Strange to summon him at all, without knowing for sure if Bisclavret were dead. You would ask if his wife or his steward made that decision, but that you fear giving credence to rumours better forgotten.
But there must be something they aren’t telling you, something that will make sense of this. Their story is bitterly plausible, you cannot deny that: the wolf has been quiet recently, but winter would drive its hunger, and it might well be on the prowl again. And if Bisclavret were absent and unknowing, in the grip of his almost-madness, then a beast that encountered him at hisgoing astray would face no real challenge. His usual skill with a blade would do him no good if he lacked the wit to call upon it.
You cannot, however, accept that he is dead, plausible or not. Bisclavret cannot be dead.
You hardly remember mounting your horse and riding away; the world is fogged with your disbelief. You remember a little better the long ride that follows, scouring the forest as though you might hunt the wolf singlehanded, but it has found for itself some secret den and defies your searching. When you arrive home, mud-splattered and tearstained, you can scarcely manage the words to explain.
Your chamber is empty, lacking in answers. The hall echoes with absence. You let your feet take you where they will, and find yourself in a room where the very air is redolent with the scent of parchment and of ink; you run your fingers along the lid of a book-chest before you have consciously registered the absence of a candle or a familiar figure at his workbench.
He’s gone. Of course he’s gone; he’s been gone for weeks. And his replacement spends less time holed away in this chamber, copying stories for his own delight, so there is nobody to see your grief. You slump down to the floor in the same corner where once you were kissed and hug your knees to your chest, a pose more befitting a child, abandoned and lost, than a king. You don’t feel much like a king. You bury your face in your knees and try not to weep.
You fail. If Bisclavret is gone, then you’re more alone than ever. To think you imagined him lost when he was married! That was a mockery of grief. You were a child, naive, not to understand how much more profoundly it would cut to have him entirely gone. No longer his smile at your feasts, no longer his melodic voice raised in song, no longer the curious magnetism of his loping stride, no longer his blade meeting yoursand his amused gasp of exertion when you manage to catch him out while sparring.
Married, Bisclavret wasn’t lost to you. Not like this. His life pervaded yours in a dozen ways, and you were a fool not to see it. Now the heart has been ripped from the world, and all you can do is curl up in this lonely corner and weep.
Nobody disturbs you. Perhaps they don’t hear, or perhaps they assume your tears are those of some exhausted page, too lowly to matter. You’re left uninterrupted and uncomforted, sobbing until you are hollowed out. When they find his body –ifthey find his body – you’ll grieve as befits a king on the loss of one of his knights. But for now you mourn as a man mourns the loss of an intimate friend.
And you mourn, too, that you face this loss alone, without the one man who might have understood you. The room is bitterly empty, the books locked in their chests like bones in a coffin. None of them may help you. None contains prayers to heal a broken heart, or spells to repair a body torn apart by a wolf’s teeth, or the secret of the flowers that weasels know, which bear within their petals the power to return the dead to life.
He cannot be gone. You refuse to be living in a world bereft of him. And yet the enormity of loss will not be held back; it’s a wave crashing down on you, implacable and furious. It feels like the truth, as unyielding as the challenge in the eyes of the wolf. It feels like you’ll never see him again.
You cannot be sure how long you stay there. Grief renders time meaningless, marked only by the dryness of your throat and the stinging of your eyes. Eventually you can cry no more, and your cheeks are wet and raw with salt. You remain curled in the corner for as long as you can bear, and then you haul yourself to your feet and stumble from the room. Part of you hopes to encounter somebody who will recognise your sorrowand offer you some balm for it, and part of you wishes only to return to your chamber unnoticed, to wash your face and surrender to the healing solitude of sleep.
The hall is empty, but you’ve put only one foot on the stair to your chamber when you meet an interruption in the form of the chaplain.
He’s taken your Confession too many times not to recognise your distress. You try to brush past him with some platitude, but he holds you firm by the arm. ‘Tell me.’
So you bring him into your chamber with you, and you tell him that Bisclavret is dead.
You aren’t sure what response you expect from him. Perhaps some commentary on the immortal nature of the soul and the reassurance that your knight is in paradise. What reason to mourn a man who is with God, freed from the burden of mortal strain and toil? It will be no comfort at all, but it is the way of priests, to seek their answers in the intangible and forget the pain of mortal bodies.
He doesn’t say that. He says, ‘I am so sorry,’ and then he holds you, and if you had any tears left you would weep them now, in the assurance of his embrace. Instead you can only keen softly, your breath catching in your throat as his arms encircle you.
He makes no suggestions. Does not ask what you’ll do next. Does not suggest seeking comfort in any one person or activity; does not prescribe distractions. He simply holds you while you mourn.
Eventually, you become aware that he is praying. It was so soft and unobtrusive that you can’t be sure when he started; perhaps he has always been murmuring the familiar words. His prayers are simple, humble, and he seems to expect nothing from you, but you follow him in reciting them anyway.Subvenite sancti dei
occurrite angeli domini suscipientes animam eius offerentes eam in conspectus altissimi. Assist, saints of God; hurry, angels of the Lord, to receive his soul and bring it before the sight of the Most High . . .
Will it help Bisclavret’s soul, to speak these words for him? Will something of the love you felt for him be diffused in these prayers, to dissipate and speed him on his journey through torment to paradise? At least then it would not remain a hard rock in your chest, impotent and unbearable.
Your throat is dry from weeping and from praying. The chaplain fetches you a drink and stays with you until finally you tell him you’d prefer to be alone, to seek solace in sleep. He retires with promises to keep a vigil for Bisclavret’s soul, and to pray for you too.
You don’t need his prayers. You’re not the one who is dead; it’s not your soul that has fled unshriven under the onslaught of a wolf’s claws. Dear God, the horror of it – no confession, no absolution, and after such bodily torment, what manner of suffering must Bisclavret now endure? Perhaps his half-mad wanderings make him child-like, his innocence granting him clemency. You mislike to believe in any God that would condemn him to suffer, but all must wait for Judgment, and bear the answer.
You spend most of the night on your knees. If your prayers could cleanse him, his soul would be washed clean by your tears by now. Your candles burn themselves to stubs and you turn away the servants who come to replace them. Morning imposes itself unwelcome on your mourning, and you’re forced to wash and dress yourself to face the world. But when the night comes again, you wander phantom to the chapel and let yourself in through the unlatched door to kneel on the cold stone and whisper words that burn your lips and sting your heart.
The prayers are no comfort to you, but perhaps they bring him warmth, wherever he is now.
28
Other
this has always been a story about lying.
about running and pretending to run
in order to avoid the bigger lie:
