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 was under the watchful gaze of Fulbert for all the months Abelard and I were parted. But when I heard my uncle would be travelling to a monastery outside of Paris for some weeks, Abelard and I got to work on a plan.
Disguised in a nun's habit, and bringing nothing I owned along with me, I was able to leave the cloisters and join Abelard outside their walls where he waited for me on horseback.
We travelled to Brittany, where Abelard's family still lived in their tall, countryside home. They were affluent, remember? His father had been a nobleman. It was not a financial burden for them to take me in, and his sister took me under her wing with arms spread wide open.
"Come here, my dear," she pulled my trembling, sobbing frame into an embrace.
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"I don't want to leave you," I was crying to Abelard. But no matter the strain of my protests, he had to return back to Paris; if he didn't, Fulbert would soon come back from his travels and see that we were both missing. He would think we had run away together, and he would soon be off, with gathered members of his clergy, to find us. He would eventually sift out Abelard's home province of Brittany, with its rolling hills that reminded me faintly of my own village.
It did not make me happy to see them. I did not have any room in my heart for the fondness of its nostalgia.
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It seemed nothing would make me happy again, until I saw Abelard and until we were reunited. He would come to visit me when our son was born, he promised. His sister would write to him, and he would come.
We would find a way to be together. We would find a way to return to Paris, or we would begin spinning plans for somewhere new we could live out our days.
We said goodbye at the edge of the doorway, clutching each other close. I would have held him so much tighter if I had known...
I would have said so many other words. They remained unspoken, sitting there swelling under my tongue for months. I had thought, then, that I would have the rest of our lives to speak them in.
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