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the former pope’s decrees, insisted that the Church, not the king, must appoint bishops. King Louis did not agree. Bishops controlled vast domains, collected large sums in taxes, and commanded many foot soldiers and knights. The king would not relinquish his power to appoint bishops loyal to him.
    â€œThe pope cannot win this battle. He might as well try to move a mountain as to change King Louis’s mind,” Abelard said.
    â€œSo said Uncle Etienne. I thought Galon would excommunicate him and my father both.”
    â€œGalon did not expect an argument?”
    â€œYes, but he didn’t expect my papa. Uncle tried to reason with them, but Papa was not so inclined. He said that, were it not for the king, Galon would not be bishop of Paris, but only the wiper of the pope’s asne .”
    Abelard and Agnes laughed over this tale, while I cringed to imagine such abuse heaped upon a man of God—and a bishop, no less.
    â€œGalon’s insults were surprisingly imaginative for one so dull witted,” Agnes said. “He could not compete with the bishop of Chartres, however. Yves called Uncle Etienne a gambler and a womanizer, and my father a drunkard.”
    As we reached the window, Etienne embraced us and introduced me to Agnes’s father—his brother, Anseau, seneschal to King Louis. So alike were they that they might have been twins, except for their attire. Etienne had changed from his ceremonial robes to a fashionable bliaut of saffron silk with a blue, sleeveless cotte adorned with garnets about the neck and hem, while Anseau wore green silk embroidered with gold thread and trimmed in ermine.
    â€œI hear that you have angered the bishops again,” Abelard said to Etienne, taking the henap from him.
    â€œToday, my brother is the devil’s vassal,” Anseau said. “His own bishop says it, so it must be truth.”
    â€œGalon is calling everyone ‘the devil’s vassal’ except for me,” Abelard said. His voice held a plaintive edge.
    â€œOh, but everyone knows that you are the devil himself,” Anseau said.
    Etienne took my hands with his soft, manicured ones and welcomed “Paris’s famous woman scholar” to his home.
    When I demurred, Anseau grunted and said he wished Agnes would apply herself to her studies with more diligence. “She thinks only of her wardrobe.” He gave his daughter a pointed glance, but she heard only Abelard’s whispers into her ear. “And, unceasingly, of marriage.” Not marriage to “Pierre,” surely, I wanted to say. The Church would never allow it.
    A servant blew the dinner horn and we gathered around the table, Anseau and Etienne on one bench with Agnes between them, and Abelard beside me—directly across from Agnes, who gave him wanton looks as we washed our hands, her face bright with suppressed laughter. My stomach tightened. I had at first declined Agnes’s invitation, stunned as I was by Bernard’s hateful sermon, and wanting time alone to ponder the tide of sentiment rising against women in the Church. But Abelard had convinced me to join the gathering, saying a friendship with Etienne might help me gain the position I coveted at Fontevraud. Now, watching Abelard cast amorous glances at the beautiful Agnes, I wished I had remained at home.
    â€œBernard possesses very little learning and disdains books completely,” Abelard said. “He actually boasts of his ignorance. ‘Everything I need to know, I learned in the fields and the woods,’ he says. As if God did not give men minds for a reason.”
    As the talk continued, I noticed that Abelard, who sat less than a hand’s width away, had barely glanced at me. Yet, when he’d arrived at my uncle’s house to fetch me, he hadn’t been able to tear his gaze away.
    â€œHeloise glows like a ruby in the sunlight, doesn’t she, Jean?” he’d said to my uncle’s