The Sharp Hook of Love (31 page)

“Fulbert misunderstood me,” Abelard said. “I never blamed you for anything, but invoked Eve to deflect his ire.”

“Deflecting it onto me.”

“Not onto you, no, but your sex.” He struck his breast with his fists. “ ‘From the origins of the human race, beautiful women have ever brought the noblest of men to ruin.' Clever,
non
?” He caressed my cheek, then moved his fingers to the soft skin under my ear. Pleasure rippled my blood. “And you
are
beautiful, Heloise—more so than ever now that motherhood has softened you.”

My features may have softened; not so my powers of insight. “You have regained my uncle's trust at my expense. He regards me as a
meretrix
.”

“My
meretrix
.” Something flared in Abelard's eyes. “And if you want to be paid, you wicked woman, you must lie still.”

He touched his lips to the nape of my throat, sending shivers
over my skin. He leaned into me, nudging me backward onto the pillows, cupping one of my breasts and rubbing his thumb across the nipple until I began to squirm. He unlaced my surcotte, slipped it off my shoulders and over my arms, then lifted my
bliaut
over my head. Melting under his attentions, I forgot about my uncle, about my yearning for our child, about my past, present, or future and all else save for the two of us, as alone together as though we were the first woman and the first man and no others existed. In all the world, only we remained: his serpent, and my fruit.

Now at last I understand, sweetest, that you are mine with all your heart and all your soul.

—ABELARD TO HELOISE

THE NÔTRE-DAME CLOISTER, PARIS

FEBRUARY 1117

I
urged my palfrey over the pocked and rutted road to the Hautes-Bruyères Priory. Nearing death, Queen Bertrade had sent for me.

“She wants to see you at once.” At my uncle's front door, Agnes had shimmered with excitement for my sake or to see her precious Amaury again, or both. The plain woolen
bliaut
she wore under her surcotte told me that she had not even taken the time to change her clothes. I sent Jean with a message to my uncle, pulled on a cotte, hat, and riding boots, and departed with her and her servant on the horse they had brought for me.

As we rode, my thoughts scattered like the stones under the horses' hooves. What if the queen should die before I reached her?
Please, God, do not take her yet.
No one else except my mother's dearest friend could answer the questions plaguing me yet about my past.

Amaury greeted us, red eyed, at the door of the infirmary.

“You have arrived in good time. My sister is nearly gone,” he said in a choking voice, and escorted us into Queen Bertrade's private chambers, where nuns and nobles stood around her bed, waiting like guests at death's dinner table.

“Thanks be to God,” the queen said when she saw me. “Amaury, please take this morbid audience with you when you go. They are robbing me of air.” Amaury ushered everyone out, including the healer, who sputtered and protested that he must remain near his lady until the priest could arrive.

“Fool. Does he think I would die before receiving the viaticum? I intend to join my husband in Paradise.” She smiled at Agnes and me. “Behold your expressions of gloom! Do not mourn, please. I'll be in Philip's arms again before sunset. Now—give me another pillow so I can see you.”

“But—you must not overextend yourself,” I said.

“Lest I die?” She snorted. “I have saved my strength for your visit. After this final task, I will gladly go—depriving the leeches, I hope, of any more of my blood.”

We propped her with a pillow; Agnes took up a comb from a table by her bed and ran it through her hair. I willed myself not to stare at her as the others in the room had done. Although her black eyes' fire had dimmed to a smolder, her beauty had not. Her long chestnut hair flowed like a river of silk over her shoulders and across her lap. Her skin stretched taut over her cheekbones and jaw, giving her the appearance of a sculpture. She was so pale and had lost so much weight that I thought she might fade away while I watched. Her intelligence had not diminished, however.

“I thought you would have taken charge of the Fontevraud Abbey by now,” she said, a sly gleam in her eyes.

“I did not go there, my lady. Or—rather—I did, but only to tell Robert that I had changed my mind.”

“You've changed your mind? Or did God change it for you?”
She grimaced. “Amaury told me about your ‘secret' marriage. It won't remain a secret for long in Paris.”

“We had only a few witnesses, and all of them vowed never to tell. But we will not need to seal our lips for long. Abelard's new book will propel him to glory, and then he may do as he pleases.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Indeed? And what of the child?”

I caught my breath and glanced at Agnes, who blushed. “I did not tell her! I confided in Amaury, but no one else.”

“My brother tells me
everything
,” the queen said, giving Agnes a shrewd look.

I told the queen of leaving Astralabe in Brittany, and of Abelard's promise to take me to him soon. We planned to fetch him as soon as Abelard's songs about me had faded from the streets and rumors about us had ceased to wag tongues.

“Your Abelard craves attention too much to be forgotten.” She closed her eyes. “You will never bring that child home.”

“No, my lady, he has promised—”

“And so you follow your mother's path.” She sighed. “One cannot escape destiny, after all.”

I stared at her, speechless. Of course we would retrieve our son. If I had to do it myself, I would not hesitate. I had journeyed to Brittany before without Abelard and could do so again.

“And did you find your father?” Her eyes opened.

“I did.” At last, we touched on the topic I had come to discuss with her. “He recognized me at Fontevraud.”

Queen Bertrade's nostrils flared. “And did he tell you all?”

“He was delirious with fever, my lady. He could not tell me anything, and Petronille would not.”

“Because she doesn't know anything.
Hmph
. I am the only one who knows.”

Queen Bertrade first met Robert long before my mother did, she told me, while living with her husband, the womanizing
Count Foulques of Anjou. When Robert arrived in the court, she cast her eye on his
fier
form, tall and lean and dark, the streak of white emblazoned like the mark of God in his dark hair, and his gray eyes filled with light. Bertrade determined to have him for herself. When Robert, in her presence, chastised Count Foulques for repudiating his past wives and children to marry again and again—Bertrade was his fourth wife—she fell even more completely under Robert's spell. “No man had ever treated me with such respect,” she said. In return, Bertrade gave him an apartment in which to live while he pursued his studies in divinity at the Angiers school.

But the handsome priest seemed immune to the charms not only of the beautiful Bertrade but of all the other women who adored him—as many did. They brought him food, cleaned his apartment—he had refused the servants Bertrade offered—and even emptied his chamber pot. In return, they basked in his love, which seemed limitless and pure. None suspected that, under his alb, Robert wore an iron tunic whose sharp blades pierced his skin whenever he moved. When he met my mother, however, he put the iron tunic away so that he would not harm her when he held her in his arms.

“Women were his weakness, and your mother his greatest temptation,” Bertrade said. Mother's virtue and piety only made her more attractive to him; her intellect made her irresistible. She felt no compunction about loving him, whom God had sent to relieve her loneliness. She saw no reason why priests should not marry; had God desired men to live without women, why had he created Eve?

My mother and father's conversation began in the Angiers court at dinner with Foulques and Bertrade, and continued throughout the day and into the night while courtly life went on all around them: the servants' clearing the tables; the petitioners'
filling the hall to await an audience with the count; the sweeping of the rushes and the replacing of them with fresh ones; the lighting of the candles and the replenishing of wood in the fireplace. Through it all my mother and Robert talked earnestly, discussing, debating, laughing, and developing a bond that would deepen throughout their lives.

No love is perfect, however. When their friendship turned to passion, guilt plagued Robert. He who had spent years in Brittany demanding that clergymen set aside their wives now lived in greater sin than those priests.

“He would have married Hersende but for the wife and children he had renounced,” the queen said. His sins, adultery as well as fornication, made him weep many times in my mother's arms. Then, hearing whispers about Mother, he realized that he caused her to sin, as well, and put on his iron tunic again.

“That's when she knew he would leave her,” Bertrade said.

Unable to bear the burden on his conscience, Robert fled Angiers in the dark of night without even saying good-bye. Mother wept for months and would have followed him, but no one knew where he had gone. He wandered, a hermit in bare, bleeding feet, in the forests at Craon, lost to her for years.

Near my seventh birthday Mother went to hear Robert preach, and he asked her to build his new abbey. She would not have agreed but for my uncle, who had come to rescue us from poverty with an offer of marriage from a count. When Mother refused, my uncle's anger rose. When I walked into the
salle
, she introduced us and he began to shout. From where had this child come? Who had fathered it? Now he understood why she refused to marry. What man of noble birth would want a whore as his wife?

Soon my uncle had arranged a place for me in the Royal Abbey at Argenteuil, to prevent my being known, he said, but also for my
benefit. Argenteuil had housed many great ladies of France and boasted the finest teachers in the world. I would depart from the abbey with the best possible education, he told her.

“The girl cannot live here in secret for the rest of her life,” he said. “She will be discovered, and the whole world will know—the world!” If my mother wished to keep me with her, she must produce my father, whom Fulbert and her other brothers would force to recognize me.

“Or you can marry the count and beg him to adopt her.” Uncle leered. “Employ your womanly talents.”

Deprived of me and forced into betrothal to a man she did not know, Mother fled to Robert's side. She worked closely with him for years, devising plans for his abbey and executing them, commanding men. But she never told Robert about me, fearing that guilt would pierce his heart and that he would flee from her again.

“What good would come of his knowing, anyway?” Bertrade said. “He could not claim you; nor, with that white streak in your hair, could Hersende take you along to Fontevraud. Everyone would know that Robert had sinned with her, and, worse, Robert would be reminded every time he beheld you.” She snorted. “God knows what punishments he might have inflicted on himself.”