‘You are too kind, sire,’ says Bisclavret, rubbing his sore wrist. ‘It was an honour to spar with you.’
‘Well, it won’t be the last time. Come. You will need a bath, and there are arrangements to be made, if you are to be a knight.’
‘Sire—’ He pauses, glances away. ‘On that matter, I would speak with you. Alone, if such a thing is possible.’
You’re puzzled by his serious expression, but a consultation with your knight in green secures you the armoury and a few moments without interruptions – save for Bisclavret’s cousin, who accompanies you. You’re about to send the man away, but Bisclavret says, ‘No, let him stay. He knows well enough what I plan to say, I’d imagine.’
‘That your health is too delicate for knighthood?’ says his cousin, baldly. ‘That you should be allowed to retreat back to your mother’s estate and pretend that this never happened? That you intend to spend the next twenty-five years hiding, as you have done until now? Yes, I rather fear I do.’
Bisclavret winces. ‘You know that I . . . that I am . . . unfit for this, that however much I want it, I cannot take it.’
‘I know that as a youth you dreamed of knighthood and as a man you fight better than anyone,’ retorts his cousin. ‘This is your inheritance. I will not stand idly by while you forsake it because your courage has failed you. I beg your pardon, my lord,’ he says suddenly, as though remembering himself. ‘I should not have spoken so in front of you. It is . . . it is an old argument.’
‘So I see,’ you say, eyeing the pair of them. You had suspected already that it was the cousin’s doing that brought Bisclavret to court, but you’d thought, briefly, that their aims were aligned. And nothing you have seen of Bisclavret so far suggests he lacks for courage. ‘What is it you would say to me, Bisclavret?’
He chews on his lip for a moment. ‘Sire,’ he says at last, ‘I came here seeking my father’s place and my father’s lands, I will not deny that. I did not expect your favour and I did not expect your attention, but I thought – hoped – that you would grant me the small boon of my inheritance. And then, I thought, I would retreat there, to my own lands. I . . .’ His gaze darts to you as though he anticipates an interruption, but you say nothing. ‘I will serve you, sire, in whatever capacity you ask of me; I will fight when I am needed, and train men to do likewise, but I cannot . . . I cannot stay here at the court, so far from my own home.’
His belief in his unsuitability, whatever underlies it, appears unshakeable – but you cannot understand the difficulty. ‘Is it your lands you fear for? A good steward may take care of them for the best part of the year. Of course, you’d need to travel to see them on occasion, but—’
‘It’s not that. My cousin is not wrong, when he attributes my loss of courage to my health. It isn’t as strong as it could be; it’s one of the reasons my mother never brought me to court before.’
You’d wondered; he might have come alone, if she wasn’t well enough to travel. ‘What manner of weakness ails you? My physicians . . .’
‘They cannot help me,’ he says, with a glance at his cousin. ‘I have been bled and purged and bathed and it has not helped. I have . . . I am . . . Sire, it is not madness of the true sort that troubles me, but madness it might become, amidst the noise and the crowds.’
Madness. You eye Bisclavret again, carefully, as though you might see a sign of it in him. You have no great love of noise and crowds yourself, most of the time, but you would not make a claim like this to escape them. ‘Your father was a baron,’ you point out. ‘I know not yet the full extent of his lands, but they will be far more substantial than your mother’s dower, and so will your duties, and the men you owe to me.’ You have no desire for war, but still the kingdom must be ready for it, should such a day arrive. ‘It will be no quiet retreat. I fear granting your inheritance would be more a burden than a gift, if you are so unsure of your own capabilities.’
You do not intend to keep from him his birthright, but he must see, surely, that this ends either with a return to his exile or rising to his father’s place, and the latter will be a new life, one he has not known. And you . . . you mislike the idea of losing him to exile again. Of losing the chance to see what he might become, to tease out the hints of the stubborn, irreverent man you glimpse hiding beneath his shyness. To hone the edge of his rough-hewn beauty and make it something you can bear to look at, without feeling that the air has been stolen from your lungs.
There’s a heavy silence, and then his cousin speaks: ‘Let me help him.’
You both look at him in surprise; you recover first. ‘What manner of help were you thinking?’
‘I will serve as steward on his father’s estate. Help to train his men, help keep the readiness for war, so that he carries not the burden alone. You would . . . you would need to release me from my service to my lord, sire, that I might do this without shame or reprisals, but I would do it willingly.’
‘I would not take your knighthood from you,’ protests Bisclavret. ‘We were to be knights together. To have you serve me as steward, it’s—’
‘A waste?’ interrupts his cousin, with a self-mocking smile. ‘I am a knight in service, Bisclavret, landless with little hope of inheritance. I am better spent helping you, at least until you learn the way of it, and have men you trust to serve you in place of me. It was to aid you that I was sent to you in our youth, after all.’
You consider this. It is no trouble to you if the cousin truly wants this, and it would aid Bisclavret. But it does not solve the issue at hand. ‘And with your estate cared for, will it be able to spare you to the court? Or do you maintain that you could not live here?’
Bisclavret looks tormented. ‘Sire, I . . . I will do as you command me, and I cannot claim I do not want this. But I know myself. I know what I can withstand. This is beyond me.’
You think of that first night, of Bisclavret absent from the hall; the way you found him, in the morning, looking as though he had fought his own nightmares to return to you. Was that a reflection of this infirmity, or wine-sickness of the usual kind?
You think of the challenge in his voice when he offered you his oath. You well believe that he wants this – so whatever it is that keeps him from accepting it, it must be something grave, such that he cannot even speak the truth of it to you.
There is a knock, and then your knight in green looks into the room. ‘I’m sorry to intrude, my lord, but your . . . scribe is here to see you.’ His hesitation means little, you’re sure. He’s not the sort to judge you; if anybody is being judged here, it is the scribe, for being a stranger, and unacquainted with your knights.
‘Show him in,’ you say. It has been only hours since you instructed him to look for Bisclavret’s father’s lands, and you didn’t expect news so soon.
Your scribe is looking almost respectable now, halfway to a cleric in his dark, sober clothes, his tangled hair hidden by a cap. Only the ink on his fingers gives him away – that, and the sly curve of his smile. He holds a roll of vellum, which he hands to you. ‘The charter you were seeking, my lord,’ he says, and glances at Bisclavret with barely concealed curiosity.
‘My scribe and custodian of books,’ you tell Bisclavret, by way of introduction. ‘I set him to the task of identifying the location and fate of your father’s lands.’
‘A welcome distraction from the state of the records,’ says the scribe, kissing Bisclavret in greeting and then, by way of afterthought, his cousin. ‘You must be the fair unknown about whom I’ve heard so little.’
‘I . . .’ Bisclavret colours, laughs a little. ‘You make a story of me, master scribe.’
