‘I could have you kept here for the rest of your life,’ you say, pretending not to notice that you’re weeping again.
‘You could try,’ he says. ‘But you won’t.’
No, you won’t. You hold him, and allow him to hold you, and the day is already fading to evening by the time he clasps your hand one final time and walks away, a small sorrowful smile on his face as he glances back.
And then you are entirely alone.
The remainder of the winter passes in a haze. Sometimes Bisclavret is there; sometimes he’s not. He’s often a little pale, eyes bruised with sleeplessness, but when you spar he wears his old smile and fights with his usual strength, so you don’t pry. You treat him as any other knight and he behaves with due deference, and neither of you acknowledges that it was ever otherwise.
But it is impossible to ignore that he has argued with hiscousin and the two are at odds, for the man is no longer his steward. He has sworn himself into service again, his lord’s knight once more, though he brings his own fine horse and good armour, which must ease the sting of the interruption. He trains with you briefly, but only for a matter of days; his lord is returning to his estate, and he will go with him. Bisclavret seems relieved rather than saddened by the separation. He will not, however, acknowledge that anything is wrong.
Deprived of distractions, you throw yourself into kingship. The grey fog isn’t gone, but the sharp blades of loss have punctured it, cutting away the veil, and through those rents in your mind you glimpse a sort of clarity. You listen attentively to your seneschal’s reports and engage with your barons’ counsel as you have not done since those first weeks after your coronation. You leave every meeting with an aching head, but at least it is time spent not thinking about anything else.
The promised clerk presents himself to you and he is, of course, a perfectly adequate scribe; even your seneschal finds no fault with his record-keeping. You rarely speak, and that’s fine. Occasionally, you call by his chambers to consult some charter or volume, but you don’t linger. There’s no longer anything for you there.
You’re lonely, but what man isn’t?
Half a dozen more hunts are mustered, but the wolf is nowhere to be seen, evading all the traps set by the huntsmen. There are few reports of further damage, although occasionally a deer is found, or there will be some other mark of its passing. It leaves too few traces to be living only in your forest, and you wonder where it spends the rest of its time, and what causes it to stray.
You’re sparring with Bisclavret one morning when you recall that his own lands must be in as much danger from the wolf asyours. You ask him about it – has he strong enough fences? Are his livestock and people safe?
‘Yes, my lord,’ he says carefully. ‘We’ve had no trouble from the wolf, and I don’t anticipate any. In any case, I have had the cottages secured and the fences strengthened.’ His mouth twists with something that might be amusement. ‘I imagine the foxes are wondering what cruelty drives us to deny them any hope of access to our chickens, though they cannot be more dismayed than the hens by their enclosure. Renard with all his wiles could not slip through.’
Despite his joke, his manner is stiff, uncertain, and his divided attention allows you to disarm him.
‘But you never ride with us on the hunts,’ you say. It’s not that you mean to press him, but you’re curious. ‘You’re recovered now, are you not?’ He still looks too thin, but he’s lost the unhealthy pallor that followed his earlier bout of sickness, and he doesn’t fight like a man who should be confined to his sickbed. ‘You’re such a skilled hunter; we miss you on the
chase.’
‘I’m sure you do.’ His smile is more of a grimace. ‘But I have no taste for hunting wolves, sire.’
Is it fear, or a softness for them? You had thought the former, but for the first time you wonder about the latter. ‘In the north, they let them roam untouched.’
‘So I’ve heard,’ he says.
‘They speak of garwolves. You’ve heard the stories?’
He stiffens. ‘Garwolves?’
‘Men who walk and hunt as wolves, but return to their own skin when the moon is right, or when their bloodlust fades, or by some other mechanism, I know not what.’
You’ve always suspected a certain heterodoxy from Bisclavret, but you have no sense of how he might react to such blatantsuperstition, better suited to a peasant than a king. You watch him carefully, but his expression is still and controlled.
‘If such men exist,’ he says at last, choosing his words with care, ‘then they must bear some frightful curse, and I pity them. And it seems to me as good a reason as any to let the wolves alone. This one seems to run with no pack, and certainly does not appear to mean harm to you or your people.’
‘You speak as though it’s rational,’ you say with a small laugh. ‘What does it mean, for an animal to mean harm? Are they not incapable of such reasoning?’
At that, he laughs. It does little to diffuse the tension in his shoulders, but you welcome it anyway; it is a long time since you heard his laugh. ‘If I did not already know you for a king, that would be the statement that marked you as never having worked the land. Animals know malice as well as any man, sire, as you would be aware if you’d ever earned the enmity of a watch-goose.’
The idea makes you smile. ‘I will grant that geese seem fierce in their likes and dislikes.’
‘And fierce in acting upon them,’ he agrees. ‘My lord, my land overlaps with the forest, and I have seen little sign that the wolf is a menace to you – if it’s there at all. Perhaps it’s time to abandon these hunts.’
‘Perhaps,’ you say, but you find yourself eyeing him thoughtfully as the bout resumes, wondering why he speaks for the wolf when your other knights are calling for its blood.
25
Him
