Chapter 17 You
You
Everywhere you look, Bisclavret is there.
If you thought his absence unbearable, then his presence is worse, for you can think of little else but him.
When you spar with the knights, you are perpetually distracted by the way he fights, fluid and dangerous as a river after a storm.
Your gaze snags on the coloured belt he wears, declaring his affections for all to see; catches on his smile when your ward comes to watch him fight.
Perhaps you should feel kinship with her, a shared admiration; perhaps you should be glad of the excuse to bring Bisclavret ever closer into your household – but all you feel is a strange, cruel jealousy, one that ill becomes you.
Still, you have learned courtesy the way prey animals learn survival, and you like to think no hint of your lovesickness is apparent to those around you.
But the mask comes closest to cracking – to shattering entirely – the day you go in search of your scribe with some fabricated request for a letter you wish him to compose, and find Bisclavret in his chambers.
You’re about to turn on your heel and go, but your knight spots you, rising from his seat with an apology already springing to his lips. The movement draws the scrivener’s attention, and he looks up.
‘How can I help?’ he asks immediately, as though you have no relationship beyond the needs of a king for a fair hand to copy his scrawled epistles.
‘I—’ You look from him to Bisclavret. You cannot imagine what business they might have together. ‘It’s unimportant. I’ll come back later.’
‘No, by all means,’ says Bisclavret, already gathering himself to leave. ‘I wouldn’t wish my presence to delay you. I can go.’
‘I’ll return later,’ you repeat, and make good your escape.
In your chamber, the door firmly closed, you sink to the floor.
It shouldn’t feel so strange to see the two of them together: you introduced them, and you have made it clear you wish your knights to welcome the scribe as a part of your household.
There is no reason Bisclavret should not avail himself of the man’s services.
And yet.
As you half-expected, your custodian of books comes in search of you a little later, letting himself in to your chamber without hesitation. ‘I should have warned you,’ he says. ‘He asked me to teach him to read.’
Whatever you were expecting, it wasn’t that. ‘He did?’
‘His exile, it seems, afforded few opportunities for a formal education; his mother’s teachings were more practical than literary, and he can scarcely read his own name, let alone write it.
He sought me out with the vague idea that I might be a tactful tutor, unlikely to pass judgment on his failings.
’ He sits down next to you. ‘Of course I agreed immediately. He’ll be vulnerable if he’s not literate, and his steward handling it all. ’
It ought to have occurred to you that a man who had so rarely left his mother’s estate might not be lettered, but the thought never crossed your mind. ‘Of course you should teach him,’ you say. ‘I might have suggested it, had I known.’
Your scribe’s mouth twists in a knowing smile. ‘But I ought to have told you when it started. You were taken by surprise today. I’m sorry.’
He doesn’t owe you apologies, and you are being absurd even to find this situation startling. Bisclavret has half the castle in his thrall, his grace on the field matched only by his kindness, and that’s as it should be. But you underestimated the effect it would have on you.
The effect he would have on you.
‘I hear you hired a new sword master,’ says your keeper of books.
Your father trained his own knights; there has been no man hired for the role since the master who taught you to fight as a youth passed away.
Until now, you’d thought you might continue in the same way, for you are well able to train your own men.
But after seeing Bisclavret fight, you know you will never be enough to nurture that talent – and you have begun to wonder what the rest of your knights might be capable of if pushed to their limits.
‘The seneschal assured me the funds would not have gone to parchment or ink whatever happened,’ you say, with a brief smile. ‘But yes.’
The scribe nods. You have the odd notion that he would like to try himself against the man, though it would be unfitting of his position.
Against Bisclavret too, no doubt. You have never seen him fight, but you know he’s capable of it: you have seen the scars that mar his skin, the remnants of a dozen bloody battles.
He’s evasive whenever you ask about them, as he is about any aspect of his past, but there must be a story; however harsh the discipline of his monastery might have been, no monkish scourge or mortification left those marks.
Perhaps once he wore both sword and cross, though you’d have thought him too young to have waged holy war.
For a few moments you sit in silence together. Finally, you say, ‘Has he told you much about his upbringing?’
‘Little enough. I do know his mother taught him to weave and to sew and manage the housekeeping; it seems they had very few servants. His new estate must be quite an adjustment, though I don’t doubt his cousin is well able for managing it for him.
He’s Bisclavret’s heir, you know,’ he adds.
‘He had me draw up a charter that would ensure it. The cousin’s the sixth of six and has no inheritance coming to him from anywhere else, and Bisclavret’s had no contact with the rest of the family since he was quite young, but I suppose he still fears they might lay claim to his estate should he die unexpectedly. ’
‘Has he told you why?’ you ask, then add, more petulantly than you intended, ‘He has not spoken to me of his family.’
Your scribe purses his lips and says, ‘Have you asked him?’
Not in as many words. In truth, you’ve spent more time sparring than in conversation.
But neither has the man volunteered information, or shown himself to be open to such a discussion.
‘Do you think he would answer?’ you say.
‘After all, I must have asked you a dozen times for your story and I have yet to hear
it.’
He gives you that half-smile he always does when you needle him about his past. ‘You don’t want my story, my lord, though you may think you do. You’d lose all respect for me.’
Which only feeds your curiosity, but you have learned that pursuing that line of questioning will get you nowhere. ‘And does Bisclavret feel the same way, do you think?’
He considers this. ‘I think if he wishes to speak of his family, he will. No, he hasn’t told me what manner of feud or falling-out has caused this estrangement.
I also haven’t asked. I suspect he would prefer to construct for himself a new story, free of the shadow of his exiled youth – a story of a knight in the court of the king.
You could give him that. You have already given him that. ’
You want more. But you don’t know how to ask for it.
‘You should go,’ you say finally. ‘You must have work to be doing, and it will not please the seneschal to think you have my ear.’
He grimaces. ‘One day, perhaps, the man could start trusting me,’ he says, but he gets to his feet and makes for the door without complaint.
Then he stops and says, ‘I can’t make this easier on you, nor can I tell you honestly whether it will pass as an infatuation does, or grow the way passions do when left untended.
All I can tell you is not to torture yourself, lest your hair turn white before you know it. ’
With that, and the return of his usual grin, he leaves you be.
Infatuation. Is that what it is? Probably.
You’re behaving like a youth ten years your junior, and you’re at risk of embarrassing yourself.
As the day wears on, you try to force yourself to sober pursuits, but the business of kingship is tedious when your heart is elsewhere, and you cannot keep your thoughts from intruding.
No wonder your father was so often in an ill temper, cooped up all day listening to reports of lands you’ve never seen, or the twittering of advisers over rumours of a war that will likely never reach you, even if it does eventually erupt.
In the end, your restlessness becomes so powerful that you abandon all efforts to tame it, and decide to go for a ride before your prowling aggravates your servants entirely.
You have the grooms saddle your father’s most vicious-minded destrier: the warhorse is trained to courage but has never welcomed any touch but your father’s, and the effort of imposing your will on the intractable creature will occupy your wits and keep you from slipping into further rumination.
You mean to go alone – or as alone as you are ever allowed to be, now, with guards following at a discreet distance – but you’re not far past the main gate when you hear the clatter of hooves on the stony ground behind you, and you turn to see your knight in green.
He’s dressed for a ride, his hair streaming in the wind.
‘If I’d wanted company, I would have asked for it,’ you say, trying not to sound unwelcoming.
‘I thought I’d spare the guards the effort of keeping up with you,’ he replies, with an easy smile. ‘Besides which, not wanting company is not the same as not needing it.’
You scowl and spur your horse forward without answering.
He follows, holding his tongue, and soon you’re past the village and out of earshot of anyone who might care to listen.
As you anticipated, the destrier is stubborn and high-spirited, and the presence of another horse has him minded to show off; your hands and thoughts alike are consumed by the strain of keeping him to a steady canter.
Eventually you slow so that the both of you can catch your breath, and your knight does likewise. ‘Would it help to talk?’ he says.
‘Of what?’ you snap.
He shrugs. ‘Of whatever it is that has you so nettled, my lord.’
There’s a fond, faintly sarcastic note to the honorific – a reminder that while you may feel you returned from exile a different man to the one who left, you are still enough the same to be unable to hide your mood from a man who has known you since you were only a boy.
He was never quite your peer, always a few years ahead, but you had a friendship, and you’ve done him a disservice not to acknowledge it more since your return.
You glance sideways at him, trying to gauge the extent of his knowledge. There’s nothing of the scribe’s knowing humour in his expression, but it’s clear he, too, has an inkling of your mind. He has known you too long to be easily fooled.
‘Bisclavret,’ you say finally, and the destrier shifts beneath you as though the sound of his name sets him as restless as it does you.
‘Ah,’ he responds, and waits for you to elaborate.
‘He is . . . he is the sort of man any king would wish for a knight, and any man for a friend.’
He raises his eyebrow. ‘That sounds like something to be glad about. What troubles you about plucking such an excellent knight from obscurity?’
You shrug and look away. ‘Perhaps the very fact that I brought him out of his obscurity. Have I not thrown in the faces of all my knights their service and training?’
‘Have no fear on that account,’ he says immediately. ‘The men love him; nobody resents his knighting. We are only saddened for his sake that it took so long, for he should have been dubbed ten years gone.’
You believe him – your knights have ever been better men than you, not prone to jealousy, and this man knows their hearts the way few others do, and would not tell you falsely.
‘You don’t think me a fool, then?’ you ask, in a voice smaller than befits a king.
‘For returning a man’s inheritance and bringing him back to his proper position? I can’t think what could be less foolish.’
Of course it was proper, it was right, it was the way things should have been, and yet none of that was on your mind when you took his oaths from him. ‘I suppose, over time,’ you begin vaguely, ‘it will all be . . . easier.’
‘No doubt,’ he agrees. ‘My wife is of the mind that all change is disruptive until it is old, even when it is for the better.’
And there has been such a lot of change, these past months, not least your presence here and this crown on your head. ‘A wise woman,’ you acknowledge.
‘The wisest, save that she married me.’ His smile is fond. ‘You’re not alone in being caught out by a beautiful man once in a while.’
So he knows, then. Well, of course he knows. You were youths together, fighting with sticks in the shadow of the forest, and you have never been skilled at hiding your feelings. ‘I wager she benefitted more from the entanglement than I will,’ you say, only a little wistfully.
He cocks his head. ‘Perhaps,’ he allows. ‘But you’ve his fealty, and he his knighthood, and few things bind a man more tightly than those.’ He clicks his tongue, nudging his horse into movement. ‘Shall I race you, sire? To the river?’
You hesitate, but the destrier is itching to run and part of you feels the same way, battle-roused without a fight into which to channel your passion. ‘Sword drills before Prime for the loser,’ you suggest.
‘Before Lauds, surely, my lord,’ he counters, ‘for it to be a fitting wager,’ and before you have time to agree or object, he has spurred his mount into action, his laughter ringing in the air as you begin your pursuit.