Stealing Heaven (10 page)

Heloise stared at her. "How many days?"

"Two. Almost two. After nones, day before last." She reached for the ale and drained it wearily. "I would have been here last night but I lost my way. Took the wrong turn near Saint-Lazare. Heloise—"

I'mlistening."

"You've got to help me." Her face was wrinkled with fear. "Please, no one but you can help me."

Heloise tapped her fingers impatiently against the table. "What happened?" She did not have to ask, but she wanted to hear it anyway.

"Lady Alais read me the letter. I'm not going home again. They want me to stay at Argenteuil."

What chilled Heloise was the girl's speech. Everything was said in the same toneless voice. "It—" The word stuck in her throat; she swallowed and gulped it down. "It won't work, you know."

"It must. I won't go back. Surely you can understand that."

"I understand. All I said was it won't work."

"It did for you."

Her face sagged. At last she said, "It was different for me, don't you see? I had someplace to go. People to look after me."

"Heloise!" cried Ceci. "I have you!"

Heloise pretended to pull a knot out of her hair. She could hear Petronilla slamming the bucket against the tiles. There was a stream of soft curses, then silence. Slowly she walked over to Ceci and pulled her head tightly against her hip. She cradled her and stooped down to brush her lips against the dark hair. Rocking back on her heels, she squatted down next to Ceci's stool. "Listen, sweeting, listen well. You think—I don't know what you think, but you're wrong. I can't make miracles."

Ceci was staring off blankly into a corner.

"I'm not the mistress of this house. Are you paying attention? Right now Agnes is upstairs airing the beds. There's a servant just down the hall. In less than an hour my uncle will walk through the front door. How is it possible to hide you? I can't even get you out of this kitchen without somebody noticing." When she glanced at Ceci, she saw that her face wore a queer, flat look, as if someone had applied a coat of paint.

Looking past Heloise, she pointed to a pan of anise cakes cooling on the table. "Can I have one of those?" she asked.

Heloise brought a cake in each hand. They did not speak for several minutes. Then Heloise sighed heavily and said, "All right."

Ceci followed her out the garden door and around the house, down to the Port Saint-Landry, where Heloise left her with a fisherman she knew slightly. She ran back to the house and seated herself next to the hearth. When Agnes came downstairs, she glanced around curiously. "Thought I heard you talking to someone."

"I was reading aloud."

At noon, Fulbert came home. Heloise picked at her duck; once the full enormity of Ceci's act had struck her, her stomach had shrunk to a knot.

In the afternoon, Agnes went out to buy dyes, and Petronilla curled up under the kitchen table and fell asleep. The moment Heloise heard Petronilla snoring, she hurried back to the quay and got Ceci. Quietly they climbed to the third floor, and Heloise opened the door to a room across the landing from hers. She had been in this room only once before. As a bedroom it had stood unused for years, but recently Agnes had begun regarding it as a storeroom for Fulbert's relics, the less important ones that needn't be locked in the cellar. Heloise dragged the dustcover off the feather bed. There was only one thin mattress, but still it was better than sleeping in the fields. She wanted to open the shutters and air the mattress, but she was afraid of attracting attention. The room was choked with dust.

"I'll try to get you more covers," she told Ceci. "But please, you've got to be quiet. Agnes sleeps on the second floor. If she hears noise up here, she'll think it's mice and be up in a second." She added lamely, "Agnes won't tolerate mice in the house."

Ceci nodded, her eyes brilliant with anxiety.

"There's plenty of food in the kitchen. Agnes will never miss it. You won't go hungry." She held her voice even and tried to smile reassuringly.

"What if Agnes comes in here?" Ceci said.

"She only comes to this floor to clean, and there's nothing to clean in here." She was not at all certain of that, but she wasn't going to tell Ceci. Agnes went wherever she pleased in the house—she regarded it as her own—and sooner or later she would open the door. Heloise didn't want to think about it right now. Trying to hide a person in a house where four people lived was impossible. Tomorrow she would decide what must he done about Ceci. If only she had someone to talk to, if only Jourdain were here.

The rest of the afternoon, she scurried cautiously about the house, bringing Ceci quilts, pillows, a chamber pot, clothing, and food. Whenever it appeared as though Agnes or Petronilla might be heading for the third floor, Heloise found an excuse to keep them downstairs. She even emptied her own chamber pot, which made Petronilla give her a quizzical look. In the days that followed, circumstances conspired to keep the house more empty than usual. It was Easter weekend, and Fulbert returned from the cathedral only to sleep. On Easter Eve, the candles in Notre Dame were extinguished and the great paschal candle lit during the all-night vigil. Heloise prayed fervently for a solution to Ceci's problem, but despite her night of prayer, she received no guidance. Perhaps God did not bother to answer because she, Heloise, was in a nervous frenzy. Ceci could not be left alone in that room forever, she would go mad.

The end of it came without warning. On the Tuesday after Easter, leaving mass, she rounded a column in the nave and bumped straight into Fulbert. They chatted a few minutes, and as Heloise turned away, he called her back.

"My fair niece," he said calmly, "who is that child sleeping in the room across from you?"

Her mouth dropped. To her amazement, she heard herself saying coolly, "A friend of mine, Uncle."

"That I took for granted. But which friend and where did she come from? I've not had the honor of an introduction."

Hot with shame, Heloise stared at the ground. "How long have you known?"

"Since Friday, when I went up there for St. Loup's molar. The young lady was asleep."

Heloise rubbed her nose with a fist. She did not look at him. "Forgive me, I'm sorry, Uncle," she said in a small voice. "I was going to tell you, but I didn't know how. Her name is Ceci and—"

"And?"

"—she has run away."

"From where?"

She sighed. "Argenteuil."

Fulbert looked more puzzled than angry. “I see," he murmured. They stood staring at each other. After a moment, he said, "Go home now. We shall speak about this later."

Outside, she raced alongside the Campus Rosaeus and down to the Port Saint-Landry, dreading to share the news with Ceci. Fulbert was not a cruel man—he was kind and wonderfully indulgent—and he would help Ceci if he could. At the same time, she realized that no matter how kind he might be, he was also a canon of the Church. Under no circumstance could he agree to harbor a convent runaway.

In fairness, she could not blame him.

 

Ceci did not leave immediately. There were a number of conversations, between Heloise and Fulbert and also between Ceci and Fulbert. In the end, Fulbert offered to write Lady Alais and see if anything could be done. Possibly Ceci's family were unaware of her reluctance to become a nun; once they fully understood the situation, perhaps they would take her home after all. After speaking privately with Ceci, Fulbert said that in his opinion she should not be forced to take the veil against her will: she had no vocation, that was certain. And Fulbert, as Heloise knew, had always been adamant about men or women taking monastic vows if they had no sense of vocation. He said that it disgraced the Church and caused all manner of evildoing.

Heloise wanted to believe that it would be all right. Hours she spent on her knees, at Notre Dame or in her room, begging God to see the justice of Ceci's case, and adding automatically, "Thy will be done." Fulbert, calm and affectionate as ever, did not discourage her hopes. Nor did he encourage them.

"These are hard times," he warned Heloise. "If her kin can't find money for a dower, what choice do they have?" He added, "She could do worse than Argenteuil. There are places like Odette de Pougy where the bellies of the nuns are always swollen."

Weeks passed. Letters slowly moved back and forth between Paris and Argenteuil, and between Argenteuil and Angers. Spring came at last. The chestnut trees in the cloister unfurled green banners, and the students, liberated from their lodging houses and taverns, roamed the He with uproarious good spirits and danced, fortissimo, around Maypoles.

On Ascension Day, Heloise woke to see musk roses budding in their garden. For some reason, the roses made her feel guilty; she had not opened a book since Ceci's arrival—that fact she could and did blame on the girl—but then, too, the good weather drove all thoughts of work from her head. For that she could not fault Ceci, and she castigated herself for being a pseudo-scholar. Her lethargy, the shadowy frustration she could not throw off, heightened when she looked ahead. Sister Madelaine had been right, she thought; her studies could be put to no use, now or ever. They must always exist solely for her own selfish pleasure, thus they would forever remain tinged with a certain element of absolute futility. She told herself that she was absurd, for she had everything a girl might want.

At first, Ceci had slept in Heloise's room. But Agnes, having scoured the house from turret to cellar in a fever of spring cleaning, unexpectedly turned her energies to the room across the landing. Fulbert's relics were carefully transported to a second-floor storeroom; buckets of whitewash were dragged up the staircase and the walls freshened to a whiteness that would have done justice to a Lady chapel. Mattresses were beaten and heaped on the bed frame, sheets were rinsed with saffron, and Agnes draped strawberry hangings around the bed. The room transformed, Ceci settled in. She was so happy that she could hardly keep still. Bouncing with both feet on the bed, she shouted, "How kind you are, Agnes! I love this bed, I love Paris, I love everybody!"

Agnes giggled. "You're nothing but a weanling," she said, smiling fondly.

"When I go home, can I take the bed with me?"

Agnes's smile faded. "God's toenails, how could you be carrying a bed to Angers? On your back?" She lifted Ceci off the bed and unfolded a linen sheet. "Off with you now. I have work to do."

"Heloise," said Ceci, tilting her head to one side, "what shall we do today? Quick, think of something wonderful."

"We could—"

"Let's go to a tournament. Oh, Heloise, I've never seen any real knights!"

"There are no tournaments now. Why not a picnic instead? We could take our dinner and eat along the river."

"Just like pilgrims!" Ceci squealed. "Please, Agnes, can we?"

Heloise broke in. "You won't have to prepare a thing, Agnes. We'll do everything ourselves."

Agnes smiled indulgently. "Very well. But don't leave the kitchen a mess."

They ransacked the pantry for tempting morsels and packed them in a basket: a whole roast chicken, salted herring, ham pasties, gobs of dripping Brie, a long loaf of white bread, a skin of raspberry wine, cups, knives, a rough blue and white cloth with napkins to match.

At the last minute, Heloise tucked in two
gaufres
from a batch Agnes had baked earlier in the morning.

Petronilla watched their preparations with a sour expression. "Can I come along?" she asked.

"No!" Heloise and Ceci cried in unison, and then Heloise added, "Not today—some other time."

"I saw you take those waffles," muttered Petronilla. "Those are for dinner. I'm going to tell Agnes."

"Tell her," said Heloise brightly, "but you still can't come."

"You've taken the last loaf of bread."

"I'll buy more." She went into the hall and shouted up the staircase, "Agnes! There's no more bread. I'll buy some on my way home."

It was glorious out of doors. They took the river road around the southern rim of the island, down along the towpath, and the sun glimmering through the willow branches dappled patterns of lace in the water. Coming to the Street Before the King's Palace, they gawked at the high stone wall separating the Cite Palace from the rest of the island, and, near a gate, they watched fishmongers selling herrings and mackerels.

"Now," said Heloise, 'look carefully. We must find the perfect place for our picnic." After a great deal of debate, they settled in a grassy glade under a willow tree, a spot that looked much the same as any other. Spreading the cloth, they began to lift the food from the basket and positioned the items artistically on the cloth.

Ceci said, "I've never been on a picnic before."

"Nor I." Without bowing her head to pray, Heloise hungrily bit into a ham pasty.

"Do you suppose Lady Alais knows about picnics?" Ceci broke off a chunk of bread and layered it thickly with Brie. Pulling up her skirt over her knees, she lay back and stretched her legs out in the grass. "Wouldn't she die if she could see us now?" The image sent her into a paroxysm of giggles until she began to choke on the bread.

Heloise rolled over onto her stomach and buried her face in a patch of moss. During the last year, she had given little thought to Lady Alais and the others; to be truthful, she had not thought about Argenteuil other than fleetingly until Ceci had appeared at the garden door. And even then her mind had been on Ceci's troubles, rather than on the convent itself. Her memories of it had silted in some remote comer of her mind, memories that she could consider with indifference. Argenteuil had been a way station, an antechamber to her real life, that was all. "How's Madelaine?" she asked.

"Yellow."

"Oh, Ceci."

"Her face. It's turning yellow."

"Is she sick, then?"

Ceci shrugged. "I think so."

Heloise turned toward the girl, sighing slightly. "She's getting old." But Madelaine had always seemed old to her.

"They are all old there," said Ceci, bitterly. "Even the young ones." Awkwardly, she poured wine into a wooden cup, spilling it on the cloth. She passed the cup to Heloise.