Chapter 33
You
You are tired for hunting and lacking in bloodlust, but the sight of the count’s son riding out to meet the rest of the group at least sparks some enthusiasm for the sport.
His hunting clothes, though borrowed, fit him well; he has well-turned calves and strong shoulders and a shy smile that he offers you, a little uncertainly.
You nod to him in return, the expected response, and see his relief.
Perhaps he thought you would hold his boldness against him.
How uncharitable that would be, when you have tasted the sweet nectar of his kisses and felt the warmth of his skin against yours and allowed his touch to drive away your melancholy, even if only for a moment.
You find yourself falling back until you ride beside him, trusting those ahead not to stray from the trail. ‘Do you hunt often, in your father’s lands?’ you ask him, though it’s a banal question and well you might guess the answer.
‘Often enough,’ he says, predictably. ‘Rarely in woods that carry rumours of wolves, however.’
Perhaps that’s the cause of his hesitance, and not some lingering regret for the previous night.
You hope as much; such concerns are easier to assuage.
‘Our chances of meeting a wolf are slim, if it pleases the Almighty to preserve us,’ you assure him.
‘With luck we’ll meet only deer. Do you prefer to hunt par force, or are you a man for falconry? ’
He shoots you a sharp look, as though reading euphemism into your honest enquiry, but whatever he sees in your expression softens his response.
‘It’s the hounds I favour, for the most part,’ he says, ‘though our kennels can’t hope to match yours.’
Yours reflect your father’s concerns more than your own, but it’s true, the hounds are fine and spirited and ready for the chase. Fearless, too, even in the face of deadly quarry, capable of staring down boar as though they might take the kill themselves.
The memory recalls Bisclavret to your mind, and you feel again the ache of missing him.
You want him here now, riding out with you, unflinching in the teeth of danger.
The count’s son beside you does little to ease the absence: all you can think about is the fact that he isn’t the man you wish him to be.
Grief disarrays your mind again, scattering your attention, and you would sooner be at home than here in the woods.
But a cry goes up – tracks found, prey sighted – and you spur your horse forward to join them, disguising your sudden melancholy as a surge of enthusiasm.
The count’s son follows, ignorant of his failure to be somebody else.
‘A wolf,’ comes the word. ‘There’s a wolf in the forest. The wolf is here.’
A wolf.
The wolf.
The wolf who took Bisclavret.
The wolf who escaped you once before.
Suddenly your enthusiasm is real, spurred by rage.
He should be here to make the kill, but in his absence, you must do it for him, offer up vengeance for a life taken too early and with such indignity.
You forget your peace and the softer tones of your grief in favour of the red fury of facing your enemy, ignoring the cautions of your nobles and the count’s son to ride out to the front, weapons ready.
When you don’t look back at them, Bisclavret might be beside you.
‘Sire,’ calls your knight in green, and it’s almost a reprimand.
You can’t pretend that’s his voice. He’d not have spoken with that echo of reproach or hint of impatience; the same word from his lips would have been a softer utterance.
Where the others would have heard deference, you’d have heard secrets in the aching familiarity of the syllable.
The rustling leaves of these sepulchral woods are falling ash, smothering you, and for a moment your breath catches on the airlessness of absence.
No matter the distance you put between yourself and death, the shadow of grief never stops haunting you.
All you can hope to do is outrun it. You spur your horse and ride ahead, forcing them to follow you. You will find the wolf and make it pay for its sins against the both of you. Nobody will take that victory from you, or claim its pelt when it’s yours to skin.
You’ve caught the trail yourself, now, despair-clouded eyes sharpened once again by hatred. The wolf was here, and recently. It will not escape you this time.
It’s not running. Perhaps it hasn’t caught the scent of you yet, or perhaps it means to rip you from your horse and fight to the end.
‘Sire,’ says your knight again, more urgently. To be a king is to have no name, only this title, this reminder that you’re supposed to lead, not wander astray.
Not chase a ghost through the forest.
‘It’s here,’ you tell them, voice desperate, deranged.
‘The wolf is here. This time I will catch it.’ This time it will not evade you, flitting away between the trees before it can be made to pay.
This time you’ll see its blood steam red on the ground, its skin ragged like the scraps of Bisclavret’s torn clothing.
Your knight in green tries one last time to warn you: the woods are too dark, too deep, and already you’ve strayed too far from the usual paths. The hunt must circle round and find another track or risk losing its way.
You turn to look at him for the first time. At all of them.
You say, ‘Please.’
You are a king. You should beg for nothing.
But you’d crawl on your knees if it would reclaim him from whatever shadow has swallowed him, and damn the mud on your crown.
If you cannot unbury him, then you’ll offer blood sacrifices on the grave he never had, feed his shade with the entrails of his murderer.
They let you go. They could never have stopped you.
You ride on until you find yourself crashing through the undergrowth and then out into a clearing and—
Your horse rears so suddenly there’s no time to calm her. You’re thrown from her back, a tumult of falling and fear and impact, softened by mud but hard enough to bruise and bewilder.
You hear somebody call out, and then they falter into silence, and as your vision clears you see what they’ve seen.
The wolf.
It’s the same beast you saw before, that awful day when you learned of Bisclavret’s death – you’d swear it, solid as an oath. Huge, implacable, utterly unafraid of you. Something in its face that isn’t wolflike, something knowing.
Your horse has abandoned you. Your men can come no closer or their own beasts will panic. Some of the huntsmen are archers, and you hear the creak of their bows as they prepare their arrows, but they hesitate to loose them.
Why do they hesitate?
You push yourself up from the mud, and the wolf keeps its uncanny eyes fixed on you. Is there time to reach for your sword? Could you still have a chance of victory, if you—
The wolf moves.
Blindingly fast. Directly towards you.
You think: I’m going to die. You think: this is what Bisclavret saw before it took him. You think: my sword my sword where is my sword why don’t they shoot am I to fall here alone are they to abandon me is this the end—
And it stops, so close you feel the heat of its breath. You’re frozen to the spot as the creature carefully, deliberately, places its heavy paws on your lap and presses its nose against your hands like a courtier swearing fealty.
Your breath catches. The wolf’s teeth are a hair’s breadth from your hands, but it makes no attempt to bite. It looks up at you again with that too-human stare and then repeats the gesture.
Fealty.
Shaking, you push yourself to your knees, and then your feet. The wolf prostrates itself before you and then, standing, makes the same gesture for a third time, before it waits, head bowed, for your response.
If it were human – it’s not human, it’s a wolf, outlaw, murderer, forest-wild – you would have thought this loyalty.
Subservience. The wolf has put itself under your protection and bared itself to your retribution.
If you pulled free a blade now, you could take your revenge so easily, without breaking a sweat, and yet your hand doesn’t stray to your sword.
You’re transfixed by its strange expression, and the impossible gentleness of the way it placed its paws on you.
‘Sire,’ says a shaking voice – one of the huntsmen, an arrow trained on the beast. ‘We cannot shoot without hitting you.’
We cannot save you. But you don’t think, somehow, that you need saving – not from this.
You glance up in time to see your knight in green cross himself, all the wry wit drained from his expression. ‘That wolf,’ he says, ‘has the mind of a man.’
The mind of a man.
Can it be possible? Is this a garwolf?
If so, the stories do them discredit to paint them as witless beasts. This creature is no monster: it pledges itself to you as its king as though it were your knight, defeated in battle, though dressed in furs instead of armour.
‘Put down your weapons,’ you say. Your voice shakes, and they hesitate. You’re not used to needing to repeat yourself. You take your eyes off the wolf for just long enough to fix them in a firm stare: ‘I said put them down.’
They lower their arrows, let the strings of their bows go slack. They know, as you do, that if you’re wrong and the beast means you harm, this is the kind of mistake you won’t survive.
You swallow.
The wolf raises its head and looks up at you.
It is so very large, you think, inanely.
It would be the work of seconds for it to maul you – a quick death, at least – and your knights’ hands are twitching towards their blades.
But they obey their instructions, and keep their swords sheathed; the huntsmen’s arrows remain in their quivers.
You reach out a hand, and wait to feel the wolf’s teeth close around your wrist. Nothing.
Only the surprising softness of its fur as you bury your fingers in it, the creature leaning into the touch.
It’s been run ragged, burrs and mud matting its pelt, but that can’t disguise the thick pile of it, the warmth of its skin underneath.
The beast remains utterly still and allows you to pet it like a hound.
You hear the soft exhalation of a dozen nobles releasing a held breath. The count’s son says, ‘Why, the beast is practically tame.’
‘Not tame,’ you say – there’s something feral in the creature’s eyes. This isn’t a domestic calm, an absence of threat; this is teeth withheld and violence curbed. ‘But safe, I think.’
A defeated enemy, placing himself in your hands. A subject, swearing fealty. A lonely creature, desperate for the momentary relief of touch.
But what now? Can you leave the animal in the woods and go home?
Will you try to explain to the court that you’ve found the wolf they’ve feared all these months, and wish for it to be left alone?
It’s difficult to believe that this can be the same monster, and yet you know it, have seen it before, have hunted it.
Do you now intend to pass a decree that forbids such a thing?
I have no taste for hunting wolves. Bisclavret would not have resented such a ruling, you suspect.
Something about the animal reminds you of him: his loping grace in its movements, his quiet intelligence in its eyes, his poise and restraint in its readiness.
Maybe he saw that familiarity too; maybe that was why he treated the beasts as kinsmen rather than enemies, coexisting in the same forest.
You take a few steps, as though to walk away, and the wolf follows.
‘Do you intend to follow me all the way home?’ you ask it softly, in the tone one might use for a wayward kitten. ‘The forest is a more fitting home for a wolf than the court.’
The wolf is undeterred. Its expression clearly conveys that it cares nothing for what is fitting, and will follow you wherever you choose to go. Fealty. This was no mere mimicry or imitation. This was an oath, and one the wolf meant wholeheartedly.
Perhaps it does have the mind of a man after all. Perhaps some unknowable part of the creature is loyal to you. Or perhaps you’re a naive dreamer, easily fooled by figments, and will find yourself attacked the first time you turn your back on the wolf.
You turn your back anyway, waiting for the claws to fall on you, but the wolf keeps padding softly at your side.
‘Sire,’ says one of your barons, some nervousness in his tone. ‘You cannot bring the wolf back to the castle with you – there’ll be panic, and—’
‘I cannot?’ you say, soft and dangerous. ‘Is that so?’
He swallows, realising too late his overstep. ‘I beg your pardon, I only meant—’
‘I know what you meant,’ you say, cutting him off before he can stammer an apology. ‘But the beast is intent on following, and I choose not to be the one to drive it away.’
You wait for them to counsel that you should have the creature killed before it’s too late, but although you hear that advice in their silence, they have more sense than to speak the words aloud.
Your knight in green crosses himself again – any other day, you would marvel at such piety from a man who has always flirted with heresy and irreverence, but today there are greater wonders.
And you have become one of them, walking out of the forest like this: weapons unbloodied, one hand buried in the wolf’s fur.
It walks steadily beside you, no humbled predator but a loyal retainer, and when you come to the court and people recoil in fear, you allow them to see that you’re fearless, that there’s nothing about the wolf that should concern them, that it means you no harm.
You think you believe that. You are, at least, able to pretend enough to convince them. And behind that mask of courage, you walk inside, and the wolf follows.