I will never have my own skin
my body has forgotten how to be human
even despite the dreams of it
this place is not home but half a tomb,
cold stone and candle wax,
but still the dust is a breath of life,
still the pale dawn of candlelight is homecoming,
away from the forest and starvation and desperate bloody survival.
not home but a resting place,
a moment’s grace
– for as long as he will have me here –
‘bisclavret’
he remembers my name
he speaks it when he’s praying
perhaps I am not lost after all
35
You
You send the count’s son away, eventually. You have to – it isn’t fair to use him to keep your loneliness at bay, nor to encourage his family’s hopes of favour, though where they think this will end, you can’t imagine. Rumours are already beginning to spread that you’ve no interest in encouraging: it is any king’s right to invite his favourites to share his bed, but it will cause tension if you’re thought to show a preference for a foreign count over one of your own barons, and you have admitted so few into your intimacies since your coronation.
When he’s gone your bed is cold and far too large and you rise too early for prayers from fractured sleep. The wolf is curled outside your door, less disreputable after having been washed and groomed by the keepers of the castle hounds. It –he, there’s too much intelligence in those eyes to think of him like any other animal – looks up at you with placid loyalty, and follows you to the chapel.
It’s always cold there, on your knees, but the warmth of the wolf beside you chases away some of the chill. When your prayers are uttered, you twist your cold fingers into his fur and feel the heat that radiates from his body. He doesn’t seem to mind. He nudges you gently, as though encouraging you to come closer.
But the chaplain made it clear that he is not enthused about the presence of a wolf in his chapel, so you don’t linger, returning to your chamber. The wolf’s about to lie down in front of the door when some soft instinct prompts you to say, ‘No, come inside.’ As if he can understand you.
Maybe he can. Certainly he follows you, and curls up beside your bed like a guard. There’s space enough for him in the bed itself, in place of the friends you don’t have, but perhaps the floor suits him better; lying on the edge of the endless bed, you can still reach out and touch him, and his presence is comforting. It’s easier than usual to slip back into dreamless sleep until the morning comes properly to wake you again.
The first time the servants find him there, they’re startled, but it becomes a familiar sight: the large wolf beside you as you sleep, protecting you from harm. Perhaps it’s as well that you never acquired the habit of inviting your barons to share your chambers and gain a little honour that way, though it would be a fine test of their mettle to know if they’d dare to lie down beside the wolf and close their eyes. If nothing else, you know you need fear no assassin or spy, for the wolf growls fiercely at any who come unannounced to wake you.
Gradually, the court lose their fear of the animal. It helps that he shows no inclination towards violence; after months of quiet companionship and protection, even those initially timid have grown fond of him, and will spare a morsel from their plates or offer him a scratch behind the ears. But you take care not to let stories of his docility spread beyond the castle walls. It can be useful, sometimes, to have him stare down petitioners when they become too strident and demanding; they are suddenly minded to curb their tongue.
You’ve always talked to the wolf, in the way that anyone talks to their hounds or their horses – small murmurs of reassurance,basic instructions – but as weeks stretch into months, you find yourself confiding in him. Especially at night, alone in your bed, when you curl up against the beast for his warmth. It is less lonely than talking to yourself, and lacks the bitter sting.
At first you speak of little. Your tiredness, maybe, or a hard day, one where an issue brought before you is more difficult to resolve than most and you cannot be sure you made a fair judgment. You talk about your knights and their foibles and quests, recounting a joke told at a feast or a story brought home from a tournament. You have no real sense that the beast understands you – despite his intelligent eyes, he makes no response to these tales that suggests anything more than recognition of the rhythm of your voice. But somehow it helps to tell him. You confess your fear of the growing unrest on the eastern horizon, the threat of war that comes ever closer in the reports of your advisors and the epistles of your correspondents:this may be my last letter for a while, one writes,for once the fighting reaches the river, there will be no safe path for messengers . . .
You don’t know what you will do when it arrives, and you don’t dare tell anybody else that, either.
One night, you tell him about Bisclavret. The reminiscence slips out, unprompted: you think of him daily, keep him in your prayers, but usually, these days, you spend less of your time lost in nostalgia and grief, and are not minded to speak of him. You aren’t sure what nudged the words loose.
Perhaps it’s because it’s the anniversary of Bisclavret’s wedding, unmarked and uncelebrated.
Once you start, it’s difficult to stem the flow of memories. You talk of him late into the night – half recollections, half confessions, everything you should have said and didn’t, all the things you think he knew but wouldn’t acknowledge. Briefly, you voice a fear you’ve never spoken aloud before: that he’snot dead but hiding, having fled your court and your affections when he became unable to bear your gaze.
