4

 

 

Two days after Christmas, Thibaut organized a hunt and took the men off to chase foxes in Saint-Gervais forest. Heloise was not sorry to see them go, especially Thibaut, who had pinched her bottom on the way to chapel the previous evening. Already she was counting the days until her departure; she suffered from constipation and dull pains in the head. By now, it seemed clear that she had nothing in common with her cousins. Thibaut's three boys, sly-looking youths with fleshy faces, had spoken no more than a few words to her. The eldest, Philip, wore a permanent sneer at the corners of his mouth. Mabile had troubles of her own with two infants and a third on the way, and her conversation was limited to complaints of sore breasts and pains in her lower back.

Alis and Claude and the rest of them gibbered constantly about clothes and boys. Heloise had been shocked to leam that Alis could write no more than her name and that she had never been taught to read. None of them at Saint-Gervais knew, and would not have cared had they known, about Heloise's studies. They only knew that Fulbert had brought her home from Argenteuil to be married, and nearly everything they said to Heloise centered on this one subject.

The morning, like all previous ones, dragged by sluggishly in a tiresome round of embroidery and gossip, most of which concerned persons that Heloise did not know. The laborious idleness, as well as the tattoo barking of the castle dogs, made her head throb, but she purposely said nothing.

At noon, she was relieved when Alis suggested they take a few of the squires and go to play in the meadow. The day was bright; glazed snow glistened in the fields. Over the top of the forest hung a few ragged clouds, clouds that for some reason made her think of the sunsets over the Ile. She felt sick with the memory.

Alis insisted that they must build a castle of love. When it was finished, they could all climb into it and pretend the squires were knights trying to rescue them. For most of the afternoon, they worked in a frenzy, but when they'd completed the snow castle, there was room for only one person to crawl inside. Heloise scrambled to the top and looked out. Two horsemen were approaching the drawbridge, and she could hear them hailing the gatekeeper.

At the sound of the voices, Alis began to squeal with pleasure. "Jourdain, come here! Jourdain, look at our castle of love!" She laughed happily. "What a fine day. Jourdain's here!"

Ambling toward them, smiling good-naturedly and dodging Alis's snowballs, came a young man with a stocky frame and an old-fashioned face, square, cherubic, his cheeks dusted with freckles. Heloise waited to be introduced, but Alis was too busy rolling up her eyes coquettishly through her lashes. She clung to Jourdain's arm like a thirsty leech.

He looked up at Heloise and grinned with a sheepish shrug.

She grinned back. "Are you another cousin, then?"

He shook his head. "My father's fief adjoins Saint-Gervais. All of us grew up together." He added hurriedly, "I'm surprised to find you here, lady. I've seen you often on the streets of the Ile."

"Oh?" Heloise frowned. "How do you do that when you live in the next fief?" She nodded toward the forest. "You must have very sharp eyes."

Alis answered for him. "He lives in Paris now. Our Jourdain's a scholar." She said it in a mocking, flirtatious tone.

Jourdain leaned over and kissed Alis's cheek, then promptly ignored her. "I have student's lodgings on the Rue Saint-Pierre," he told Heloise. "You should see my landlady, she's a dreadful old witch. But sometimes I stay on the Left Bank with my master. He gets lonely and likes to have someone there in the evenings, and I—"

Heloise cut in. "Tell me something, friend, which master do you study with? If only you knew how I envy you!"

"With Master Abelard, of course." He laughed a little self-consciously.

His laugh pleased her; she liked his voice, by turns grave and then merry as a cricket. "Why do you say 'of course'?"

"Because he's the best teacher in the world. He has more than three thousand students." He laughed again. "What can I say? Believe me, there's no way to describe such a man. He's a prince, a reincarnation of Socrates, a . . ."

Alis turned away with a loud cluck of annoyance. "God's blood, can't you talk about anything but your poxy master!"

"Poxy to you," Jourdain flared, "because your head is empty. I'm very proud that he's my master—and my friend."

Making a face, she snorted at him and ran off to play with Claude.

Heloise leaned over the top of the snow castle. Perhaps this trip could not he counted a loss after all; it might even prove to he fun. "Come up," she said to Jourdain.

"No room. Come down."

She slid to the ground and crawled out through the tiny opening. "Your master sounds splendid." She had heard others speak admiringly of Peter Abelard. Even Fulbert, who tended to be critical of other people.

The afternoon shadows were lengthening. The hunting party clattered over the drawbridge, leaving a trail of blood on the hard-packed snow. Those in the meadow followed slowly. In the ward, Heloise's cousin Philip stood by his steaming horse, and as they passed, she was surprised to see him shoot Jourdain a look of venom.

"Still kissing ass for Peter Abelard?” Philip said with a grin.

Jourdain jolted by without replying. Upstairs in the hall, Heloise said, "He doesn't like you."

"No." His voice was quiet and controlled.

"Nor Abelard?"

"No. Philip hates anyone above him."

That night, for the first time since her arrival at Saint-Gervais, Heloise found herself feeling contented. Alis had been right about one thing: the arrival of Jourdain had turned the day splendid. Heloise felt easy with him, and as her tongue loosened, out rolled stories about Sister Madelaine and Ceci, critiques of Lucan and St. Augustine, her fears of marriage to some old, toothless lord, all the misty unsaid debris littering some segment of her mind.

"But don't you want to marry at all?" he asked, obviously curious.

"Not very much." When she saw him staring, she added quickly, "Oh, I suppose. Later. Much later." She laughed. "St. Paul said it's better to marry than to burn."

 

On the morning after New Year's, they rode back to Paris with Jourdain accompanying them. The sky was overcast, and a sleeting wind kept conversation to a minimum. Heloise had worried about Fulbert's reaction to her friendship with Jourdain, but he did not seem overly concerned one way or another, nor, in the weeks that followed, did he object to Jourdain's visits. At least once a day, the boy appeared at the Rue des Chantres, sometimes bearing a book for Heloise, or merely to sit in the kitchen and drink a cup of ale with her and Agnes. He had a stock of stories, rumors, and humorous gossip, all of which Agnes adored, and she stuffed his book bag with cakes. For Heloise, his cheerful face brought a predictable bit of fun into her day; his mere presence was like a draft of healthful tonic, good for whatever ailed her.

It was some time before she realized that Jourdain brought with him into Fulbert's house the unseen presence of his master. Since he spent many hours of the day in Abelard's company, both in class and at his lodgings, he was forever chattering about the minutiae of his teacher's personal life: Master Peter threw his servant down the stairs because Galon had bought four-day-old turbot and pocketed the remainder of the shopping money, Master Peter had a cough—could Agnes recommend a soothing posset?—and Heloise had made up a small jug of licorice and anise wine. She was beginning to feel as though she knew Peter Abelard, and in a vague way she did. At least, she knew that he suffered from bad headaches and his undertunics needed mending and that once he'd had a breakdown that sent him back to his home in Brittany for three years. It was some time, however, before it occurred to her that the garrulous Jourdain, with all his infectious tales about his friends, might be a two-way channel.

On a sudden impulse one day, she demanded sharply, "Jourdain, you're always telling us about Master Peter. By any chance do you talk to him about us?"

He flushed and began to stammer. "Uh, well ... I suppose . . . you might say that. But he's always asking. You don't mind, do you, Heloise?"

She did mind, but was not going to admit it. “I guess not.”

"He'd like to meet you."

"Uh-huh." Surely Abelard was merely being kind to poor Jourdain. She had heard that he dined with kings and archbishops. Such a man could not truly be interested in an inconsequential person like herself, a nobody who was also a girl.

Jourdain was smiling earnestly at her. "It's true, Heloise. He did say that. And he asked me to describe you."

"And what did you say?" Immediately she regretted asking; she had no desire to hear herself described.

"That you are not unattractive and—"

Simmering, she swallowed and said, "Gramercy, fair friend, for nothing."

Jourdain bounded to her side, his eyes cloudy. "Come now, lady, can't you tell when I'm teasing? I told him you are comely and brilliant." He turned soft, smiling eyes on her. I described you just as you are. Please don't be angry."

The next morning while filling Heloise's tub, Petronilla calmly announced, "Jourdain wants to fuck you."

"God forfend, what language!" Many times she had seriously considered reporting Petronilla's shameless outbursts to Agnes or Fulbert, but she always restrained herself in the end. She had no wish to get her into trouble.

Petronilla went on. "It's no secret, you know." Humming, she poured boiling water into the tub. "Anybody with eyes can see. The way he looks at you."

"You're mad. Jourdain is like a cousin. And he's only a boy."

"He has a pizzle, doesn't he?" She grinned, pleased with the irrefutability of her logic.

Suddenly Heloise remembered a time last summer when she had wakened in the middle of the night. She had had to use the chamber pot but, after fumbling about in the dark, realized that Petronilla had forgotten to bring it up. Muzzy with sleep, she groped her way downstairs to use the garden privy, a facility she normally avoided as it housed a large family of water bugs. At the door a noise stopped her; from the direction of the herb beds came the sound of a man's laughter, followed by hoarse panting, and then a girl's voice squealing in a queer way that she had never heard before. The last voice was Petronilla's, that she had been certain of, and she had fled into the house. By morning, she'd forgotten the incident, but now it came back to her.

Petronilla opened her mouth, but Heloise would listen no further and sent her downstairs to her mother. For the rest of the day, she was in a foul mood, and when Jourdain came by just before vespers, she instructed Agnes to tell him that she was unwell. For several days, she managed to avoid him. Then, just when the lewd images sown by Petronilla were fading and she felt able to face him without blushing, he stopped coming. Strangely, three days went by without a visit, something that had not happened since they'd met, and she felt horribly guilty. Twenty times a day she reproached herself; he must feel that she didn't want to see him, he was staying away because she had hurt him. A week or more went by, a week of mounting loneliness, for she missed his bright face, until she resolved to visit his lodging and tell him she was sorry.

When she came down for breakfast the next morning, Agnes handed her a letter sealed with purple wax. "A student left this for you a little while ago."

"What student?"

"Nobody I've ever seen before," Agnes mumbled.

Heloise raced back to her room and tore the seal. Quickly she glanced at the signature, but to her disappointment the scrawl was not Jourdain's. She went back to the beginning and read, "To the Lady Heloise, greetings. My young friend Jourdain has asked me to notify you of his recent illness. To be precise, he was out of his head with fever for several days. He is feeling much improved, but still weak, and I thought it best that he leave the city to recuperate. I have sent him to his friends at Montboissier, and I'm sure he will be back soon, fully recovered. He was concerned that you should know all of this. Farewell. Pierre du Pallet."

Relief flooded over her and she sat down hard on the bed. His feelings had not been hurt; he was only sick. But now he was better. His thoughts had been of her!

It was not until halfway through breakfast that she realized Pierre du Pallet must be Abelard.

 

All through Lent, the city shivered under below-freezing temperatures. Everyone said it was the coldest spring he could remember, and if the weather didn't break soon, the ground would be too hard for the first planting. Heloise carried her books down to the kitchen, and Agnes set up a small trestle table for her near the hearth. Even so, it was difficult to work, because Agnes was incapable of keeping quiet for more than three consecutive minutes, and if she wasn't jabbering to Heloise, she was screeching at Petronilla.

Near the end of Lent, Queen Adelaide gave birth to a son. The prince was named Philip, after his grandfather, and the Ile reverberated with the pealing and tinkling of bells. To celebrate the new heir, people built bonfires on every corner. Heloise dragged bundles of kindling to the quay and lit one of her own, and she passed out mulberry wine to the half-frozen fishermen who still loitered about die Port Saint-Landry. She longed for Jourdain's return.

Sometime during that cold period, she began to keep a journal of sorts. In a sense, it was a substitute for Jourdain; she had become accustomed to having someone for her confidences, and now there was no one. As much as she loved Fulbert, they were, after all, a generation apart and there was only so much she could tell him. Then too, during this time, she experienced a return of those fantasies that had warmed her childhood at Argenteuil, and these disjointed reveries she jotted into the journal as well. Whereas once her daydreams solely concerned herself, her adventures, her triumphs, now they began to emerge in a completely different form. She kept imagining another person, a man, and not merely any man but a romantic figure who clearly fell into the category of lover.

The night before Maundy Thursday, she dreamed of this person, and at daybreak, still seeing him clearly, she felt able to write down a fairly detailed description. She hurried down to the kitchen. Agnes was cleaning a duck for dinner and the feathers kept drifting across Heloise's table. They made her want to sneeze. Struggling to keep her mind on the dream, she ignored Agnes's comments about the weather and the high price of ducks, and tried to reconstruct the man on parchment. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with curly black hair and a melting smile that revealed even white teeth. She realized, surprised, that he was not young but in the vicinity of Fulbert's age. What his face might look like in repose she couldn't tell because in her mind she imagined him smiling.

By midmorning, she was deep into a volume of Origen. The kitchen had quieted at last, Agnes having given Petronilla a bucket to scrub the solar tiles and she herself huffing upstairs to air the beds. The room was full of the sound of bubbling broth and the smell of onions and marjoram. She yawned. After a few minutes had passed, she gradually became conscious of another sound, a very faint thumping against the shutter of the garden window. At first she ignored it as only a rattly branch, but the tapping grew crisper and finally shattered her concentration altogether. Sighing, she went around to the garden door and pulled it open. There was no one in sight, no sound but the tinkle of melting icicles. But in the hard morning sunlight she sensed a fluttering movement to her left, and then she saw someone flattened against the wall of the house.

"Heloise, is it you?" Ceci ran toward her. Heloise pulled her over the threshold and closed the door.

"Dear God in heaven, what are you doing here!"

"Heloise, don't be angry."

Exasperated, she dragged Ceci to her with an awkward hug. "Come now, why should I be angry with you? Seeing you startled me, that's all. I don't— Why are you in Paris? Hiding in—" She stared at Ceci's pinched white face, then down at her feet. Out of one slipper poked a bare toe; the other foot was wrapped in rags.

Heart pounding with dread, she led the girl into the kitchen and sat her down next to the hearth. She brought bread and poured a cup of ale. Ceci ignored the ale; she tore off hunks of bread and stuffed them into her mouth with both hands, swallowing them without chewing.

Heloise stared at her. "How many days?"

"Two. Almost two. After nones, day before last." She reached for the ale and drained it wearily. "I would have been here last night but I lost my way. Took the wrong turn near Saint-Lazare. Heloise—"

I’mlistening."

"You've got to help me." Her face was wrinkled with fear. "Please, no one but you can help me."

Heloise tapped her fingers impatiently against the table. "What happened?" She did not have to ask, but she wanted to hear it anyway.

"Lady Alais read me the letter. I'm not going home again. They want me to stay at Argenteuil."

What chilled Heloise was the girl's speech. Everything was said in the same toneless voice. "It—" The word stuck in her throat; she swallowed and gulped it down. "It won't work, you know."

"It must. I won't go back. Surely you can understand that."

"I understand. All I said was it won't work."

"It did for you."

Her face sagged. At last she said, "It was different for me, don't you see? I had someplace to go. People to look after me."

"Heloise!" cried Ceci. "I have you!"

Heloise pretended to pull a knot out of her hair. She could hear Petronilla slamming the bucket against the tiles. There was a stream of soft curses, then silence. Slowly she walked over to Ceci and pulled her head tightly against her hip. She cradled her and stooped down to brush her lips against the dark hair. Rocking back on her heels, she squatted down next to Ceci's stool. "Listen, sweeting, listen well. You think—I don't know what you think, but you're wrong. I can't make miracles."

Ceci was staring off blankly into a corner.

"I'm not the mistress of this house. Are you paying attention? Right now Agnes is upstairs airing the beds. There's a servant just down the hall. In less than an hour my uncle will walk through the front door. How is it possible to hide you? I can't even get you out of this kitchen without somebody noticing." When she glanced at Ceci, she saw that her face wore a queer, flat look, as if someone had applied a coat of paint.

Looking past Heloise, she pointed to a pan of anise cakes cooling on the table. "Can I have one of those?" she asked.

Heloise brought a cake in each hand. They did not speak for several minutes. Then Heloise sighed heavily and said, "All right."

Ceci followed her out the garden door and around the house, down to the Port Saint-Landry, where Heloise left her with a fisherman she knew slightly. She ran back to the house and seated herself next to the hearth. When Agnes came downstairs, she glanced around curiously. "Thought I heard you talking to someone."

"I was reading aloud."

At noon, Fulbert came home. Heloise picked at her duck; once the full enormity of Ceci's act had struck her, her stomach had shrunk to a knot.

In the afternoon, Agnes went out to buy dyes, and Petronilla curled up under the kitchen table and fell asleep. The moment Heloise heard Petronilla snoring, she hurried back to the quay and got Ceci. Quietly they climbed to the third floor, and Heloise opened the door to a room across the landing from hers. She had been in this room only once before. As a bedroom it had stood unused for years, but recently Agnes had begun regarding it as a storeroom for Fulbert's relics, the less important ones that needn't be locked in the cellar. Heloise dragged the dustcover off the feather bed. There was only one thin mattress, but still it was better than sleeping in the fields. She wanted to open the shutters and air the mattress, but she was afraid of attracting attention. The room was choked with dust.

"I'll try to get you more covers," she told Ceci. "But please, you've got to be quiet. Agnes sleeps on the second floor. If she hears noise up here, she'll think it's mice and be up in a second." She added lamely, "Agnes won't tolerate mice in the house."

Ceci nodded, her eyes brilliant with anxiety.

"There's plenty of food in the kitchen. Agnes will never miss it. You won't go hungry." She held her voice even and tried to smile reassuringly.

"What if Agnes comes in here?" Ceci said.

"She only comes to this floor to clean, and there's nothing to clean in here." She was not at all certain of that, but she wasn't going to tell Ceci. Agnes went wherever she pleased in the house—she regarded it as her own—and sooner or later she would open the door. Heloise didn't want to think about it right now. Trying to hide a person in a house where four people lived was impossible. Tomorrow she would decide what must he done about Ceci. If only she had someone to talk to, if only Jourdain were here.

The rest of the afternoon, she scurried cautiously about the house, bringing Ceci quilts, pillows, a chamber pot, clothing, and food. Whenever it appeared as though Agnes or Petronilla might be heading for the third floor, Heloise found an excuse to keep them downstairs. She even emptied her own chamber pot, which made Petronilla give her a quizzical look. In the days that followed, circumstances conspired to keep the house more empty than usual. It was Easter weekend, and Fulbert returned from the cathedral only to sleep. On Easter Eve, the candles in Notre Dame were extinguished and the great paschal candle lit during the all-night vigil. Heloise prayed fervently for a solution to Ceci's problem, but despite her night of prayer, she received no guidance. Perhaps God did not bother to answer because she, Heloise, was in a nervous frenzy. Ceci could not be left alone in that room forever, she would go mad.

The end of it came without warning. On the Tuesday after Easter, leaving mass, she rounded a column in the nave and bumped straight into Fulbert. They chatted a few minutes, and as Heloise turned away, he called her back.

"My fair niece," he said calmly, "who is that child sleeping in the room across from you?"

Her mouth dropped. To her amazement, she heard herself saying coolly, "A friend of mine, Uncle."

"That I took for granted. But which friend and where did she come from? I've not had the honor of an introduction."

Hot with shame, Heloise stared at the ground. "How long have you known?"

"Since Friday, when I went up there for St. Loup's molar. The young lady was asleep."

Heloise rubbed her nose with a fist. She did not look at him. "Forgive me, I'm sorry, Uncle," she said in a small voice. "I was going to tell you, but I didn't know how. Her name is Ceci and—"

"And?"

"—she has run away."

"From where?"

She sighed. "Argenteuil."

Fulbert looked more puzzled than angry. “I see," he murmured. They stood staring at each other. After a moment, he said, "Go home now. We shall speak about this later."

Outside, she raced alongside the Campus Rosaeus and down to the Port Saint-Landry, dreading to share the news with Ceci. Fulbert was not a cruel man—he was kind and wonderfully indulgent—and he would help Ceci if he could. At the same time, she realized that no matter how kind he might be, he was also a canon of the Church. Under no circumstance could he agree to harbor a convent runaway.

In fairness, she could not blame him.

 

Ceci did not leave immediately. There were a number of conversations, between Heloise and Fulbert and also between Ceci and Fulbert. In the end, Fulbert offered to write Lady Alais and see if anything could be done. Possibly Ceci's family were unaware of her reluctance to become a nun; once they fully understood the situation, perhaps they would take her home after all. After speaking privately with Ceci, Fulbert said that in his opinion she should not be forced to take the veil against her will: she had no vocation, that was certain. And Fulbert, as Heloise knew, had always been adamant about men or women taking monastic vows if they had no sense of vocation. He said that it disgraced the Church and caused all manner of evildoing.

Heloise wanted to believe that it would be all right. Hours she spent on her knees, at Notre Dame or in her room, begging God to see the justice of Ceci's case, and adding automatically, "Thy will be done." Fulbert, calm and affectionate as ever, did not discourage her hopes. Nor did he encourage them.

"These are hard times," he warned Heloise. "If her kin can't find money for a dower, what choice do they have?" He added, "She could do worse than Argenteuil. There are places like Odette de Pougy where the bellies of the nuns are always swollen."

Weeks passed. Letters slowly moved back and forth between Paris and Argenteuil, and between Argenteuil and Angers. Spring came at last. The chestnut trees in the cloister unfurled green banners, and the students, liberated from their lodging houses and taverns, roamed the He with uproarious good spirits and danced, fortissimo, around Maypoles.

On Ascension Day, Heloise woke to see musk roses budding in their garden. For some reason, the roses made her feel guilty; she had not opened a book since Ceci's arrival—that fact she could and did blame on the girl—but then, too, the good weather drove all thoughts of work from her head. For that she could not fault Ceci, and she castigated herself for being a pseudo-scholar. Her lethargy, the shadowy frustration she could not throw off, heightened when she looked ahead. Sister Madelaine had been right, she thought; her studies could be put to no use, now or ever. They must always exist solely for her own selfish pleasure, thus they would forever remain tinged with a certain element of absolute futility. She told herself that she was absurd, for she had everything a girl might want.

At first, Ceci had slept in Heloise's room. But Agnes, having scoured the house from turret to cellar in a fever of spring cleaning, unexpectedly turned her energies to the room across the landing. Fulbert's relics were carefully transported to a second-floor storeroom; buckets of whitewash were dragged up the staircase and the walls freshened to a whiteness that would have done justice to a Lady chapel. Mattresses were beaten and heaped on the bed frame, sheets were rinsed with saffron, and Agnes draped strawberry hangings around the bed. The room transformed, Ceci settled in. She was so happy that she could hardly keep still. Bouncing with both feet on the bed, she shouted, "How kind you are, Agnes! I love this bed, I love Paris, I love everybody!"

Agnes giggled. "You're nothing but a weanling," she said, smiling fondly.

"When I go home, can I take the bed with me?"

Agnes's smile faded. "God's toenails, how could you be carrying a bed to Angers? On your back?" She lifted Ceci off the bed and unfolded a linen sheet. "Off with you now. I have work to do."

"Heloise," said Ceci, tilting her head to one side, "what shall we do today? Quick, think of something wonderful."

"We could—"

"Let's go to a tournament. Oh, Heloise, I’ve never seen any real knights!"

"There are no tournaments now. Why not a picnic instead? We could take our dinner and eat along the river."

"Just like pilgrims!" Ceci squealed. "Please, Agnes, can we?"

Heloise broke in. "You won't have to prepare a thing, Agnes. We'll do everything ourselves."

Agnes smiled indulgently. "Very well. But don't leave the kitchen a mess."

They ransacked the pantry for tempting morsels and packed them in a basket: a whole roast chicken, salted herring, ham pasties, gobs of dripping Brie, a long loaf of white bread, a skin of raspberry wine, cups, knives, a rough blue and white cloth with napkins to match.

At the last minute, Heloise tucked in two gaufres from a batch Agnes had baked earlier in the morning.

Petronilla watched their preparations with a sour expression. "Can I come along?" she asked.

"No!" Heloise and Ceci cried in unison, and then Heloise added, "Not today—some other time."

"I saw you take those waffles," muttered Petronilla. "Those are for dinner. I'm going to tell Agnes."

"Tell her," said Heloise brightly, "but you still can't come."

"You've taken the last loaf of bread."

"I'll buy more." She went into the hall and shouted up the staircase, "Agnes! There's no more bread. I'll buy some on my way home."

It was glorious out of doors. They took the river road around the southern rim of the island, down along the towpath, and the sun glimmering through the willow branches dappled patterns of lace in the water. Coming to the Street Before the King's Palace, they gawked at the high stone wall separating the Cite Palace from the rest of the island, and, near a gate, they watched fishmongers selling herrings and mackerels.

"Now," said Heloise, 'look carefully. We must find the perfect place for our picnic." After a great deal of debate, they settled in a grassy glade under a willow tree, a spot that looked much the same as any other. Spreading the cloth, they began to lift the food from the basket and positioned the items artistically on the cloth.

Ceci said, "I've never been on a picnic before."

"Nor I." Without bowing her head to pray, Heloise hungrily bit into a ham pasty.

"Do you suppose Lady Alais knows about picnics?" Ceci broke off a chunk of bread and layered it thickly with Brie. Pulling up her skirt over her knees, she lay back and stretched her legs out in the grass. "Wouldn't she die if she could see us now?" The image sent her into a paroxysm of giggles until she began to choke on the bread.

Heloise rolled over onto her stomach and buried her face in a patch of moss. During the last year, she had given little thought to Lady Alais and the others; to be truthful, she had not thought about Argenteuil other than fleetingly until Ceci had appeared at the garden door. And even then her mind had been on Ceci's troubles, rather than on the convent itself. Her memories of it had silted in some remote comer of her mind, memories that she could consider with indifference. Argenteuil had been a way station, an antechamber to her real life, that was all. "How's Madelaine?" she asked.

"Yellow."

"Oh, Ceci."

"Her face. It's turning yellow."

"Is she sick, then?"

Ceci shrugged. "I think so."

Heloise turned toward the girl, sighing slightly. "She's getting old." But Madelaine had always seemed old to her.

"They are all old there," said Ceci, bitterly. "Even the young ones." Awkwardly, she poured wine into a wooden cup, spilling it on the cloth. She passed the cup to Heloise.

Heloise sat up and asked hesitantly, "Why do you hate it so?"

Ceci threw her an indignant glance. She said sharply, "Why did you hate it so?"

Heloise did not answer. While they were finishing the last of the wine, she told Ceci about her cousins at Saint-Gervais, about Mabile and her one-eyed husband, about Jourdain, whose father despised him, and about the lovely Alis, who dreamed of a fairy prince and who would, probably, die unwed in her uncle's castle.

When Heloise stopped talking, Ceci said, "So?"

"So—mayhap life outside Argenteuil is not any better than life inside it."

"You don't believe that."

No, she did not believe it. She decided to keep quiet. They had a fight over whether prayers to St. Denis were answered more quickly than those to St. Michael, and then they slept. It was late afternoon when they woke, and bells were ringing vespers. "It's time to go home," said Heloise crisply, "and we must stop at the baker's on the way."

Ants were gorging themselves on the remains of the Brie. Ceci scooped up the cloth, ants and all, and stuffed it into the basket. They walked slowly and turned down the Rue de la Juiverie, then made another turn on Rue de la Pomme. There was a line at the baker's stall, but it seemed to be moving fairly quickly. Ceci stayed outside with the basket, and Heloise queued up behind a woman carrying a trussed goose under her arm. After the nap, she felt drowsy and the roof of her mouth was dry. She should know better than to drink whole wine at midday.

After a few minutes, the line seemed to come to a dead halt. She peered over the head of the woman with the goose. A tall man was standing at the counter, pointing to one loaf and then another, asking question after question.

"Is that white bread?" he demanded. "You're sure. How about that flat loaf over there? What's that made of?"

He seemed utterly unperturbed by the baker's furious glances and by the customers stamping their feet impatiently at his rear.

Out of curiosity, Heloise began to listen more attentively. The man behaved as if he had never seen the inside of a bakery before. Now he was asking the baker for the yeast content of the barley loaves. Smiling involuntarily, Heloise edged out of line and moved around so that she could get a better look at the fellow. He did not appear simple-minded; he was clean-shaven and had shaggy dark hair, well cut. The profile revealed a handsome face, intense and sensitive. His voice was as silvery as the summer Seine on a moonlit night.

Someone behind her shouted angrily, "By St. Denis's holy farts, pay your money and move your ass!"

He turned around then and bowed deeply in the direction of the irate voice. "Madame," he said, smiling broadly, "it took Our Blessed Savior three days to rise from the tomb and he was the Son of God. The least you can allot me is three minutes to purchase a loaf of bread."

Heloise started to laugh, but the grin froze on her mouth. Paralyzed, she stared at the man's smiling face and then, when he had turned once more to the baker, at his back. She saw him drop a handful of oboles on the metal counter and shove a loaf of white bread under his arm. As he strode by her, she looked squarely into his eyes. His step faltered by half a beat. Smiling sheepishly, he said to her, "That's what comes of being wholly enslaved to one's stomach at regular intervals," and passed on.

Stumbling out of line, she darted after him into the street, only to see his back vanish into a crowd of shoppers.

Ceci ran up to her. "Heloise, you didn't get the bread."

"Did you see that man?" She pointed vaguely toward the Petit Pont.

"What—"

Her voice rose feverishly. "The man who just walked out of here. With black hair and a loaf under his arm."

Ceci frowned. "I guess. I don't know. Why?" 

"That man is mine."

“Yours? What do you mean—yours? Heloise, what are you talking about?"

"Nothing." Her heart was pounding; she gulped for air. "I didn't mean anything." Slowly she turned and walked back to the end of the line.