Stealing Heaven (2 page)

The years rolled back, and she could hear the melodious ring of that voice that had hypnotized so many adoring thousands. And she could hear her own voice, high-spirited and reckless, the diamond-sharp voice of a young girl who gloried in rebellion and who did not care if the world ended tomorrow as long as she had her lover. They were lying in a grassy meadow on the road to Saint-Victor. It was an afternoon in midsummer, and they had crossed the Petit Pont and followed the vineyard-bordered Rue de Garlande, carrying with them a skin of good red claret and a basket of flaky pasties filled with soft cheese and eel. Along the road, they had picked wild raspberries and gathered poppies and yellow buttercups. In the rippling grass, she had strewn the blossoms into the shape of a gold and scarlet bed, and then they had pulled off their clothes and thrown themselves, flushed and naked, atop the flowers. Afterward, they had fed each other berries, laughing softly at their carmine-stained mouths and listening to the sawing of the grasshoppers in the green-latticed sunlight.

You will never reach paradise, he had teased. And she, wanting no more of paradise than she possessed that afternoon, had answered, amused and defiant, that heaven did not mean a peppercorn to her. She had declared, I don't care to go there unless I have you, my dearest friend whom I love so much. Do you know who goes to paradise? I'll tell you, my honey sweet. There go priests and old cripples and the maimed and ugly who are shriveled in body and soul, those who crouch day and night before altars and ancient crypts, who are naked and shoeless and covered with hideous running sores, who die of hunger and wretchedness. These people go to heaven, but I want nothing to do with them. I'm willing to go to hell, because to hell go the famous scholars—yes, it's true—and the courteous knights who die in tourneys and glorious crusades. With them I'll gladly go. And there go the fair ladies who have lovers besides their lords. And do you know who else goes there? The harpers and jongleurs and lute players and the great kings and queens of Christendom. With all these will I go, if only I have for company my own love with the black curls, my Abelard. And when she had finished, he clasped her in his arms and pressed his greedy mouth to her eyes and her mouth and her forehead and throat.

Faintly, she could hear the rising and flickering sound of someone praying.

"Lady, you have a visitor. Father William is here and he—lady?"

When Heloise did not open her eyes, the sister broke off and backed away from the bed. She heard a man speaking, and then the prayers resumed, this time with the heavier counterpoint of the priest's droning voice. Curdled with irritation, she bit down on her urge to scream at them. She refused to allow these sisters and brothers of death to escort her to the edge. No, she would go skipping and dancing to the melody of a lute with a summer breeze floating her hair behind her like an angel's wings.

She swallowed and opened her mouth to speak. She said, Leave me alone. But the words whistled vainly through her teeth, and she did not try again. Once more the jeweled visions tumbled and somersaulted through her mind, and she hurried to chase after them before they escaped. If only she might catch them, she would be young again. Her hair would be the color of wild wheat and she would wear a blue gown girdled with a rope of damascene gold. She would not fear Death's crushing claw; she would not even acknowledge its existence, because between her and Death swirled a thousand rainbows, ten thousand pink-tinted dawns heralding days of sunlight and music. She was more than a child but not yet a woman, and life beckoned.

 

 

 

1

 

 

Shapeless black shadows
stretched out on all sides; the hammering sound of rain laid a mantle of fog over the cot. In the heavy, deep darkness, a chorus of snores whistled softly before dying away, the stirring and breathing of sixty women and uncounted animals, uneven and flute-shrill against the monotonous rasping of water dripping on the roof overhead. For thirteen years, she had been awaiting this dawn, but she had not imagined the rain.

"Heloise?"

"Yes."

"Are you awake, sweeting?"

"Yes."

She drew a deep breath and rolled to the edge of the cot. Next to her, she felt the blanket lift for a moment and then Ceci's cool, naked body slipped in beside her. She curled her legs around the girl's and moved her hand caressingly over the supple waist. "It was raining the first day I came here."

"Nonsense," Ceci said placidly. Her voice was husky and nasal, as if she had a cold. Or had been weeping. "You were only a babe. You can't remember."

Heloise dragged the coverlet around their ears and hid her face in Ceci's thick black plaits. Her throat tensed. She thought, How can a person live in a place almost her whole life and yet never think of it as home? She had been well treated; there was no cause for complaint. "I don't want to argue with you," she said, her mouth next to Ceci's ear. "It was cold and wet the day Uncle brought me. My hair was soaked, and Lady Alais sat me by the fire in her parlor and fed me hot licorice wine."

Ceci sniffed. "I thought you said Agnes brought you here."

"Whoever." Each January, before Epiphany, Agnes would make her annual visit to Argenteuil. Her uncle's housekeeper was round and enormous, her face as bloated as an unbaked loaf of bread with two sunken raisins for eyes, her voice as deep as a man's. From under her voluminous cloak, she'd bring out the eagerly awaited bundles—oatcakes and gingerbread, currants and candied oranges, a small bag of deniers for Heloise's tuition, and always a new bliaut. Unfortunately, she never failed to deliver the same lecture: how lucky Heloise was to be a pupil at wealthy and fashionable Sainte-Marie of Argenteuil, where Charlemagne's daughter had once been prioress. Master said that its reputation for learning compared to the famous German convents of Gandersheim and Landesberg. Count your blessings, lamb, she'd pant in a stentorian tone.

And so forth. Heloise had heard the admonitions so often that she no longer bothered to listen. She would hold her breath until Agnes had raced off to the abbey church to gawk at
la sainte tunique,
the tunic woven for Christ by the Blessed Virgin. She hated relics. Disgusting old bones and ridiculous splinters of wood that the ignorant slobbered over. The tunic was somewhat better—at least it might possibly be authentic. Except that she doubted it.

The darkness had begun to scatter. Through a high window, far away, she could see a leaden square of sky. The rain had subsided to a thin hiss that she could barely hear. She was tired. Numb, too, although this she did not wish to admit. Last week, when Lady Alais had summoned her and announced that Uncle had sent word she should come to Paris, she had sprinted into the cloister and rolled on the grass. She had sobbed hysterically, as much from relief as happiness. Now, for the first time, she felt uneasy about leaving Argenteuil. Something occurred to her. She knew nothing of life in Paris. For that matter, what did she know of life anywhere, except behind these walls?

Abruptly, she jerked her arm from Ceci's waist and rolled to the far edge of the cot. She burrowed deeply into the safe blanket.

 
Ceci said, "Don't go today."

"I must. Lady Alais has arranged for me to ride pillion with a butcher who's traveling into town."

"Go tomorrow instead. One day won't matter."

"It will."

"Why?"

Heloise thought of the ride and of Paris. Beyond the crenellated walls of the convent squatted the village. And beyond the village was —what? Plowed fields, vineyards, more villages. She shrugged irritably. "You would keep me here forever if I let you. You know I must leave today. Uncle will be expecting me."

Neither of them spoke. After a long while, Ceci said quietly, "I want to go home."

Heloise glanced at the pale face next to hers. "You will. Soon your father will send for you. Then you can go hack to Angers and marry your Rannulf or Geoffrey or whatever his name is."

"Girard. I don't know, maybe he's married someone else by now. I've had no letter from Father since Michaelmas." She sighed noisily. "Girard won't have me without a dower, and with four older sisters I—"

"Well, marriage isn't so important." Hearing Ceci's sharp gasp of indignation, she grinned. "God's toenails, how boring to be a woman!"

"You're in a pretty mood. What would you be then? A man?" Her voice was thick with sarcasm.

Heloise hoisted herself on one elbow. She turned to the girl and tugged at one of her plaits. "Listen to me, Ceci—"

"I'm listening."

"Do you ever think about the future?" She paused, searching for words that Ceci would understand. "I mean, do you ever wonder what your life will be like twenty years from now?"

"You sound like an astrologer."

"Do you?"

The subject made Ceci uncomfortable. She bit her lip and turned unsmiling eyes on Heloise. "What's there to think about? When I go home, I'll marry Girard. Or someone. We'll sleep together and I'll have a son. The next year—"

Heloise closed her eyes and stirred impatiently.

"—the next year, I'll have another son and then maybe a daughter." Her voice rose to a triumphant bleat. "And in twenty years, I'll have a lot of grandchildren."

It was a bad subject to have brought up this morning. In a few hours, she would be gone. She would miss Ceci. She thought, I should tell her that and make her happy. Musing, she felt her eyes grow heavy, and she started to doze; in her sleep, she heard someone playing the lute, badly. A moment later, Sister Adela's greyhound jumped on the bed and began climbing over her chest, his wet tongue lashing her neck. Absentmindedly, she pushed him to the floor. Sister Adela's hound had a habit of making water on people's beds.

Ceci pushed down the bedclothes and sat up. She regarded Heloise with teasing black-rimmed eyes. "And where do you see yourself in twenty years, madame?"

"You wouldn't understand." The girl, two years younger than she, was still a child—Heloise was fourteen. "Yes, I would. You can tell me."

Heloise glanced around the dormitory in the wavery light. Even though the bell for prime had not yet rung, the mounds under the blankets were beginning to stir. There was a low torrent of coughs and catarrh, and she saw Sister Judith waddle toward the privy, her rump swinging loosely behind her. Solemn, expectant, Ceci leaned toward her. With her compact body and eyes as dark as berries, she sometimes reminded Heloise of a gypsy. She wondered how Ceci would manage at Argenteuil without her; for eight years she had followed Heloise like a worshipful puppy, imitating her and hanging on every word with little-sisterish adoration. "I won't be a bride. Neither of man nor of Christ."

The girl began to giggle. "You don't want to marry."

"That's right." Heloise smiled.

Ceci looked bewildered. "Then you must return here and take your vows. There is nothing else."

Heloise saw the subsacristan appear at the far end of the dormitory; bleary-eyed, she began to wag the little bell for prime. She crept down the aisle between the cots, keeping to the center lest someone trip her. No one looked at her. Ceci rolled out of bed and stared down at Heloise before leaving. A few minutes later, she returned carrying her clothing and shoes. Heloise had not moved. She stared up at the ceiling with expressionless eyes.

"Aren't you getting up?" Ceci asked nervously.

"No." All in a burst, the sun had risen and she could hear someone gurgling about the fine day. Suddenly, the room was full of women hurriedly pulling on black robes, unplaiting hair, arguing hoarsely. Always wrangling, forever wrangling. Ceci sat down on the edge of the bed and began tugging at her shoes. “Your uncle won't keep you at home forever," she said breathlessly.

"He might." No, he would not. Not for nothing had she listened to Agnes's doleful plaints the last dozen years. Fulbert was a money-hungry, pinchpenny miser. Which was why he was rich and owned farms and vineyards near Melun. But Heloise's mother had left her some money, how much she did not know exactly. She did know that the fees Fulbert paid Lady Alais for her education came out of her own money. She thought, Those few sous each year couldn't have exhausted my inheritance. There must be a great deal left. I must speak to Uncle about it. "I won't marry. I'll read Greek and become a great philosopher. Like Plato."

Ceci stopped combing her hair and gave a gleeful little cackle. "Oh. Well, yes. Prioress says you have a mind like a man." She shook her head violently. "But you're not a man, sweeting. So you must be a woman and marry a man."

"I'm not interested in men," Heloise said heavily. All Ceci thought of was men, she thought, suddenly angry for no good reason. But she was no different from any of the others at Argenteuil. Their chief topic of conversation, after their pets, was men. Bishop this—brother that. She put her hands to her face, rubbing her eyes and trying to shut out the lemon sunlight.

"You've never known any men," Ceci said loudly and pointedly. "Wait. Paris is full of them. Thousands of students from all over. They say there are more students than people in Paris. Mark me, you'll change your mind."

Heloise made a noncommittal grunt in her throat. She didn't dislike men, so that was not why she had no desire to marry. She didn't want to talk about it to Ceci. When she looked up, she met the eyes of Sister Judith standing over the cot.

"Why aren't you dressed?"

"What?"

"Clean out your ears. The bell for prime rang fifteen minutes ago. Didn't you hear?"

Heloise made a face and pulled the blanket over her chin. I'mnot coming."

"Are you mad? Lady Abbess will be furious."

"Let her."

 

The dormitory had emptied, save for a handful of nuns who had stayed up late after matins drinking and gossiping and who, naturally, could not manage to rouse themselves. Heloise crawled out of the cot and pretended they weren't there. She hurried to the lavatory to wash, and when she came back, she pulled a wooden clothes chest from under the bed. Inside, hidden among her tunics, was a white linen shift and a pale-blue bliaut, neady folded, and a coiled embroidered belt. This treasure, concealed for the past year, she had garnered from the maid of a rich lady who had stopped the night at Argenteuil. The maid had seemed surprised when Heloise begged for shabby clothing fit only for the fire. It was true: the shift had been badly ripped and the faded bliaut stained with grease spots and mud. But Heloise had mended and stitched, and she had scrubbed the stains with verjuice until the dress looked presentable. It had remained hidden in her coffer against the day when she might have occasion to wear such frivolous apparel.