascended to heaven whence he shall judge the quick and the dead. Finally I believe that all sins are remitted in baptism and that those who have erred may be reformed by penance. As for the resurrection of the body, what need have I to speak of it?
I could not call myself a Christian if I did not believe that I would one day live again. This then is the faith by which I live and from which my hope finds strength. Thus safely anchored, I do not fear the barking of Scylla; I laugh at the whirlpool of Charybdis; I care nothing for the siren's deadly songs. Let the storm rage, I am not shaken. Though the winds blow, I am not moved. For the rock of my foundation stands firm."

Slowly she lifted her eyes to the boy. "This is the confession of faith that Bernard wanted." He could have saved himself with this statement, but he bad not. Instead, he had given it to her.

Abruptly, she thrust the letter into her sleeve. "How far south has he got, do you think?"

"Not far. Mama, you—“

"Saddle my mare."

 

They careered south along the river road that led to Auxerre, saying nothing. Heloise kept her eyes straight ahead and watched the dust rise like brown moths in the dying light. Mounted monks came into view, loitering toward their monasteries and grumbling loudly about the abortive affair at Sens. Heloise and Astrolabe kicked up their horses, passed, and churned on, dodging a party of pilgrims on foot.

Twice they stopped at inns to make certain that Abelard had not turned off for the night. Heloise thought about the road to Rome, how it wound treacherously through the Alpine passes. It was a hard journey, even for those in the best of health. Her fists tightened on the reins. He would not reach Rome, that she knew as surely as if God himself had told her. She ached with loving him, the man with the silvery voice and the pain in his eyes, but she would not add to his humiliation by pressing him to return to the safety of the Paraclete. Let him climb the long road home, let God watch over him.

An arm's length away, Astrolabe called out, "Mama, darkness is coming. Mayhap we should stop."

She looked away from him, into the woods that snapped with twigs and the whirring notes of birds. "No," she said in a tight little voice. She must see him once more; she needed a picture of him to keep in her mind during the endless years ahead.

At the hour of dusk, finally, they came upon Abelard in a clearing beside the road. Beneath an ancient oak, he was sitting on the trampled grass chewing bread, and he did not look up until they had reined in. Then he rose and walked toward them slowly, as if it hurt to move. The skin across the bridge of his nose, along the sides of his cheeks, and down over the neck was fiery red, scratched raw in spots.

Heloise dismounted and swayed toward him. He dipped his head, smiling, as if meeting her on the highroad were an ordinary occurrence. "Is it you, lady?" he asked.
 

"Aye." Behind her back, Astrolabe cleared his throat. "You will want company. It would be best if the boy goes with you."

"And it will be a good thing for him to see Rome." He spoke without glancing at Astrolabe.

"Have you money?"

"Some. Enough." He shrugged. "I shall travel from monastery to monastery. We won't go hungry, God willing."

She felt her tongue dry in her mouth. "At the passes. You must hire a guide to take you through."

"That's right," he said absently. "Lady, you look weary."

“I'm all right."

Abruptly, he rasped, "I'm finished."

She looked up, startled.

"Let others carry on the fight for truth. My young men—let them look to other teachers." He spoke very quickly and looked beyond her shoulder at Astrolabe while he talked.

She shook her head, hunting for an argument, but in the end she said nothing.

"You need not grieve. Nothing can be changed now."

"How do you know?" she said. "Mayhap it will come out differently."

"Once I wrote verse. I sang songs. When I was done with poetry, I put aside my lute."

Under the great tree, they stood quietly for a few minutes. Each looked at the other without speaking. Dark blue was staining the evening sky, pricking it with pinpoints of white. The wind was still.

"Lady?"

"Yes, my love."

"If I've caused you pain in this life, forgive me."

She did not trust herself to speak. At last, he reached for her and she tangled her fingers in his. He put his cheek against the coarse black wimple.

"Ladylove," he breathed.

 

 

 

26

 

 

It was Michaelmas again
, and the sacks of grain had been counted and duly recorded in Heloise's ledgers, the tithes collected, and the villeins blessed and twice blessed. With the coming of autumn, she turned her efforts to the renovated house at Trainel and prepared to install her women. Each day the packing progressed a little; barrels and boxes were filled, wagons loaded with beds and trestles and chests. Keys swinging from her girdle, she moved briskly through the whitewashed rooms and arcaded walks of the Paraclete, and her eyes, deliberately smiling, cloaked all evidence of her thoughts. Three months had passed since Abelard had been condemned at Sens, less than two months since Pope Innocent had issued his edict: guilty as charged . . . heretic . . . sentenced to perpetual silence. Abelard's books had been burned ceremoniously in St. Peter's. Now it was over, Heloise had thought. Now, silenced, he would never write again. Jourdain had said that Abelard undid himself, that a man of different temperament, less contentious, more humble, would not have attracted so many enemies. Well, possibly Jourdain was right, but she did not believe it. Since Sens, the anger had rushed out of her, and all she felt now was a vast sadness that it should end this way.

The Saturday after the fall quarter day, the nuns going to Trainel assembled in the yard, twenty of them, and Sister Gertrude, whom the chapter had elected abbess. With them came Astrane, Ceci, Hermeline, and those of the senior nuns who wished to attend the installation ceremony. In anticipation of the trip, the women chattered and giggled, behavior not ordinarily encouraged at the Paraclete. Heloise pretended not to see. Some of them had not passed through the gate into the outside world for years; let them have this one day. Horses were brought up, wagons for those who did not ride. After some early-morning fog, the sun broke out.

The caravan straggled north along the river road to Saint-Aubin, where they would make a crossing. The woods were thick with colors of apricot and russet; the air smelled of fungus and burning leaves. Ceci trotted her horse close to Heloise. "You're sure the archbishop is coming in person," she said. "He's not sending an assistant."

Heloise nodded. The archbishop of Sens had requested the honor of presiding over the opening of Trainel. Not Henry Sanglier, who had died suddenly, but his successor, Hugo. Heloise had been surprised that Hugo was bothering to come all that way. She lifted her head into the air and dragged deeply, thinking of the pine-strewn plains of Burgundy, thinking of Abelard and the abbey of Cluny, of its abbot, whose name was Peter also. Peter the Venerable people had begun calling him, although he was only six or seven years older than Heloise. One day in July, Abelard had ridden up to the gate of Cluny. He was still there, and now he would never leave. A temporary resting place for a
wanderer, he had written to her shortly after his arrival, but it had become more than that. She did not know what Abbot Peter had said to Abelard, what tact and patient persuasion he had used, but it was clear to her that he had immediately recognized one thing: Abelard had reached the farthermost limits of his endurance. Within weeks, he had persuaded Abelard to join their congregation, and he had assured Pope Innocent that heresy was abhorrent to Abelard. Most astonishing to Heloise, Peter had reconciled Abelard with Bernard, but how he had managed that feat she could not imagine.

After Lammas Day, she had received a
letter from Abbot Peter: "The pope has granted that Master Peter may spend the last days of his life, which are perhaps not many, in our abbey of Cluny. Nothing shall be permitted to disturb the sparrow from its place under the eaves, the dove from its nest."

His kind words brought comfort to her. This man, Jourdain's boyhood friend whom she had been hearing about for half a lifetime, would care for her lord. She wished that it could have been herself. But that was not God's will.

The wagons clattered down the main street of Saint-Aubin. The villagers trotted alongside them, calling out questions about their destination. It was an unusual sight, scores of nuns out in the world on a September morning. They skidded down a short hill and onto the rotting quay, where barges bobbed. The Saint-Aubin people stood on the bank, watching. Heloise gestured to the boatmen, and they pushed off. The river was narrow, a
duller green here than at the Paraclete. The nuns leaned over the sides of the wagon like small children on a
holiday and peered down at the slack water.

"Lady," Gertrude said tearfully to Heloise, “I shall never cross this river again."

"Don't be silly. You'll come back to the Paraclete once a year for instruction. I told you that."

Gertrude answered, "Trainel is such a long way from home."

Heloise smiled gently. "Sainte-Madelaine is your home now. And it's not so far. You'll see. We will be there before sext."

Home, she thought. The Paraclete was Abelard's home. Strange that God sent him to Cluny. She had faith in Abbot Peter—he was well known for his skill with medicine and herbs, and he had written that Abelard suffered from scabies and perhaps some other disease for which he knew no name. She trusted him, but she trusted herself more, and she had sent a lay brother to Cluny with ointments for Abelard's skin and baskets of fruit for the abbot. Over to her right, she saw the smoking chimneys of Trainel. They crossed the Orvin River, wound through the town, and drew up at the gate of Sainte-Madelaine. The nuns crawled out of the wagons and stood wobbly in the road, mouths sagging with excitement. Ceci had already dismounted, her horse wandering off with its reins trailing in the dust, and she threw open the gate. "Sisters," she yelled, "come on. Let's look around."