Chapter 31 You
You
There’s a young man standing in front of you.
He’s handsome enough, a few years younger than yourself but with the bearing of a grown man and a strong fighter. His expression is pleasant, and he shows no signs of resentment or discomfort as he is presented to you, though the muttering from the rest of the court is difficult to ignore.
‘Sire, I fear this is some trick of the count’s,’ says your seneschal, low and urgent in your ear. ‘He intends to cause you dishonour, or to provoke rumour, but—’
You glance at him, and then the young man. ‘Dishonour?’ you echo, beginning to understand the commotion. ‘Is that the motivation you lay on this particular envoy?’
The seneschal flushes red. ‘For what other reason would he send his son, my lord?’
You can’t help it: a smile tugs at the corner of your mouth.
‘Perhaps he seeks knighthood,’ you suggest. ‘How unlike you to leap to conclusions.’ You know, even as you say it, that this young man is not here to swear himself into your service – not in that way, in any case.
No, the count has seen the endless parade of daughters sent to court you, and minded their lack of success; now he tries another tack.
No wonder the court is so uncomfortable.
The young man’s gaze is steady as he meets yours, and he allows you to appraise him without once fidgeting.
He’s as demure and personable as any of the young women who have been presented to you this week, and you wonder whether this was his father’s idea or his own.
‘Tell me,’ you say more loudly, directing the remark at the visitor himself. ‘By your own account, are you here for knighthood or to cause me dishonour?’
To his credit, he doesn’t flinch or bluster. ‘Neither, my lord,’ he says. ‘If my presence here is not pleasing to you, I’ll leave immediately, and there will be no difficulties between our households following this. I give you my most solemn word.’
You already knew you had nothing to fear from political reprisals if you sent him away – you’ve been paying close attention to these matters lately, and though his father’s powerful enough, he doesn’t have enough allies to cause you trouble.
But it’s intriguing to hear it from the young man himself, and to know that he’s not relying on fear to provoke you into action.
Nor, you think, is he particularly keen to leave.
It is unwise, perhaps, but for the first time in months, you have a mind to see where this might go.
‘And if not dishonour,’ you say, your tone still hard, ‘what did your father mean by sending you, and not your sister? You do have a sister, don’t you?’ you add, as though uncertain of it, when you know well that she’s a beauty courted by many, and witty besides.
For the first time, the young man looks nervous, glancing at the seneschal as though seeking permission.
Your advisors, you sense, would love to tell you that this is improper and shouldn’t be countenanced or obliged even as a matter of curiosity, but they don’t dare, unless you yourself express enough discomfort to assure them of their right to say as much.
The young man says, ‘My father noticed that no lady had yet won your hand, and had the idea that you might respond favourably to an alternative approach.’
Tactfully worded, but bold, nonetheless.
You raise your eyebrow. ‘Your father has taken it into his head that I only get into bed with other men,’ you say baldly.
‘And has sent you in the hope that I’ll prove him right and confirm all his suspicions about our kingdom.
’ Ever the rumour has circled that your people are minded to seek the pleasures of adolescence even as adults, and neglect the begetting of heirs, and that your priests turn a blind eye to the practice.
You think if this were really such a rural backwater or deviant borderland, untroubled by the censure of homilists, your father would not have been so disappointed by you, and would not have sent you away – his reasons were no secret, even if they were never uttered aloud.
Evidently exile was insufficient to cleanse your name of those whispers, if still they follow you.
But the young man says, ‘No,’ so firmly that it draws looks of disgust from the manners-minded courtiers. ‘My lord, no scheming of my father’s would draw me here if I thought he intended you harm. I’m here because I asked leave of him to come.’
You eye him again in this new light. There is no fear or shame in him. He has never known exile, never been cast out. ‘Give us the room, please,’ you instruct, and when the hall is empty of all save yourself, your guest, and your seneschal, you say, ‘Elaborate.’
‘When word reached us that you were being courted, my mother’s instinct was that my sister should be among those paying you suit. You met her once, though some years ago now, and seemed to show her favour, though I’d not presume that you remember such an occasion—’
‘I remember,’ you interrupt, though you were both only youths at the time, her beauty still unformed and you awkward and ungainly. ‘I’ve heard that she has flowered and flourished in the years that have passed.’
‘Sire,’ he acknowledges, with a small bow of the head.
‘My mother’s thought was that she would have as much chance of winning your hand as any other, but the question was raised as to whether that were any real chance at all.
Your failure to find a bride thus far cannot be due to the unsuitability of the candidates who have presented themselves, so we thought perhaps your interests lay elsewhere. ’
You suppose it was inevitable, that people across the kingdom and beyond it should speculate about your tastes, but it still feels strange to hear it presented so honestly.
No doubt others think the same, but would not voice it, and still more of them fear you’ll cloister yourself eventually and leave the throne open to any capable of seizing it, since your father made it clear enough he expected that sort of thing.
And that’s assuming good intent and genuine concern, and not ill-feeling towards your kingdom and its stubborn refusal to become part of their great empires and speak their tongues and conform to their liturgy.
You might have hoped they would expect more from you than the neglect of your kingdom for the sake of your own desires, after these past months working to prove that you have a greater sense of duty than your father.
Perhaps they do you the courtesy of assuming you intend to name an heir another way, but you fear you have not yet won their trust.
‘And so you asked to be sent instead,’ you say.
It’s not a question, but he makes a noise of assent anyway.
Your next inquiry’s half a mockery, a note of mischief creeping into your voice: ‘And I suppose that was out of concern for your household’s future, was it, and the status that might be earned should you succeed in winning my favour? ’
He takes a breath. Looks at the seneschal. Looks back at you. And says, ‘No, sire.’ Then, halfway to mischief himself, adds, ‘My father is a count. I do not lack for status.’
Interesting.
Despite yourself, your attention’s been caught by the young man.
You can’t keep him in your household for long, you know that – it wouldn’t benefit either of you.
But he is unabashed and uninhibited in a way that you find intriguing, and it seems a shame to send him away without exploring that at least a little more.
Your seneschal will disapprove. You try not to resent that, for he has been your saviour these past months, and his disapproval is grounded in a politic mind and a canny sense for the winds of favour, but you wish his sense of duty did not cost him his sense of sport.
You glance at him – he is trying hard not to frown, and not entirely succeeding – and then fix your gaze again on the young man.
‘You’ll stay here tonight, then? You’ve travelled far; you must be tired.
There’s a feast planned for the end of this week, and .
. .’ You’re forgetting something, some other plan for these next few days.
Before you can admit defeat and ask him, the seneschal says, ‘The hunt, sire. There is also the hunt.’
The last before Michaelmas, the end of the season for roebuck.
You have missed so much of the hunting this year, your stomach still easily turned by the chase, but you have promised your men this mustering and you will not fail them.
You smile at the young man and say, ‘Well, of course you must join us for the hunt.’
It’s not preferential treatment. All of the young women have been housed and feasted, before being sent away with gifts to ease the sting of rejection.
You’ll do the same for him – and in the meantime, you may as well ride out together.
Perhaps the sweetness of a new companion by your side will ease the unsettled chill in your stomach that still haunts all thoughts of hunting.
You have servants find him a place to sleep, clothes, food.
You inform the stables that he’ll be riding with you on the hunt, and that they should ensure his horse is made ready.
Then you look again at the mount – a quality beast, but better suited to travel than hunting – and tell them to prepare instead one of your own coursers for his use.
You do everything properly, as though he were any visiting nobleman, and you treat him with all the kindness and distance with which you treated all those daughters.
But not one of those daughters was bold enough to leave their bed in the dead of night and mount the stairs to your chamber, knocking so softly on the door that at first you’re unsure what woke you. None of them stood bashful on your threshold, skin pale against the open neck of their undertunic.
None of them said, in a voice so low as to be hardly audible, ‘Send me away, and I’ll go.’
And if they had, perhaps you’d have done exactly that.
But you don’t send him away. You remain where you are, propped up in bed, with your bedcoverings and hair disarrayed by uneasy sleep, and hold his gaze until he takes a few hesitant steps across the room.
And then a few more. And then, finally, after what seems like an age, he’s standing in front of you.
He looks younger like this, away from the formal trappings of petition. Or perhaps it’s only that he’s nervous: you see him twisting his fingers into the fabric of his tunic, and the frantic way he swallows.
You say, ‘Do you want to go?’
He shakes his head. No, he doesn’t, does he?
He came to you, this bold count’s son, and he must have known that his quest was doomed from the beginning – that as king, whatever your own inclinations, you could not make a husband of him.
And yet he thought it worth trying, if only so that it might bring him here, half-dressed, to your bed.
He has the advantage of height on you, when you sit there in your bed and he stands before you.
But he kneels, and places his head in your lap.
Fealty. For as long as you want it, and whatever you require of him.
You run your fingers through his hair, startled by its softness, and feel the gentle warmth of him.
You have had little time in recent months for simple intimacies, and the warmth of slow touch and quiet company.
You take him by the hand and pull him up so that he’s sitting beside you on the bed. You trace his shaking palms with your fingertips. You say, ‘Do you know what it is that you want?’
He’s wide-eyed, more innocent than you expected from his confidence earlier, and you have the sense of having caught him with his guard down. Perhaps he never anticipated coming so far. Perhaps he thought you’d turn him away at the door.
He says, ‘No.’ Then he swallows again, his gaze drifting to your lips and back up to meet your eyes, and says, ‘Yes. I would like to kiss you.’
His lips are warm. It’s no kiss of peace – it’s filled with fire, setting you alight, and you shudder under his touch as he runs his hands along your arms, as though marvelling that he’s allowed to touch you at all.
You break apart, and he says, ‘Am I . . . may I . . . sire, I don’t want . . .’
‘Am I wearing a crown?’ you ask him, words soft as feathers.
He shakes his head. ‘Then tonight I am not your king.’ And then you kiss him again, to remind him, and feel his warmth diffusing through your cold, grief-laden bones.
He cannot fill the hollows inside you, but he can close them off for a moment, because he’s there, real and solid and burning in your hands.
You press yourself a little closer and he gasps into the kiss, and you know then that you could have him, in whatever way you wanted him, in all the ways you could never have had Bisclavret. Fealty. This man will give everything of himself to you.
It’s been so long since you wanted any of that.
But his touch wakes something in you that has been long asleep, some hunger that yearns to be fed, and you find yourself helping him to remove the last of his clothes, the warm skin of his torso against yours the most exquisite sensation, your hands moving against his back in ways that make his breathing catch and stutter.
And you allow him to press you down into the bed. Allow yourself to want him. Allow yourself to pull him closer, to put down the walls you’ve built these last few months, to be held – allow yourself, for once, to be known.