Stealing Heaven (24 page)

Replies washed up to the end of Heloise's tongue, and she kept swallowing them down. When Denise paused for breath, she said, "There isn't going to be a wedding."

Denise looked at her. "What did you say?"

“I said we're not getting married."

She laughed uncertainly. After a moment, she said, “I don't understand."

"It's very simple. We don't wish to marry." She went past Denise and stood so close to the hearth that her hands felt fried.

A flaming log collapsed with a spattering of hisses. Denise jerked her chin toward Heloise. "But surely you want your child to—"

Impatient, Heloise cut her off. "There is no great dishonor in illegitimacy. But the child has nothing to do with it."

Denise said, as if she had not been listening closely, "You mean, my brother does not wish to marry you."

Heloise shook her head politely. "I've never discussed the subject with your brother. I'm only saying that I do not wish it."

"Why?"

She might have made an attempt to explain herself to Denise, but abandoned the idea as futile in advance. As one shouts a message into a gale wind, expecting it to be instantly lost, she said tautly, "The title of mistress is sweeter to me than wife."

Denise burst out with a wordless gasp. Then she said severely, "If you think of yourself as a concubine, you can't expect people to respect you."

“I know what I am," she said with a certain amount of grit in her voice. "What people think of me is not something I lose sleep over." She looked over to see Denise absolutely motionless, watching her with barely veiled contempt.

"My lord brother," she told Heloise, "is an honorable man. He will marry you." She clapped her hands together for emphasis. "Yes! There will be a wedding."

Mildly, Heloise said, "I will refuse."

"Refuse?" echoed Denise, wagging her head fiercely. "Lady, you have some outlandish ideas." She stalked through the hall in the direction of the kitchen. From the hall, Heloise could hear her racketing at the cook about some fowls he had forgotten to pluck for dinner.

 

The pains started early on Christmas Eve. They were mild, and she saw no reason to mention them yet. Shortly before midnight, everyone filed into the ward and walked to the chapel through deepening soft snow. It was a fine night. The snow silenced the sound of footsteps, and above a fleet of stars gentled down the sky. Inside the chapel, Denise was marshaling the children into formation—the smallest ones in front, Justin must not sit next to Maria because they whispered, and so forth.

The priest began mass. It was cold in the chapel, but Heloise's palms were sweating. The pains in her belly grew more insistent. After a while, she could not concentrate on the Latin words and tried to think of something else. Before the first snowfall, a peddler had come to the castle, his saddlebags stocked with a surprising assortment of goods, and she had purchased an ivory toothpick for Abelard. Now she began making a mental list of the peddler's wares: pins and needles, gloves, linen handkerchiefs with embroidered flowers, ribbons, tweezers—her mind began jumping around, and she gave up. She said a prayer, urging God to make the babe a boy. A little while later, she canceled the request. Thy will be done, she said, and asked forgiveness for her sins.

Back in the hall, she took her place at the trestle. When William heaped her plate with goose and capon, her stomach swam with nausea. Between contractions she smiled politely at Alienor's eldest son and answered his questions about Socrates. The boy was beginning to annoy her; he was asking questions only to hear himself talk. It was hot and smoky in the hall, and she gripped the edge of the trestle until her knuckles whitened.

Alienor came around the table and stood behind her. She said, "You should go upstairs now."

"Later."

"When did it start?"

 
"After vespers."

Alienor's narrow face twisted into disapproval. "Don't be a fool. Go up and lie down."

Upstairs, she crawled under a fur and lay like a child with her knees drawn up. Below in the hall, they were singing and clapping, and somebody was banging a spoon against a kettle. She wondered when Alienor would come up and how long this whole thing might take. Hours, possibly. She dozed for a while, and when she awoke, she could feel Alienor and Denise next to the bed.

"When will it be over?" she asked without opening her eyes.

Denise laughed. "That's what they all ask the first time."

Heloise opened her eyes. Half a dozen women scurried around the bed, some of them trying to look busy but the rest merely staring. Anger gagged her. "Get out!" she whispered hoarsely. "Leave me alone." Nobody moved. She shut her eyelids tight, swallowed up by a wave of unspeakable pain. Suddenly she was afraid that she would die.

Alienor sat on the side of the bed and unclenched Heloise's fists. "It's worse when you tense your body," she said. "Try to relax."

“I can't.”

"Relax between pains."

"All right." She gulped a deep breath and forced her body limp. Several times she opened her eyes and looked at the women. None of them seemed to be upset, or even terribly concerned. After a while, she forgot the women, forgot her vows to be brave. Some time later, a long way off, she could hear someone screaming and understood vaguely that it was herself.

The sun was just coming up when the baby was born. Alienor brought it in a blanket and laid it next to Heloise, and then, almost as an afterthought, she told Heloise it was a boy.

"Ah, yes," said Heloise and plunged into sleep.

 

All day long there was a great coming and going at Le Pallet. The castle's tenants and their families brought the Christmas rents—firewood, bread, hens, home-brewed ale. In return, Denise gave them Christmas dinner, mainly the food they had provided. Bonfires crackled in the ward, and everyone gathered noisily around the flames, talking, singing, some dancing. At noon they were allowed to enter the hall with their cups and trenchers, and the kitchen varlets carried out enormous platters of cheese, stewed hen, bacon with mustard, and loaves of white bread. And as much ale as they could drink.

Washed and combed and propped against the pillows, Heloise held the baby gingerly in the crook of her arm. She could not take her eyes off him. Again and again she tentatively inspected his fuzz of light hair, the tiny fingers, the pearly rose mouth. The dark-blue eyes staring back into her own seemed otherworldly, as if his body were there but the rest of him with the angels. There was an expression around his eyes and mouth that awed her.

All afternoon, people had been climbing the ladder to look at the new babe, and Heloise had smiled at the visitors and accepted their clucking and aahing. Finally, Denise came up with a plate of bread and cheese, her face red from the heat of the kitchen.

She said, "You can hold him tight. He won't break."

"Denise, he smiled at me a little while ago."

She laughed indulgently. "Silly. New babies don't smile." She leaned over to stare into his face. "A fine boy. He looks just like you."

Heloise pursed her lips indignantly. "Certainly not. He looks like Abelard."

Denise straightened with a grin. "If you say so." She set down the plate on the bed near Heloise's elbow. "See, it wasn't so bad now, was it?"

T guess not." It was bad, she thought.

"Next time you won't be frightened. You're a good breeder and you have plenty of milk. Count your blessings."

"Yes." She turned her head away slightly. No doubt Denise was right, but she didn't like people reminding her about counting her blessings, as though she were a child who couldn't think for herself. Denise was a good person, but her manner of speaking irritated Heloise. Next time indeed. There would be no next time, Heloise thought.

"You're going to call him Peter, aren't you?"
 

"No."

"What do you mean, no? Who else would you name him after?" Denise sat down hard on the bed.

"I think I'll name him Astrolabe." She smiled down into the baby's face.

"Astro—what?"

"Astrolabe."

"I beg your pardon," Denise said coldly, "but I've never heard of any person called Astrolabe."

Heloise reached down and popped a piece of cheese into her mouth. "An astrolabe," she said patiently, "is used by astronomers to chart the movement of the planets."

I'msorry. I don't understand."

"It's like the sextant that navigators use at sea. Only it's to chart the heavens."

"You're going to name him for a machine?" She looked down in amazement.

Heloise said, expressionless, "If you want to put it like that, yes."
 

Denise's eyes needled into her. "I don't like the name."
 

"That's obvious."

 
"People will laugh at him."

"No they won't." She hoisted the child into both arms and began to rock him.

Denise slid off the bed and started out. Then she turned and came back to stare at them. "Nobody in our family has ever been named after a machine. And I can tell you this, lady. My lord brother will be furious." She looked really angry.

Heloise said, "Please, Denise. I'm very happy. Don't spoil everything."

Denise grunted. "It's a stupid name."

Heloise slid Astrolabe under the coverlet. She said to Denise, "It's not inappropriate. He was born on Christmas."

"Hmmm," said Denise, unconvinced. "You might as well call him Star of Bethlehem."

“I'll take it under consideration." Heloise grinned, but Denise did not even flicker a smile.

 

Denise complained about the baby's name until Heloise's churching, but by that time everyone in the castle was calling him Astrolabe, and she finally gave up. Winter closed in around Le Pallet. It snowed off and on all through the month of January; the temperature remained frigid and the road to Nantes impassable. No letters came into Le Pallet, and none went out.

During that time, Heloise did not open a book. Every other day she wrote to Abelard, and occasionally to Jourdain, until she had used up the castle's supply of parchment. The letters she kept locked in her Limoges box against the day when the road thawed and someone could take them into Nantes for the Paris courier. The rest of her time was spent with Astrolabe. He was too young to really play with; about all she could do was watch him, and cuddle and kiss and fondle, and this she did incessantly until Alienor warned her that he would grow up dreadfully spoiled. She should not pick him up every time he cried, Alienor instructed, nor was it necessary to give him the breast twenty times a day. Heloise smiled sweetly. Sometimes she brought Astrolabe's truckle bed down to the hearth and rocked him giddily until he laughed out loud and his plump cheeks dimpled with pleasure. And when he lay still, his mouth budded a delicate pink, she talked to him and told stories about Ulysses and Jason. The castle women laughed and shook their heads.

"Lady." Denise grinned. "Wait a bit. He can't understand you."

"Of course he can. He just can't answer yet."

Denise shook her head. "And all that attention is going to make him high-strung. Mark me, by the time he's walking, he'll be a real devil."

Heloise thrust out her chin. "What kind of woman are you? He's my son, and I'll love him as much as I please. I don't tell you how to raise your children, do I?" Her voice trembled.

Denise stiffened and went off in a huff.

At the beginning of Lent, Dagobert came from Nantes to hunt with a party of the duke's courtiers. In his saddlebag he had a bundle of letters for Heloise. The one from Jourdain she shoved aside to read last. Abelard's she made herself read slowly, like a starveling trying to make a crust of bread last. After a few pages, she forgot about going slow and skimmed the pages to find out when he was coming. Astrolabe began to howl, wanting to be picked up. She ignored him. In the last letter, she found what she was searching for. As soon as the weather broke, he wrote, when the roads improved, he was setting out for Le Pallet. Which, of course, told her nothing useful. How did she know what the roads near Paris were like?

She paced the floor near her bed, suddenly sick with missing him. The self-control she had clamped on herself as month had passed into month, the deliberate putting him out of her mind, began to spin away from her. She wanted him with a physical hunger that made her stomach churn.

After a while, she sat down and calmly read all the letters. That made her feel better. He had, he wrote, been to see Fulbert. The two of them had spent the evening together and everything had been arranged. Heloise was not to worry, because her uncle bore them no ill will. Abelard repeated the sentence "Everything has been arranged" several times, once underlining it for emphasis. But precisely what he and Fulbert had arranged he did not reveal. If Fulbert would allow her to return to Paris with Astrolabe, she would kiss the ground under his feet. That must be what Abelard meant. She could not stay at Le Pallet, that much she had decided even before Astrolabe had come. Already half of her mind was dead, and if she remained, the rest would slowly rot from disuse. She longed for the Ile and for the stampeding students shouting in Latin, for her uncle's quiet turret chamber with the only sounds those of parchment pages turning and the scratch of her pen.

She sighed. With Astrolabe, there would be no such quiet in her uncle's house. Perhaps he would not allow her to come, after all. He had no love for infants. Hadn't he sent her to Argenteuil as a babe? On the other hand, he had not, apparently, objected to Agnes's babes, and of course Petronilla had been raised there. She lay down on her bed and turned over the problem in her mind. If he would not have her and her child at the Rue des Chantres, then she would find other lodgings. One room, that was all she needed for herself and Astrolabe. The solution was simple enough, and she chided herself for having fretted over nothing. She went downstairs to tell Denise about Abelard's visit.

That night, getting into bed, she found Jourdain's letter, and again she was seized by anxiety. Visiting Melun at Christmas, he had ridden over to Saint-Gervais once. He did not wish to worry her unduly, but she should stand warned that Thibaut and Philip had talked a great deal about Abelard and Heloise, and the talk had been ugly. Threats of cutting Abelard's throat and throwing him into the Seine. Of course, Jourdain allowed, it could be talk for talk's sake. Yet he felt, as her friend, that she would like to know.