A re-telling of the true 12th century love story of Heloise and Abelard. Abelard is a great philosopher and theologian who has taken, like many academics of the time, a vow of celibacy. When he is hired as a tutor for the brilliant and beautiful Hel...
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I am sure many suspected it.
The passion and intensity with which we seemed to approach our studies - all hours of the day - would have left a bad taste in the mouths of the nuns walking by my doorway. I would catch the faintest hints of scandalous looks when I'd open my door to him, the nuns around us craning their necks our way as if to say "again?"
If we were not such reputable scholars - if we were not known to become so wholly engrossed in our works - the extent of our devotion to our studies would have been unbelievable. Surely, they must have speculated, we could not only be studying.
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But surely, they'd assume, Abelard would not risk his reputation so. To ruin is vow of chastity, to risk his place amongst teachers and scholars... it was unthinkable.
These speculations of an affair were voiced to my uncle, but he dismissed them. He grew angry at anyone who would bring up such a claim in his presence. I wonder now, however, if this anger was indeed the first seed of a deep shame...
It was a shame that would grow to engulf him.
One of his cathedral's most reputable scholars...
His niece, entrusted in his care...
His decision to allow Abelard's unrestrained access to me; under his hire!
There was no cure for this shame.
We had made Fulbert a fool. Both of us were living off of his kindness in housing us in the cloisters. Abelard's salary was made plump by the sum of money Fulbert was paying him to instruct me daily.
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And yet, there was no instruction. Worse: his niece, entrusted in his care, under the very roofs of his cathedral's cloisters no less!, was being ravished in sin.
No one could find out about it. It would ruin his own reputation, as well as the reputations of the scholars of Notre-Dame.
If there was some secret to be discovered about us, he would be the one to discover it. He would be the one to put an end to it.
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And so he came to my chamber sometime in the small hours of the night. He did not knock. He burst through the doorway. And I saw, spread across his face, the look of something unrecoverable.
My life would never be the same.
All tenderness my uncle had grown for me had vanished. In its place rose a dark disappointment. And in the place of whatever fondness he had grown for Abelard was now a burning hot hatred.
For when he burst in through the door, there we were, entangled in each other's arms; naked, and raw, and sweaty, clutching each other in fear.
"Uncle!" broke up my throat in terror, but he was already off.
The door had slammed behind him and I could hear him running furiously away down the hall.
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