She makes a thoughtful noise. ‘What manner of man is he?’
‘A brave one in the hunt and a shy one at a feast,’ you answer; it is as much as you know of him. ‘An exile, new to courtly life and easily overwhelmed by it.’
There is a moment’s pause while she ponders this, and you eat a few more mouthfuls. At last, she says, ‘Is he courteous? Kind? What aid does he offer to those in need? Is he easily tempted? How would he treat a maiden, if she came to him alone?’
You are ashamed not to have thought to learn these things about him. You might guess at courtesy, read respect into his shyness and expect aid from a man who saved you from the boar, but there has been no opportunity to test his other qualities.
‘He strikes me as a good man,’ you say weakly.
A nod of acknowledgment – disappointed, you think, in your lack of answers – and then she says, ‘Send me to him.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘When he returns. The priest will hear his Confession and test his faith and creed, yes? Let me do likewise. I will see if he has the qualities of a true knight.’
You cannot, in that moment, explain the feeling such an idea arouses in you. Yes – a test of his loyalty and his courtesy is well for an untried knight, and a stronger temptation than your own ward with her fair hair and smiling eyes couldn’t be found for all the wealth in the world. But if he were to fail . . .
You would not expose your ward to that humiliation, and you would not weather well the disappointment of finding Bisclavret so weak. And – and you do not like to think of him touching her that way.
For her sake, of course, that she might keep her good name until her marriage, and nothing more.
‘You would do this?’ you ask her. ‘And if he proves himself uncouth—’
‘I do not think he will,’ she says. ‘I watched him at the feast. I think he is a fine man. But better for you and I both to be sure.’
True. ‘Then,’ you say, a little reluctantly, ‘when he returns, you will go to him, and tell me afterwards how he behaves towards you.’
Her smile widens. ‘Yes, my lord,’ she says.
After that, your impatience for his return only seems to grow, but the days pass without sight or word of him. You attend to whatever business your seneschal directs you to, and when the day’s work is done, then come the minstrels and storytellers and musicians all – more of them every day, it seems, for word that you’re more inclined to patronage than your father must be spreading. They bring new lais and romances and have an eager audience among the knights and ladies, though many of their tales are already familiar to you from your exile. There, every feast brought some performance, poets and jugglers alike competing for attention and bread, and you miss it, a little, here in this small kingdom of yours with its quiet, dark castle. Your father had little time for letters, beyond the necessary, and gave scant gold for music, such that the best of your kingdom’s harpers have long since left to seek their fortunes elsewhere and the best of your storytellers with them. Perhaps you can tempt them back, now that you are king. Perhaps you can make of this hall a place of joy again.
It should be enough to fill your days: the work and the sport, the contemplation and the dreaming. But your thoughts grow scattered, and when the last night of a fortnight has passed and there is still no word of Bisclavret, you give up on keeping your frustration buried, and go in search of the only man who will not judge you for it.
Your scribe is working when you let yourself into his chamber, half hidden among his book-hoard with its sturdy codices and neatly piled scrolls. They look better cared for than ever they did in your youth, and if he keeps at this rate of scribing, there will be plenty more of them soon, for he has a voracious appetite for stories and appears single-mindedly determined to rival the book production of any monastery, one man that he is.
‘If it’s another charter you’re seeking,’ he says, continuing to write, ‘you’ll be pleased to know that I’ve imposed some order on them, that they might be easier to find.’
‘Not that, today,’ you say. ‘It’s you I came to see.’
He puts down his pen. ‘Ah. A distraction.’
‘Something like that.’
His smile is back, but different now. ‘Will you tell me what you seek distraction from, or am I to guess? I hear your seneschal’s been plying you with criminals for judgment, but that seems not to be something you’d seek me out about. There’s little else in the winds of rumour, unless it’s that your Bisclavret ought to have returned by now, and hasn’t.’ He eyes you, and laughs when your expression gives you away. ‘I thought as much.’
He misses little, even in this dusty corner, half-buried in vellum, and even when few in the castle know and trust him enough for conversation. ‘Perhaps we might spare the speaking,’ you tell him.
His expression turns wicked. ‘I see. It’s that manner of distraction you need. But you’re so beautifully dressed for court, my lord.’ He gestures to your fine clothes. ‘Really, I’d not want to treat your servants’ handiwork lightly.’
His teasing is the only thing that hasn’t changed since you first met him. If ever he treats you with deference, you will leave, and never ask him for this again. ‘I’m sure you know the trick of the fastenings.’
He raises an eyebrow. ‘Me? Oh, but we had no silks and fine things in the monastery, and I am only a humble scribe . . .’ His fingers have already found the laces that hold your mantle closed, and are untying them with ease, letting the heavy furs fall to the floor. ‘I wouldn’t know where to begin.’
You take his hand and guide it to your belt. ‘Begin here,’ you say, and he unclasps it and draws it away, gathering it around your sheathed sword and placing both carefully on the desk.
‘And now?’ he says, and you show him –and now? and now?– until he’s taken from you all the armour of kingship and all that’s left is your undertunic, thin as clouds, pushed up around your waist, and nothing is real but his fingers on your skin and yours tangled in his hair and the scrape of unyielding stone against your back.
It’s not enough. But he is warm, and real, andthere, his lips hot as brands against your skin, and you can almost lose yourself long enough to forget why you were trying in the first place.
