But that is melancholy speaking, and ill becomes a king.
You make your way out of the keep and into the courtyard, still sheltered by the castle walls but with a sharp bite to the air nonetheless. It’s past Michaelmas, and winter is rushing in – too fast for one newly crowned, who has had no time to ready his kingdom for the cold months. At least this wave-tossed peninsula of yours has gentler claws than the inland courts you’ve known these past years; here there will be less snow to besiege you in your castles, a lighter frost. But storms will harry the coast and keep the fishermen from their work, and an ill-prepared kingdom is a kingdom that starves.
Your own death of cold would be carelessness, but the loss of your people would be cruelty. If they do not live to see Candlemas, it will be your sin to answer for.
The stables have changed little in your time away. You even think you recognise a few of the grooms as they hasten around you, making preparations for the hunt. You enquire after Bisclavret’s horse, and they gesture towards a stall at the end of the row, and you squash your inane anticipation as you walk towards it.
You see his horse first: a reliable-looking dun courser with sorrowful eyes. One of her forelegs is swollen, though the grooms have taken care of her with their poultices and bandaging. She snuffles despondently at your empty palm and consents to your touch, but your hand stills when you catch sight of Bisclavret.
He’s still asleep, curled up in the straw like a servant boy. He’s twig-thin and birch-pale, wearing only his undertunic and that with the sleeves loose. His chausses are torn, the left almost ripped from his leg entirely; his bare feet are obscenely white against the muddied floor. His hands and face are filthy, his hair tangled, a scratch across his cheek.
‘Bisclavret,’ you say, coming a little further into the stall. ‘Bisclavret?’
He was taken ill, his cousin told you, but you cannot see how wine-sickness would have left him in this state. He is so still that for a moment you fear he is dead.
‘Bisclavret,’ you say again, more loudly, and this time he stirs. You see the moment he becomes aware of your presence: the crease of concern in his forehead, the tightening of his muscles as the discomfort of the cold air registers to his underdressed body. He looks down at his feet first, then at you, and you see his mouth curl into an oath or some utterance of despair as he realises the aspect he’s presenting. ‘Be easy. I won’t judge you. Are you well?’
What a foolish question, when he is clearly not. But he pauses a moment and then nods. ‘Yes, I’m well,’ he says. ‘I was . . .taken badly, last night. I am not used to the wine. I will be fit to hunt, if still you want me there.’ His words are unsteady, dealt out one by one like coins or blows. ‘I’m sorry, sire, that you saw me like this.’
‘Rare would be the man who has never been found dishevelled after a feast,’ you say, and press him no further about his disarray. ‘Come. I will arrange for a bath, and clothes, while we wait for the huntsmen to return. By the time we break our fast, you will have entirely forgotten your wine-sickness.’
He is taller than you, and broader-shouldered; nothing of yours will fit him. But the servants will be able to source something – hunting clothes of your father’s, maybe, stripped of ornament and destined to be remade into something new.
‘I thank you, but . . .’ he begins, and then abandons whatever argument had leapt to his tongue, perhaps remembering that you promised him clothes even before finding him like this.
‘Then it will be done. Come. Your cousin will ride with us. He tells me boar hunts are rare on your estate.’
Bisclavret pushes himself to his feet, wincing. ‘This is true,’ he acknowledges. ‘Though I am aware of the principles. I hope I will not disappoint you.’
And you will endeavour not to disappoint the court, and the shade of your father. ‘It will be a fierce chase. And boar can be dangerous, even to a hale man. I could call a physician to examine you, if you have any doubt about your fitness to hunt.’
‘No,’ he says quickly, and then recalls his manners. ‘Thank you. I am uninjured.’
But he stumbles, and when you extend your hand to steady him, his grip betrays both his strength and his need. His feet are bruised and bloody, belying his claims to health. ‘Are you quite sure?’ you ask him. ‘It would be no trouble.’
‘I am well,’ he insists.
If he is determined not to see a physician, you won’t force him. But you look doubtfully at his bare feet, and observe, ‘You have lost your boots.’
‘. . . Yes,’ he admits, reluctantly, as if for a moment he intended to claim otherwise.
‘I will find you another pair. Can you walk as far as the keep or will I ask the servants to bring water for a bath here?’
‘Don’t put them to that effort,’ he says. ‘I will manage.’
It is your right to put them to that effort. You are their king. But you don’t feel inclined to remind him of that, when he has finally forgotten to call yousireor to look at you as though it causes him pain to regard the gold of your crown.
You take him to the kitchen, on the basis that the ever-burning cook fires make it the warmest place within the castle walls and he has not stopped shivering since he woke. They’re startled to see you darkening their door, but usher Bisclavret inside with promises that he will be bathed. From there, it’s easy enough to ask a servant to seek out clothes sturdy enough for hunting and fine enough not to shame the man.
With those orders dispatched, there is nothing left to be done but to return to the stables and select a mount to be saddled for Bisclavret, and a second for his cousin – the steadiest hunters your father ever had trained. The horses remember you, at least, and as they press their soft noses against your neck and breathe warm breath in your face, you feel a little more like you have come home, and not exchanged one exile for another.
But still the court is changed, made new – and Bisclavret is a part of that strangeness, his presence altering everything around. Perhaps this is a natural curiosity about an untested man who might be a knight, but it feels stronger than that. Fascination has ensnared you, novelty only part of the tangle of desire. His reticence, his blush, his almost-refusal, as though heowes no oaths . . . He is something new, this fellow exile, and you have only scratched the surface of understanding him.
You would know him for who he is, if he will allow you to see.
The hunt will test him. The hunt will test you both.
5
