Stealing Heaven (3 page)

She pulled the shift over her head and wriggled her arms into the long, tight sleeves of the dress, pulling it down sleekly over her breasts and hips. The belt she passed twice around her waist and knotted low on her hips. There was something wrong; she wished that she could see herself. The dress felt considerably more snug than when she had first acquired it. When she looked down, she saw that it barely covered her ankles. Last year it had fitted, but now she realized that she must have grown.

"God's death, why am I so tall?" she swore aloud. Already she towered by half a head over the tallest nun at Argenteuil. It was bad enough to be an orphan, but to be a tall orphan seemed a cruel and gratuitous insult on the part of fortune.

There was nothing she could do about the bliaut now. Quickly she unplaited her hair and let it stream down her back. From the chest she pulled her cloak and spread it flat on the cot. She began emptying the chest. In no time, everything she owned had been placed in a mound, and she tied the cloak into a bundle. Kneeling, she reached into a hole in the mattress and drew out a grimy silk purse. The contents she dumped on the bed, and began to sort the motley collection of bits and pieces into two piles. On one she threw a handful of shiny pebbles she had collected along the Seine, a cheap brooch, a length of yellowing lace, and a fistful of almonds. These she stuffed back into the purse and went over to slide it under Ceci's pillow. Into her bundle went the remaining items—an ivory comb missing several teeth, an orange and black butterfly mounted on a scrap of parchment, two needles and a thimble, and a vial of rose water she had concocted herself last summer. And, most precious of all, her writing implements: knife for scraping parchment, quill pen, biting pumice, and ruler.

She left the parcel on her cot and headed toward the night stairs leading to the south transept of the church. A voice from one of the cots behind her shouted, "Wait till Lady Alais gets a look at you in that thing!"

Heloise did not turn around.

"Slut!" The voice rose to an angry wheeze.

The stairwell was dank and chilly. Under the fitted sleeves of the gown, she felt gooseflesh rise on her arms. Suddenly her stomach wrenched violently and she felt like vomiting. Halfway down, she stopped and leaned against the damp stone wall. How many hundreds of nights had she crept, dazed and soft with sleep, down these dark steps to say matins and lauds, how many hundreds of dawns for prime? As a young child, she had not been required, or even permitted, to get up for the night office at two a.m. But of course the forbidden always lures, and she had begged the nuns to take her along as a treat. By now it must have been eight or nine years since she had slept the night through, and she could hardly imagine a night of unbroken rest.

She went on down the steps. In the cool, dark shadows near the choir, she pressed against a pillar and watched the nuns gabble their way through a psalm. This morning they were skipping sentences to get the service over quickly. One side of the choir had omitted a pause between verses and were already mumbling their way into the next verse before the other side had finished the first.

Still, they were behaving better than last year at Pentecost, when they had giggled and joked during services and dropped hot candle wax from the upper stalls on the heads of those below. After that, the bishop had severely chastized Lady Alais for negligence and commanded that she restore discipline among her women. Heloise wrapped her arms around her chest and shivered. She thought of taking her place in the choir one last time but decided not to. She could think of nothing but Paris. Besides, there was the matter of her dress. She edged her way along the wall to a side door and opened it carefully. As she turned to close the door behind her, she caught a glimpse of a bilious-looking Sister Judith, eyes closed, mouth hanging open in a silent snore. Heloise choked off a laugh. She thought, Most of these women wouldn't be here if the choice had been theirs. Obviously.

The cloister was deserted. Along the east walk she broke into a run, passing the bakehouse and kitchens, and let herself out through the postern door which led to the vegetable gardens. The brightness of the air made her blink; she didn't remember May to be this hot. Before her swept the farm and pastureland belonging to Argenteuil. Robin, the oxherd, was veering his bulls toward the west pasture; over by the pens, the dairymaid screamed at her heifers and calves. The air smelled faintly of rosemary, rankly of manure.

Argenteuil lay on the north bank of the Seine, and the path down the hill to the river took her by the convent's fishponds and then through tall, lush grass and a grove of willow trees. Under the arching branches, the noises of the farmyard faded; the air was colder and the grass wet and glistening from last night's rain. With a rush of joy, she ran along the muddy path, hair blowing behind her.

In the woods grew banks of violets and gillyflowers, and between the moss-footed tree trunks she caught flashes of the river, steel-gray, and then in a burst of sunlight, brilliant cerulean blue. As a child, her greatest delight had been to steal away from Sister Madelaine and run to the riverbank to dream her secret dreams. At the water's edge, she scrambled up on a shelf of searing-hot rock and threw herself face down. Squinting, she watched a barge skimming downriver toward Paris, raising clouds of spray in the bobbing water.

In the distance, across a loop in the river, she could see the red-tiled roofs of the abbey of Saint-Denis, the monastery favored by the royal house of Capet. Sister Judith had told her that King Louis had studied there as a boy and it was very famous. Heloise didn't care about that; she was only interested in the annual fair held in the little town that had grown up outside Saint-Denis's walls. For two weeks every June, the lay workers at Argenteuil talked about nothing but the Lendit. Colorful tents were laid out in streets, and if you had sous in your pocket, you could roam around and buy plenty of pasties and fruit and fish and cakes. There were jugglers and trained bears and storytellers who recited every single verse of the
Chanson de Roland
and made everyone weep. Minstrels brought their viols and strolled about the tent streets playing lays to maidens who painted their cheeks. It was all madly exciting. Or so she had been told; she had never been there.

Thirteen years here. How little I have seen, she thought. Nothing but women and yellowing parchment manuscripts. Surely there is more poetry to life than is contained in the verses of Virgil and Seneca, as intoxicating as they may be. I'm old already and I know nothing, she told herself. She thrust the thought away with a sudden surge of resentment. Let Sister Madelaine get herself another prize pupil. Let all of them go to the devil. Even Ceci.

Her back and scalp were beginning to prickle from the stinging fire of the sun. She closed her eyes and lay very still for a few minutes before leaping to her feet and starting back up the slope to the convent.

Prime had ended and the cloister rumbled with the hum of women's voices, gossiping and laughing. Heloise brushed past unseeing and ducked into the library, which also served as scriptorium and schoolroom. There was no one there. In this room, when hardly more than an infant, she had held a wax-coated tablet on her knees and carefully traced the alphabet with an ivory stylus. And here, too, she had labored over her Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. She slid into a carrel next to the window and stroked the grain on the slanted wooden desk with a thumb.

During Sister Madelaine's thirty years as prioress, she had assembled an excellent library of nearly a hundred volumes, few of which the nuns of Argenteuil ever bothered to open. Not only did she have Aristotle's
De interpretatione
and Boethius's De
musica,
but in her locked cupboard could be found all the ten books of Livy, Plutarch's
Lives,
and Caesar's
Commentaries,
as well as a wide variety of the heathen poets: Terence, Virgil, Seneca, Lucan, Plautus. Even Ovid's
Art of Love,
which, by rights, no nunnery should even know about.

Sister Madelaine came into the room quietly. "You've come to say goodbye," she said in a raspy voice. The thin lips, outlined by a faint down, bore a smile, but there was no warmth in it today.

"Did you imagine I wouldn't?" She could not endure this farewell, but she could not endure not coming either. Everything that she knew she had first learned from Madelaine, until finally the day had arrived, several years back, when the prioress had had no more to teach her.

"Now you will go to Paris, where your uncle will find a rich lord who needs a decoration for his household." She pulled over a stool and slammed it down next to Heloise. "And soon you will spawn a castleful of brats and forget all about philosophy." She sank down heavily, frowning at the floor in accusation.

"No," Heloise whispered, bruised inside. "Is that all you know of me?" Madelaine would not spare her; she had known it.

The prioress laughed, lightly. "Ah, it's not that I lack understanding. I know that your pretty head is befuddled with dreams. Don't toss your hair at me, missy. If I fear for you, it's because I love you."

Heloise turned to the window and watched Sister Adela's hound doing its business on the velvety grass under the abbess's favorite lemon tree. There would be trouble about that later. "Thank you," she said over her shoulder. "You can always pray for me." And then, because the words had come out edged with sarcasm, she added gently, "You needn't worry that I'll marry. I have other plans."

"Such as?" The prioress glanced up suspiciously.

"Oh. You know."

"Be specific."

 
"You wouldn't understand." She swiveled around and waved her hand in dismissal. But Madelaine sat there, stony and unyielding, her brittle little face twisted into a silent command. “I'll continue my studies of course. At the cloister school if Uncle permits, or else I shall study at home." She stopped and breathed deeply for a long moment. "And then I'll take students of my own."

Madelaine bristled. "Excellent," she said angrily, "That's exactly what I meant when I spoke of your foolish daydreams. For all your learning, you have the sense of a flea when it comes to practical matters."

"I told you that you wouldn't understand." Most people wouldn't understand. But she had thought that Madelaine might. She stood up and went to a cupboard where Madelaine kept the least precious of the convent's manuscripts. She took out Bede's
De arte metrica,
the old textbook she had used in learning to write Latin prose and verse. “I'm not so stupid as you imagine. Madelaine, listen, I could teach girls."

"Faugh!" Madelaine grunted. "What land of twattle is that? What need have girls of Latin and—" She stopped and closed her mouth with an audible click.

Furious, Heloise slammed down the book. "I don't believe it!" she shouted at the nun. "You wouldn't have wasted your time on me for nothing."

Madelaine laughed cautiously. "Perchance I'm as big a fool as you. But a pupil like you comes along once in a teacher's lifetime. If she's lucky. How could I leave such an extraordinary field to lie fallow?" Impatient, she waved her arm. "But I never promised that your knowledge could be put to use. Or that it would make you happy." She took a jar of ink from a table and began to make her way along the carrels, filling the inkhorns. "I'm sorry if I misled you."

Heloise shrugged. "Never mind. Books are my life. Think you that I'll be stirring pots of soup and suckling babes?" She realized that she was clenching Bede's manuscript; she made herself take it back to the cupboard and replace it carefully. "Somehow I'll manage, I'm sure."

The prioress set down the ink jar and regarded Heloise. "God forgive me for saying so, but he should have made you a man. Then everything would be simple." She came over to the girl and grabbed her by the shoulders. "Listen to me, child."

Heloise's head flew up.

"The only place for a man with a brilliant mind is in the Church and—" When Heloise tried to wrench away, she held her tightly. "No, mark me. And the only place for a gifted woman is also in the Church. For God's love, stay here!"

"No!"

"One day you could become an abbess. If not at Argenteuil, then at an even greater convent."

"No. No. No." Heloise's voice cracked with hot rage. "You— Why are you saying these things? It's cruel. You know that I have no calling for religion. Don't you know that I hate this place? I want to live." She gestured wildly. "This isn't life."

"Heloise," Madelaine said, "you're a special child. But even geniuses can't remake the world to suit themselves. You believe the outside world to be such a fine place. Well, you will see for yourself and God's will shall be done." She sighed heavily. "As always."

She straightened and went over to her locked cupboard. Taking a key from her belt, she unlatched the door and lifted out a leather-bound manuscript. "I've been saving this for you—St. Athanasius."

"Oh, Sister Madelaine, you mustn't." Heloise looked quickly around. "It belongs to Argenteuil. What if Lady Alais—"

"Now, how would Lady Alais ever miss it?" said Madelaine. "In thirty years you've been the first one to learn Greek. The first and no doubt the last. Take it."

Uncertainly, Heloise reached for the book. She had never heard of a girl having a book of her own; at any moment Lady Alais might sweep in and beat her for red-handed thievery. As she stroked the leather cover, her eyes kept flicking nervously toward the cloister. "I don't think—"

"Don't stand there mewing," Madelaine told her. "Run along and hide it among your parcels." When Heloise did not move, she came over and stood before her. She kissed her hair before giving her a push toward the door. "Go, or I'll take my switch to you!"

 

Heloise caught a deep breath in her chest and plunged through the refectory door. The long oak tables were almost filled, and she maneuvered her way into an empty space on a bench next to Ceci. When Ceci turned and saw her, she gave an involuntary gasp. "Mother of God, where did you get that?"