The Sharp Hook of Love by Sherry Jones Read Free Book Online

servant.
    Jean’s eyes had narrowed in response. “A valuable jewel must be jealously guarded. She who makes herself a ewe will be eaten by the wolf.”
    â€œI will keep a special watch for wolves tonight.” Abelard’slaughter had struck a false note through my uncle’s great room—as it did now at Etienne’s table, after he declared that philosophers lacked time for women.
    â€œUnless, of course, she is the most brilliant scholar in Paris.” He smiled at me.
    â€œNo time for women, Pierre? I have seen how they flock around you, in love with your music and your blue eyes,” Agnes said. “Take care, Heloise—this man breaks hearts.”
    â€œHas he broken yours?” I could not help asking.
    â€œMany times,” Agnes said, giving Abelard a sly look—which he returned. His hand dropped under the table to brush mine, but I pushed it away. What had he written to me yesterday? The burning flame of love compels me. Even knowing that the letter was only an exercise, I had allowed myself to linger over the word love . I wanted to leap up and run from the table.
    â€œMy lessons with Heloise are never dull,” he told the Garlandes. “I would give my benefice to have her join my classes.” His knee brushed mine again. I moved my leg away.
    â€œWhy, then, don’t you seek permission for me to attend the school?” I asked.
    He shrugged. “One might as well try to teach an ass to sing as to convince Galon to mix the sexes in anything.”
    Servants glided into the hall with bowls of soup and plates of bread. Abelard’s hand dropped under the table to rest on his knee, his fingertips barely touching my leg and yet commanding all my thoughts.
    â€œGalon is worse than Saint Augustine, frowning on carnal pleasures as though Christ had never enjoyed even a back scratching,” Agnes said.
    â€œOr a woman’s anointing his feet, then drying them with her hair,” I said.
    â€œOr a cup of wine,” Etienne said, lifting his henap .
    â€œOr two,” his brother said.
    The servants replaced our soup with trenchers bearing salmon, lampreys, and bowls of buttered peas. As Abelard leaned forward to take some fish, his legs fell apart so that his left knee touched mine. My pulse quickened even as I moved away.
    â€œSaint Augustine openly admitted his weakness for women,” Etienne said. “But who in the Church dares to acknowledge Galon’s vices?”
    â€œLet Galon incur the bishop of Chartres’s displeasure and we would hear accusations soon enough,” I blurted, then blushed at my own irreverence.
    As the others laughed, Abelard reached for bread at the same time as I, deliberately brushing my hand with his fingertips. Agnes lifted her eyebrows.
    Abelard stretched his legs; Agnes giggled. I forbade myself even to glance down. Was he touching her foot with his? The bishop of Chartres had called the wrong man “womanizer,” it seemed.
    The meal went on, lamb and beef and lettuces, pastries and cherries and fine white bread, and conversation that flowed as copiously as the wine: Guillaume of Poitiers’s new, scandalous song, which Abelard performed to great merriment; the king’s marriage to Adelaide of Maurienne, rumored to be quite ugly with a nose as large as a goose’s beak; the declining health of the Amiens bishop Godfrey, with the men placing bets on the date of his death. I would have thrived on the riposte if not for Abelard. With him sitting beside me, his thigh pressing mine, his eyes on another woman, I had to force myself to listen. More than once, I reminded myself that others inhabited this room—this world—besides Abelard, Agnes of Garlande, and me.
    O Abelard! The very name filled my body with yearning—to hear him whispering into my ear the words of love he had writtento me, always to be loved more than anything , and to feel his breath hot on my cheek, the slide