The Cloister

PROLOGUE

In the Duchy of Bourgogne in the year 1142, the largest church in Christendom stood on a hill above the tidy village of Cluny. That church, with its towering belfry, Corinthian columns, and massive rectangular pilasters, defined the pulse of the Benedictine Abbey of Cluny, a large walled complex itself the center of a vast monastic empire, counting ten thousand monks and nuns in foundations spread across the continent, from the Mediterranean to the British Isles. The sharply pointed Cluny belfry was visible for miles around, and had served, across the last phase of a long journey, as the locating focal point for the small band of horsemen that approached now, making its way up the final slope toward the monastery gate.

The palfrey on which a heavily cloaked rider sat, as it slowly ascended the hill, was a lighter-weight horse, and its unsteady gait suggested what a distance it had come. Trailing behind were four other ridden horses, and a hitched pair pulling a covered cart. The wind was howling from the valley spread below, and the sun was low at the distant ridge. The stout wooden gate banged open. The porter rushed out, going to the first horse, to take its headstall and stirrup. In a bustle of activity, others of the minor orders followed from within the monastic enclosure—the almoner, oblates, and lay brothers. A knot of black robes, they surrounded the riders and the cart. With the porter’s help, the first rider dismounted, throwing aside the covering woolen mantle, and being seen only then for the religious woman she was. The porter bowed, showing his tonsure, muttering, “My lady.”

Two others in the party were religious sisters, clothed, like the first, in a long gray belted tunic, scapular, white coif, and veil. Except that the fabric was the gray of rough, undyed wool, the garb was the habit of the Benedictine Order. They were nuns.

The party’s six accompanying men were the horse master, the marshal, two armed henchmen, and two stewards. As the first nun, walking erect and at an authoritative clip, led the way through the gate, the receiving monks bowed, even while stealing glances at her sharply concentrated face. With whispers, they had spoken of this arrival, although this woman of slight stature and medium height did not match the measure of the songs sung in her name. She was the Abbess Héloïse, Mother Superior of the Abbey of the Paraclete, a ranking convent several days’ journey by river and rough trail to the north. In those whispers, they had spoken of what she would be coming for. There would be further songs.

The porter had been instructed to show her at once into the main Cloister garden, to which women were ordinarily forbidden entrance, but the instruction had come from the Abbot Primate himself. At this time of year, the garden was still bare of fruit and berries, but twigs shone with the fresh scales of buds and shoots. The waters of the central fountain, drawing on the stream that ran below the monastic kitchens and toilet block, had quickened in recent weeks, but would not splash again until the coming spring rains replenished the flow. The normally bright marble of the arches and pillars of the surrounding arcade was dusky gray now, for the shadows of evening had settled on the place, like loneliness. The Vespers bell would be ringing soon.

The porter gestured at a garden bench, but did not wait to see if Mother Héloïse would sit. She watched him hurry away, as relieved to be alone as, after the day’s ride, she was to be standing.

It was not long before the Abbot Primate entered, coming from the chapel. Because his cowl was up, his face was shadowed. Across his chest was the leather strap of a pilgrim’s satchel, hanging at his side. The unfettered stride with which he crossed to her suggested the depth of feeling she knew was there. His arms were stretched toward her, but as he drew close, she genuflected, a proper obeisance. With her head bowed, she reached for his hand, pulled it to her mouth, and kissed his ring. Grasping her upper arms, he lifted her. He lowered his cowl, unveiling sadness.

“Where is he, Most Holy Father?” she asked.

The Abbot Primate turned slightly, gesture enough to indicate the Chapter House, the darkened room, close at hand, separated from the garden by a large arcaded gate of three stout arches, each one upheld by a clutch of fluted pillars. Mother Héloïse peered into the room. Under the interlacing of groined ceiling vaults, the open space was large enough to accommodate the professed members of the monastic family, with each monk sitting at the wall, on the stone bench that defined three sides of the rectangle. Now the room was vacant, but as her eyes adjusted, she made out the dark form of the catafalque standing in the center. She should have sought the Abbot Primate’s leave to move away from him, but did not. Instead, she simply walked out of the garden, crossing through the arcade, to enter the Chapter House, going directly to the one for whom she’d come.

Leaves of lavender and woodruff, and dried rose petals, were scattered on the floor; pots of rose water stood at the four corners of the bier; but still the fetid odor of his decomposition came to her. He was clothed in his black habit, and his hands were hidden under the folds of his scapular. But the sight of his sharp-featured face, with its distinctive brow and aquiline nose, made her stop. Oh, Peter.

Lifeless, yes. But also old. He had come into his seventh decade, yet she still thought of him as they had been before. The lids of his eyes were down, but his lips were slightly parted, the lips from which the most precious words had pierced her, the lips with which her own had been so sweetly caressed. His lips. She bent to them, touched them lightly with her cheek, then put her mouth on his. Oh, my Peter.

The Abbot Primate took up a place behind her. To her back, he said quietly, “When I sent for you, I assumed he would still be alive at your arrival. I am sorry.” He waited.

When, finally, she turned to him, she said, “They condemned him because of me.” Her voice was shot through with feeling, a mix of grief and anger. “Because I refused to renounce my love; because he remained mine through all calamity. I will publish his virtues across all the world, to punish the age that has not valued him.”

“It is true, Mother. They hated him for what he had in you. But he opposed them in their vain repudiations of God’s mercy. By the end, he was the exemplar of mercy. That is what he had from you. Mercy. Against all charges leveled at you, the measure of your love was mercy, not licentiousness.”

“He disowned our promiscuity. I did not.”

“He did what was necessary to keep his authority—as you yourself wanted. You flogged him with your writing, to re-enter the fray. And he did.”

“But look!” Her hand swept across the corpse. “What authority has he now? They betrayed him, all of them.”

“Not all.”

“You, my lord, were his only friend.”

“No, dear Mother. Many, many loved him.”

“Where were they, then? When the Damnamus was pronounced, and pronounced again, where was a hint of objecting murmur?”

“You were not there, Mother.”

“But I was.”

The Abbot looked at her aslant, as if to diagnose derangement. “Impossible. A Canonical Council? No women were present.”

“Enthroned beside King Louis? Does your monkish vow prevent even the perceiving of the female form?”

“The Queen? Yes, the Queen was there. Pro forma. But otherwise—”

“And the Queen’s party, the Ladies-in-Waiting, in the loggia, nearly out of sight.”

“Ladies-in-Waiting?”

With a half-curtsy, the nun mocked herself.

“You? A consecrated woman among the courtiers?” The Abbot checked his first reaction, and smiled. This Héloïse was indomitable.

“Disguised as the widowed cousin of Her Majesty,” she said. “A consecrated woman dressed, illicitly, in the mourning clothes of a widow. But a widow is what she is.” Héloïse turned back toward the bier, perhaps in part to face away, as she said then, “In the hour of his great test, I would not abandon him—unlike the others. It was as close to him as I could be. If the Abbot Primate is obliged to censure an undisciplined religious woman, so be it.”

“Mother, what the Abbot Primate does not know, the Abbot Primate is under no obligation to censure. I know nothing of the Queen’s Ladies.”

“Queen Eleanor, as you do know, is a patroness of the Paraclete.”

“Her Majesty is a devotee of the storied niece of Canon Fulbert. Your former notoriety defines her interest.”

“Not ‘former,’ ” the nun said, but quietly.

The Abbot Primate continued, “The Queen cares only for romance, nothing for theology. And at the Council of Sens, theology was at issue.”

“Romance and theology, Father. Only eunuchs would think they are unrelated.” Mother Héloïse raised her hand, a fist. Then she checked herself, biting her knuckles, letting her eyes fall again to the face of the dead man before her. “Despite what they had done to him because of me, and despite his palsy, Peter Abelard was the only one in that large nave with manliness. The only one, I mean, besides you.” She raised her eyes. “Your bold statement rang like the Word of Jehovah.”

“I could not save him. All I could do, as his canonical superior, was confirm his appeal to the Roman Pontiff, and guarantee it.”

“An appeal that was then promptly denied. The Pope excommunicated him, burned his books in front of Saint Peter’s Basilica, condemned all those who dare to follow in the way of Peter Abelard. Anathema sit! The greatest man in Christendom!”

“Yes. All of which I then myself appealed, with Peter’s approval. The Pope is reassessing, even now. I succeeded in getting Clairvaux to second my petition.”

“Bernard! That false prophet! It was he who betrayed Peter.”

“Yes. But he is remorseful. His support will help Pope Innocent overturn himself. The excommunication will be lifted. Now, more than ever, I will see to that.”

“But again, I ask: if so many others loved him, where were they when Clairvaux led that chorus of Damnamus?”

“Afraid. They were afraid, Mother. The winds from Rome are fierce. And not only Rome.” She knew this, of course. Peter Abelard, by the end, was tied by his enemies to the restlessness of the schools, but rowdy boy-geniuses were the least of it. Abelard and the thinking he promoted were blamed for the rebelliousness of burghers; he was faulted, even, for the deceptions of the Jews. In those days, princes challenged bishops; but, then, yeomen challenged princes. Peasants, obviously, would be next. Order was shaken—inside the Church, but outside, too. The King’s sworn duty was to restore that order—everywhere. Fierce winds, therefore, blew from his palace, too. The savvy Abbess understood. Alas, she had not understood soon enough. Yes, she had flogged him to re-enter the fray, entirely underestimating how lethal such an action might be.

She said, “Peter Abelard was an apostle of caritas, yet he was damned.”

“The excommunication will be lifted,” the Abbot said forcefully. “I will make it happen. Then the gates of heaven will be opened to him, we will be authorized to inter him in sacred ground, and we will do that here at Cluny.”

“No! I will have him at the Paraclete. I will have him with me. It’s why I’ve come. Any ground that receives this man will be sacred.”

The Abbot Primate began to object, but she raised her hand again, stopping him. He stared at her. She did not blink. Finally, he lowered his eyes. One of the most powerful men in Christendom—yet he yielded to this woman.

“As for tonight,” she said, “I will not have this Chapter House plunged into darkness. I want torches here until Matins. And the paschal candle.” The dynamic between Abbot and Abbess had reversed. Each saw it; each assumed it. “I want water brought in,” she continued. “Heated water, and cloths. Incense. And scented oil. I will bathe him.” The Abbot Primate bowed. She added, more quietly, “And perhaps a mat. Bundled straw will do.” She would not be leaving him.

“Yes,” the Abbot said.

“I will depart with him tomorrow, at first light. I will need fresh horses. He will be mine, at last.”
After a long silence, the Abbot pulled back the flap of his leather satchel and withdrew a sheaf of beribboned vellum sheets. He said, “Peter asked me to return these to you.”

Mother Héloïse received the bundle solemnly, knowing at once what it was. Her letters, all that she had written him. Once, Peter had said that it was womanly to save such letters, implying he never would. Yet he had.

And then the Abbot produced another pair of bundles. “These also. His Credo, a last explanation of himself.” Solemnly, he handed her the sheaf. “And one other . . .” He held the second, hesitating. “An unfinished treatise, what he called Dialogue with the Jew. I alone have read it. Guard these words—”

“Peter was never guarded with words.” Héloïse received the pages, but she was bristling.
“Guard these words, Mother! Clairvaux’s dark angels are everywhere—spies!—even here at Cluny. He joined with me in the petition to Rome only because he thinks he has heard the last from Peter Abelard. This treatise must not be published! They condemned him once because of the Jews. They will again.”

“Jews are being attacked, murdered. If Peter wrote of Jews now, despite the Council’s Damnamus, it was to defend our Lord’s own cousins, for was Jesus Christ not a Jew?”

“Mother! There are reports of Jews slaughtering Christian children, to get their blood.”

“That is nonsense.”

“Perhaps. But Jews murdered their own children in Mainz. That is certain.”

“To prevent their being kidnapped by the crossbearers and forcibly baptized. That was not murder; it was martyrdom.”

“Be careful of that! These are fires from which we must protect Peter Abelard’s name. Jews be damned. The battle now is for Peter’s eternal salvation. We must have the anathema voided. Guard those words if you want the papal rescript granted.” Father Abbot took hold of her forearm, fiercely. “For the sake of his eternal soul, Mother. Guard those words.”

She clung to the pages. Despite the hot rush of what she felt, she nodded. A promise.

The Abbot held on to her arm for a moment more than was seemly. He said, despite himself, “Your obstinacy is what Peter knew of you. But I see it, too. Beware of your obstinacy, Mother.”

To his surprise, she leaned against him. “Inside, Holy Father, I am anything but obstinate. I am egg custard, fallen.”

“The jongleurs sing otherwise.” The Abbot laughed, gave her one squeeze with his enclosing arm, and released her. “You, the infamous Héloïse,” he said, with a sudden rush of affection. “Their lyrics sing happily of your damning of the Church. An Abbess who damns the Church!”

“And you, the Abbot Primate, who receives her with a gentle hand.” She straightened her spine, an unconscious gesture of will. She clutched the vellum pages close, deliberately pushing the bundle against her breast, to feel the pressure of the small ring of gold, suspended on a chain, hidden beneath her habit, against her flesh.

The Abbot stepped back.

But now, with a bolt of feeling, she reached for him. “Will you be at the gate in the morning, my lord? I will pray your blessing.”

“You will have it, Mother. You will have it always. And now I must order your torches, the oils, and water.” His authority was back. “I will send in bread and fruit, a cup, and the holy image of our Lady.” With that, the Abbot Primate turned and walked out into the Cloister, the budding garden, over which darkness was soon to fall.