Chapter 22 You
You
‘Wolves, sire. We only tracked one, but where there’s one there’s a pack, so the rest will be close by. And there were three deer half-eaten in the royal forest.’
The huntsman is grim-faced, freshly returned from the forest. His tidings feel ill-fated.
Your father was merciless in his hunting of wolves when you were a boy, and you who loved your hounds always thought it a shame when they dragged in the carcasses and hung their pelts on the walls.
But you know better now, and fear the violence of the outcast hunters.
They must be creeping back across the rivers and the mountains, slipping into the kingdom from the east like the invaders they are.
In your years of exile, you heard stories, plenty of them, of men who lose their skin and reason and go out wolfing in the night.
The garwolf, they would call such a man locally.
Humans transformed into mindless, violent animals, such that they might eat their own kin and enjoy the feast. The first time you heard the story, you dismissed it as a folktale; the second, as an embellishment.
By the third you had begun to wonder what it was that haunted their woods, to give birth to such tales, for there must well have been something, and that something bloody-minded and sharp-toothed.
But these stories do not belong here. If such wolf-men ever roamed your kingdom, they’re long gone, hunted down with the rest, and these tales are unfit for Christian men.
When your knights hear the wolves are back, they’ll want to mount a hunt.
No time to waste: wolves left loose in the forest will become a problem.
It’s an ill season for riding out, though, the ground soft with winter mud, and the hounds sluggish with cold.
All the more reason to address the threat before it grows.
You’re interested to see how Bisclavret acquits himself in a hunt against wolves, and whether his fierce courage will serve him as well against them as against the boar.
But you’ve not seen him since the wedding, now three nights ago.
A messenger sent to his wife brought back the message that he has been taken ill, and that his cousin is caring for him.
If you could, you would visit to see how he fares, but he has not been ill so long as to warrant such attention from his king, so you must content yourself with waiting.
‘Very well,’ you tell the huntsman, and turn to your seneschal. ‘Have them make arrangements, and send word to those within a day’s ride.’
He gives you a look that suggests he’s noticed the lack of enthusiasm in your voice.
Perhaps he wonders when hunting stopped being enough to give you pleasure, and you might wonder the same thing, except that you have known this ebb and flow of happiness all your life.
It comes, and it goes; sunlight one day, shadows the next.
You are deeply shadowed, now, wandering the ramparts late at night as though searching for something, with no real idea what you’re looking for.
Bisclavret’s arrival brought a momentary colour to your life, but now that radiance is fading, and even he cannot stop the colour seeping away again, grey disinterest descending like rain.
The physicians call it melancholy, an excess of black bile, another excuse for purgatives and blood-letting; the priests are inclined to call it sin, or weakness at the very least, and recommend prayer and penance.
You have tried both cures, in years past, and found little relief in either.
Each time the fog descends you fear that this time it will never lift, and each time it does, and all is restored; this is the hope you must cling to, when the shadows are darkest.
Through this cloud of apathy you make your absent way to the stables, and there he is: Bisclavret, looking pale and drawn and very much as though he has been ill, a half-healed cut on one hand.
His hair hangs loose around his face and he has a nervous, darting gaze, unwilling to meet your eye even as you ask earnestly after his health.
It’s not the behaviour of a man recently married who has been enjoying the delights of the marriage bed.
It is the behaviour of a man who is afraid.
‘Bisclavret,’ you say finally, losing patience with his evasive answers. ‘Something is wrong. Tell me what it is.’
He cannot disobey a direct order. Even so, he considers it. Tries hard. Eventually manages to say, ‘I’m sorry, sire, but it’s not something I can explain to you. It’s . . .’ He trails off. ‘A matter of personal importance, not for the ears of others.’
‘I did not judge you harshly when you spoke to me of madness,’ you remind him. ‘What else can there be that you cannot explain?’
‘Too much, I fear, sire. I’m sorry.’ He brushes his hair out of his eyes with a hasty, thin hand. The bones in his wrists are more prominent than they were four days ago, and you worry for him. How ill has he been?
‘At least assure me that your wife is taking care of you,’ you say finally, expecting that, at least, to be a request he could grant.
But Bisclavret avoids your gaze, and it strikes you then that his dishevelled appearance means he came here without his wife’s knowledge.
‘In the Lord’s name, you’ll kill yourself if you don’t rest. You shouldn’t have come to court. ’
‘Maybe not,’ he says. ‘But now that I’m here, I hear rumour of a hunt?’
‘Yes, they’ve spotted wolves in the forest, but—’ You break off. The colour has drained from Bisclavret’s face so fast you fear he’ll faint from the rush of blood away from his head. He staggers and leans against the stable wall for support, coughing to cover the movement. ‘Are you well?’
‘Wolves?’ he repeats faintly. ‘But there aren’t – there can’t be . . .’
‘You have a fear of them?’ You’re surprised by that.
You didn’t think he was a coward, to be brought to near-swooning by the mere mention of wolves.
A hunter of his prowess is more than capable of protecting himself.
‘I know they have been nearly gone from these woods for some years now, but my huntsman assures me we’re plagued with them once more.
Three deer have been found dead so far.’
Bisclavret looks ever more alarmed. ‘Three?’ he says. You wonder if his illness has damaged his hearing, or addled his brains in some way. ‘No, that can’t be, there can’t be, there are no wolves in the—’ He glances up at you. ‘Where were they found?’
‘In the royal forest,’ you say, ‘a little west of here, and— Oh.’ You’ve begun to grasp the nature of his fear, for that forest adjoins his own land and any wolf might well slip from one to the other, poaching Bisclavret’s animals and threatening his tenants and his household.
‘I did not hear that they were as far west as your border, but well you might think to fence in your animals.’
‘Yes,’ he says faintly. ‘Yes, that I might.’
‘Are you sure you’re quite well? What is it that worries you about these wolves?’
‘Nothing,’ he says hastily. Too hastily.
‘That is, nothing that wouldn’t strike fear in the heart of any man.
I did not think there were wolves in your forest, and as for my own lands, I’ve walked them enough times now and never seen hide nor hair of them.
It alarms me to think they could have returned without my knowledge, for I felt I was a better steward to the woods than to have allowed something like that to pass me by. ’
Perhaps that’s all it is. But there’s more fear in his expression than you’d expect from a man of his boldness and courage.
‘Will you join us on the hunt?’ you ask. ‘You might rouse your men to ride with us, since it concerns your land.’ You think you would feel safer with Bisclavret at your side.
He shakes his head. ‘I cannot. I’ll send men, if you desire it, but I’m too weak myself to be hunting wolves at present, and you cannot wait until I’m recovered if you’re to catch the culprits before they poach more from you.’
Of course he’s in no fit state to ride out – he should be in bed.
Had you been thinking straight, you’d have forbidden him even to contemplate hunting until he has recovered his strength.
And it’s true, you cannot wait, or else you risk attracting the rest of the pack to the easy pickings of your forest.
‘Of course. You must rest.’ You give him half a smile. ‘Not hide here in my stables as though trying not to be found by your wife.’
A flicker of discomfort crosses his face, as though the joke strikes a little too close to the truth. ‘Yes, sire.’
‘And ensure you speak to my physician before you leave. Perhaps there is something he can give you to speed your recovery.’
He nods. ‘I’d be grateful for it,’ he says, and kisses your hands before taking his leave.
You remain in the stables, because it is a relatively secluded place for a king to submit to the maelstrom of his thoughts without being observed by a bevy of servants and hangers-on.
Bisclavret did not seem happy, nor did he look as though marriage agrees with him.
It’s early days, of course, but such a rapid decline bodes ill.
If his wife were not your ward, and you were not certain of her virtues, you might wonder if she poisoned him, for him to fall ill so quickly after their marriage.
A small, cruel part of you is perversely pleased to see him so weakened, and you despise yourself for it. If he were happy, content, it would be a wound and a reminder that he never needed you. If he is unhappy, perhaps she cannot offer him what he was looking for, either.
But you don’t want him to suffer. You gave him up so that he would be happy. If it were within a king’s power to grant him that happiness, you would do so, but all the jewels in your crown cannot buy you such influence over Fortune.