Bisclavret did not expect such understanding from a man of the cloth who carries his self-assurance like prayer beads, familiar and comforting. He swallows hard and asks, ‘How do you defeat it?’
The chaplain does not look at him as he says, ‘I have tried to see myself as Job, my faith tested by misfortune. Then, at least, there would be some purpose in it, and if I am true to my God, it will come to an end, and I will have my reward.’
This is a bitter disappointment. He finds no solace in the idea of suffering for some holy game or unseen test, played out by forces beyond his ken. ‘Does that help, Father?’
‘Not in the least,’ he says, looking back at Bisclavret, and his kind smile carves deep lines around his eyes. ‘We are supposed to be saved through Christ, with such evils defeated. It gave me strength, perhaps, in my youth, but it has long ceased to be a comfort. I tell you this only so that you know I have wrestled with these angels too.’
‘What now, then?’
‘Now, I take each day as it comes. I accept that I will never have control, and allow my pain to be only part of me, not my entire being. I hold to the knowledge that there is a greater plan, though little I can see of it. I count my blessings, and let the pain pass over me.’
He speaks the words as though they’re easy, but his expression, his lined face – lined in a way a young man’s face should not be – says otherwise. This is, perhaps, a question he still grapples with.
Bisclavret says, ‘What else is my being, but this?’
‘A knight,’ says the chaplain, and blesses him. ‘For your sins as you have confessed them to me, and for those you have not, seek both penance and peace in the praying of the psalms. I will be back shortly to administer the Eucharist.’ He holds out his psalter, and Bisclavret takes it. ‘Bisclavret, for what it is worth . . . the king sees great potential in you. Perhaps your fortunes are turning.’
He musters a smile. ‘Perhaps.’
When the chaplain has gone, he opens the psalter with trembling hands, but for all that the book boasts clear script and fine illumination, it remains impenetrable to Bisclavret. He has yetto confess his illiteracy, another symptom of his inadequacy for knighthood; the chaplain must assume either that he can read or that he has the psalms by heart, and he cannot claim such piety as that. But he dredges some few words from his memory:Miserere mei, Domine, quoniam infirmus sum; sana me, Domine, quoniam conturbata sunt ossa mea. Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak: heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled. Troubled, yes, that’s one word for it, but what mercy may the wolf claim?
This is a mistake. An abomination. He should have confessed and had it over with, allowed the chaplain to take the lead. Perhaps they would have had him killed, perhaps merely sent back to his exile; even that would have been better than the endless torment of waiting to be discovered.
But he wants this. He wants knighthood. He wants the oath, the service, the brotherhood; he has always wanted it, since before he understood the twists and turns of his life’s path.
And if God did not want this for him, would He have formed in him this desire and allowed this opportunity? If this is not his path, why is it so difficult to turn from it? For once in his life, he is being led somewhere that he wants to go, and he is not minded to argue with that.
Still he chokes a little on the Eucharist, and tastes his blasphemy on his lips as he swallows. Still he feels the impostor as they take the candles away, one by one, leaving him alone in the dark chapel. Still the doubts threaten to crack his resolve, interrupt his prayer, rob him of his dreams.
But the cold stone beneath his knees grounds him, and a shaft of moonlight slices the altar with its insubstantial blade, and Bisclavret keeps his vigil.
The woman is golden-haired like the king. Dressed in silks and furs like the king, too, fit for a princess. Bisclavret remembers her from the feast, but he did not expect to see her here, in this chamber adjoining the hall where he has been brought to be clothed for the ceremony. She slips in, speaks quietly to the servants, and to his surprise and dismay, they nod and disappear, leaving him alone with her.
‘My lady,’ says Bisclavret, flustered, and not solely because he is dressed only in his undertunic, barefoot and bareheaded. ‘I was not . . . should you be here, unchaperoned?’
‘Do you pose a threat to my virtue, Sir Knight?’ she asks, with a smile.
He wouldn’t dream of touching her, even if she weren’t under the king’s protection, but he hasn’t the words to say as much without casting some slight on her beauty and her charms, nor still to make it convincing. ‘I am . . . I am not a knight yet,’ he stammers instead.
‘And yet you trail stories in the way of the finest,’ she says, and steps closer to him. ‘I hear you defeated the king in single combat.’
‘Combat it was not,’ he says, a little desperately. ‘Friendly sparring, that was all, and he yielded, when well we might have continued for some time. My lady, I am certain this is not allowed.’
She makes a reassuring hushing noise, as though to a child. ‘The king knows I am here,’ she says, and if that is true then it eases slightly the sense of danger, but only increases his certainty that this is a test. Bisclavret wishes he knew better how to pass it. ‘Tell me about your home. Your mother’s lands, those you have but lately left.’
He has only until the next sounding of the church bells to dress, and no notion of how much longer that might be, but if the king has sent her then he must indulge her curiosity. ‘Theywere small. Wooded on one side, the hills on another. Largely heath more than farmland, though there was a little of that. We were too far from the sea to count fishermen among our tenants, so winters could be hungry.’
Is this what she wanted to know? Her expression doesn’t change. She looks at him with appraisal, her clear eyes evaluating every inch of his body. Her gaze does not penetrate his human skin the way the king’s seems to. She sees a man. Only a man. But what does that mean in this moment, when she has sent the servants away, and ensured they are alone together?
‘Were you loved, there?’ she asks. ‘Did you have a pretty maiden of your own? Perhaps several?’
Does she ask for the sake of narrative or for the sake of law; is she concerned that someone might lay claim to inheritance from him, or that he might be distracted from his duty and torn in his loyalties? In either case, the answer is the same. ‘No. I was quite alone.’
A peculiar smile on her face. ‘Then you are untested,’ she says, and steps even closer, close enough to lay her hand on his chest, to feel his rapidly beating heart through the thin linen of his undertunic. ‘We might change that.’
‘No.’ Too fast, too brusque, but he’s already pulled back from her. A night at vigil in the chapel has left Bisclavret fortified against temptation. ‘You are . . . very beautiful, my lady, but I will not touch you. You are the king’s ward, and I am unworthy, and I will not violate my oaths before I have even taken them.’
Her smile, to his surprise, widens. ‘Good,’ she says. ‘Then I will help you dress for those oaths.’
