The Sharp Hook of Love (29 page)

“Because you were too lazy for real work and too cowardly to fight. You cannot bear the sight of blood, especially your own. Admit it!”

“I admit to nothing except having an
asne
for a brother.”

“Stop!” I jumped to my feet, while Denise held my baby in her arms and kissed his cheeks as though he already belonged to her. “No one is going to bring up my baby except me,” I said, glaring at Abelard.

I turned and snatched Astralabe to myself. Cradling him as if to shield him from a storm, I ran with my wailing infant into my bedchamber, where I fastened the latch against Abelard, against greedy Denise, against all the world, if need be.

“Shhh, poor baby, do not cry,” I murmured. “Do not cry, and do not worry. No one will take you from me. Your mother would die before she would leave you.”

An hour later, when both my son and I had drifted off to sleep in my chair, Abelard's pounding on my door awakened me. Forgetting my anger for the moment, I arose with sleep befuddling
my brain and, after setting Astralabe into his cradle, opened the door.

“Ignore my brother's bad behavior.” Abelard pushed his way into the room. “He once was a kind and gentle man, but he has changed. I blame that Breton woman he took to wife. Doesn't
Breton
stem from the same word as
brute
?”

At another time, I might have laughed at the clever jest. Abelard laughed enough for the two of us, however, and hooked his arm around my waist to pull me close—but I refused him.

“Are you annoyed with me? Why?” He lifted his eyebrows innocently.

“Because you want to take my son from me.” I stepped over to the cradle and gazed down at his beautiful face.

“I want no such thing. I only asked for my brother's help should we need it. He said
non
, so we have nothing more to discuss. But I discovered why my sister has treated you as a leper. She fears Astralabe will take this estate from her own sons.”

“But you signed your inheritance over to Dagobert.”

Abelard shrugged. “My father wrote a provision into his will reserving inheritance rights for
my
son.” He sighed. “Of course, I never expected to have a child. Papa must have known something that I did not.”

My heart beat a little faster at the thought of living at le Pallet with Abelard and our child, far removed from rumors and scandal and far from my uncle. I imagined picnics on the grass, and singing and dancing together, the three of us, with chains of daisies in our hair as my mother used to string for me.

“To claim the estate, I must become a knight,” Abelard said, having guessed my thoughts. “I would be required to fight battles for the Duke of Brittany.”

I laughed at the notion of him with a sword—but his frown stopped me. “You are a scholar, not a fighter.” I did not add that he
would certainly be killed in his first battle—unless wits were the weapon. “Any man can flourish a blade, but your brilliant mind shall alter the world. Where can we go, instead? Paris is not safe for us.”

“That has changed. I am at my ease in Paris now, and you will be, as well.” His smile promised secrets.

“At ease? Have you told my uncle where I am living?”

“I have.”

“And yet he no longer desires to harm you?”

“He will do me no harm.” Abelard appeared so pleased with himself that I had to smile. “Sending you here was one of my more brilliant ideas. Fulbert did not dare lay a hand on me out of concern for you. He thinks that we Bretons are savages.”

“Aren't you?”

“Haven't you guessed the answer by now?” Then he attacked me most savagely and most deliciously. I thrilled to the low growls issuing from his throat, his hands rough on my body, his mouth ravishing my skin—but we had matters to discuss.

“So we cannot remain here,” I said, moving his hands from my overused breasts. “Your star did not rise in le Pallet, nor will it set here. But—where shall we go?”

“We return to Paris. My work awaits there, and my students.”

“But if I am there, and not here, what will prevent my uncle from avenging himself against you?”

“I have befriended him, that is what. Ha! Disbelief writes itself across your face.”

“My imagination has reached its limits, I admit. When last I saw the two of you together, my uncle brandished a knife.”

“I have given him what he wants.”

“What is that, pray tell?”

Abelard pulled me so close to him, I could feel the wings of his heart beating against my rib cage. “You and I are going to wed.”

I laughed at his jest. “Thusly you demonstrate that intelligence
is not the same as wisdom.” Abelard frowned as if confused, so I added, “You ought to know better, by now, than to make false promises to my uncle.”

“False promises?” He kissed me. “Let me remove those words from your lips for all time.” He kissed me again. “I intend to marry you as soon as we return to Paris.”

I extricated myself and walked to the window. In another life, I might swoon with pleasure to hear the man I loved begging for my hand, as I imagined the joys of children, shared meals, and my own household to command. Marriage would bring neither pleasure nor joy to Abelard and me, however, but the opposite: censure, scandal, and among his scholars, disillusionment.

“What are you doing there?” Abelard asked.

“I am searching for your good sense, since you seem to have lost it.”

“To marry you makes perfect sense to me.”

“And now, I think you must have misplaced your mind, as well.” I turned to him. “Had it not occurred to you that I might wish to be consulted in this?”

“Is that the reason for your anger? Please, come to me.” He held out his arms and I relented, letting him pull me back into the bed. “I am consulting you now, sweetness. Will you marry me?” His eyes gazed not with questions, however, but with answers—all of them in his favor.

“Non.”

He laughed and kissed my lips. “My darling contrarian. Have you forgotten that I read the Ovid before you? ‘We can't stand sweetness: bitterness renews our taste.' But he was not speaking of me, I assure you.”

“And I speak not from Ovid, but from the promptings of my own heart.”

“Have you lost your love for me, then?”

“Did you read my letters?”

“Every word is imprinted in my memory.”

“Then you know that I have pledged to love you eternally. I, for one, honor my promises.”

“If you love me, then you must marry me.”

“Because I love you, I cannot marry you. Abelard, you know that marriage would destroy you. A wife and children would diminish you in the world's eyes; you would never know glory.”

“But you are wrong. Not to marry you, the mother of my child, would destroy me.”

“If you do, the fruits of your labors will be lost—your reputation, your new book, perhaps even your position at the school. Not just your students, but all the world would be deprived of your brilliance.”

“I must compliment you for originality. Never have I heard of a woman's refusing a suitor with such high praise.”

“But I am not refusing you, my love.”

“Are you not? To my ears,
non
sounds very much like a refusal.”

“And have we not established that I will love you eternally? I am refusing marriage, not you.”

“And when we return to Paris? Where would you live?”

“Why can't I live as your mistress? Many canons keep concubines. Given your fame and the scholars you attract to the cloister, the Church might even accept the arrangement. You might rent a house for Astralabe and me and visit us often.”

He snorted. “Making you my mistress would placate Fulbert?”

“Not at first, no—but he would soon adjust.”

“Having pleaded with your uncle for my life—for both our lives—I must disagree. And lest you say that we need not consider his opinions, let me remind you that he has already threatened to remove my testicles.”

“Which he did not do, in spite of the knife in his hand.”

“But he will kill me if I do not marry you.” Abelard left the bed to pace the room and run worried fingers through his hair. “Everything is settled. Fulbert and I have reached an agreement. If I marry you, he will be appeased.”

“You reached an agreement without consulting me?”

“I never thought you would object.”

“In all the time you have known me, have you learned nothing of me? I prefer love to chains.”

“I thought you might prefer to save my life.”

“You overstate the danger. My uncle is not a murderer. And if we wed, you would lose your position at the school as soon as Galon heard the news.”

“He will hear nothing. You and I shall marry in secret, with only your uncle, Etienne, and Agnes as our witnesses. Fulbert has agreed.”

“A secret marriage? Now I know that you have lost your mind. Such an arrangement would never satisfy my uncle.” Would a secret marriage end the talk about Abelard and me? Certainly not—in fact, the whispers would increase once everyone knew of my child with eyes the color of dusk and an indentation in his chin as a finger makes when pressed into clay.

“Fulbert and I have discussed the matter over many flagons of wine. He was reluctant, at first, to accept a marriage made in private. He talked endlessly about honor and his family, especially your mother and the scandal she caused. He blames her for his difficulties.”

“Scandal? Mother kept me a secret all her days. Not even Robert of Arbrissel knew.” I told Abelard about my visit to the Fontevraud Abbey and the state in which I found Robert. “Petronille of Chemillé worked beside my mother every day for years, and she did not know of my existence. Any scandal accompanying my birth exists only in Uncle's imagination.”

I also told him of Petronille's revelation that, had my mother chosen to do so, she could have taken me with her to Fontevraud. Now that Robert had revealed the truth I understood why she had not. Everyone, including Robert, would have known who'd sired me: a streak of white had fallen over his left eye, too, before all his hair turned gray.

“When he extended his hands and called me ‘daughter,' I could scarcely believe my ears. At first, I thought he must have mistaken me for one of his nuns. But the expression on Petronille's face told me all: Robert of Arbrissel is my father.”

“Hermits and monks,” Abelard said, smirking. “They are all the same.”

I stiffened. His was the kind of remark my mother must have dreaded—and, surely, the reason she had relinquished me. “My mother loved Robert. She gave up everything, even her child, to protect him. She would not sacrifice his glory, not even for her own sake.”
We hope to make a saint of him,
Petronille had said to me again, escorting me to my horse at the abbey gate. Were our secret known, the Church would not even consider sainthood for Robert.

“When he dies she will petition for sainthood, but no one thinks it will succeed,” Abelard said.

I gasped. Did Robert yet live? He had appeared so close to the end when I had seen him last October.

“I thought you knew,” Abelard said. “But of course, you would not have heard the news here.” After my visit, Robert had recovered his health—a miracle, it was said, and I could not disagree—and appointed Petronille as his abbess “with much hesitation and eyes full of tears, causing many to say that he would never have chosen her were your mother alive.” He had returned to preaching for several months but now lay deathly ill again in the infirmary at Orsan, Fontevraud's priory in Berry.

I lowered my eyes, thinking of Robert's kindness to me, and the smile, filled with warmth, that had encompassed his face when he had recognized me as his own.

“Even had you never been born, the Church would not canonize Robert,” Abelard said.

“He has lived too much like Christ for the Church's liking.”

“Yes, and, like Christ, he is beloved of women.”

I remembered how Robert had called me to him, wanting to hold me in his arms. Had he lain with my mother in the convent? I had dared not ask Petronille, for fear she might say yes.

“Your uncle is convinced that scandal taints him, as well—and that your mother is to blame. He said that if our love becomes known, he will be ruined forever.”

“If Uncle Fulbert wants the reason for his failure, he need look no farther than the flagon in his hand.”

“But he will never admit to that.”

“
Non
. Admitting the truth even to himself would be too difficult. He must blame someone else for his downfall. My mother is dead, so now he points his finger at us.”

“Do you see now why we must wed? In Fulbert's eyes, marriage would sanctify us. Otherwise, we are sinners—and I have corrupted your soul. I swear, Heloise, he will kill me if I do not make you my wife.”

“He will not. Nor would I marry you, or anyone, at the point of a sword. To do so would mean a life of misery for you, me, and for our child. I would rather be your mistress—or even your whore.”