‘Ah, as is ever my task,’ he responds. ‘I see you’ve been fighting. I am sorry to have missed it; I’m sure it was a sight worth seeing.’
The blush deepens. ‘I am sure your work was grateful for your attention.’
‘Oh, I’m sure it was,’ says the scribe, and his smile widens. ‘At present I’m at work at the copying of a collection of lais and romances, if the parchment with its holes doesn’t defeatme first, and if I’m not sent in search of too many more half-forgotten charters.’ He nods to the roll in your hands. ‘Aren’t you going to look at it, my lord?’
You unroll it, skimming the painfully complex hand of some long-forgotten scribe with a wince. Your scribe may be foreign enough to give the seneschal a headache with his abbreviations, but he has a fair hand, monastery-trained, and the scripts of the present age are a little easier on your eyes than those of a century or two ago. ‘This records only the granting of the land to Bisclavret’s father’s line,’ you say. ‘It is . . .’ You hesitate, reading the description again. ‘Why, it’s scarcely an hour’s ride from here. Perhaps less, to the most easterly border, which is . . .’
‘Firmly bisecting part of your finest hunting forest, yes,’ says the scribe, with some apparent amusement. ‘It seems the woodland was once cultivated, but your father conveniently forgot this, when it offered his deer more space to roam.’
You read the charter again. ‘But you’ve found no record of it being granted after his death?’
‘It was given to nobody. Whether this was carelessness on your father’s part or avarice, I can’t be sure, but those lands remain in the hands of the crown. You could restore them today, if you chose to.’
An hour’s ride from here. Land on the very edge of the forest. Perfectly suited to a fine hunter, perfectly within your capacity to grant, and none could see it as undue favour, for they were his father’s lands. It is the most elegant solution to the situation that any could have offered you.
You look up at Bisclavret, who is staring at the parchment in your hands as though it is a saint’s relic, miraculous and holy. ‘What say you, Bisclavret? No need to remain at court, with a home so close. You may keep your father’s lands and join us for feasts and tournaments. And you would have hunting rights.’
He wants it. You can see well that he wants it. ‘Those were truly my father’s lands?’ he says. ‘He lived so close to the court? No wonder my mother—’ But his voice cracks, and he breaks off before finishing that sentence. You wonder what would have completed it:No wonder my mother wanted them back. No wonder our exile wore so heavily on her.
‘They were your father’s, and they will be yours,’ you say. ‘And you will be a knight, without the madness.’ This with a light tone – you do not truly believe him mad, though it’s quite the figment to concoct, in place of whatever his true infirmity might be.
‘A knight,’ he whispers, wonderingly. ‘I will . . . I am to be a knight.’
His voice breaks on the word, breath stolen by joy and wonder. You exchange a glance with your scribe; he has a pleased smile, to have enabled such delight, though elsewise his expression is as sharp and curious as ever.
Bisclavret’s cousin, less wonder-struck, says, ‘Sire, he will need time to return to his mother’s lands and make arrangements with his steward. We will leave tomorrow, if it please you. I anticipate that we will be returned within a fortnight. Will that be enough time, do you think, for clothing and weapons to be made or fetched for him, and the ceremonies to be arranged?’
He will make a fine steward, brusque and efficient like that, but you feel a pang of dismay at the thought of losing Bisclavret so soon. You had . . . well, you had scarce thought about the practicalities, beyond a vague idea that he would be dubbed and raised to brotherhood within a day or so. Of course it can’t be so; the castle chaplain would have your head and months of penance for demanding such a thing without the proper preparations, and your scribe will need time to set the record to rights.
‘A fine plan,’ you agree, reluctantly, ‘and I will speak to your lord and have you released from his service.’ Then you look back at Bisclavret. ‘And you will swear to me as knight and baron, and nothing less. Perhaps it is for this that the weather waylaid you on your first journey to the court. One might almost see the hand of the Almighty in it.’
He swallows hard. ‘One might indeed,’ he says.
And, like that, he is yours.
9
Him
The day has an unreal air to it. Bisclavret allows the servants to chivvy him away to another bath, and dresses once again in his own clothes, shabby as they are; with a journey ahead, there is no need for anything better. He makes arrangements to travel, trying not to think too hard about where he is going and why for fear that, when looked in the eyes, these impossibilities will splinter and disappear.
But that his cousin witnessed it, he would think the conversation with the king had been a dream.
The impossibilities: that the king should want him for a knight at all; that his father’s lands should be intact and waiting for him; that they are so close to the court as to allow him both freedom and concealment; that his cousin will give up a small piece of his own dreams to help him; that when he hesitated to accept what he was offered for fear of the wolf inside his skin, the king worked to persuade him otherwise.
The kingwantshim. Will bend rules to make space for him. It is like breathing fresh air after two and a half decades of drowning.
He’d thought if he gained anything from this, it would be the king’s pity, inheritance restored because it was his right and nothing more – perhaps some small portion of land thatrepresented only the least lucrative corner of his father’s estate, a softer and easier exile but an exile nonetheless. It was all he dared hope for. He certainly did not imagine this.
You will swear to me as knight and baron.
Can he? Does he dare? The wolf is at bay for now, but he can still feel it, haunting his bones. The hunt made it restless, the unfamiliarity of the court made it worse, and the fight with the king ignited every trace of savagery within him and stirred it into motion. What if it returns just as he is raised to knighthood? Better not to rise at all. He knew that almost before he’d lowered his sword to accept the king’s surrender, and he’d tried—
He did not expect, somehow, for his cousin to intervene. He is more used to his kin trying to limit him and to hide him. His mother would have kept him shackled to the loom like a girl, if she’d had her way of it; she would not have armed him with anything larger than a needle, and he would have lived a quiet life, a safe life, until the wolf tore him from it.
But his cousin and the king, they demand more of him. His cousin he understands – the man will benefit as much as he, though life as a steward will offer less glory for a young man than a knight’s life, and one day perhaps he’ll want to return to the latter. The king, he understands less. Oh, he noticed the man’s lingering gaze, his interest; he can’t imagine what it is about him that draws the king’s eye, but drawn it is.
Unbidden, the words of the knight in green come back to him:he was tumbling one of the grooms.Is that what the king seeks? Is all of this a seduction, from a man with the power to command him with a word? The idea settles oddly in his stomach. He is not used to being desired, and he can’t give the king what he wants. Not with the wolf lurking inside his
