Chapter 19 You
You
His wife.
You saw this coming, almost from the first time she spoke to you of him, but still it pierces you like an arrow, startling and painful.
You agree before you can think of a reason to refuse – and what reason, truly, could you give that did not also do her a disservice?
– and he bows his head and leaves, giving you no opportunity to reconsider.
But it would have changed nothing if he’d waited a month for your answer.
You wouldn’t take from him his happiness.
You’ve seen how the weight on his shoulders lifts when he’s with her; she smooths away the creases in his brow, gives him the comfort you cannot, and no true friend would rob him of that.
And yet.
And yet you watch him leave with the sense of something ending.
And yet you know that when he is married, he’ll spend less time at court (it’s inevitable; it is the way of things).
He will not want for adventure; he will lose his taste for the hunt, unwilling to travel far from home and his lady.
It will become harder and harder to drag him from his bed in the mornings to ride out with you and, eventually, you will lose him.
Not immediately. It’s never immediate, and you have known Bisclavret long enough by now to know that he will not shirk his responsibilities or break his oaths.
He will do his duty and more, and he has exemplars enough to follow – there are others among your knights who are married, and they do not let it keep them from court. But neither are they unchanged by it.
And if he is married, then he is lost to you.
He isn’t yours. He was never yours. He was never going to be yours, but the secret hope was a small lie you could tell yourself without guilt.
No more the innocent pleasure of wistful desire: such a thing will always be wreathed in shame for the selfishness and discourtesy of it, for you cannot think that way of a man who belongs to another.
Whatever his lady is able to offer him – her gentleness, her safety, her beauty, whatever it is that draws him – isn’t something you can give.
If it were, he would have asked for it, you would have offered it, it would already be satisfied by these oaths and bonds that tangle you in each other’s lives.
And if you cannot be what he wants, then you must put aside your jealousy and let him find it where he will.
To help him find it where he will, with all of your power and all of your heart.
This, too, is love: a sacrifice made willingly, to ease his darkness and bring him forward into something lighter.
But perhaps even a heathen before a burning altar might, for a moment, regret the blood spilled there and wish once again for the return of the slain beast. Is it not human, to be grieved by this kind of loss, by the knowledge that your beloved loves another?
It may be a poor friend who resents his friends’ joys, even when they come at a cost to himself, but you have always suspected you’re a poor friend.
You go, as you find yourself doing too often these days, to see the only man in the castle to whom you can speak freely.
Your chaplain is wont merely to look sympathetic and prescribe prayers as though they are the remedy to cure all ills, and your seneschal has little time for feelings when there is always work to be done; neither will offer you any comfort today.
Your scribe is working intently, his pen in one hand and a knife in the other, carefully shaping trails of neat black letters.
Propped in front of him are his wax tablets, filled with scrawled and abbreviated notes on whatever story he is now transcribing.
He must have heard it from one of the storytellers, or else begged a glance at a book they carried.
He says, ‘You know, many would frown on a king taking counsel from someone other than his noble vassals. From a peasant and a foreigner, no less.’
‘Is that what you are?’ you say, taking a seat on the bench across from him. ‘Even with all your monastery-learning?’
‘Perhaps in the eyes of God we are all peasants. Or all noble.’ He darts a smile in your direction. ‘Omnes enim vos unum estis in Christo Iesu. Nevertheless, I am no baron, to advise your rule and your choices.’
You consider this. ‘It is not advice I seek,’ you say finally. ‘Only sympathy.’
He doesn’t put down his pen, but he pauses in his writing. ‘That, perhaps, a common scribe might offer,’ he says.
It makes it easier that he isn’t looking at you: you don’t have to hide your expression as you say, ‘Bisclavret is to be married.’
His brow creases for a moment. He resumes writing in silence, and only when he has formed the final letter of the line does he pause, glance up, and say, ‘Will that make him happy?’
Your voice is unsteady as you say, ‘I hope so. I would like to think it will. He – he seems to think so.’
‘But it will make you unhappy.’ This isn’t a question: he can read that much on your face.
‘It has no right to,’ you say. ‘I should be happy for him. I am happy for him – and for her. I wanted for her a kind husband who will treat her well, and she cannot do better. I want him to have what he needs, and that is not me. I have no reason to feel this way. I cannot resent him seeking out his happiness, wherever he finds it.’
‘Should is a dangerous word when it comes to feelings,’ he says, laying down his pen.
‘Should we be sad when an elderly relative, who has lived a long and full life, passes away in their sleep? Should we fear death at all, when we are promised such delights on the other side? Should any love or hate or jealousy or happiness or grief exist? Perhaps not. Perhaps they are never justified. But we feel what we feel, and our hearts are no great respecters of reason.’
‘That isn’t the point,’ you protest.
‘I think it is,’ he responds. ‘You are holding yourself to an impossible standard, my lord. By all means, recognise that your feelings should not be acted upon, but it is no sin to feel them.’
He should know, after his time in the monastery, though you have the thought that some would disagree with his theology, and still others with his politics.
A king should not have desires of his own.
A king’s heart belongs to his people, to his land; his own hungers are immaterial, and his follies a burden his people must not be asked to bear.
Your scribe picks up his pen again, and you watch him write for a few moments. There are as many words in your head as there are on his page, but they resist your efforts to marshal them into sentences. Finally, you say, ‘I fear being replaced.’
‘That’s because,’ he says, without looking up, ‘you believe you are replaceable.’
The words settle oddly in the air, ringing with a truth you cannot deny.
You are their king: if you die, the kingdom will mourn for you, and without a named heir, they will be left adrift.
The crown will be fought over, and amidst the chaos and struggles for power, lives will be lost and others altered.
Nobody could argue that your death would pass unmarked.
But would they miss you?
Would your knights miss you – your knights whom you are only now beginning to know again, after so long away, unwanted even by your kin?
Is there anything you can offer Bisclavret that he cannot find elsewhere?
His lands should have been his in any case.
If you were gone, and another king crowned, he would swear his fealty again and all would continue as before.
Nobody would think your loss too great to bear, once the tumult had passed.
He finds companionship amongst the knights. Happiness with his lady. Pride and honour in his armour and the strength of his arm. He does not need you.
But you need him. It’s absurd, the intensity with which you need him.
Your morning training sessions together have aroused in you a passion for swordplay that you thought lost, your childhood delight in the blade long since worn away by the weighty demands of your father’s expectations.
He has blown away the cobwebs of familiarity and reminded you of all that is surprising and delightful about the physicality of knighthood.
And he has woken the rest of your court in the same way. Your knights are bright-eyed. They fight harder, dare more, live more boldly because he is among them.
It is no wonder his lady loves him.
‘I am replaceable,’ you say. It is a relief to admit it, like giving your fear a name has tamed it. ‘There is nothing about me that another could not imitate. I have nothing to offer him, or anyone else.’
Your scribe puts down his quill and penknife and comes over to you.
He takes your hands in his; you hadn’t realised they were shaking until he holds them still.
‘One day you will learn that that isn’t true,’ he says.
‘One day you will see yourself as the man I know, the one I chose to follow here, when I might have gone to any court in Christendom or crossed the seas in search of a more distant exile. In the meantime, you will watch your knight marry your ward, because you want him to be happy. And it will hurt, but you will bear that pain with courage, because you are a good man. I respect that. Anybody would, if they knew.’
You don’t deserve his respect. You don’t deserve the gentleness in his voice, the warmth of his hands holding yours, the care with which he assures you of your worth.
Your father was right to send you away – he must have seen in you this unmanly envy, this bitterness unbecoming of a king.
A better man would not feel this way. Bisclavret was never yours, you have lost nothing, you have no reason to feel bereft.
He wasn’t yours, he wasn’t yours, he wasn’t yours.
‘I wish I had forbidden it,’ you say. ‘I wish I had – I wish I had longer. I wish I could let go of these desires, because they are doing me no good, and I wish he was mine so that I didn’t have to.’
‘I know,’ he says.
‘I wish she didn’t make him happy.’
‘I know.’
‘I wish I could be what he needs.’
He kisses your fingertips gently, less like an oath, more like a lover. ‘I know,’ he says again, and you believe him.