‘I cannot condone you lying to her.’
This is your fault,Bisclavret wants to say.You would not let me hide at home. You would not let me flee the court. If not for your meddling I’d have stayed alone and exiled and would never have loved her and would never have had to lose her.‘I don’t need your permission for the living of my life.’
His cousin makes a noise of disgust. ‘Perhaps you would not have my friendship either, then.’
‘Is this friendship?’
‘You know that it is.’
They walk on a little further. Bisclavret says, ‘Is it only my wife you fear for?’
‘What?’
‘You think I’m a danger to those around me. Your concern must extend to others who spend time with me – the knights, the king, yourself . . .’
‘Iknow to be cautious,’ says his cousin. ‘As for the knights and the king – well, the situations are hardly comparable, unlessyou are spending rather more time alone with them than I’d realised.’ His cousin eyes him warily. ‘If you want to convince me you’re trustworthy, this is a strange way to go about it. What are you trying to say?’
‘You love my wife.’ The words come out too harshly, and Bisclavret wishes he could bite them back. But the resentment boils over inside him. There is so little that is his own, and his cousin who is human and safe and has never felt his body unmaking itself will not be the one to take this love from him. His cousin who could have any woman in the world, if he wanted. ‘Explain to me why I should believe you are not led by your heart on this matter.’
‘Of course I am led by my heart,’ his cousin snaps in return. ‘How can I be otherwise, when I have cared for you for years and that love has not faded? But Bisclavret, you must see that these situations are not the same. The king has guards, other knights, the means to defend himself. Your wife—’
‘Is perfectly safe!’
‘So you say! And I wish I believed you, but this isdangerous.’
‘I have always been dangerous,’ he spits. ‘No more now than ever. Perhaps you should have thought of thatbeforeyou dragged me to court.’
‘I have thought of it every day since.’
The confession hangs limply between them, and it says everything Bisclavret needed to know. He turns and begins to walk again, faster, knowing the other man will struggle to keep pace with his loping stride.
‘Bisclavret,wait.’
But the damage has been done.
‘You’ve always been the only person I trusted,’ he tells his cousin. ‘But you’ve proven yourself the same as the rest. I’ll find another steward, and you may return to knighthood, so thatyou might not begrudge me the sacrifice of the life you’d rather be living. You will have only the best arms, the finest horse I can offer you. But I want you gone from my lands. I’ve no need of you.’
‘You need me as much as you ever have.’
He needs nothing. He has his wife, his king, the castle, the knights. He’s more than a wolf-man, more than a vagabond, more than a pitied cousin living out his years in exile. He has always thought he needed this charity, but that was when it was all he had. And now he has more.
‘Perhaps I was mistaken then, too,’ he says, and does not look back.
24
You
The hunt is unsuccessful, if success is to be measured in face-to-face encounters with vicious predators. You ride all day, and catch no glimpse of the wolf. The tracks in the forest are muddled, bewildering even the best of your huntsmen, and only the mangled remains of the deer confirm that there was ever a wolf at all. By the time you return to the castle, your whole party is cold and dispirited. Food has been prepared, but you’ve no appetite. You take a hunk of bread, leave instructions that you’re to be left alone, and retreat to your chamber.
You don’t remember falling asleep, but you’re woken the next morning by the sound of the door opening. ‘I gave orders that I wasn’t to be disturbed,’ you say, propping yourself up on your elbows; your chamber is meant to be inviolable, closed even to your seneschal should you wish it.
‘Those instructions don’t usually include me,’ says a familiar voice.
You let yourself fall back onto the bed. ‘One day you’ll pass a whole day with no other concern but your books and I’ll be so astonished to see you at your scribing that I’ll faint dead away. Why are you here?’
Unusual as it is to see him this early in the day, your scrivener looks far more awake than you feel. ‘To see if you are well,’he says. ‘You went so early to bed and are so late to rise. The knights tell me you didn’t train with them this morning.’
What time is it? You’d assumed it was morning, but as you become more alert, you see that the daylight is streaming in. ‘How long have I slept?’
