will be educated and the most perfect of women.’
‘And ruined for ever, you know very well.’
‘She will go back to the convent. What else can she hope for? She has nothing but her beauty . . .’
‘I thought you didn’t find her beautiful!’
‘Everyone makes mistakes. Nothing, I said, apart from her beauty and her mind. In other words, nothing. And who do you think she would have after me? The king’s butler?’
There was so much quiet and cheerful scepticism about him and, as always, such perfection of reasoning, that it bordered on innocence. Confronted with this paradox, my heart swelled: I was so happy under his guidance that in spite of myself he was persuading me to share his beliefs, and in so doing to become the instrument of my own suffering. But I had no idea what lay behind this: seeing only my own loss, I was growing blind to his.
His eyes had not left me – they were plunged deep into my turbulent heart and they were indifferent to what they saw there. It hurt me to see her leave even though she had never been mine; it hurt me to have hung my hopes on a few words which she may not even have uttered. And yet I felt dizzy at the thought of being involved with a man who was wiser and knew more than I did, but who above all desired in a way that I thought I was incapable of.
‘Find her for me,’ he said at last.
Squeezing me gently on the shoulder, he got up and left without waiting for my reply. I remained where I was, feeling subdued, gazing at the fire.
VII
I knew that Heloise’s uncle said Mass every Friday evening at the chapel of Saint-Julien, where the apse opens out at the far end of the Close, above the Seine, as if suspended between sky, stone and water. People said it was the very place where the saint’s boat had landed, with the leper aboard, and that sometimes Jesus returned at night in the guise of a beggar to contemplate men and to grieve over the fact that they were not better. Over the years the rock had subsided and the nave was inclining: if it tilted any further it would end up slipping into the Seine, dragging along the saints, the just and those who were not.
With its unusual nave, its low vault, the paucity of light and that very humble way it had of suggesting that men should huddle together, it was a chapel dating from the time of the first Christians – not one of those splendid vessels such as Cluny, not the great mountain that was being built at Chartres – but a simple boat that listed while the disciples doubted and Jesus slept; you could weep all alone in there and no one would hear you apart from the God of the humble and the afflicted, the God of the wretched whom one entreats in a low voice.
I stood in the darkness listening to Mass, allowing the spirits of generations past, who had been born and had died here, to permeate through me, mingling in my memory the prayers of both the dead and the living.
Fulbert’s words – he’s a heavy, plump man whose eyes, which are as blue as those of his niece, express unexpected anxiety – droned away inside my head without my being able to understand what they meant; I was lost in the song of a crow that had come to seek shelter, in the sounds that came up from the river, and in the buffeting wind, which made the haulers groan and pull all the harder; I was that beggar who waits but who will receive nothing.
Heloise was listening to her uncle, her head bowed as if he were Paul the apostle, her blue cloak thrown over her shoulders. Her pure, slightly husky voice rose to sing a psalm – yet again that Song of Songs which the awesome Crusaders of the True Faith had never stopped intoning.
Behold, you are beautiful, my love;
behold you are beautiful;
your eyes are doves.
Behold, you are beautiful, my beloved,
Truly lovely.
Our couch is green.
Heloise turned towards me, recognising me. I had grown pale, so striking was her beauty, and it was with some difficulty that I became accustomed to her very soft, oval-shaped face, her eyes that gleamed with intelligence and tenderness, an expression that I knew to be animated, alert, and possibly amused, should there be anything to laugh about, but which I could also imagine gripped in the concentration of study.
The Mass was over.
Heloise took her uncle’s arm graciously and the stout man smiled – the smile of a large, fat, good, ruddy-faced man, who eats pork and drinks good wine every day – and the top of his skull shone.
I was wearing a golden-yellow tunic and a velvet cloak of the same colour, embroidered with wild flowers, red, white, and yellow too. I looked like a vision of spring in autumn. I drew near. He glanced at me with a kindly but anxious look.
‘I am sent by my master Peter Abelard, philosopher, theologian, master of the Notre-Dame school . . .’ I said to Fulbert, trying not to look at Heloise.
‘I know who Peter Abelard is,’ replied Fulbert respectfully.
‘Most important of all, this is the man who saved my life, Uncle,’ said Heloise.
‘So it’s you!’
‘. . . author of a treatise on the Trinity and the divine unity, former master of the schools of Sainte-Geneviève, of Melun, of Créteil, pupil of William of Champeaux and Anselm of Laon . . .’
Heloise looked puzzled. I tried not to catch her eye. We left the church through the crypt situated in the north arm of the church: the west door was open to the breezes from the river.
As I explained my business (and it was another me, speaking with ease and conviction, while I, huddled up at the pit of my heart, felt nothing but shame), the canon led me through the narrow streets of the Close to his house. By the time we reached his front door I had still not understood whether he was flattered, worried, or tempted . . . He spoke to me about what was happening in Paris, about the Comte de Meulan’s raid, the finances of the chapterhouse, the archdeacon’s ambitions, Garlande’s mischief, about the importance of the school and a dispute about a prebend. Whenever I returned to the subject in hand, he avoided me with the agility of a juggler.
Even though she was walking behind us, I could sense Heloise’s eyes staring at me. Finally, just as we were shuffling about outside her door, I could hold back no longer.
‘What shall I tell my master?’
‘You will tell him that his proposal does me more honour than I can say.’
‘But what else?’
‘You will tell your master,’ Heloise’s calm voice intervened, ‘that my uncle’s house is full and that there is no price – for all his prestige and attributes – that can be paid for the favour he is asking.’
‘Heloise!’
‘You will tell your master to make his own requests, instead of sending a poor student . . .’
‘Heloise!’
The canon turned pink, almost choking.
‘You will tell your
