Chapter 14 Him
Him
He spasms back into his own skin sometime after dawn.
The air is fresh, thin mist dissipating in the pale sunshine. The trees are stark outlines against the foggy white of early morning, and the ground is thick with dead leaves, autumn on the verge of surrendering to winter.
He’s naked, and without clothes the change looms again, ready to drag him under. If he can’t dress himself and convince his body it’s meant to be human, he’ll slip again into the wolf and this time, he fears, he won’t come back.
He always fears that. That one day he won’t come back.
But the fear is strongest in these moments when his body has forgotten its proper shape and he has no way of reminding it.
He doesn’t even know where he is, though it has the look of the royal forest, so perhaps he didn’t stray too far.
He was at the castle, yesterday. Did he make it into the trees before he changed?
He can’t remember. He doesn’t know. There were so many people; God, what if he didn’t get away in time?
But he’d remember. He would have stopped himself before he hurt them. He has to reassure himself of that, when the memories are fuzzy and disjointed because the geography of a wolf is painted in scents and shapes that mean little to a human.
He is not wholly lost, even in the depths of his wolf-sickness. Only changed.
Bisclavret runs his fingers over his face, as he always does when he returns. He’s not sure what he’s checking for. Perhaps it’s the sheer relief of feeling eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth, the tug of his fingertips against his own lips reminding him that he has a mouth and that he has hands.
He has hands.
He begins to stumble towards the outwood – perhaps there he’ll have a hope of orienting himself and finding some way back to his abandoned clothing.
The roots of gnarled oaks snag his feet, threatening to trip him; he’s helpless as prey compared to the wolf’s loping grace.
Does he miss it? He’s not sure. There’s always a period, when he first comes back, when his mind isn’t certain what skin it wants to be in, only that whichever he’s currently in isn’t it.
It’ll pass when he finds his clothes. He hopes. It usually does.
It’s cold, out here in the forest. When the winter comes properly, it’ll bring new dangers: he’ll need to ensure he doesn’t freeze to death while he’s a new-skinned cub stumbling pelt-less among the trees.
He survived last winter only through careful planning, never straying far from home, but this year already feels different.
New lands, a new home, paths he hasn’t yet learned, and a new resistance to the careful limits he’s built up over the years.
The castle and the king and the lady – they’ve tangled the carefully separated threads that form his life, made a mess of it.
He’s almost to the edge of the trees when he hears footfalls.
No. No, they can’t find him here, not like this.
Naked and wandering the king’s forest like a witless poacher.
He tries to remember whether he hunted last night, and whether he’ll have killed any of the king’s own deer.
He hopes not. He may be a knight now, with his father’s hunting rights to some of these woods, but it will still cause trouble.
A knight. What a joke. He’s a naked, terrified man with a wolf beneath his skin that threatens to steal him away. He can feel the shift coming, the aching as his joints prepare to twist inside out, and all he can think is, not again.
The footsteps come closer, swishing through the fallen leaves.
They’re making no effort to conceal their approach – most likely, they have no idea that he’s here.
He needs to concoct a story before they stumble into his path, but his mind is still half-wolf and ice-cold, and excuses fail him.
There is no reason he can give for being naked on somebody else’s land that will make it any better.
The footsteps halt. He stays perfectly still, half-concealed between the trees, and hopes they leave before the wolf comes back, but they don’t move.
After several agonising moments, they break the silence. ‘I brought your clothes.’ His cousin. He sounds wary, and distinctly unimpressed, but not hostile. ‘I thought you might not find them. They were . . . scattered.’
There’s a rustling, as though he’s placed the bundle on the ground. Bisclavret coughs and it’s half a growl, but he manages to say, ‘Thank you.’
‘I’ll wait for you outside the wood.’
His cousin retreats. When he’s sure he’s alone, Bisclavret darts forward to pick up his clothes: his own linen undertunic, only lightly torn, and the fine gambeson his cousin had made for him for the ceremony; simple everyday braies and chausses; his boots, brushed free of mud.
His mail and surcoat must be elsewhere. He doesn’t know how he got out of them.
When he’s presentable and the sting of shame has receded a little, he follows the sunlight to the edge of the trees. His cousin is leaning against a drystone wall, arms crossed. He looks relieved to see Bisclavret.
‘I wasn’t sure you’d come back,’ he says, ‘without your clothes.’
‘I came back,’ says Bisclavret. ‘But I might not have stayed.’ He thumbs the fabric awkwardly, feeling it brush against his skin, willing his body to understand that this is you this is who you are you are human. ‘Thank you.’
‘Here.’ His cousin pushes himself forward, and takes charge of the laces Bisclavret couldn’t manage, just out of reach of his fumbling wolf-scratched fingers. Every fastening he tightens seems to bring his skin a little closer to his bones. ‘You gave me a fright.’
‘Did I . . .’ Bisclavret’s mouth is dry. ‘Was I seen? I don’t remember leaving.’
The other man has changed out of his feast clothes, but he doesn’t look like he’s slept much.
‘You made it to the forest, just. I gathered your clothes before the king or his knights stumbled upon them and started asking questions. I didn’t see you change; you were already amidst the trees by then.
By the grace of God, nobody else did either. ’
His tone demands reassurance, or at least excuses, but Bisclavret has few to offer. He tries anyway: ‘It was overdue. You know we were lucky, on our journey, that the wolf let me be. After everything, I might have expected it sooner.’
‘Everything?’ his cousin echoes.
‘The hunt, single combat, our journey, Confession, a vigil, the ceremony . . .’ And the lady. And the sights and the colours and the fact that the change was already there, waiting, because he’d been too many days without it. He was deluding himself to think he would be allowed peace for long.
There’s a pause, and then his cousin says, ‘I must say, when I urged you from your exile, I thought you had more control over it than this.’
‘I know you did,’ says Bisclavret tiredly. ‘I tried to tell you otherwise.’
‘Perhaps I was wrong to push you.’
‘Perhaps you were.’ It’s too late now. He’s sworn his oaths, accepted a blade from the king’s own hand.
‘Perhaps this is inviting disaster. Perhaps it is unsafe. But then, you said to stay in my exile was unsafe, lest the wolf be tempted to roam too far. The truth is that I have never been safe, and I will never be safe, for I can neither escape the wolf nor hope to control it. The best I can do is try to live despite it – which I thought was the philosophy you were encouraging me to adopt. You cannot now drive me back into fearful timidity because the limitations of that idea have made themselves known.’
‘I have no intention of doing so,’ says his cousin, with more patience than his bitter tone warrants. ‘If I wanted to hurt you, I would not have ridden half the length of the forest looking for you so that I might bring you your clothes.’
Only now does Bisclavret notice the horse, tied to a branch a little way off, blithely cropping the muddy turf and ignoring them both. ‘Where are we?’ he asks. ‘How far did I come?’
‘All the way into your own lands,’ says his cousin, and his expression softens into half a smile. ‘Perhaps the wolf in you has some sense after all.’
His own lands. Bisclavret looks around him in new wonder: the woods, their glorious autumn colours already fading to the muddy grey of winter; the heath before him; what looks like farmland beyond that. There will be the manor, too, the house he should have grown up in, but has never seen.
‘The wolf has as much sense as I do at any other time,’ says Bisclavret, distractedly – his own lands! – and his cousin says, ‘Yes, well, no wonder he would put you in such danger, then,’ with enough humour in his voice to ease the sting of insult.
The relief of being in safe territory gives way once more to fear. ‘Do you tell me true, that I was not seen? Why does the king think I left so suddenly?’
‘He had already excused himself. I told his seneschal you were wine-sick, and that I would see you safely home.’ He adds, with faint amusement, ‘He advises that you must learn to hold your drink, lest you find yourself cheated at dice by the knights.’
Bisclavret forces a smile. ‘If that is all I have to fear, then I would be a luckier man than I deserve.’
‘We both would be.’ His cousin takes a breath. ‘Bisclavret, as your steward I am sworn to be honest with you, and as your kinsman I would not choose to lie. I am afraid.’
His cousin has had various reactions to Bisclavret’s condition during their lives. Disbelief. Confusion. Doubt. Disgust. Hope, far more tenacious than Bisclavret’s own. But if he has ever before been afraid, he has not admitted to it.
‘Afraid of what?’ Bisclavret asks, waiting for him to say: you.
‘That somebody will be hurt by this. That you will be hurt by this, or that you will hurt another, and be in turn tormented by the knowledge and the guilt of it. I saw you, last night, with the king’s ward.
The way she looked at you, and you at her .
. .’ There is a new uncertainty in his voice.
‘Do you intend to court her, Bisclavret?’
‘I had not thought so far ahead.’ He can’t court her. What kind of marriage could a wolf-sick man offer the king’s own ward? ‘What concern is it of yours?’
‘Every concern,’ retorts his cousin. ‘The same way that your land is my concern, that your health is my concern. For the same reason that I came out here looking for you this morning.
But also for her own sake, that she should not be injured by this.’
‘I will not hurt her,’ says Bisclavret. ‘And you have no reason to fear me.’
‘Bisclavret,’ says his cousin gently, ‘I am afraid for you.’ He reaches out and plucks a leaf from Bisclavret’s tangled hair, letting it fall to the ground with the rest. ‘I wish you all the joys of knighthood, and I will be at your side to guide your lands to their flourishing. I know you do not lack caution, but . . .’ He takes a breath.
‘This hope is new for you, as though the sight of the lady has changed something, and I am afraid of what it will do to you if your hopes prove unfounded.’
He knows, then, the shattering of Bisclavret’s heart every time the wolf comes back after a long absence. He knows how dangerous that fall from grace can be.
‘Cousin, I must be allowed to hope,’ says Bisclavret softly. ‘I cannot live my life never looking ahead to better days nor celebrating them when they come for fear that Fortune’s wheel will once more plunge me into sorrow.’
‘The fall is greater from a height.’
‘So is the view.’
His cousin’s smile is sad, and Bisclavret feels close to weeping. ‘I’m trying to protect you,’ he says, ‘the way I always have. You know that, don’t you?’
Of course he knows that. His cousin is the only kinsman who keeps faith with him: keeps his secrets, made those thankless journeys to his home in exile, brought him food and news and cheer. It is a debt he will never repay, for it has kept him alive.
But his cousin cannot protect him from the wolf, just as the king cannot command it.
‘I am a knight,’ he says. ‘I can protect myself.’