Heloise Holds the Sun ✓

26. the letters

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"Of course I was angry with him," Marie watches Heloise move about her study. They're both sitting in chairs opposite one another, and Heloise is digging through the pages of her books - countless, countless books - to find the letters.

The study is small as a cave, and lined up to the ceiling in book cases. One small window shines above Heloise's desk, illuminating her manuscripts. She has one spread open, unfinished. A quill rests in its ink. To this day, Marie smiles, Heloise writes just as frantically, as obsessively. Heloise is older now, frailer. But still there is fire in her instead of blood.

"He wrote to his friend - Philintus was his name - instead of me. Imagine... if Philintus had never sought me out, I may have never seen Abelard again. I was angry with him, of course. I was angry he could let go of me so easily..."

"It does not sound like it was easy," Marie ventures under her breath.

"Well," Heloise raises her eyebrows, still flipping through the pages of all her books. "To me it was clear; love first, always. I suppose it took him some time to catch up," then Heloise flashes her that secret smile. Marie remembers her words on that first day she met her. The greatest thing about him is that he was loved by me.

This study... Marie feels honoured to be able to sit in the midst of it. Had Abelard once sat in this very chair? Had his hands rested where Marie's did now? And this desk... is this where the two of them, legendary scholars in their own right, had poured their days and nights over - their lines coming to life in front of them, composing book after book?

"Ah, here they are."

Heloise hands a bundle of letters gently - so gently - into Marie's open palms. The pages are stained with age and tearing at the edges.

"These are our letters - from the first one I sent to him, delivered by Philintus to Abelard that day, to the last."

"The last?"

"Until... we met again, of course."

Marie nods. She wants to get to this part of the story - the reunion - already. The heartbreak she can feel, through the spoken details but also through the pain rising in Heloise's throat as she speaks them, is too heavy. It feels like it has been left, up until now, unspoken: it feels like something that has been enclosed with a lid all these years, bursting now that the lid has been popped off of it.

If anything, Marie wishes she can help Heloise release it. She hopes her listening can give Heloise at least this.

"Read them!" Heloise beams, closing Marie's delicate fingers over their edges. "They explain this part of the story better than I can. Details have dulled in my memory, through the years, but... in these letters, they are still sharp. Still fresh. Read them, but please, guard them with your life."

As always, Marie is curious as to why Heloise is entrusting her with all these stories. These precious, raw, painful stories; and these artifacts - these artifacts of Heloise's love that mattered to her above everything else, the love that mattered to her more than heaven and earth combined - that are being placed now, trustingly, in Marie's hands.

"I will guard them with my life. Of course." Then, "I know they hold yours."

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