Chapter 4 You
You
Ride out with us.
You’ve hardly slept, remembering his hesitation, that fear and desire tangled up in each other. What is it that Bisclavret is afraid of – and what is it that he wants?
You rise early, before the huntsmen have set off. Dawn is uneasy and grey, but there’s a fresh scent in the air: the rain has passed, and if your luck holds, the sun will shine later.
Impatience hums beneath your skin as a servant stitches tight your sleeves, such that eventually, with the uncertainty of one still adjusting to your edict to speak to me, in the name of God, I cannot abide this silence, he asks, ‘Are you excited for the hunt, my lord?’
That’s a sound enough excuse for your twitching, you suppose.
Though excitement doesn’t come close to touching this tangle of feelings: the relief at leaving the castle and breathing fresher air; the thrill and the fear of a boar hunt with all its dangers; the ever-present awareness that this is a test. Your people no longer know you, and they wish to.
Today will demonstrate your strength and skill in arms and your father’s canniness in sending you away to learn, or it will mark you the unmanly failure of a son he thought you were when last you saw each other.
It’s a heavy burden to place on a spear and a dagger.
‘Yes,’ you say absently, when you realise that the servant is waiting for an answer. ‘Yes, it will be welcome to hunt here again. I have been gone too long.’
When you are dressed – and oh, how welcome these more practical clothes, free of the trailing sleeves of your coronation bliaut; you are already tired of being decorative – you descend to the hall, where your lords are waking, their eagerness for the hunt tempered by the heavy remnants of last night’s festivities weighing down their heads.
You scan their ranks for Bisclavret, but there is no sign of him.
But there, by the door, far from the hearth, is his cousin. You cross to him. ‘Is Bisclavret here? I had thought to take him to be equipped for the hunt. I’m aware he did not travel prepared.’
His cousin blinks, and swallows. ‘He is . . . that is to say, he was taken ill after the feast, and left to seek relief. I believe the air in here was too close for him, and the wine too strong.’
‘Ill?’ You choke back your dismay. It will be nothing serious. ‘Wine-sickness, I assume? He would not be alone in that.’
‘Something of the sort,’ admits the cousin, but he looks uneasy, and his fingers twist in the fabric of his surcoat. ‘He intended to sleep in the stables, I think. He cares a great deal for his horse, and after the journey . . .’
A kind man to care so much for his lamed horse that he would give up his place by the fire to spend the night with her. ‘Then I will seek him there. Thank you.’
The knight looks startled by your thanks. ‘Sire,’ he begins. ‘I must ask . . .’
‘Speak freely.’ You are not surprised that those who knew your father are hesitant to offer opinions or indulge their curiosity, but it’s tiresome nonetheless, when you have no intention of punishing them for it. It will be far easier to rule if you are loved and understood than if you are not.
‘How did you convince him?’ He cannot look at you as he speaks.
‘He is reclusive, shy; it took some cajoling to convince him to travel for the coronation itself, and he was determined that he could not stay, but would leave when he was pledged to you. But now he has agreed to ride out with the hunt.’
‘He is not yet pledged to me,’ you say, as if that explains it, and perhaps it does, desire and obligation keeping Bisclavret here, his father’s lands held to ransom.
But still he hesitated when you asked him to stay – you saw that.
You saw how he almost refused you, and it charmed you, that he considered saying no to a king.
‘Then you have promised him something more?’ asks his cousin. ‘His inheritance?’
Oh, he is clever, this landless knight, engineering this situation to bring his cousin back into the court’s favour and restore a family impoverished by the old baron’s death and the past quarter-century away from the court.
Perhaps, if Bisclavret rises, he stands to gain a knight’s fee of his own, and that, for a man with too many brothers, would be heady enough temptation to risk retrieving his cousin from his exile.
Especially if he alone has kept faith with him, and knows Bisclavret owes him for that loyalty.
‘I would know his capabilities,’ you say, half an answer and far from a promise. ‘Is there much hunting, on his estate?’
‘Not of boar. Largely hares, foxes. We haven’t the land for deer.’
We. Interesting. ‘Then this will be a test of his mettle, too, I suppose. Will you be riding with us?’ Properly, he should ride with his own lord, but you’re sure the man can spare him, if it will put Bisclavret at ease to have a familiar face beside him.
‘If my lord can spare me a horse,’ says the cousin. ‘My own will not be fit for hunting for some time yet.’
‘Oh, have no fear about that. I will ensure you a mount.’ Your father loved his horses, possibly more than he loved his son; his stables are the finest in the land. ‘I’m going to the stables now, to arrange one for Bisclavret. I will have them saddle one for you, too.’
‘Sire, you are too kind,’ begins the knight.
You flash him an unkingly smile. ‘I am a man alone in his own home. What have I to lose by cultivating friends? Fear not, I’ll speak to your lord and ease the sting of his loss; I’m sure he’ll not begrudge me the use of you. Be at the assembly when the huntsmen return, and I’ll find you there.’
He doesn’t blush as easily as his cousin, but his embarrassment and pleasure is plain nonetheless in the pink tips of his ears and the stammering way he thanks you for your attention.
A novelty, still, to have men grateful for these scraps of friendship, when for so long you have been too unimportant and unwanted to be worth befriending by any but the other outcasts and exiles scrabbling for a place in a court they don’t belong to.
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 you sire or 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 he owes 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.