And sure enough, his cousin is moving through the crowd of men and dogs towards them. He’s set aside his mail and livery for hunting clothes, and carries his own spear.
‘Now,’ the king is saying to the huntsman, ‘you say he was moving west, but—’
‘I looked for you last night,’ says Bisclavret’s cousin in a low voice, drawing him away from the king. ‘After the feast. I hadfound you a place to sleep, but you were nowhere to be seen. Bisclavret, did . . . was it . . .’
‘Nobody saw me,’ says Bisclavret, which is as much an answer asYes, it was the wolf. ‘I was careful.’
His cousin chews his lip. ‘Are you well enough for this hunt? I know the wolf can leave you weak.’
It can – it does – but today the bitter ache of his ill-fitting skin is muted beneath the thrill and excitement of the chase ahead. Whatever else Bisclavret is, he is a hunter, in a wolf’s skin or a man’s. He has never had the chance to test himself against a boar before, but he welcomes the opportunity. One last chance, he thinks, to taste the life of a knight, before he returns to his own lands and his own life.
‘I am well,’ he assures his cousin, and pretends to believe himself, but underneath his borrowed clothes he feels again his ever-shifting bones and knows there is only so far he can push himself before disaster.
‘If you need to leave . . .’
‘I am well,’ he insists, a little more firmly, though he knows his cousin is merely concerned for his comfort. He is the only one who has ever understood the pain of the change, the only one who has ever been more concerned for Bisclavret than for the sheep the wolf kills or the paths it treads in the woods.
His cousin nods, acquiescing with grace. ‘Then today is your chance to prove yourself the equal of your father.’
Theequal. A joke. His father was a knight, well-trained and experienced; Bisclavret can claim only adolescent sparring with his cousin for his sword-work, though many long and lonely hours he spent swinging around a blunted weapon until it felt like an extension of himself. His father would have thought nothing of hunting a boar – he would know the technique of it in his bones and in his blood, not merely in his head, theproduct of hearsay, the way Bisclavret does. Just as he would have known his own father as a man and not a story, a body and not merely a name. Though perhaps it’s for the best that his father never knew his wolf-sick son.
‘Aye,’ he says at last, dragging himself from his reflections. ‘And when I have his land and his title, I will be safe.’ Safe and secluded and rich enough to pay compensation for the animals he takes when the wolf is hungry. Safe, and nowhere near the court, or the king.
Bisclavret glances again at the golden-haired man who invited him here. He has put aside his heavy crown, exchanging it for a slim circlet. There is an earnest animation in his face as he discusses routes and habits with the huntsmen; he gestures emphatically, his hands darting like swallows.
One hunt, Bisclavret promises himself. Then he will swear his oaths, as master of whatever land is his, and that will be the end of it. He will not let the court seduce him; he will not let his dreams become too glorious.
Let me stay, howls his heart, but there is no place for desire amidst this careful balancing act of wolf and man. Better to have the loneliness of exile in his own body than the glory of the court without his proper shape.
Better to be no knight at all than to bring the wolf into the king’s halls.
6
You
The hunt is continuity: youth, exile, kingship, all of them joined by this bright thread of the horse beneath you and the call of the horns and the fierce joy of the hounds as they run, chasing down the boar as it crashes through the undergrowth. Your swirling thoughts settle, the winds that stirred them dropping to stillness, all your fears of inadequacy slipping away. You’re awake to every detail around you: each shaking leaf, each shrilling bird, everything a fearful mind tunes out.
Even the knowledge that it’s a test can’t erase the thrill of it. So you are being watched, measured, judged by your father’s standards and the standards of his men – what of it? They will not find you wanting. Not here in the woods, which are not so different, after all, from the woods of your exile.
The company, though, is better.
Bisclavret is here. You catch sight of him, now and again, out of the corner of your eye, and your heart lifts in triumph.He’s here.He rides well, even on an unfamiliar horse, and when you dare turn your head to look at him, you see a vicious smile lifting the corners of his mouth, a new light in his eyes.
alive alive alive alive alive
The woods shake under the thunder of hooves, the beaters driving the boar ever forward, the well-trained hounds neverforgetting their quarry no matter how many smaller beasts cross their path. The huntsmen were right: the boar is a strong one. He keeps his speed, though his low, heavy body has to fight through the undergrowth that the hounds leap over. He knows these woods, in the way that you intruders do not. Perhaps he thinks there’s safety somewhere for him, if he can only run for long enough.
But even the strongest beast tires eventually. The dogs have caught up with him; he turns to face them, tusks at the ready, sword-sharp. There’s a risk he’ll gore them, if he’s not gored first, and you pull back your horse and reach for your spear, but the animal is already moving again, path erratic, and you can’t judge the angle. If you miss, and anger the boar—
He charges forward, snarling. Behind you, somebody mutters an oath, and you hear them turn their horse’s head away, preparing to flee. You cannot think of doing so yourself. You’re frozen in the face of violence and danger, unable to remember how to loosen your hand around the spear you’re gripping so tightly you feel it might splinter into pieces at any moment. He is heading straight for you, for your horse, and you cannot move, the delight of the chase dissipating in an instant. This is not like the deer-hunts of your youth, nor yet the pursuits of your exile, where few eyes marked your progress and even fewer passed judgment on you. The crown is yours – the laws are yours – the kingdom is yours – but this, this test will affirm you as king in the eyes of all your barons or it will mark you as a weakling and a failure, unguided by God’s hand, and the echo of your father’s disappointment resounds in your ears like the hunting horns.
A thin film of cold sweat coats your skin beneath your clothes. You try, again, to raise the spear to strike, and your panic-locked fingers fumble, such that you’re lucky not to dropit. What an ignoble way to die, before your reign has even truly begun, and how feeble the human will is, to hesitate now when you have never before hesitated to hunt. Some king you will make, flinching from the blow, without even a knight or favourite beside you to strike true in your place.
The boar is getting closer. It is too large, too fierce – the huntsmen shouldn’t have chosen this target. But of course they wanted to test you against an enemy anyone with a shred of sense would fear. Wanted to know if exile had hardened you, but now, in this moment, all you see is death advancing towards you, and violence turned upon you, and your heart is as soft and weak as it ever was. You are afraid. You are afraid to die. You take a breath to better speak your prayers, and—
A spear flies from somewhere to your left and strikes the boar unerringly, burying itself deep, all the way to the guard.
He roars, furious, injured, as the hounds dive towards him. One falls back, stomach torn by a tusk; another takes its place, the smell of blood hot in the air. Only a brave man would dare get close enough to finish the job, and risk being gored himself. The kind of man who could make a throw like that, and hit a boar in motion from horseback, perhaps.
