How can Bisclavret not be dead? He’s been missing for the better part of two years; his clothes they found mauled and bloody. You’ve mourned him, been cut through by the keen loss of him, and now this knight thinks to suggest that Bisclavret isn’t dead?
‘Sire,’ he says urgently. ‘I should have seen it sooner, but only now has it become clear to me. From the day we encountered him, I told you that this wolf has the mind of a man – you’ve seen yourself how he feels loyalty and hatred the way a man feels them.’
‘What is your point?’ you ask. The blood has begun to saturate the cloth in your hands; it’s sticky against your skin.
‘My point is that he has shown nothing but gentleness and protection towards us all since the moment you brought him home. There is nothing violent in his temperament. And yet we have seen him just these past days inflict violence upon two individuals, as though he harbours some grudge against them. But what grudge would a wolf have towards Bisclavret’s cousin and his wife?’
You look across to the wolf, still pulling at the ropes holdinghim back, refusing to be calmed. His usually placid eyes are filled with murderous intention as he looks at the woman in front of you. Very few people could look on such a creature and believe there isnothing violentin its nature.
‘Because they live near the forest?’ you suggest, already knowing it’s the wrong answer. ‘Because they have come against him in the past?’
The lady makes some remark through her sobs, inaudible because of the cloth pressed against her face. She pulls it aside and manages to repeat: ‘Heisdead. The wolf – the wolf has a hatred for our household. He killed Bisclavret and now he will kill me and my husband. He has already tried.’
You have no desire to believe her – it grieves you to think you’ve found companionship in the beast that killed a man you held so dear. But how else are you to make sense of this?
Your knight in green shakes his head vigorously. ‘It isn’t so,’ he insists, and he’s so earnest you’re inclined to listen, despite the wildness of his claims. You want him – need him – to be right. The idea that Bisclavret might have survived ignites in you a desperation you thought had long since faded into the dull acceptance of grief. ‘This isn’t the violence of a wild animal. This is the vengeance of a wronged man.’
It’s true that you’ve remarked on the wolf’s curious intelligence, the hints of a rational mind beneath the animal skin, but that doesn’t mean you intended for such utterances to be taken as truth. And yet—
You look from the wolf to the injured woman and then to the knight: ‘Explain.’
‘The wolf is not Bisclavret’s killer,’ he says, eyes bright with conviction. ‘The wolf is Bisclavret.’
41
Other
there is nothing left in me but rage
her blood tastes like rot, love made hate by decay,
by loss, and every minute spent wandering, wolfing, lost.
they hold me back with ropes
restraints
like some kind of madman –
this is the truest sanity: anger
burning away the dreams,
the promises, the sweet nothings.
all that I am comes back to me
I remember her I remember the way she pretended to care
I remember how she used her gentleness against me
fury makes a hound a threat;
the king’s sweat tastes of fear.
surely he can see I’m justified in this –
he sees only the wolf
