The Tenth Chamber (26 page)

‘Ah,’ Luc said faintly, ‘our dinner at Domme. His last night.’

‘You all looked so happy. Would you like them?’

He thought about it, the sadness of it all, but said he would.

‘I’ll email them to you, if that’s okay,’ and she was off, crying again.

Isaak was a few minutes late. He came striding in, with a troubled look on his face. With a minimum of smalltalk, he launched into an agitated apologia for his foul mood.

‘You were his friend, Luc, so I can tell you that it’s all going to hell. I had to take over the books, of course, and I can tell you, the business wasn’t as good as Hugo made out. He had big loans against the assets, to feed his lifestyle, you know. It was barely profitable and now, without him, business is way down. We’re in the red. It’s not sustainable.’

‘I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do?’

‘Other than join me in the restoration business? No, just venting. We’ll have to sell it to settle his estate. I’m talking to bankers. This is my problem. You have your own. I’m sorry to equate mine with yours.’

‘Don’t apologise,’ Luc said. ‘We’d both be better off if Hugo were still here. Look, it’s good of you to make some time. What do you have for me?’

‘Like I said in my voice message. More of your manuscript. Hugo’s Belgian contact decoded another chunk.’

‘Did he say what the key word was?’

Isaak’s desk was in chaos, files and papers everywhere. He searched and cursed for a good minute before laying hands on the folder. ‘H
ELOISE
.’

‘Not a shock,’ Luc said. ‘It’s in Latin, no?’

‘It’s not a problem. I read Latin, Greek, even a bit of Hebrew and Aramaic. Hugo picked me for my background. He didn’t want a guy who only knew spreadsheets.’

‘Do you have time to translate it now?’

‘For a friend of Hugo’s, of course!’ He scratched his beard. ‘Also, I’m curious, and it’s more fun than sorting through accounts payable.’

Luc’s phone rang and he excused himself when he recognised the number.

‘Luc, it’s Father Menaud calling.’ There was a tremor in his voice.

‘Hello, Dom Menaud. Are you all right?’

‘It’s a silly thing to be upset about, what with the horrible tragedy of the murders but . . .’ His voice trailed off.

‘But what, Father?’

‘I’ve just found out the manuscript is gone! It was in the box on my desk. You recall it?’

‘Of course.’

‘I opened the box this morning to look at it and it wasn’t there! You don’t know anything about it, do you?’

‘No, nothing. When was the last time you saw it?’

‘Perhaps a week ago. Before the tragedy.’

‘Could someone have gone into your rooms and stolen it Sunday night?’

‘Yes. Nothing is locked here. I and the Brothers were at prayer when your people were attacked.’

‘I’m sorry, Father. I don’t know what to say. We have a very faithful colour copy of the manuscript, of course, but that’s no substitute. You should call Colonel Toucas and let him know. And listen – a little good news, I suppose. Another section has been decoded. I’ll send you the information when I have it.’

Luc re-pocketed his phone and saw that Isaak was staring at him.

‘On top of everything, Isaak, the Ruac Manuscript was stolen, perhaps the night of the murders. I’m not buying the randomness of all the shit that’s happened. Not for a minute. It’s more important than ever for us to know what the manuscript says. It has to be the key, so please, let’s go.’

Isaak had the lengthy email from Belgium printed out. He put on his reading glasses, and began translating the Latin, on the fly, apologising for his stumbles and wistfully interjecting that Hugo was the superior Latin scholar.

For a priory as modest as the one in St Marcel, it was an extraordinary gathering. Well set back from the River Saône and nestled in a dense thicket, the priory was ill equipped to deal with the influx of pilgrims. They arrived from all the compass-points of France, and how such a diverse population had efficiently learned about one man’s imminent death, no one could say for sure.

Abélard, the great teacher, philosopher and theologian lay dying.

There were students, disciples and admirers from all the way-stations of his life – Paris, Nogent-sur-Seine, Ruac, the Abbeys of Saint-Denis and St Gildas de Rhuys, the Paraclete in Ferreux-Quincey, and finally, this friendly final sanctuary near Cluny. He had spent his life teaching and wandering, thinking and writing and were it not for the dreaded white plague, the consumption that was eating away at his lungs, he would have continued to attract many more followers. Such was his charisma.

The infirmary was little more than a thatched hut and in the trodden-down clearing between the hut and the chapel, perhaps forty men had pitched camp to pray, to talk and to visit at his bedside in ones and twos.

The path from Ruac to St Marcel had been a twenty-four year exploration of life and love. Abélard had left Ruac, his health and outlook restored and had travelled to The Abbey of St Denis, where he had assumed the habit of a Benedictine monk, and had begun an explosively rich period of meditation and writing. Not only did he produce his controversial treatise on the Holy Trinity, much to the discomfort of the Church orthodoxy, but he also continued to write letter after letter, ever more passionate, to his beloved Héloïse, still ensconced at the nunnery of Argenteuil.

He was nothing, if not feisty. His inquisitive temperament, rapier intelligence and boundless energy led him to argue and probe and shake established thought from its foundations. And whenever his spirits flagged or his pace slowed, he would set off with his wicker basket into the fields and meadows to collect plants and berries, much to the amusement of his fellow monks who knew not what he did with them.

He had his own personal trinity of sorts that occupied all his waking thoughts: theology, philosophy and Héloïse. Of the first two, few men had the sufficiency of mind to spar with him or share his intellectual proclivities. Of the last, all men could understand his longings.

Héloïse, sweet Héloïse, remained the love of his life, the fiery beacon on a faraway hill that beckoned him home. But she had taken the veil and he had taken the cloth and Christ was their proper object of devotion. All they could do was exchange letters that singed each other with their passion.

Neither he nor Bernard of Clairvaux, would have ever imagined that Bernard’s new-found enmity of Abélard would have formed the bridge that would unite the star-crossed lovers.

When Bernard left Ruac, and returned to Cîteaux healed in body but troubled in spirit, he bitterly rued the decision his brother Barthomieu had taken not to forsake the devil brew. On reflection, he blamed no one more than Abélard for the turn of events because among the players in this affair, none was more ample of mind and persuasive than that eunuch. His poor brother was a mere pawn. The true evil-doer was Abélard.

For that reason, he used his ever-widening sphere of ecclesiastical influence to keep tabs on that renegade monk and when Abélard’s treatise on the Trinity made it into his hands, he seized on its heresies, as he saw them, to have him summoned before a papal council at Soissons in 1121 to answer for himself.

Was he not proclaiming a Tritheistic view that Father, Son and Holy Ghost were separable, each with their own existence, Bernard fumed? Was the One God merely an abstraction to him? Had the devil brew made him lose his mind?

With no little satisfaction, Bernard learned that Abélard had been forced by the Pope to burn his own book and retreat to St Denis in disgrace. But bitter seeds had been sown. The monks at the abbey saw fit to rid themselves of Abélard and his heresy and he withdrew to the solitude of a deserted place in the vicinity of Troyes, in a hamlet known as Ferreux-Quincey. There, he and a small band of followers established a new monastery they called the Oratory of the Paraclete. Paraclete – the Holy Ghost. A stick-in-the-eye to his accusers.

The place suited Abélard. It was remote, it had a good spring nearby, fertile soil and an ample source of wood for building a church. And, to his satisfaction there was an abundance of possession weed, barley grasses and gooseberries in the environs.

When the basics of the oratory were constructed and there was a chapel and lodgings, he did something he could not have done had he not been the abbot of this new place: he summoned Héloïse.

She came from Argenteuil on a horse-drawn cart, accompanied by a small entourage of nuns.

Though veiled in the simple habit of a sister, she was as captivating as he had remembered.

Surrounded by their followers, they could not embrace. A touch of hands, that was all. That was enough.

He noticed her crucifix was larger than her companions’. ‘You are a prioress, now,’ he observed.

‘And you are an abbot, sir,’ she countered.

‘We have risen to high office,’ he jested.

‘The better to serve Christ,’ she said, lowering her eyes.

He came to her at night in the little house he had built. She protested. They argued. He was wild-eyed, talking too fast in a dreamy way, cogent but fluid without the starts and pauses of normal discourse. He had drunk his Enlightenment Tea earlier in the evening. She did not need to know that. He was pressed for time. His mood would curdle soon enough and he did not want her to bear witness.

Her wit and tongue were rapier-sharp, as ever. Her skin was as white as the finest marble in her uncle Fulbert’s salon. Too little of it showed from under her chaste rough habit. He pushed her down on her bed and fell onto her, kissing her neck, her cheeks. She pushed back and chided but then yielded and kissed him too. He pulled at the coarse fabric that covered her to her ankles and exposed the flesh of her thigh.

‘We cannot,’ she moaned.

‘We are husband and wife,’ he panted.

‘No longer.’

‘Still.’

‘
You
cannot,’ she said, and then she felt his hardness against her leg. ‘How is this possible?’ she gasped. ‘Your mishap?’

‘I told you there was a way for us to be man and wife again,’ he said, and he lifted her habit high over her waist.

Hypocrisy.

It weighed on them. She was married to Christ. He had taken the vows of a monk and those vows included chastity. Both of them had towering intellects and full knowledge of the religious, ethical and moral consequences of their actions. Yet, they could not stop.

After Matins, several times a week, Abélard would retire to his abbot house, drink a draught of Enlightenment Tea, and in the middle of the night come to her. Some nights she said no, initially. Some nights she spoke not a word. But every time he came, she would consent and they would lie together as man and wife. And every time, when they were done, he left her in a hail of self-deprecation and tears. And he too, when he was alone, would pray fervently for the absolution of his sins.

Their liaisons could have continued without interference. He was a eunuch. This was universally known. Their relationship, was by this twist of fate, beyond suspicion or reproach.

Yet it could not stand. In the end, Christ was stronger than their lust. Their guilt tore them to pieces and threatened their sanity. Their stealthy practice ground them down. She said she felt like a thief in the night and he could not disagree. He always insisted on leaving her after they made love and warned her of a dark side that had him in its grip, which he would not let her witness. And then he would run off into the woods before the rage overtook him. There, until the cloud passed, he would flail the trees with branches and pound the earth with his fists until the pain made him stop.

Their continual cycles of sin and repentance made them into oxen yoked to a grist mill, turning, turning, going nowhere. Did they not, they asked each other when they were spent from lovemaking, have higher purposes?

In time, despite his overwhelming desire and affection, he bade her to return to Argenteuil and she fitfully agreed.

They continued to write each other, dozens of letters, pouring their souls on to parchment. None affected Abélard more than this missive, which he reread every day for the rest of his life: