‘When have I ever abandoned you, Bisclavret? I have been faithful to you since we were children. I gave up knighthood to stand at your side; I risked my position at court to present you to the king. And still you accuse me always of meaning you ill.’
‘Perhaps you should not have done,’ says Bisclavret. ‘Perhaps you were better off as a knight. I would arm you again, if that’s what you wish.’
‘You need me,’ says his cousin. ‘You need me as your steward. And your wife needs me, to stand between her and the violence of the wolf.’
‘I am notgoingto kill her!’
‘You cannot know that! Not any more, not after everything that has happened!’
Bisclavret is exhausted and faint, but he struggles to his feet and begins to walk away. His cousin easily keeps pace withhim. ‘Perhaps I have surrendered some measure of control over the last few days,’ he begins, as they leave the chapel, ‘but that doesn’t mean it will happen again. I was overtired and overwrought and—’
‘And you can guarantee never to be overtired again, can you?’
The worst part is that his cousin is right. The words cut deep because they’re the refrain of his own mind – the fear that he’ll snap, and hurt her, and that there’ll be no coming back from that. Once he loses control of his own mind, he loses everything.
‘This was your idea,’ he spits. ‘I tried to retreat, to back out of knighthood. You were the one determined that the king should have his way.’
‘There is a difference between being a knight and marrying the king’s ward.’ His cousin stops dead, folding his arms. Bisclavret tugs him into the relative shelter of the chapel doorway before their conversation can echo around the entire courtyard. ‘Before, you were taking risks with your own name. Now, you are taking them with her life. You have denied yourself the safety of your own house as a retreat from scrutiny, and that loss of safety will bring the wolf ever closer to the surface. And your wife—’
‘She is not making it worse.’
‘You went wolfing on your wedding night and vanished for three full days, returning thin and injured with three ravaged deer in your track. Forgive me if I do not believe you.’
‘And I’m supposed to believe this is concern speaking, when you’ve as good as admitted you’re in love with her?’
His cousin’s cheeks are flushed. ‘What has love to do with any of it? My feelings are of no concern here.’
‘No? So it’s merely a convenience that if I should repudiate her on the basis of her safety, you will be there to offer her your hand.’
‘Well, no one else will now, will they? Would you have her left to starve, the widow of a living man?’
‘I would have her be mine.’
‘I would have heralive!’
Bisclavret turns his face away. He doesn’t know how he can possibly respond to that. Of course he wants her safe. He’d cut off his own hands to keep his claws from scratching her. But he’s never felt as much himself as he does under her touch; never felt as present in his humanity as when she looks at him. She’s safety, belonging, selfhood, and despite his care for her, he cannot bear to surrender that.
Perhaps his cousin is right. Perhaps he is selfish.
He walks on, not looking at his cousin, not speaking; perhaps if he walks fast enough, he can leave this whole argument behind, and with it the knowledge of his failings. He hears footsteps and knows that his cousin has followed, but he doesn’t look back. They make it most of the way to the stables in this manner, locked in a fragile silence.
‘Bisclavret,’ says his cousin eventually, tiring of the stalemate. ‘Bisclavret, look at me.’
He doesn’t. He says, ‘I have never hurt anybody.’ It’s almost a plea:you know me, you know what I’m capable of, how can you still think me willing to maul and murder? He’s speaking to himself, to those self-loathing corners of his heart, as much as to his cousin, because it is so easy to forget that fact. He has never hurt anybody. That means something. When it comes down to it, thatmustmean something.
‘I know,’ says his cousin. ‘But you have never before hunted the king’s deer, either.’
He’s right about that too, damn him. Bisclavret is haunted by the gaps in his memory, the hunt he doesn’t remember. If he is so close to losing his reason, there’s no telling how muchfurther he might fall. ‘I’ll be more careful in future. Lay safeguards, ensure I cannot stray.’
‘And if I asked you to tell her, would you do it?’
He turns then, sees his cousin’s open, earnest face. Not the expression of a man conniving to steal his kinsman’s wife. Just concern, and hope, and something else he can’t place. ‘Why?’
‘She deserves to know. Tell her the truth of it and let her decide. Perhaps she can help you, find a way to ensure you don’t wander too far . . .’
Perhaps she would. Or perhaps, for all her goodness, his wife would turn from him. She knows her own worth too well not to recognise that she deserves better – and his cousin must know this, which makes his suggestion feel vicious and cruel.
‘I can’t,’ he says, almost a whisper.
