Him
Three days.
He was gone for three days. His memories of the time spent wolfing are blurred, fragmented into smells and feelings. He doesn’t remember hunting the deer, or crossing the boundary that demarcates his woods from the king’s forest. He hunted, and he has no memory of doing so, and that terrifies him.
Unless, of course, there’s another wolf in the forest. But he would know. He wouldknow. Which means it must have been him.
When he first shifted back, he kept vomiting, as though his body was trying to purge itself of poison. A human stomach isn’t made for raw meat, and the venison must have been sitting heavily in his belly. Now he’s weak and hollowed out, but the thought of food makes bile rise in his throat again. It’ll be a while before his appetite returns.
He’s never allowed himself to hunt like that. He was going to sleep, to rest, to wait it out – and he failed. How did he fail so badly? Was it because of her touch that he lost his mind as well as his body? Did he leave that crucial part of himself in their bed?
It feels like a punishment for all the risks he has taken, all he’s dared to hope for.
He doesn’t go to the physician. There’s nothing they can tell him that he doesn’t already know, and no cure they might offer will balance the humours of the wolf that wears his skin. He’s on his way to the armoury instead, in search of boots and a warm cloak to keep out the chill for the journey home, when he finds himself crossing paths with the king’s scribe.
‘I heard you’d been ill, Bisclavret, but you look more as though you’ve crawled out of your grave.’ He clasps Bisclavret’s shoulder, his good humour not hiding his concern. ‘Are you well?’
Bisclavret gives him a stoic grimace. ‘Well enough, and mending,’ he says.
‘Hmm. Your wife is here, you know. She came in search of you.’
His wife. He thought at least he would have the ride home to think up some excuse. ‘She’s here?’
The scrivener gestures vaguely. ‘In the chapel.’
His heart sinks. ‘Thank you. I should go to her.’
‘Like enough you should,’ the scribe agrees. ‘It’s always dangerous when they start praying for you.’ His smile is light and irreverent, but there’s an edge to his expression as he gives Bisclavret one last clap on the shoulder and then disappears.
Dry-mouthed, Bisclavret makes his way to the chapel. With luck, the chaplain will be there to mediate, to offer intercession between Bisclavret and his lies and his wife – but when he lets himself in, there’s only one figure kneeling in front of the altar.
His footsteps are too loud on the flagstones. She looks up, and at the sight of him she drops her psalter and pushes herself to her feet. ‘You,’ she says, and he can’t tell if it’s relief or anger that makes her voice shake. ‘You’re here.’
He swallows. ‘I’m here. I’m sorry.’
She seems unsure whether she would prefer to slap him or to embrace him. ‘You ran from me.’
‘Not from you,’ he says, pleading. ‘From myself.’ He cannot look at the altar without remembering the vigil he should never have kept and the oaths he should never have sworn. He isn’t made for knighthood. He isn’t made for marriage. But in the eyes of God he is bound to both, and cannot abandon them. ‘I came back.’
She reaches out her hand, brushes his tangled hair away from his eyes. He can see the questions in her face, and the pain they bring. He would kiss away those soft creases in her brow if he could, and take from her the worry; he would have her fear nothing. But it would be a peace made of lies, and it already tastes bitter on his tongue.
In the end, she doesn’t ask. She looks him in the eyes and says, ‘You came back,’ in a voice that’s soft and doubtful and full of gratitude. ‘But you came here instead of home.’
‘Perhaps I knew I’d find you here,’ he says.
Her small, sad smile shatters his bravado and flirtation: she knows the thought never crossed his mind. ‘I came here to pray for your soul when I thought you must be dead,’ she says. ‘I kept a vigil for you last night, in case you lay unshriven somewhere in the forest with nobody to find you. I stayed until the candles burned out.’
Of all the ideas she might have come up with to explain his absence, he didn’t expect his death to be among them. A lump rises in his throat at the thought of her on her knees on the cold stone for his sake. ‘You truly believed me dead?’
‘I believed you loved me,’ she begins.
‘I do,’ he interrupts.
‘And so,’ she continues pointedly, ‘I believed if you were alive, you would have come back.’
She has faith in him. She looks at him, still, in that way of hers – seeing the whole of Bisclavret-the-man, and none ofBisclavret-the-wolf, the way he has always wanted to be seen. She raises his hand to press a kiss to the inside of his wrist.
That should be his part to play. But he has a mind to let her court him, run ragged and exhausted as he is. ‘I would not have left if I felt I had any choice,’ he tells her, which is as honest as he can be. ‘And I will always come back.’
