Chapter 23 Him #2
‘You have the manner of a man who would have married her himself,’ Bisclavret says, before he can think better of it.
The words are meant as a joke, but land as something sharper.
His cousin’s colour is high, his eyes bright and manic, and the pieces fall into place: ‘Is that what it is? You would have married her? You did not say as much, when there was still time. Is that why you seek to take her from me now?’
‘No.’ The answer is curt and difficult to believe.
‘What happened to protecting me?’ he asks spitefully.
‘I am protecting you,’ his cousin retaliates, lowering his voice.
‘Or do you think the king will take your side if you lose control and kill her? Do you think there will be anyone standing between you and the hunters when that happens? You entered the royal forest. You killed three deer – and do not think to deny it, for I know full well that there are no other wolves in that forest, just as I know that you would not have done that deliberately. Which means you lost control, and might well do so again. It’s only a matter of time before somebody finds themselves on the receiving end of your lunacy.
When that happens, somebody will need to speak for you.
If you continue to ignore my warnings and my attempts to help in order to pursue this pig-headed approach, it will not be me. I will not see her dead by your hand.’
‘And so your means of protecting me is to leave me abandoned?’
‘When have I ever abandoned you, Bisclavret? I have been faithful to you since we were children. I gave up knighthood to stand at your side; I risked my position at court to present you to the king. And still you accuse me always of meaning you ill.’
‘Perhaps you should not have done,’ says Bisclavret. ‘Perhaps you were better off as a knight. I would arm you again, if that’s what you wish.’
‘You need me,’ says his cousin. ‘You need me as your steward. And your wife needs me, to stand between her and the violence of the wolf.’
‘I am not going to kill her!’
‘You cannot know that! Not any more, not after everything that has happened!’
Bisclavret is exhausted and faint, but he struggles to his feet and begins to walk away.
His cousin easily keeps pace with him. ‘Perhaps I have surrendered some measure of control over the last few days,’ he begins, as they leave the chapel, ‘but that doesn’t mean it will happen again. I was overtired and overwrought and—’
‘And you can guarantee never to be overtired again, can you?’
The worst part is that his cousin is right. The words cut deep because they’re the refrain of his own mind – the fear that he’ll snap, and hurt her, and that there’ll be no coming back from that. Once he loses control of his own mind, he loses everything.
‘This was your idea,’ he spits. ‘I tried to retreat, to back out of knighthood. You were the one determined that the king should have his way.’
‘There is a difference between being a knight and marrying the king’s ward.
’ His cousin stops dead, folding his arms. Bisclavret tugs him into the relative shelter of the chapel doorway before their conversation can echo around the entire courtyard.
‘Before, you were taking risks with your own name. Now, you are taking them with her life. You have denied yourself the safety of your own house as a retreat from scrutiny, and that loss of safety will bring the wolf ever closer to the surface. And your wife—’
‘She is not making it worse.’
‘You went wolfing on your wedding night and vanished for three full days, returning thin and injured with three ravaged deer in your track. Forgive me if I do not believe you.’
‘And I’m supposed to believe this is concern speaking, when you’ve as good as admitted you’re in love with her?’
His cousin’s cheeks are flushed. ‘What has love to do with any of it? My feelings are of no concern here.’
‘No? So it’s merely a convenience that if I should repudiate her on the basis of her safety, you will be there to offer her your hand.’
‘Well, no one else will now, will they? Would you have her left to starve, the widow of a living man?’
‘I would have her be mine.’
‘I would have her alive!’
Bisclavret turns his face away. He doesn’t know how he can possibly respond to that.
Of course he wants her safe. He’d cut off his own hands to keep his claws from scratching her.
But he’s never felt as much himself as he does under her touch; never felt as present in his humanity as when she looks at him.
She’s safety, belonging, selfhood, and despite his care for her, he cannot bear to surrender that.
Perhaps his cousin is right. Perhaps he is selfish.
He walks on, not looking at his cousin, not speaking; perhaps if he walks fast enough, he can leave this whole argument behind, and with it the knowledge of his failings.
He hears footsteps and knows that his cousin has followed, but he doesn’t look back.
They make it most of the way to the stables in this manner, locked in a fragile silence.
‘Bisclavret,’ says his cousin eventually, tiring of the stalemate. ‘Bisclavret, look at me.’
He doesn’t. He says, ‘I have never hurt anybody.’ It’s almost a plea: you know me, you know what I’m capable of, how can you still think me willing to maul and murder?
He’s speaking to himself, to those self-loathing corners of his heart, as much as to his cousin, because it is so easy to forget that fact.
He has never hurt anybody. That means something.
When it comes down to it, that must mean something.
‘I know,’ says his cousin. ‘But you have never before hunted the king’s deer, either.’
He’s right about that too, damn him. Bisclavret is haunted by the gaps in his memory, the hunt he doesn’t remember. If he is so close to losing his reason, there’s no telling how much further he might fall. ‘I’ll be more careful in future. Lay safeguards, ensure I cannot stray.’
‘And if I asked you to tell her, would you do it?’
He turns then, sees his cousin’s open, earnest face. Not the expression of a man conniving to steal his kinsman’s wife. Just concern, and hope, and something else he can’t place. ‘Why?’
‘She deserves to know. Tell her the truth of it and let her decide. Perhaps she can help you, find a way to ensure you don’t wander too far . . .’
Perhaps she would. Or perhaps, for all her goodness, his wife would turn from him. She knows her own worth too well not to recognise that she deserves better – and his cousin must know this, which makes his suggestion feel vicious and cruel.
‘I can’t,’ he says, almost a whisper.
‘I cannot condone you lying to her.’
This is your fault, Bisclavret wants to say.
You would not let me hide at home. You would not let me flee the court.
If not for your meddling I’d have stayed alone and exiled and would never have loved her and would never have had to lose her.
‘I don’t need your permission for the living of my life. ’
His cousin makes a noise of disgust. ‘Perhaps you would not have my friendship either, then.’
‘Is this friendship?’
‘You know that it is.’
They walk on a little further. Bisclavret says, ‘Is it only my wife you fear for?’
‘What?’
‘You think I’m a danger to those around me. Your concern must extend to others who spend time with me – the knights, the king, yourself . . .’
‘I know to be cautious,’ says his cousin.
‘As for the knights and the king – well, the situations are hardly comparable, unless you are spending rather more time alone with them than I’d realised.
’ His cousin eyes him warily. ‘If you want to convince me you’re trustworthy, this is a strange way to go about it. What are you trying to say?’
‘You love my wife.’ The words come out too harshly, and Bisclavret wishes he could bite them back.
But the resentment boils over inside him.
There is so little that is his own, and his cousin who is human and safe and has never felt his body unmaking itself will not be the one to take this love from him.
His cousin who could have any woman in the world, if he wanted.
‘Explain to me why I should believe you are not led by your heart on this matter.’
‘Of course I am led by my heart,’ his cousin snaps in return. ‘How can I be otherwise, when I have cared for you for years and that love has not faded? But Bisclavret, you must see that these situations are not the same. The king has guards, other knights, the means to defend himself. Your wife—’
‘Is perfectly safe!’
‘So you say! And I wish I believed you, but this is dangerous.’
‘I have always been dangerous,’ he spits. ‘No more now than ever. Perhaps you should have thought of that before you dragged me to court.’
‘I have thought of it every day since.’
The confession hangs limply between them, and it says everything Bisclavret needed to know. He turns and begins to walk again, faster, knowing the other man will struggle to keep pace with his loping stride.
‘Bisclavret, wait.’
But the damage has been done.
‘You’ve always been the only person I trusted,’ he tells his cousin.
‘But you’ve proven yourself the same as the rest. I’ll find another steward, and you may return to knighthood, so that you might not begrudge me the sacrifice of the life you’d rather be living.
You will have only the best arms, the finest horse I can offer you.
But I want you gone from my lands. I’ve no need of you. ’
‘You need me as much as you ever have.’
He needs nothing. He has his wife, his king, the castle, the knights. He’s more than a wolf-man, more than a vagabond, more than a pitied cousin living out his years in exile. He has always thought he needed this charity, but that was when it was all he had. And now he has more.
‘Perhaps I was mistaken then, too,’ he says, and does not look back.