She kisses his wrist again, and his hand, and finally his lips, and if she notices the sour smell of sickness that haunts him or the iron tang of the blood spilled by the wolf, she doesn’t comment on it. ‘Then let us go home,’ she says.
Bisclavret smiles. ‘I have no horse and I’m not dressed for the weather. Let me rectify those faults and then we’ll go.’
‘I promised the servants I would be home by Nones,’ she says; Sext is long past, the winter sun already weakening, and she will be pressed to keep her word. ‘Follow after me, then. You ride faster than I do, and might well overtake me on the road.’
He’s not ready to be parted from her – he owes her penance, atonement for his failures as a husband. But it will be easier, if he can travel alone and have time to fashion his thoughts into human patterns. ‘Very well.’
‘And don’t tarry,’ she says. ‘You’ve been gone long enough.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’
But when she’s gone, he takes a moment, leaning against the wall and waiting for the dizziness to recede. It must be days since he ate a proper meal, food meant for human consumption, and exhaustion thrums in every shaking muscle. Blackness stains the edges of his vision, and he tries to blink it away, but the fatigue is not easily banished.
He’s not paying attention to the footsteps approaching him, but he notices when a figure in travel-stained court garb stops in front of him. ‘I’m well, I’ll be gone in a—’ He looks up. His cousin. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I was summoned by the king to answer to your condition,’ says his cousin stiffly, and Bisclavret feels sick. ‘Don’t look at me with such alarm. Of course I didn’t tell him. Nor have I told your wife, and that, I confess, needles my conscience more.’
‘The king summoned you?’
‘That is what I said, is it not? Though in any case I might have come to accompany your wife back home in your absence. The roads grow ever more dangerous, and the woods more so. After all, they say there are wolves hunting there these days.’ His tone has sharpened.
Bisclavret doesn’t know how to respond to this. ‘What did you say to the king?’
‘That the secrets of my kinsman were not mine to disclose. And that you would be as loyal to him as any man could be, within the limits of your ability.’ It ought to be a relief, but it feels like the sort of statement that comes with a sting in its tail. When his cousin speaks again, the barb makes itself known. ‘I am beginning, however, to think I overestimated those abilities. How long were you gone this time, Bisclavret?’
Bisclavret is silent, and his cousin crouches down and grips his chin so that he has to meet his eyes. He forces out the words: ‘Three days. I was gone for three days.’
‘And I suppose you told your wife where it is you went, didn’t you? That must be why you are here in the chapel, why I saw her with the chaplain this morning.’
‘She thought I was dead. She went to pray for me. She doesn’t – I haven’ttoldher – I . . .’
His cousin lets go of him and pushes upright in disgust. ‘Then she is deceived as well as despairing. She deserves better than this, Bisclavret.’
Better than you. ‘I know that,’ he snaps back. ‘Do you think the thought doesn’t haunt me?’
‘And yet you’re not here to seek an annulment, are you? It cannot, then, haunt you so very much.’
‘An annulment?’ echoes Bisclavret.
‘I’m assuming you did not manage a consummation before . . . this.’ The word is accompanied by a gesture – an attempt, it seems, to encompass the whole of Bisclavret’s being and all of his failures. ‘It would not be without shame for either of you, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be for the best.’
Coldly, fighting down the wave of dread that threatens to swamp him, Bisclavret says, ‘You assume wrong.’
His cousin closes his eyes and takes three slow breaths. ‘So she is bound to you,’ he says finally, opening them again. ‘She might have had her pick of knights, but she chose you, and now she is trapped. In the name of God, Bisclavret, have you considered what might become of your children?’
‘How can I not have considered that?’ cries Bisclavret in response. ‘Of course I have thought of that! I have scarcely stopped thinking of it since she first expressed her willingness to be my wife.’
‘And yet that consideration did not change your actions! I have thought you many things, but selfish was never one of them. But in this you have done wrong – you have been selfish and unkind, and you have hurt her. I have failed you and I have failed her by not doing more to stop this. I—’
‘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.
‘Iamprotecting 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?’
