Chapter 25 Him #2
He sees her swallow. Her throat is so pale and fragile.
He understands too well what it means to be afraid of him, of the wolf, and he hates that she now shares that fear, and that he cannot relieve it.
He knows that, in this moment, it means nothing that she has slept by his side for a year and always woken unhurt, because the man she thought she was sleeping beside is not the one who has revealed himself to her.
She says, ‘Clothed?’
He cannot help himself: he frowns. ‘What?’
‘Do you go clothed, when you are a wolf?’
‘No,’ he admits. Somehow there’s shame in that confession, though he’d never expect his hounds and beasts to wear garments. ‘I go naked.’
She considers this. Perhaps these practical questions are a way to avoid the horror of it all, keeping it at arm’s length, or perhaps she doesn’t believe him, thinks this a figment of an imbalanced mind, and probes him only to see how far the story goes.
‘What do you do with your clothes,’ she asks at last, ‘when you . . . change?’
‘I leave them somewhere I can find them again,’ he says.
‘I—’ He breaks off. He has never had to explain this before; his cousin knew him in his youth and understood his condition before he had the language to describe it.
Now that he must articulate it aloud, he struggles to shape it into phrases that make sense.
‘I need my clothes to stay human,’ he confesses.
‘Without them, I might not be able to come back.’
Her expression doesn’t change, but when she says, ‘Oh,’ there’s an odd note in her voice, as though she is beginning to understand him.
‘Yes.’ He sounds pitiful. He almost pities himself, and he hates it, that desolate helplessness in his tone – yes, I hide them in the woods so that I might dig them up later like the dog I am.
‘There is . . . a chapel, a little way off the road, where I am able to leave them and know that they will be undisturbed.’ He creeps in there with his skin still shifting and seeks absolution and humanity at the same time, dressing himself before the altar and the eyes of God.
‘You must struggle,’ she says carefully, ‘without somebody to help you.’
For a moment, he imagines her going out to the edge of the woods to clothe him as he stumbles home, still half a beast. Her hands fastening his garments, sewing his sleeves, binding him into his skin.
A little too late, he realises that this is another way to ask if he has trusted some other with his secret, in place of her.
‘My cousin has helped, in the past. He is the only one who knows. Otherwise I must manage for myself.’
He cannot interpret the look on her face. He feels as if he has lost the right to understand her, after so many months of lies and masks. He waits for her to push him away, or to run screaming from the house, but she doesn’t.
‘But if your clothes were taken . . .’ she begins.
‘I might come back.’ Or he might not. Or he might come back only for his bones to twist and warp on him again, inverting him even when he thought he was safe.
He might spend days and nights shifting back and forth, his organs remade over and over until there was nothing left of them and nothing left of him.
Perhaps it would kill him, eventually. Perhaps it would drive out his sense and condemn him to madness.
‘I think I would struggle to stay. It’s my greatest fear, you know. Not being able to stay.’
‘You want to come back.’
‘Always,’ he tells her, voice low and hungry. ‘Were it my choice, I would never leave you. You must know that.’
There’s a long pause during which he expects her to refute it – how can I know that, when you have lied to me for so long? – but at last she smiles and says, ‘I know that.’
He doesn’t dare lean forward to kiss her. He’s terrified, however irrationally, that she’ll recoil despite her gentle words. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says instead. ‘I should have told you. I couldn’t find the words.’
She nods. She hasn’t forgiven him, but maybe she understands his sin a little better now that she has the truth of it. ‘Your cousin is the only one who knows?’
‘Since my mother died, yes. I have always kept it secret.’
‘So you have not told the king.’
‘No, and were it my choice, I would that it would stay that way. I don’t intend to give him any cause to regret knighting me, but if the truth were to become known, no doubt many would think he shouldn’t have done so. Perhaps they’re right.’
‘You are a good knight,’ she says, though fear is still thrumming through her, her body tense and taut with it.
She’s working so hard to stay at his side, though her heart is telling her to run; her love is as pure and painful as a blade through his ribs.
‘One of the king’s best fighters, and one of his best hunters, too. ’
Then her expression tightens: ‘The deer, the wolf in the royal forest, was that . . . ?’
‘Yes.’ It is the hardest confession so far. ‘I . . . I don’t remember those nights as well as I usually recall the wolf’s hours. I try hard not to hunt, and to leave no trace of my passing. But sometimes the wolf is . . . hungry.’
‘Hungry,’ she repeats faintly. ‘And you have – killed.’
‘Not people. Never people.’
‘The stories of garwolves say—’
‘The stories are wrong.’ The words burst out of him, harsh and fierce, and she flinches.
He didn’t mean to snap at her. He didn’t mean to turn his rage on her.
But the words to apologise elude him. ‘The stories are just stories. I am not . . . I am not a killer.’ Yet.
He hopes. Only of deer and dumb beasts, like any hunter.
‘Is it because of this that you sent your cousin away?’
‘Largely,’ he admits. ‘He opposed our marriage, and the arguments that followed broke the trust between us.’ He does not tell her that his cousin loves her.
Perhaps she already knows – perhaps he proposed his suit before Bisclavret ever came to court, and she turned him down.
Perhaps she has no idea, in which case he would not give her more reasons to regret marrying the wrong kinsman.
‘He opposed our marriage?’ she echoes, apparently caught by surprise.
‘After our wedding night, when I . . .’
‘You transformed,’ she finishes, only now drawing the connection between his headlong flight and this confession. ‘That’s why you fled from me. I . . . I wondered.’
Of course she wondered. Of course she must have thought it was her own fault, no matter how many times he assured her that it wasn’t – must have thought something about her behaviour or form drove him away. He regrets the pain that misapprehension must have caused her.
‘My cousin feared for your safety,’ he says.
‘He would have had me repudiate you then, and perhaps I should have listened to him. But I couldn’t bear the thought, when I have found with you such peace as I have never known before and might never know again.
He was right, however, that I should have told you.
I’m ashamed that I did not. I’ve wronged you with my lies. ’
‘I understand,’ she says, a little unsteadily, ‘why you would not.’ Because of course this wasn’t something she wanted to hear; because of course she is horrified and disgusted by this revelation. How could he expect anything else?
‘I must know,’ he says finally, more begging than commanding, ‘what you are thinking.’
She’s silent for so long he fears she won’t answer him. At last she says, ‘I am thinking that next time you turn, I will know to watch for you coming back.’
It is everything he has ever wanted to hear, and still the words taste of loss, taste of grief. He would not have her know him as a wolf. He would not have her see him in those moments of change.
‘For as long as I am able,’ he promises, ‘I will come back to you. On this you have my word.’
When he kisses her, both their lips are bitter with lies and salt with tears.