THE LAST LETTER

2 THE LAST LETTER To My Only Beloved Before God, My Only Master, Father, Brother and Child; Your Faithful Servant, Daughter, Mother, Sister and Bride; To Abelard, Heloise, My dear, my only love – now that you lie dying, felled at last by that foul wound, that long ago defeated your body and your manful spirit, I write to you without dissembling, for there is no time left for that. When, years ago, I wrote to you out of my heart’s longing, and my body’s painful need of you, you answered me with cold reason, untried theories, and a heartless renunciation. You postulated a higher logic at work among our affairs than that of my base longings – or that of my simple heart. Among our sufferings and terrible losses, you proposed the influences of a greater power, and so I suffered myself to be, again, chastened and chastised by your words. It was clear that you could no longer know me as once you did, nor even acknowledge that thing you loved in me: my wild and innocent soul – visible in my clear thought and the pure promptings of my body. Yet I longed for a word of recognition, of remembrance. I craved acknowledgement for that intimate bond, uniting body and soul, that once we shared. Such searing knowledge, so divine a marriage of heart and mind as we knew before even we were wed, it seemed to me then, could never quite die out – could never go unheralded or unmarked. I thought that you would never disown that one, eternal truth – the immortal beauty of our shared passion. Such sentiments and feeling words as you once dedicated to me in fevered whisperings, on our clandestine bed or upon the floors of borrowed rooms, in song and verse and exaltations, it seemed to me, must live for eternity and never cease to ring. Though the vitality of your body and the ruddy vigour of your soul had been assailed, been stemmed and thwarted, and though your words were burned upon the pyre of your good name, I believed you to be essentially unchanged. I still believe it -- though I know you can not say it – will not suffer yourself to be so defiled again, will not deliver yourself up to yet more desecration and shame. Your days, that transpired in the wake of that vile wounding, were marred by bodily weakness and spiritual distress. With the mutilation of your body, our enemies defaced your soul, so that you could no longer countenance that which we had done together so many times, in such frenzies of pure animal delight and impervious desire. We thought ourselves invulnerable in our youth – immune to harm in our superior knowledge of love. Our hubris lay in thinking we could not be touched or harmed. We thought ourselves indestructible and free; we grew proud and careless in our loving -- in what we believed was our inviolable right to each other. When all that we held dear, as the ultimate truth and meaning of our lives, was vandalised and derelicted – torn from us as we were torn from each other, you could no longer face me, nor our acts, as I faced you in my pleading letters – could no longer stand by our great sin, that was no sin, that to this day, I repent not of. "I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone: my soul failed when he spake: I sought him, but could not find him, I called him, but he gave me no answer." That such love as ours was, by all accounts, including your own, an affront to a most jealous God, I do not doubt. Yet I abide by all we did and wish we had done more – 3 that we had continued to love – that we loved still. Did I not say unto you, "Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for wither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God." From the first moment when I saw your face did I not say "Let me find favour in thy sight, my lord; for that thou hast comforted me, and for that thou hast spoken friendly unto thine handmaid, though I be not like unto one of thy handmaidens." Would that I had remained your whore – your handmaiden, even serving as your maidservant, your camp-follower, your bed-warmer and attendant, through the long years. I would have been content to remain forever in obscurity, eschewing the fame your tributes and songs have brought me through all the years you have been absent from my side. I would have penned your disputations, cleaned your robes, prepared your sheets. I would have combed your hair and washed your face, as I had done so many times before. I would have lain at your feet, as Ruth lay with Boaz, and waited for your kind attentions, and gleaned among the new corn, or winnowed in the old, as you saw fit. Until this day, my love, I would have continued to serve you. What was my rank and privilege to me, if I could not dispose it in service to the honourable needs of your vocation, your divine learning? Would that you had let me serve at your side, instead of making me your wife, seeking to honour me above your duties. You looked on me with favour then. Indeed, with a furious and intense desire did you regard me. After your fall from the grace of youth and sturdy vigour, engineered by our enemies, that you later insisted upon seeing as a bestowal of grace engineered by God, you repeated, to me and to others who would judge you, that there could be no merit in that regard with which you once beheld me, as you were used, in the last resort, to bend me to your will "with threats and blows" if you could not do so with caresses. Yet you yourself have said, "there were, indeed, sometimes blows, but love gave them, not anger; they were the marks, not of wrath, but of a tenderness surpassing the most tender balm in sweetness." What I would give for such a mark, for even a harsh word from you now, is beyond counting. For when our long exile from each other began, "our thirst for each other was still unquenched." You began, after your wounding, to see shame in the "unbridled lust" to which we had consigned our bodies, and sought to verify this view by reminding me of how, were I ever reluctant or unwilling to give myself to you, you often forced me to consent by your greater strength. Yet I remember how your insatiable hunger for me drove you to anger, which you would vent on me, blaming me for your sleeplessness and longing, your inability to exercise control or abstinence, even when our recklessness would cause us to be discovered. I remember your anger as another tribute, lustrous as the ardent words which clothed me in your desire. I wore the marks of your unbridled need with honour. I was unrepentant in my pride. You said that it was for that sin of pride that we were punished and brought low, and that this was really our salvation coming to us in the guise of damnation. But I don’t believe that. I believe that we deserved to be proud, as we had a love – a nobility and a fury of passion -- like no other. It was due to the poverty of others that we were undone, brought low, and separated from our triumph. For, "jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire which hath a most vehement flame." Because others were bereft, and had not what we had, they destroyed us. I do not see the workings of God, lest He be a jealous, vain and terrible God indeed, within the engines of envy and hate which ensnared us, though to make the best of a bad deal was ever your wont, and I hope 4 with all my heart it brought you comfort. For my part, I could never find recompense in that poor bargain. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," saith the Lord, and of that very sin I am guilty, for I put you above all others, even our little son. How shall I bear the days that remain to me in this world, when you are gone from it? You stand at death’s threshold, and you must now know, my only beloved, that you bear no stain of sin. The venerable saint, your abbot, the good Father, will cleanse you, in the final hour, of all taint inflicted by this life. Before even you depart this life, and after – in absolution – he will release the bonds of sin, if that is what you fear. Your body I will take then, and receive here, with the Holy Sisters, the Daughters of your mission, who will pray for you in perpetuity. For, "Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee." And when I pass from this life I will be buried next to you, when we will meet again in Paradise, whose mercies we may already anticipate, as we have dwelt within those fair precincts once before, in the days of our loving. You only followed your own soul’s destiny, which led to me, and to the Paradise of your divine words, too pure for this world to bear the hearing of. How could you gauge the evil which lurked in others’ hearts, or stem their will to do you mortal harm? Too late you realised the malevolence and bitter envy inspired in those less blessed by divine inspiration, without your voice of the angelic orders, your illumination, your fire. Fair of form and clear of aspect, you had enemies always, from the moment you revealed your face or lifted up your voice, who sought to maim you at the root – though, if they but knew it, the root of your beauty lay elsewhere than that at which they struck. The beauty of your mind and bright, unfailing wit, they failed to maim. Only your love for me was felled, and for this I have never ceased to grieve. While God, philosophy and the world of men kept you, I lost you. Yet even this did not punish my sin in loving you, only my pride in having you – you who were the flower of your age, the light of my days. Listen, my love, and I will tell you a tale. It is a tale full familiar, for it tells of love found, and lost, then found again. It is our story, and the oldest story in the world, next only to the sordid lay of our first parents, punished by God’s vengeance for their disobedience in seeking divine knowledge – the fruit of the Tree, which is our story as well. It is a story of a love triangle, where a jealous man assaults his rival, who found divine favour in the eyes of the Beloved, putting his own small offering into the shade. Cain slew Abel, and my uncle sought to bring you death in life, for that you had gained my love. One embittered brother slew the other, all over the bestowal of favour, and this poor but highly contested prize. Once there was a time, my love, when the world was young and thought no ill could come of itself. Two lovers lay in sweet dalliance, imagining themselves safe from woe and care. She was a high born maiden, lovely to look at in those days, and still lovelier to hear, for she was as well-spoken as she was beautiful, as kind as she was fair. Her lover was a poor scholar, a lodger in the house of her guardian, her uncle. He was the maiden’s tutor and mentor, but he was also, unknown to all, her tender lover, a gentle swain, her troubadour. He wooed her with learning and lauded her in verse and song. He courted her so carefully and well, so artfully and true, that the people in the streets and taverns, cottages and castles, in the meadows and fields across the land, knew of the love this scholar bore the maiden. They knew full well the measure of love this mentor bore his protégé, for his songs proclaimed it, while her guardian, her uncle, remained all 5 unaware. And for this, her guardian would never forgive the scholar, who had made him a fool before all. "I have preyed upon your innocence and swayed you with my songs," the scholar told the maiden. "I’ve overwhelmed you with my wit and learning, and worse have I done, for I have swayed you with my superior logic and beguiled you with my body, and bewitched your very soul," he said to her. "But thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse; thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck." "If this is bewitchment then let this enchantment never end. I would not have it otherwise," the girl told her lover. "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth; for thy love is better than wine," she said, quoting from the scriptures. "As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love. His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me." "How fair is thy love, my sister, my spouse!" her lover replied, from his own authorities, his own divine arsenal in love’s sparring. "How much better is thy love than wine! And the smell of thine ointments than all spices. A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams." And so it was. The summer came and went, and the trees grew heavy with fruit. The apples dropped from the boughs and the perfumed vineyards grew somnolent with the humming of the bees. The leaves began to redden and fall, and the bitter winds heralded the Equinox. Her guardian’s blind but ample patronage was the only providence or shelter their love had ever known, but they knew that they must leave his house. When winter came and the people lit their fires on the hills, the girl realized she was bearing a child. So the secret lovers knew their love would soon be made known even to her uncle, and that they must flee his prideful wrath. They left in the night, stealing horses from the stables, food and wine from the larders and cellars. Already so compromised in their thefts of each other, the lovers viewed these crimes as nothing. They rode for many nights, sleeping wherever they could find shelter by day. On the fifteenth night of their journey, they came to his people’s stronghold on the river estuary, near the wild and savage coast of Brittany. There they stayed, as her belly grew with each day of her confinement. After she gave birth to a boy, they gave the infant into his sister’s care, and rode back to her uncle’s city. Would that they had not done this foolish thing! But this great centre was where his fortune lay. Only here could his talents be recognised and bear fruit, or so they thought then. Only here would he be given his due, rise to a great and illustrious eminence, and gain fame among scholars and peers. The young scholar thought to put all to rights by marrying his leman, though she opposed this plan, knowing her uncle for the treacherous foe he was. She knew, moreover, that their marriage would only enrage the gods, for this would tempt fate. In reaching for happiness, they would appear to believe they could have it all – fame, success, love, forgiveness, and yet more. They would demonstrate such arrogant optimism with this gesture, daring to think they could be completely happy, could be at rights with the world and heaven too, could evade the malice of fortune and remain unscathed by the ill will of Man. Poor scholar, who thought this frail sacrament could 6 save them, when in the fraternity into which he had stepped, that contested the very earth, sacraments are but the weapons of a vengeful and possessive Father, put into the hands of jealous sons only too eager to do His bidding. There was to be neither safety nor sanctuary in the sacrament, but only an excuse for mayhem, having delivered the scholar into the ring of men’s contested rights and territories. When he sought to shelter his wife from bitter beatings and punishments visited on her by her enraged uncle by enclosing her within a convent and concealing her within a nun’s habit, her former guardian took it as justification to violently assault this poor scholar. On the grounds that the scholar was "putting his wife away," and failing to support her, which is against God’s law, the cruel uncle plotted to emasculate his rival. With no money and no patron with which to obtain lodging for a wife, the scholar had hoped that cloistered abbey walls and a convent veil would protect his bride from her uncle’s vicious beatings and rages. And so it did. But this only meant that the ruthless uncle’s rage must then be visited upon the scholar, who had thwarted him and prevented his access to his niece yet again. He was furious at not being able to get at her. But with the terrible act that followed, in mutilating and disfiguring the manhood of her husband, this tyrant dealt her a far worse injury. For with this wound, the lovers’ earthly love, their bodily marriage, their life together, was struck a mortal blow. Never again would they live together in this world. Never again would they share the delight of their bodies, nor even the transparent clarity of their soul’s communion, while they still lived. The maiden then sought to enter the convent truly, saying in the words of Cornelia: O husband most noble Who ne’er shouldst have shared my couch! Has fortune such power To smite so lofty a head? Why then was I wedded Only to bring thee to woe? Receive now my sorrow, The price I so gladly pay. But the vengeful uncle took his niece from the convent and commissioned the making of a vile instrument from a blacksmith. He caused a chastity belt to be made, forged of iron and tempered steel, trimmed with silver and gold, and studded with rubies. He put it about her loins, turned the key in the lock at her waist, and secreted the key inside his money belt. Then he called for his guards to take her to a distant tower, on a cold and lonely cliff at Finterre, that sea-girt spar at the ends of the earth, that reaches out towards Britain, mist-shrouded Angleterre. There, none could approach her. There, no one would hear her calls. There was no one to talk to her, only the servants and guards, and the woman who brought their food once a week, and none of these servitors spoke her language, but had only the barbaric speech of the coast. She heard nothing but the incessant moaning of the wind and the crying of the gulls, who wheeled and dove in the grey sky outside her tower window. Before he sent her into exile, clothed in sackcloth and locked into her chaste cage, closed inside her prison by the sea, her uncle cut off her hair. It had, when unbound, swept the backs of her knees. Her husband had loved to wrap it around them while lovemaking. Nevermore would her hair be their cover. Now it lay in golden ruin on the flagstones, ground into the mud of the yard, no longer fit to touch. It didn’t matter to her. Bereft of her love, she cared for nought. Even her lonely isolation was as nothing to her. From that day on, she lived only in her memories. 7 The years went by. Sometimes she thought she heard the wailing of her child in the relentless crying of the gulls. She heard her own cries of anguish sometimes, but as if from a great distance, in the wind that moaned and howled about her turret. Every so often, she heard a servant humming one of the many love songs her husband had composed for her before ere they were wed, or heard a peasant whistling a beloved tune. But for the most part, she heard nothing but the voices in her memories, her own voice – all the things she would say if she was given the chance once more, if she met her husband in a fair place, in love and peace. Or she sometimes heard his dear voice, in song or supplication, leading her in recitation or prayer, or assuring her of his love everlasting. Outside of her reveries, though, no guard nor servant ever spoke in the room of her imprisonment, as they had been instructed, on pain of death, never to communicate with her lest she persuade them to free her from the tower. All was unremitting silence, but for the wind, the screaming gulls, and the perpetual, dull roar of the sea. There was no mirror in the woman’s tower room, so she could not see how the passage of time had changed her. But if there had been, she would have beheld a strange and marvellous sight. For the years had not touched her. Though her captors aged and died, and were replaced with others -- and though her hair grew once again to her knees and beyond, it stayed golden, and her face and body aged not at all. In time, her wardens forgot why they imprisoned her, for her uncle was long dead. The hardy wild rose, which long ago grew low in the lee of the tower, now reached her window, having encompassed the entire breadth of the tower over the years. One midnight in full summer, on St. John’s eve, when the beacon fires were lit upon the hill tops and the peasants gathered in the fields for the king-making, a lightening bolt struck the tower, from the fury of a brief, summer storm. The stones glowed with a wyrdding light, and the timbers smoked, but only for a moment. Then all was quiet, as before; the maiden stood in her chamber, shocked awake, wondering, but unscathed. When day broke upon a bright summer’s morning, she blinked in the sunlight, plucked a rose from the vine, and tucked it in her golden hair. She struck the vile contraption that still encased her body with the flat of her hand, and it fell away, with a clank and a clatter, to the floor. She flung open her chamber door, and strode past the guards, saying, "Let me pass, for I will remain here no longer." No guard had ever heard the ageless maiden speak, and so they stood frozen with amazement as she brushed by them, descended the winding stone stair, and emerged into the stony yard. She stood by the gate for a moment, gazing at the sea, then she turned to the east, where she knew her love lay. "By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth," she said to the wind. "I sought him but I found him not. I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth." And with that the maiden began her journey. To the furthest wastes of the earth she would go in search of him. For nothing was forgotten, and nothing was abandoned in the wild, untrammelled regions of her heart. "Whither is thy beloved gone, Oh thou fairest among women?" cried the wind. "Whither is thy beloved turned aside? That we may seek him with thee." For many years and many seasons she sought him. She searched the fine cities of men, and the dark forests of the wilderness. In lords’ and ladies’ halls she sought in vain, seeking him in each voice raised in song, in every artful declamation. In every piercing gaze, she sought him whom her soul loved. In great monasteries she searched for him, in 8 hermits’ humble dwellings, in the crumbling ruins of giants’ halls and the lowly barrows of an elder race of men, in the fields and on the threshing floor, in taverns and gutters and hospices. She found no sign of him at all, until one day when she saw a ruined abbey upon a rise, enclosed by a high garden wall, still intact, with orderly rows of orchard groves and carefully tended cultivations within, and she knew that was where her love lay. Once upon a time, this had been a fine monastery, though now it was just a tumbled pile of scorched stones, burned timbers, with arches and vaults open to the sky. But the altar still stood, covered with flowering vine, and wild roses climbed through it all. She walked among the ruins until she came to a small chapel, clean and cared for in the cultivated grounds. A rose arbour framed the narrow arch of the doorway, scenting the air with its fine perfume, and she entered within. "What sainted sanctuary is this then?" she asked herself. "Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits, camphor, with spikenard. Saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices. Awake, O north wind, and come thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits," spoke her heart, in their old language of love. Thus she called to her beloved, as the Shulamite had called to the Hebrew king, knowing it for a charm of miraculous potency. Within the chapel was a shrine. There, in a glass bier, lay the body of a man, a beautiful youth, her husband. He was preserved inside the glass case, appearing just as he had in youth, with all of his graces, members and faculties restored, and all the lines of care and disappointment erased from his face. Indeed, he had been more aged and sad than this image now before her, when last they met. "Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it," her heart assured her. "Thou that dwellest in the gardens, I hearken to thy voice, cause me to hear it," her heart implored. So long had been her wandering, and so hard the years of lack of him, that she lifted the glass lid off the casket without a moment’s hesitation, and kissed his cold lips. The scent of flowers rose to meet her, more intense within the casket than without, and the soft summer air swept her husband’s hair; it brushed his pale cheek. "I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse: I have gathered the myrrh with the spice," the wind whispered, "I have eaten the honeycomb with the honey." His eyes opened, and he gazed at her with recognition and with love. They gazed at each other for an eternity, an age, until his hand reached up to clasp her, and he drew himself up into her embrace. The years dissolved away, and it was as if no loss or sadness had ever come to part them. The sounds of birds and the droning of bees came to their ears, and the scholar arose from his casket as if from a single night’s restful sleep. "Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away," she said to him. "For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth. The fig tree puts forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape are fragrant. The time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the dove is heard in our land. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away." And so they walked in the garden together. The grounds keeper laboured in the herb beds, taking no notice of their passage, and the green life of the garden continued unperturbed, with its busy growth and teeming creatures. A glorious apple tree stood laden with fruit in the centre of the garden. She walked beneath its branches and reached 9 up to pluck a blushing red apple. She offered the apple to her love, for him to eat after his long sleep. "Is this not the fruit of a most terrible knowledge?" he asked her, "Like that we tasted in our youth, that brought us so much pain?" "Oh no, lord of my heart," she answered. "For this is the Tree of Life we eat of, and its fruit is life everlasting." They ate of the tree, and were nourished. They crossed the garden to the arched gate that stood among the vine-covered ruins at the other side. All of the world lay beyond the gate, spread out in green and rolling hills and fields, wooded mountains and shaded valleys. The woman gazed out at the sunlit land. "Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field; let us lodge in the villages. Let us get up early to the vineyards; let us see if the vine flourish, whether the tender grape appear, and the pomegranates bud forth: there will I give you my love." "Truly I will come with you," said he, "for it is in you that my paradise was found, then lost, and found again. And it is with you that I will fear and grieve no more." "Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death," she said to her beloved. Then they walked out of the garden and into the wide world.