Stealing Heaven (8 page)

Heloise grinned at her. "You mean, Uncle wants me to meet normal girls who don't pester their elders about school."

"I didn't say that," Agnes answered lamely. "But you can't study all the time, sweet. It won't hurt to have fun once in a while."

Fulbert had Agnes make her two spectacular gowns, and he personally escorted Heloise to a furrier on the Rue de la Draperie, where he picked out a new cloak, raspberry velvet lined with marten. If there were ulterior motives behind this largess, for the cloak was extremely dear, his machinations met with overwhelming success. Obliging, for a time at least, Heloise dropped the subject of school. She had a curious feeling that something special, even important, lay in wait for her, and in this premonition she was right. At Saint-Gervais she met Jourdain for the first time.

 

The domain of Saint-Gervais lay on the fringe of the forest, an hour's ride west of Melun. The snow in the streets of the town had been whipped into beds of slush, but among the open hills, isolated and still, the woods were mantled with an unwrinkled layer of white powder. The sky hung heavy with snow falling steadily in a thin curtain, and crows flapped their wings above the frozen branches. Every few yards, Heloise flexed her mittened fingers, but the stiffness remained. When Fulbert offered her a handful of walnuts, she shook her head.

"How much farther?"

"Not much. Over the rise."

Twenty years earlier, when her grandfather, Rainard the Bald, had been castellan here, the place had glowed with an air of well-tended prosperity. But that had been before the great crusade, and now the accumulated wealth of generations lay strewn from the plains of Hungary to Jerusalem. It was not merely the horses, the fine leather saddles and costly armor that had rotted in the infidel soil, but the men of Saint-Gervais as well: old Rainard himself, who died of fever outside the walls of Antioch; his heir, Garnier the Young, and his wild-headed second son, William, both of whom had perished in the first assault on Jerusalem. True, those who had taken the cross were martyrs now and sat on God's left hand in paradise, but the living at the castle of Saint-Gervais were vouchsafed no such protection, and gradually most of the fiefs southerly tracts had been mortgaged to the usurers of Melun. In the year of Our Lord 1115, the palisade had fallen into disrepair, and the keep could have used a coat of whitewash.

Over a creaky bridge spanning a snow-filled moat, they slowed to a walk and racketed into the ward. Everyone was waiting—the lord of Saint-Gervais, Lady Anne and Lady Marie, a half dozen cousins, knights and squires in service at the castle, varlets and servingwomen who had left their smithies and kitchens, all of them babbling at once. Heloise dismounted into a cluster of pages and grooms and barking dogs. The yard smelled powerfully of manure. A girl with flaxen braids made a dive for her hand. "Fair, cousin . . ." Heloise heard her stutter, but the rest was lost in the thrum of voices.

Upstairs in the dark, smoky hall, formal introductions were made and acknowledged. Uncomfortable under the stares, Heloise glanced about uncertainly and tried to match faces with names, but they kept metamorphosing into smiling blobs. Everything about the castle confused her. After the peaceful house on the Rue des Chantres, where even the noise was noiseless, the castle presented a mosaic of barely controlled bedlam. Dozens of people milled around aimlessly; on the straw-covered floor, dogs and quarrelsome children yipped in shrieky voices, and in the flagstone fireplace whole sheep were roasting on the spit. Lady Anne, watery-eyed and looking constantly befuddled, gasped a torrent of orders to the squires.

Thibaut led Fulbert to a high-backed armchair near the hearth and seated him under the shield of Saint-Gervais. "Permit me to attend you, fair brother," he said. "You must be tired."

"Thank you, brother." Fulbert leaned back regally and stretched his legs.

This Thibaut, called the Lecher, was the fourth son of Rainard the Bald. He had inherited the fief quite accidentally after the deaths of his two eldest brothers in the Holy Land, while Fulbert, only ten months older, had been promised to the Church at birth. Heloise disliked Thibaut on sight. He was a largish man, bull-necked, with a faded yellow beard. There was something very nearly clownish about him, a slight slurring of his words, a fey expression around the eyes that did not match his protruding belly and massive thighs.

"Come over here, girl," he called to Heloise. "Let me look at you."

She drew nearer, smiling, trying to think of what Agnes had told her. Three wives, the first repudiated, the second dying under mysterious circumstances. Each wife had borne a son, and Thibaut had chauvinistically christened them after the kings of France—Philip, Hugh, Louis. Agnes had intimated that Thibaut was famous for treating his women badly, and judging from the remote look on Lady Anne's face, Heloise could imagine this might be true. "Sire," she said, bobbing a half curtsy.

Openly he studied her up and down, as if he were buying a brood mare. "So this is Hersinde's get," he rumbled to Fulbert. "Nothing of our kin here. God's bones, brother, she must take after Guy-Geoffrey." He went on talking about Heloise as if she were not there, addressing his remarks to Fulbert, who nodded now and again and murmured "Ummm."

Heloise said nothing. She admitted to no one, and sometimes not even to herself, that she could not remember her mother. From small things Agnes had told her, she had fashioned a portrait of a dainty blond woman, all pink and white like some angel in a stained-glass window. Her father had died shortly after she was born. He meant nothing to her; for him she had not even bothered to construct a face. Still, she disliked the unpleasant inflection in Thibaut's voice when he mentioned her father. Agnes had warned her not to expect them to have a good word for Guy-Geoffrey of Rousillon, but when Heloise pressed for a reason, Agnes had only shrugged. "He was from Poitou," she finally said, as if that explained everything.

Thibaut was spraying spittle in all directions. "God, she's a tall one!" he roared. "You'll have plenty of trouble finding a stallion for this mare."

Fulbert smiled sourly. "I suppose."

A squire scudded up behind them balancing a tray of cups and a pitcher of wine.

"A good breeder, surely," drawled Thibaut. "Strong."

Fulbert yawned. "Obviously." He rapped his fingers with ill-concealed impatience on the arm of the chair.

Finally, a woman with a blight of pockmarks across her scraggy cheeks came and hustled Heloise away. "My poor niece," Lady Marie muttered. "Pay no attention. The old bastard's been drinking since cockcrow." Heloise followed her aunt up a ladder to the solar; the women's quarters, partitioned from the rest of the upper chamber by hanging tapestries, was a congeries of pallets and feather beds. It was hot and airless, and reeked of rose water and sickly-sweet lotions. On the biggest of the beds flopped a half dozen chattering girls, giggling and eyeing Heloise with undisguised curiosity. The girl with the flax-blond hair who had greeted Heloise in the ward pushed one of them with a volley of kicks. "Move, Claude, make room for our cousin Heloise. Cousin, come sit here. There's plenty of room." Her face was flushed with excitement.

Heloise sat down gingerly, careful not to disturb a young woman who was giving the breast to a big boy of two or three.

"Mama," cried the blond girl, "can Heloise sleep with me? Please, Mama, say yes."

Lady Marie appeared not to have heard. "You favor your father," she said to Heloise. The fixed smile on her face was more of a grimace; she looked as though she had swallowed something bitter.

"That's what they say," Heloise replied, trying not to stare at her aunt's face. The craters made her cheeks look like a plowed field. Once she might have been pretty, like her daughter, but it was impossible to tell now.

After a moment, Lady Marie said mechanically, "Well then. Alis will look after you."

 

For all its seeming gaiety, its seeming country normality, there were things about Saint-Gervais that puzzled Heloise. That evening, which was Christmas Eve, everyone in the castle rode over the hill to the village of Saint-Gervais, where they heard mass in the church. Afterward, while they were braiding their hair for the night, Heloise noticed a girl huddled on a pallet in the corner. With her petaled black eyes and tousled hair, she looked remarkably like a doll that had been hugged shapeless. When Heloise smiled at her, she stared back, and then it became evident that the child had a humor: her face shone with a waxy pallor and smudgy violet shadows ringed her eyes.

"Greetings, friend," called Heloise, who was feeling merry from the wine and the mass.
"Joyeux Noel!"

But there was no answer from the dark damsel, not even a glint of expression in the eyes.

Taken aback, Heloise nudged Alis. "What's wrong with her?" she whispered, motioning to the corner. "Is she deaf and dumb?"

Alis barely glanced around. "Oh. Don't bother with her. She doesn't speak the
langue d'oil."
She was pulling off her shift. Her body glowed pink and soft-fleshed as a ripe peach. "She's from Castile."

"Really? What a long way from home."

Alis threw her a look of surprise. "Why, this is her home. She belongs to Thibaut. He bought her from a caravan of traders, a year ago Allhallows it must have been."

In silence, Heloise crawled under the coverlet while trying to digest and assess this news. She had never heard of a Christian buying another human being. Only the paynim kept slaves, and they lived on the other side of the world. Entranced, she propped herself against a pillow and stared at the girl. "I've not seen her downstairs," she said to Alis finally.

"Uncle forbids it. She's not to leave this chamber until you and Fulbert have returned to Paris." Alis crawled under the furs and huddled close to Heloise.

"Why?"

"She's breeding, didn't you notice? Six months or more." Alis laughed harshly. "Well, I guess she can't help it. She's only a whore."

Heloise shivered. The Spanish damsel appeared to be about ten years of age, although obviously her true age must be older. Still, she looked like a child. Heloise studied the girl's smoky eyes and the delicate curve of her heart-shaped face, and as she stared, she tried to understand what it all meant. Just as she was on the point of comprehension, the thought splintered and slithered aimlessly into a gaping void.

A servingwoman blew out the candle. In the darkness, Heloise twitched restlessly, her body bundled tightly between Alis and a second cousin. Their hospitality was all very fine, but she was accustomed to sleeping alone and felt miserably cramped. She wished that she were home again.

Alis stroked her hair. 'Tell me something, cousin—how do you know when a man is in love with you? Oh, I wish somebody would fall in love with me, some handsome knight who plays the lute. But really I'll take anybody, so long as he's young. He wouldn't have to play anything." Breathing into Heloise's ear, her voice turned soft and tearful.

Heloise, uninterested, said placidly, "It should be perfectly easy for you to marry. You're very pretty."

"You don't know what you're saying!" wheezed Alis. "Thibaut—"

An exasperated voice interrupted. "Shut up, Alis. You'll keep us up all night."

"Shut up yourself." In ragged hisses, she whispered very fast into Heloise's ear. "If my sainted father hadn't been killed in the Holy Land, he would be lord of Saint-Gervais. And my lady mother would be mistress and we'd all have fine dowries."

"But surely Uncle owes you dowries—"

"Oh cousin, Thibaut is a pig. Didn't he marry Mabile to a man with one eye? And doesn't he keep threatening to send Claude to the convent of Sainte-Catherine?" She began to snuffle noisily. "I'm nearly eighteen, Heloise. Are you listening? Eighteen. God, I'm old! Nobody will ever take me without a dowry. I'll rot here, that's all!"

Heloise remembered seeing the one-eyed man in the hall. He had a
gravy-stained tunic and caved-in cheeks and, when he laughed, his mouth showed practically toothless. She thought Mabile's husband repulsive. Shrouded in loneliness, she stared into the bubbling darkness a long time before she slept.

 

 

 

4

 

 

Two days after Christmas
, Thibaut organized a hunt and took the men off to chase foxes in Saint-Gervais forest. Heloise was not sorry to see them go, especially Thibaut, who had pinched her bottom on the way to chapel the previous evening. Already she was counting the days until her departure; she suffered from constipation and dull pains in the head. By now, it seemed clear that she had nothing in common with her cousins. Thibaut's three boys, sly-looking youths with fleshy faces, had spoken no more than a few words to her. The eldest, Philip, wore a permanent sneer at the corners of his mouth. Mabile had troubles of her own with two infants and a third on the way, and her conversation was limited to complaints of sore breasts and pains in her lower back.

Alis and Claude and the rest of them gibbered constantly about clothes and boys. Heloise had been shocked to leam that Alis could write no more than her name and that she had never been taught to read. None of them at Saint-Gervais knew, and would not have cared had they known, about Heloise's studies. They only knew that Fulbert had brought her home from Argenteuil to be married, and nearly everything they said to Heloise centered on this one subject.

The morning, like all previous ones, dragged by sluggishly in a tiresome round of embroidery and gossip, most of which concerned persons that Heloise did not know. The laborious idleness, as well as the tattoo barking of the castle dogs, made her head throb, but she purposely said nothing.

At noon, she was relieved when Alis suggested they take a few of the squires and go to play in the meadow. The day was bright; glazed snow glistened in the fields. Over the top of the forest hung a few ragged clouds, clouds that for some reason made her think of the sunsets over the Ile. She felt sick with the memory.

Alis insisted that they must build a castle of love. When it was finished, they could all climb into it and pretend the squires were knights trying to rescue them. For most of the afternoon, they worked in a frenzy, but when they'd completed the snow castle, there was room for only one person to crawl inside. Heloise scrambled to the top and looked out. Two horsemen were approaching the drawbridge, and she could hear them hailing the gatekeeper.