The Sharp Hook of Love (12 page)

“But, master,” I said, glancing away lest he detect the gleam of triumph in my eyes, “what of love?”

“As I said, a universal ‘love' does not exist. Love comes in many forms.”

“But are there truly different types of love, or do humans merely perceive them to differ?”

“They differ. It is a matter on which everyone can agree.”

“Everyone, master? Are we all the same then, knowing the same things, feeling the same love, sharing the same ‘world soul' as Plato described?”

He leapt to his feet and raked his fingers through his hair. “If you have read my work, then you know that the ‘world soul' is a fallacy. Men do not share the same soul; we are not the same ‘in essence.' ”

“If each man and woman is unique, doesn't it follow that each of us loves uniquely?”

“Of course we experience love differently—in all its forms.”

“And so isn't it possible that I could feel
caritas
, that beautiful, spiritual, unconditional love, not only for God but also for my beloved? Isn't that what Christ wanted from us—to enact
caritas
on Earth as he did, transforming God's love into love for our fellow men?”

Abelard's expression changed. He resumed his seat and reached over to touch my hand. My body's taut string plucked, I quivered and hummed.

“Heloise, you astonish me. Your mind—dear God! I can scarcely believe that you are—” He stopped, his face reddening.

“That I am a woman?” I rolled my eyes. “Given your propensity for insulting me, I can scarcely believe that
you
are a poet who makes women swoon.”

“Shall I speak of your beauty instead of your mind?” He winked.

“It matters not to me whether you think me beautiful of face or form—”

“But I do think so.” He slid his knees forward to press them against my thigh and touched my cheek with his fingertip.

“Do not flatter me.” Suddenly short of breath, I could barely utter the words. I turned my head away from his touch, my eyes away from his gaze. “I consider only my soul of any importance, for that is what God sees.”

“But he has given me eyes with which to behold your own eyes, as black and luminous as the water at night, and your lush, red mouth.” His lowered lids, the softening of his mouth as it approached mine, made me leap from my seat and turn toward the open window, away from him. The stars, so near that it seemed I could touch them, shifted and wheeled in my dizzy sights. My heart beat so wildly that I cupped it with my hands, thinking it might fly away. I crossed my arms to cradle myself, trying to quell my blood's stirring, and heard the scrape of Abelard's chair on the floor. Then he stood behind me and stroked the backs of my arms.

I whirled around. “Master—”

“Call me Abelard,” he murmured, moving his hands to my waist. “It is the name my scholars use—and many of my friends.”

“Are we friends?” I said weakly, taking one step backward but no more, standing so close to the window's edge.

“We shall be the best of friends. How can it be otherwise? Who else, besides me, possesses a mind like yours? What other
woman besides you approaches me in subtlety of thought and in sheer intellectual power?”

His modesty never failed to astound me, I wanted to retort—but I could hardly hear myself think over my pulse's throb. Heat rose from him like breath. When he grasped my waist and pulled me close to him, I thought I might burst into flame. A feral cry escaped my lips.

Abelard slipped his arms around me and murmured my name, a sound more delightful to my ear than angels' harps. I knew I should resist, but I had forgotten everything I had ever learned, forgotten even God and that he watched us, or, rather, I did not fear him. How could he be displeased, being the source of all love?

The rattle of the door latch caused us to fly apart. In the next moment Abelard sat in his chair, stylus in his hand, and I had turned to close the shutters of my window.

I had not yet smoothed my tunic or quelled the flush in my cheeks when the door swung open and my uncle walked into the room, a long switch of birch in his right hand. “I heard a cry.”

I averted my gaze from the switch and from his glittering eyes, praying he would not notice my crimson face.

“I had to discipline your niece, as you predicted,” Abelard lied. “We disagreed in our debate, and she called me a
bouffe
. Forgive me for losing my temper, friend.”

“My niece must learn to control her tongue.” Uncle glared at me. “I'm surprised you haven't needed to correct her before now.” Turning to Abelard, he added, “My niece can be most obstinate—obstinate! She must learn to submit to authority, or she will never succeed at Fontevraud. You will need to punish her again, I am certain. But the cane you use on your scholars is too harsh for a woman's tender flesh.” Uncle held the switch out to him.

“Thank you, Fulbert, my friend.” Will I ever forget the gleam in Abelard's eyes as he took the weapon in hand? “Heloise, be forewarned. Do as I say—
everything
I say, or you will feel my sting.”

He lifted the long, quivering branch and lashed it in my direction. I turned away; its tip grazed my backside, causing a brief, sharp flicker of pain. Heat flooded my face, and my bottom tingled where the switch had stung me. I looked down at my clasped hands, hiding my sudden elation. Never had I felt so vividly alive.

I should be groaning over the sins I have committed, but I can only sigh for what I have lost. Everything we did and also the times and places where we did it are stamped on my heart along with your image, so that I live through them all again with you.

—HELOISE TO ABELARD

T
he months that followed recur to me, now, as a blur of passion in which, as Abelard himself wrote,
more words of love than of reading passed between us, and more kissing than teaching
. I wonder if, in later years, he relived those nights as I did, nights we spent warming each other in every new way we could imagine. Did he blush to remember all the sweet and terrible things we did?

He opened my door without knocking as I worked one evening, then, undetected, moved across the floor to seize me from behind. He covered my mouth with one hand while slipping the other inside my chemise to cup my breast. It is a good thing that he thought to silence me, for without his quieting hand my moans might have alerted my slumbering uncle in the room beneath us, or Jean, who slept upstairs. My hips rocked as tension gathered like a storm between my thighs, making me whimper for release or for, at least, his touch in the moistly secret place that he did not, at first, approach.

Another time, he unbound my hair and wrapped it around his fingers, then pulled me backward into his lap. There he explored me with his hands and eyes while I lay in complete and blissful surrender. Even when he lowered his head to kiss the places he had touched, I never thought to resist him but instead luxuriated in the joining of skin to skin, of Abelard to Heloise. When we were together in this way, I felt truly one with him, my shooting star, nay, my fixed one.

One evening, he sat beside me and I opened my notes, a dutiful student although a negligent scholar who whiled my hours dreaming of my teacher. When he saw how little I had done, he commanded me to lie across the desk, on my stomach. My breath became gasps, then pants of desire, when I felt him lift my long skirts, rustling the cloth, exposing my bottom to the chill autumn air. Then followed a slow tease, the light dance of the switch's tail over my skin, causing me to grip my hands and grind my teeth; then a light flick, a snap to revive the anticipation of a sting, and then, at last, the whoosh of the switch through the air before it lashed my backside. My cries could be heard, I know, throughout the house, for Uncle's face held a sternly satisfied expression the next morning. Abelard punished me, and I endured the blows, for Uncle's sake only, so that he might not suspect the true nature of our activities—or so we told each other. Yet, on the first night we spent alone—for my uncle had gone with the bishop of Paris to a synod in Rome, taking Jean with him—Abelard eschewed the stinging birch for the bruising cane, and I submitted.

When he had ceased his chastening and tears poured from my eyes, I felt Abelard's lips and tongue tracing the welts he had made, and his hands caressing and kneading pleasure into the places that throbbed with pain. In this way I learned that the boundary between ecstasy and agony can shift in a moment, or
even disappear. I began to associate love with a sweet ache, and passion with the crack of my master's cane and the nip of his teeth.

At what time did his fingers alter their course from caressing the hurt places on my buttocks and legs to probing the area between them? So gradual was the shift that I barely perceived the difference, although the tapping of his fingertips against the door of my chastity did cause me to squirm from under his touch—at first. When he lowered his head to kiss me there, I had to bite my fist or scream in ecstasy. After all that pleasure, is it any wonder that I would want to reciprocate? He guided my hand to his
verpa
, whose terrible length and girth made me shudder with desire and fear.

What were our studies, in those days? What use were my books to me then, when love had offered herself to me in the form of Abelard? I had only a few months in which to learn love's arts, and from the most imaginative and skillful of teachers. Sitting beside me at the desk, he would ask me to read aloud from one of my letters, which had become more explicit and love-filled as our daring increased. As I read, he would untie my braids and loosen my tresses, which hung, then, to my knees, then begin the touching and teasing, which always led us to my bedroom. I remember the curling hair on his chest between my gripping fingers, the outline of every muscle in his back, his fragrance like linen, like ink, like the aniseeds with which he sweetened his breath.

How closely we ventured, in those days, to fornication—or, rather, to manifesting physically the full extent of our love for each other. His
bliaut
lifted and the proof of his virility pressing hard against my thighs, he begged me for permission to enter. I sensed that to say no was a sin, as it was a wholly selfish act. Yet I could not bring myself to take that final step, to plunge into that fire from which neither of us could emerge unscathed.

What need is there for more words? Aflame with the fire of desire for you, I want to love you forever.

—HELOISE TO ABELARD

I
t should have been Abelard whose breath quavered, he whose pulse fluttered, as we dismounted our horses and entered the royal palace. A minstrel would perform Abelard's songs that day before King Louis and Queen Adelaide and all their court; he, not I, would sup with them at the royal table. Yet, as the guards patted his clothes, searching for weapons, Abelard jested and laughed while I steadied myself with a hand at his elbow. My stomach felt unsettled, as though I had eaten something disagreeable, although I had not taken even one bite at dinner that day.

“I hear the king treats his guests very well, and his queen is said to be friendly,” my uncle had said while Abelard drank Pauline's brewet with his usual appetite. “But the courtiers can be vicious,
non
? Like vipers, I hear—vipers!”

How would they regard me, a girl from the convent with almost no knowledge of their world?
Only two things matter to those people: blood and money,
my uncle had said. How would I fare under their scrutiny?

“Speak to no one—no one!” Uncle advised. “They will sink their fangs into your innocent heart.” Abelard laughed: Uncle
sounded as though Abelard were escorting me to a snake pit rather than a royal feast.

“I have found everyone in the king's court to be delightful—with the exception of the monk Suger. He's become especially disagreeable since Bernard's visit, I've heard. Of course,” Abelard said, turning to me, “you will not even notice him in his monkish attire, not amid all the splendor. The courtiers will dazzle your eyes with their colors and gold, the ornaments about their necks, their rings on every finger. The Paris court is a garden of peacocks. And you, my girl, will be as a gazelle among them.”