Bisclavret’s heart sinks. He inherited his land some four years past, and ought by rights to have sworn to the old king, but the man was cantankerous and disinterested in the doings of minor gentry, so long as they held back from poaching in his forests and parks. His cousin is right, though: he will be expected at the coronation. Three days’ journey, at the least, if he doesn’t want to torment his horse the way his cousin has done these past two days; a night or several in the king’s hall; the same journey in return.
Too much entirely for a man with a wolf in his skin.
‘It’s not possible,’ he tells his cousin. ‘I will have to send my apologies. Meet him when next he takes a circuit. Tell him I am infirm, or injured, or—’
‘But this is your chance,’ his cousin interjects. ‘Did your mother not always plan to present you at court and reclaim your inheritance? The new king will be seeking loyal barons. No doubt he will be more than ready to restore your land, in exchange for your gratitude and good favour . . .’
‘A nice idea,’ says Bisclavret drily. ‘You have forgotten the wolf.’
‘I have forgotten nothing,’ says his cousin. He was all of twelve summers old when he learned the true nature of Bisclavret’s infirmity and has kept faith with him in the years since, whenmost would have turned their back. ‘But you can’t mean to spend the rest of your life here. Your father was a knight. A baron. His place should have been yours.’
And if his father had waited just a month or two longer to die in the old king’s service, it would have been. As it was, he died without sons, Bisclavret still in his mother’s womb, and his land reverted to the crown.
‘Then perhaps the king will grant me lands on his next circuit, but I cannot travel that long. The wolf—’
‘Surely you can manage a week,’ says his cousin, but he must read the answer in Bisclavret’s expression, because concern crosses his face for the first time. ‘Does it truly come so often, now?’
Bisclavret looks away. He has done his best to create the impression of the wolf as an infrequent visitor – an occasional lapse, not a constant haunting. All men, after all, have moments of weakness. But weekly . . . weekly starts to look like a habit.
‘Sometimes,’ he says. ‘Especially in the winter. I think the cold . . .’
His cousin doesn’t care for technicalities. ‘You can transform on the road. There will be no one to see you. Once at court, if you slip away, I can make some excuse for you, and they’ll be none the wiser. No one will be surprised by a little eccentricity, in any case, after so long in exile.’
Nobody expects you to be more than a rustic fool, he means; it’s funny how he intends this as encouragement. As though the people of the court will overlook Bisclavret’s appearance, too: the way the wolf leaves him lean and hungry, burns a sharpness into his bones that no amount of hearty food can fill out; his hair, always overlong; his skin, disfigured by small scars, souvenirs of another life. Now and again, he runs his fingers over the marks and tries to remember how they got there, buta wolf’s memories map uneasily onto a man’s body. How can he remember hurting his hand, when hours ago he didn’t have hands at all?
And his clothes – he only needs to glance at his cousin to know that his own clothes are hopelessly old-fashioned, the cheap blue and brown dyes faded with age. Fine clothes would be quickly ruined by being shrugged from a changing body and abandoned somewhere out among the trees, but he cannot appear before the king looking like he works his own fields.
‘You assume I choose the time and place of my changing,’ he tells his cousin. ‘I do not. The wolf comes when it wills, and this is too great a risk. You will take my apologies to the court.’ And he will never regain his inheritance, and he will never be a knight, and he will pretend to forget the youthful games he played, sparring with his cousin as though he could ever be anything other than this: a monster poorly disguised in human skin.
‘Bisclavret,’ says his cousin sharply. ‘Do you intend to do nothing but waste away here? How long will you hide yourself from the world?’
Howlong? He has never been granted the reprieve of an end-date for his condition. It is a fact of him, more certain than the shape of his teeth or the rhythm of his heart, they that are as changeable as all his mutable flesh. There will never come a time when it is safe for him to step out of his seclusion.
His cousin again reads the answer in his face, and for a moment his frustration is tinged with grief, as though Bisclavret’s concerns are tragic rather than rational. ‘Your mother would have wanted you to seek your birthright,’ he says. ‘Your inheritance is yours to claim.’
‘My mother kept me here and died in exile rather than riskthe danger you are suggesting,’ Bisclavret points out. ‘I cannot be my father. I wouldn’t know how to begin.’
‘I would help you,’ says his cousin, and now he is almost begging. ‘I would be your man, if you would will it.’
So he thinks to exchange his lord for Bisclavret. That explains his pleading; to serve his own family would be an easier yoke than service to another man in exchange for his arms. But he is asking for the impossible.
‘I cannot make this journey. I cannot sleep in the king’s hall. Imagine if the change—’
‘I would help you,’ says his cousin again. ‘Find you a place to sleep – the stables, if you insist, somewhere secluded. And you will swear your oaths to the king and speak to him of your father and he will restore you, and then you will have your own land, enough of it to roam in your wolfing, in place of this patch of fields. Wouldn’t that be a fair exchange?’
He makes it sound tempting. Tempting, and dangerous, and just enough like their childish dreams of glory to burrow deep into his heart and tug on the buried, secret desires he hid away once he grew too old to play at knighthood and too wolf-sick to pretend humanity. But his father’s lands – the lands that were promised to him, a home where he could live safely rather than in exile . . .
Wouldn’t that be worth it? A few days of struggle, for the years of safety that might follow? Perhaps, if he is careful, the wolf might be kept at bay long enough to make it possible.
‘I cannot stay for the hunt,’ he warns his cousin. ‘I’ll have to leave after the coronation. The risk increases with every day I spend at the castle.’
A smile casts its light on his cousin’s face. ‘So you will come.’
‘I will come,’ he says, heavily. ‘And swear my oaths, and seewhat results of it. But if the king grants me nothing then let that be the end. I will not beg him.’
‘You think it so likely that you’ll fail to impress him?’
Bisclavret remembers the king as a boy, scarcely more than a child, fair-haired and wondering as he rode out amongst his father’s knights. He can’t imagine that head bearing a crown, that mouth speaking oaths. He can’t imagine how it will feel to kneel before him, to swear fealty, to kiss him.
