Chapter 11 Him #2
‘A knight,’ says the chaplain, and blesses him.
‘For your sins as you have confessed them to me, and for those you have not, seek both penance and peace in the praying of the psalms. I will be back shortly to administer the Eucharist.’ He holds out his psalter, and Bisclavret takes it.
‘Bisclavret, for what it is worth . . . the king sees great potential in you. Perhaps your fortunes are turning.’
He musters a smile. ‘Perhaps.’
When the chaplain has gone, he opens the psalter with trembling hands, but for all that the book boasts clear script and fine illumination, it remains impenetrable to Bisclavret.
He has yet to confess his illiteracy, another symptom of his inadequacy for knighthood; the chaplain must assume either that he can read or that he has the psalms by heart, and he cannot claim such piety as that.
But he dredges some few words from his memory: Miserere mei, Domine, quoniam infirmus sum; sana me, Domine, quoniam conturbata sunt ossa mea.
Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak: heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled.
Troubled, yes, that’s one word for it, but what mercy may the wolf claim?
This is a mistake. An abomination. He should have confessed and had it over with, allowed the chaplain to take the lead. Perhaps they would have had him killed, perhaps merely sent back to his exile; even that would have been better than the endless torment of waiting to be discovered.
But he wants this. He wants knighthood. He wants the oath, the service, the brotherhood; he has always wanted it, since before he understood the twists and turns of his life’s path.
And if God did not want this for him, would He have formed in him this desire and allowed this opportunity? If this is not his path, why is it so difficult to turn from it? For once in his life, he is being led somewhere that he wants to go, and he is not minded to argue with that.
Still he chokes a little on the Eucharist, and tastes his blasphemy on his lips as he swallows. Still he feels the impostor as they take the candles away, one by one, leaving him alone in the dark chapel. Still the doubts threaten to crack his resolve, interrupt his prayer, rob him of his dreams.
But the cold stone beneath his knees grounds him, and a shaft of moonlight slices the altar with its insubstantial blade, and Bisclavret keeps his vigil.
The woman is golden-haired like the king.
Dressed in silks and furs like the king, too, fit for a princess.
Bisclavret remembers her from the feast, but he did not expect to see her here, in this chamber adjoining the hall where he has been brought to be clothed for the ceremony.
She slips in, speaks quietly to the servants, and to his surprise and dismay, they nod and disappear, leaving him alone with her.
‘My lady,’ says Bisclavret, flustered, and not solely because he is dressed only in his undertunic, barefoot and bareheaded. ‘I was not . . . should you be here, unchaperoned?’
‘Do you pose a threat to my virtue, Sir Knight?’ she asks, with a smile.
He wouldn’t dream of touching her, even if she weren’t under the king’s protection, but he hasn’t the words to say as much without casting some slight on her beauty and her charms, nor still to make it convincing. ‘I am . . . I am not a knight yet,’ he stammers instead.
‘And yet you trail stories in the way of the finest,’ she says, and steps closer to him. ‘I hear you defeated the king in single combat.’
‘Combat it was not,’ he says, a little desperately. ‘Friendly sparring, that was all, and he yielded, when well we might have continued for some time. My lady, I am certain this is not allowed.’
She makes a reassuring hushing noise, as though to a child.
‘The king knows I am here,’ she says, and if that is true then it eases slightly the sense of danger, but only increases his certainty that this is a test. Bisclavret wishes he knew better how to pass it.
‘Tell me about your home. Your mother’s lands, those you have but lately left. ’
He has only until the next sounding of the church bells to dress, and no notion of how much longer that might be, but if the king has sent her then he must indulge her curiosity.
‘They were small. Wooded on one side, the hills on another. Largely heath more than farmland, though there was a little of that. We were too far from the sea to count fishermen among our tenants, so winters could be hungry.’
Is this what she wanted to know? Her expression doesn’t change.
She looks at him with appraisal, her clear eyes evaluating every inch of his body.
Her gaze does not penetrate his human skin the way the king’s seems to.
She sees a man. Only a man. But what does that mean in this moment, when she has sent the servants away, and ensured they are alone together?
‘Were you loved, there?’ she asks. ‘Did you have a pretty maiden of your own? Perhaps several?’
Does she ask for the sake of narrative or for the sake of law; is she concerned that someone might lay claim to inheritance from him, or that he might be distracted from his duty and torn in his loyalties? In either case, the answer is the same. ‘No. I was quite alone.’
A peculiar smile on her face. ‘Then you are untested,’ she says, and steps even closer, close enough to lay her hand on his chest, to feel his rapidly beating heart through the thin linen of his undertunic. ‘We might change that.’
‘No.’ Too fast, too brusque, but he’s already pulled back from her.
A night at vigil in the chapel has left Bisclavret fortified against temptation.
‘You are . . . very beautiful, my lady, but I will not touch you. You are the king’s ward, and I am unworthy, and I will not violate my oaths before I have even taken them. ’
Her smile, to his surprise, widens. ‘Good,’ she says. ‘Then I will help you dress for those oaths.’
Stupefied, he cannot immediately process this change of direction. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘It would be a poor knight to swear into the king’s service who did not act courteously towards a lady. Your hesitation does you credit and your polite tongue more. Now allow me to help ready you, for the servants will not be back for some time, and the ceremony awaits you.’
Bisclavret is momentarily weak with relief that he seems to have passed this trial. ‘I can manage perfectly well by myself,’ he says, although he is not at all certain that is true.
She clucks her tongue disapprovingly. ‘It is no shame to be dressed, and I am as capable as any squire or page.’
It isn’t that he is ashamed. But there’s a shocking intimacy to it, to her hands on his legs as she helps fasten his hose, new and bright with royal dye.
No more for him the simple colours of undyed wool and linen, or the cheap blue of woad.
The armour is less familiar, and the sensation of permitting her help ever more alien: she eases the padded gambeson over his head and then the mail hauberk; laces the mail chausses around his calves; reaches around his body to fasten his belt over the fine bright surcoat in the king’s colours.
Her movements are quick and efficient; perhaps she once helped her father with his armour, that she knows so well the fastenings and the best way to arrange his tunic into comfortable pleats beneath the layers.
Her touch is feather-light and safe as a hearth, and the weight of the armour is grounding.
Each piece is like a bandage, another skin, a shell encasing him and binding him together, all of his selves locked up tight.
He thought perhaps it would feel like losing something.
Instead it feels as though something is coming together.
She takes a step back and regards him, appraising her handiwork. ‘There,’ she says. ‘You are almost ready to be dubbed, Sir Knight.’
‘Almost?’ he echoes.
She reaches out and touches a strand of his hair hanging loose about his face. ‘Let me braid your hair for you,’ she says.
‘That will keep it from shadowing those eyes of yours.’
His head will be bare for the ceremony, no coif of mail or helmet to hide his expressions from the king and all who have come to watch.
He might well wish for the slender defences of his loose hair to conceal his thoughts.
But he is aware that the length of his hair is unfashionable, an echo of decades past; the men here at court wear theirs cropped far shorter, and their beards likewise neat.
On that front, at least, he fits in; he keeps himself clean-shaven, a small act of reclaiming skin from the wolf and anything that might remind him of it.
‘Very well,’ he says at last, and sits. She is as efficient with the comb as with the rest of his armour, braiding his hair and twisting it away from his face.
When she’s done, she drops a kiss to his forehead. ‘For luck,’ she says, with another smile. ‘I must to the king and my place there. You know your part?’
If ever he knew his part he has lost the knowing of it; he feels as though he’s waking from a dream, only half-remembering who or where he is.
How unafraid she was. Touching him as though he were any man, any knight, no care for the lurking wolf.
How unfamiliar the press of her lips to his forehead, a blessing his mother ceased to offer him some years before she died.
He’d forgotten the unique benediction of a woman’s care.
She sees his stupefaction in his face and laughs. ‘The servants will fetch you, and bring you to the hall,’ she says. ‘All will be well, and you will be a knight.’
Yes. A knight. Dressed in the armour in which she dressed him, made by her hands. He opens his mouth to thank her, but she is already gone, and he is alone again.
He stays there, unsteady, unravelling, until the promised servant comes to tell him that it’s time, and then he finds his feet again and goes forward to meet his future.