The Sharp Hook of Love (38 page)

“Etienne!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. “Etienne, it is I, Heloise! Etienne! Let me in, please!” He heard not a word over the shouts coming from the crowd, but continued to pull the window shut.

“Heloise!” a man shouted. “It is Heloise, his lover!”

“Heloise of his heart,” another cried, referring to Abelard's song. “Let her pass!”

“Abelard's seductress,” called a man's gruff voice. “Canon Fulbert's niece.”

“Her uncle's man did the deed. Heloise is to blame for this crime!” Angry faces turned my way. Someone—my assailant, perhaps—snatched at my chemise, tearing the sleeve. I screamed again, shouting Etienne's name with all my might.

Alerted by the commotion, Etienne paused, looked over the crowd, and spied me at last. “Release her!” his voice boomed over the melee, drawing everyone's attention. He glared at the youth who, laughing, yet clasped me to him. In an instant, all hands fell away and I was free—but surrounded, now, by dark and murderous faces, the scowls of people who, loving Abelard, blamed me for his injury.

“Heloise, come to the gate,” Etienne called. “All of you—clear a path! Allow her to pass unmolested. I am watching and can see everything from here. If any of you lays even a finger on her person, I will have you arrested on the spot. Come, Heloise! Pierre needs you now.”

Slowly the crowd parted and I made my way to the gate, keeping my head down, not wanting to see the angry looks that I knew would assail me. Reputation is the first of all things to abandon the unfortunate.

“Daughter of Eve,” a man snarled as I passed. I kept my eyes upon my feet lest anyone see my blush. Just as the first woman had brought about the downfall of the first man, so had I caused Abelard's ruin. These people blamed me for what had happened to Abelard, and they were not entirely wrong to do so. My face burned as I remembered the letter I had written complaining that Abelard had abandoned me and begging Uncle for rescue.

“Meretrix,”
I heard someone mutter as I passed. How, in that moment, could I disagree? Now I must pay the price for my error, no matter how high. If the rumors about Abelard's injury proved true, nothing I might do would atone for what I had already done.

Yet, amid the anger and insults, I also found compassion in the crowd.

“The poor girl,” I heard a woman say, “behold her trembling. She loves him.”

And, also: “Why would her uncle do such a thing? Did he want her for himself?”

My hand reached for the gate latch, but it opened before me. I lifted my eyes to see, not Ralph, but a gray-haired servant whose kind expression made me lower my gaze again, unable to bear his mercy.

“My lady.” The familiar voice drew my attention as I was about to step through the gate, and I looked around to see Pauline, her large eyes luminous and moist. She gripped my hand, causing me to wince in pain.

“Pauline! Why have you come?”

“I am looking for Jean.” A tear slipped down her face. “Have you seen him? No one can tell me where he is.”

The servant rattled the gate. “Young lady, will you enter?”

“I must go,” I said to her. I placed my hand on her arm. “Pauline, Jean has been arrested and is with the bishop in the Saint-Denis-du-Pas Chapel.”

“With the bishop!” She squeezed my hand more tightly. “What will they do to him? Please, you must help us.”

“After what he has done?” I shook my head.

“For our son.” I stared at her, uncomprehending, and she added, “Jean-Paul is missing. I cannot find him anywhere.”

“Please, miss,” the servant said. “Make haste, or the mob will try to come in.”

I tugged at Pauline's hand, pulling her through the gate with me. I would talk with her after I had seen Abelard.

The servant led us into the house, where Etienne greeted me with a kiss. “I did not realize that you had come,” he said. “I sent a servant to Argenteuil for you.”

“Jean brought me home. Where is Abelard?”

“Jean?” Etienne scowled. “So that is why my men did not capture him. Where is he now?”

“He is in the bishop's custody. Where is Abelard?”

“Fortunate fellow, that Jean—he will get a trial.” Some of Abelard's scholars, Etienne said, had captured the men who had assisted Jean—Etienne's own servants, including the sneering Ralph—and blinded and gelded them in the street.

“They would have done worse to that traitor Jean. God damn him!” Etienne said, surprising me with his vehemence. He made a fist. “Had those boys captured him, I would have wielded the knife myself, and with pleasure.”

I could not help staring. Was this truly Etienne, my kind friend? Hearing him, Pauline uttered a cry, drawing his attention. I introduced her, then asked again where I might find Abelard. He rested in Etienne's own bedchambers, he said, next to the hearth. “The physician said we must keep him warm. He shivered for hours after the attack.”

I hastened into the room, trembling all over myself, wanting only to comfort Abelard.
Dear God, forgive me for betraying him.
As soon as I entered the room, however, he turned his back to me, and his face to the wall.

“Abelard,” I said, sitting next to him, “I came as quickly as I could.”

He curled around himself, drawing his knees up as if to protect himself from further harm.

“Light of my life, how do you fare?” I touched his shoulder, longing to see his face, to pour my love into his eyes and perhaps assuage his pain, which, unbeknownst to him, I had caused. “Abelard!” My voice rose. “Can you hear me? Dear God, have you lost your hearing, as well?”

“As well as what?” he snapped. His bitter tone made me recoil. Did he suspect my treachery? I wanted to throw myself at his feet
and beg his forgiveness, but was loath to tell him anything that he did not already know.

“Are you in pain, sweetest?”

“In body or in spirit?”

“Either, my love. But—why speak so harshly to me? I have come to comfort you.”

“Can the cause of my misery bring me ease?”

“My uncle, Abelard. Not I.” My mouth felt so dry that I could barely speak the words.

“ ‘The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.' ”

“I gave you my love, Abelard. I give it to you still.”

“My position at the school. My reputation, my vitality, my manhood—gone! My life is ended.” He pressed his hands to himself and curled even more tightly as he succumbed to sobs.

“Your life is not over, my soul, but only just beginning. Soon we shall bring Astralabe home. As soon as you are healed, we may collect him at le Pallet as we planned and live all together in our house.”

“Live together?” He gave a harsh laugh that tore at the edges of my soul. “You, our son, and his eunuch father?”

“Abelard, I do not care about that. I love you for yourself.”

“I am not myself. I am not even a man.”

“Do not say that.” How I longed to lie down beside him and wrap my arms around him, to offer him comfort and consolation. When I touched him, however, he pushed my hand away. “You are one of the world's great men. No one can take that away from you.”

Then, with a sudden movement, he flung the bedcovers from his body and turned to me at last. “Behold your husband,” he said. “Mutilated. Unmanned.”

I forced myself to gaze upon the wound, which, save for a small line of stitches where his testes had been, appeared less a
wound than a lack. Jean had performed his task so cleanly that Abelard did not even need a bandage. Yet, the sight of him so diminished, and the contortion of rage and shame on his face, would haunt my nights and days for a long time. He was as altered as I had heard, and I was to blame.

“Behold your uncle's handiwork.” I looked only into his eyes now and smoothed the hair from his sweating brow. “In stealing my manhood, Fulbert has robbed us of a life together. We are finished.”

“Finished, my love?” I smiled. “How can that be? We love each other. And we have a child, or had you forgotten?”

“My brother and sister have our child, and thank God for that.”

“A child who needs his parents.”

“Parents mocked and scorned by all the world? Dagobert, at least, will protect our son from this shame.”

“Who would mock you, the most brilliant man in all the world?” Even as I said the words, I thought of the scholars outside Etienne's house who had sniggered over Abelard's loss.
Your lover has nothing for you now.
Even Suger had seemed amused, his mouth lingering over the word
gelded
as though it were a piece of sweet fruit. Yet I could not agree that our son should live in Brittany, far from me, deprived of my love and his father's because of a scandal that would surely diminish with time.

“From this day forward, none shall remember my writings, or the arguments I won.” He turned his back to me again. “I shall be known as Abelard the eunuch, the
castrato
. And nothing I write, not my
Sic et Non
, not even my brilliant work on the Holy Trinity, will ever be disseminated or read by anyone.”

With great effort, I willed my tongue to still itself. Could Abelard think only of himself, of his loss, of his pain? I had not lost a part of my body, but now, in refusing me my son, he threatened me with a greater harm than he had suffered.

“Sweet Abelard,” I said, summoning all my compassion. I laid my hand on his arm but he withdrew it. “How can you think clearly now, after such a horrible night? I cannot even imagine the pain you have endured.”

“Jean drugged my wine. I remember nothing. I awoke this morning with a burning between my legs, yes, and emptiness where my manhood used to be. But my thoughts, I assure you, are as clear as ice. I have never before felt such clarity, in fact.”

“Try not to think. You need to rest.”

“Rest, when Fulbert remains free? Who knows what he will do to me when next I close my eyes?”

“All of Paris searches for him. He cannot escape capture for long. Try not to think of anything except regaining your strength.”

“Yes, I will need my strength to stand tall and look the bishop of Paris in the eyes as he humiliates me.” Abelard's own eyes glittered. “He will remove me from my post, as you know. All I have worked for, all is lost to me now.”

And what of me? I wanted to ask. My uncle had meant to wreak revenge upon Abelard alone, but he might as well have plunged that knife into my chest.

It is not the deed but the intention of the doer which makes the crime, and justice should weigh not what was done but the spirit in which it was done.

—HELOISE TO ABELARD

A
t last, having coaxed Abelard to drink a glass of wine in which I had slipped a tincture of valerian root, I left him sleeping by a freshly stoked fire. In the great room, Etienne sat in a chair beside the weeping Pauline. One of the canons had brought news of Jean, saying that he had collapsed after hours of whippings and beatings.

“He refuses to confess out of concern for me,” Pauline said. “He does not know that I have escaped.”

Sipping from a cup of wine Etienne had given to calm her, she told us what had happened the night before. As she'd prepared to leave my uncle's house for the night, he had grabbed hold of her, stuffed a rag into her mouth, and tied her to a column.

“I was so frightened, Your Grace, even though Canon Fulbert promised that he would not harm me. He even sent a message to Jean-Paul saying that I was needed overnight and that I would come home the next day. But then, oh! He made me stand on my feet all night, after working in the house all day long. You could not imagine how my legs ached, the sharp pains. See how swollen
my feet are even now! I tried to untie the ropes, but they were too tight.” She held out her wrists to show the red marks the ropes had caused.

“My God! To treat a woman so cruelly. Is he mad or possessed?” Etienne said, leaping to his feet. I sat next to Pauline and took her wrists in my hands, massaging them gently, trying to ease everyone's pain that day, it seemed, except my own. Alas, no remedy could abate the cracking of my heart, or the shattering of my dreams.
Abelard. Astralabe
. I had never felt so alone, but, for me, it was only the beginning.

“I wondered the same, Your Grace, but of course I could not ask, my mouth being filled with rags. And Canon Fulbert had been drinking even more wine than usual. He gives me such a fright when he drinks! I usually go home before he has too much, especially since Jean left him to work for Master Abelard and cannot protect me.”

“He had become increasingly violent,” I said to Etienne. “Abelard feared for my safety, or he would not have taken me to Argenteuil.”

“The day your letter arrived, Canon Fulbert came home early from work.” My heart seemed to jump about in my chest, and I had to cup both hands around the
henap
to stop their shaking. “He had already begun drinking, even before vespers. When he read your message, he threw the tablet against the wall and broke it in two. That evening, Jean came. I did not know why, and he never told me. Canon Fulbert sent me home so they could talk alone. Now I know they were plotting revenge against Master Abelard.”