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women for the death of Man? Didn’t God banish the first couple from the garden out of fear that they might eat from the Tree of Life and live forever? Weren’t they, therefore, already destined to die?
    As Bernard continued, his voice rising to a shout, his face reddening, a monk standing behind him—Suger, from the Saint-Denis monastery, I later discovered—narrowed his small, close-set eyes at me; his nostrils quivered as though I wafted a putrid odor. Flushing, I sought Abelard’s eyes and found him whispering into her ear, his lips twitching with suppressed laughter. She smiled, showing teeth like matched pearls.
    When the sermon had ended, my uncle joined me on the floor. I begged him to take me home. Never had I felt more unwelcome, and in the cathedral where I had so often prayed. He bade me to wait, however. We ought, at least, to speak with the magister , he said—but I knew he wanted to ingratiate himself with Bernard and also with Etienne of Garlande, who had descended to the floor and now talked with Abelard and his companion. Curious about the girl, I followed Uncle through the crowd of clerics and monks who now shrank back to avoid touching me.
    â€œRemarkable,” the girl was saying to Abelard and Etienne, the king’s chief adviser. But my gaze did not remain on them forlong: I could not help staring at the girl, whose bliaut fit her so tightly that I wondered how she could breathe, and whose neckline plunged to expose the curve and swell of her breasts—revealing attire, indeed, for the mass.
    â€œWhat did you think of Bernard’s sermon?” Abelard said to me.
    My uncle, fearing I would embarrass him in front of the king’s chancellor, squeezed my hand so hard I flinched from his grasp. But all waited for my reply. Pulling away from my uncle, I said, “Like your friend, I found it remarkable—for its irrelevance.”
    â€œ Voilà! Your opinion is also mine,” Abelard said. “I wonder if our reasoning is the same?”
    â€œThis is not the classroom, magister ,” the girl said, prodding him with an elbow. But he kept his eyes on me.
    â€œThe speech was written nine hundred years ago,” I said.
    â€œBy Tertullianus!” Abelard cried in delight. “You have read him, also? Etienne. Agnes. Did I speak the truth about her, or not?”
    â€œI knew the phrase ‘daughters of Eve’ sounded familiar,” Etienne said.
    â€œBlaming Eve for Adam’s weakness is certainly convenient, isn’t it?” Agnes said.
    â€œAdam himself did so,” I said.
    â€œNow we know how far backward the reformists would take us all—to the days of Tertullianus, the second century. Soon they will call for the veiling of virgins,” my uncle said, beaming at his own cleverness.
    â€œBernard has already done worse, in demanding that women be expelled from the cloister,” Agnes said. “I wonder that you did not challenge him, Pierre.”
    Pierre? I lifted my eyebrows at him, but he was looking at her, not me.
    â€œChallenge him? Why? I see no error in his remarks. We men are weak, and women are to blame for all our sins—especially lust.” The grin Abelard exchanged with her sent a pang through my breast.
    â€œWickedness resides not in the bodies of women, but in the hearts of men,” I said, more sharply than I had intended.
    â€œ Non— not in their hearts, but elsewhere,” Agnes said, making Abelard laugh.
    Etienne turned to me. “You bore Bernard’s insults most gracefully.”
    â€œI did not consider them insults, since they did not pertain to me.”
    â€œDo you mean to say that you are neither a harlot nor a whore?” Agnes said. “How disappointing.”
    Abelard’s gaze held mine—for only an instant, before returning to the red-haired girl. “Heloise is no harlot, but the most learned woman in Paris,” he said.
    â€œOf