Shortly after this, the (enter the king) king goes on a hunting party and—with the help of half a dozen courtiers and a pack of borzoi—nearly slaughters Bisclaveret. Bisclaveret is panting wildly. He has managed to outrun the dogs for two miles, but now he fears his life is spent. With his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth, he begs for his life by placing his paws upon the king’s stirrup and well-shod foot.
“I say, look at this,” says the king. “That’s a nifty trick.”
The courtiers lower their bows and take to whistling and clapping at the beast.
“Let’s take him home,” says the king. “I’ll make a pet of him. I’ll be the only king with a pet wolf.”
Bisclaveret knows a good thing when he sees it and behaves very well. He does not eat the queen’s spaniel and urinates only on the outer walls of the castle. He is even allowed to sleep in the king’s chamber, although he would rather not, because those marital acts between the king (a slight man) and his wife (formidable) are very loud.
Hearken now to that which chanced.
The king decides to throw a huge feast and invite everyone. He invites all the lords and ladies, barons and baronesses, and even that knight who’s come back from Turkey with a drinking problem (and, it is rumored, syphilis) who is now married to Bisclaveret’s former wife.
“Whatever happened to Bisclaveret?” the king wonders out loud, and Bisclaveret sets up such a pitiful moaning, even attempting to pantomime the robbing of his clothes, that the king is once more moved to bouncing up and down in his seat and clapping; he tosses the wolf a sugared quince then turns to the tailor, who is making some last-minute adjustments to the king’s ermine cuffs, which are long by half an inch.
All day long Bisclaveret follows the king. He watches as his liege presides over the hog pen, declaring with such a merry toss of his hand, “Slaughter them all.”
Bisclaveret is there when the new tapestry arrives and sits patiently for nearly an hour while the king attempts to get it hung straight. “Up on the left. No, my left. I think the whole thing’s too high,” he says.
Bisclaveret sits by the king’s side as the barber swathes the king’s face in hot towels, trims his beard to a sharp point, and drains the pus from the abscess on the king’s neck.
And Bisclaveret is by the king’s side as he tastes the wines from the cellar until he passes out.
By evening the guests have started to arrive and the minstrels are minstreling fervently. Bisclaveret is trying to decide on how to make his predicament clear to the king. He is still turning his various ideas over in his mind, when who should arrive but the drunkard knight and the slut who has turned his life into permanent, hairy hell. Before he knows what he is doing, Bisclaveret is at the knight’s throat.
“Get that thing off me,” screams the knight.
And a band of courtiers pulls him off.
“Sit,” shouts the king, “bad Biscuit.” And Bisclaveret sits. “I’m terribly sorry,” says the king, “he’s never done anything like that before.”
“Why,” asks the wife, “do you call that beast ‘Biscuit’?”
“Funny story,” says the king gesturing to his servant to top up the knight’s goblet, “he was drawing in the dirt with his paw. He drew something that looked like a ‘B’ and then an ‘I’ and then a squiggle much like an ‘S’ and then he even drew a ‘C’. I could have sworn he was writing. I think he wanted me to call him ‘Biscuit,’ so that’s his name now.”
And the wife looks with fear at the wolf who meets her eyes so frankly that she knows his true identity.
“Clever Biscuit,” says the king, and scratches Bisclaveret’s head.
At this point Bisclaveret no longer cares if he is riddled with arrows like Saint Sebastian. He attacks the knight again.
“What is going on?” demands the king.
The courtiers and servants only manage to drag Bisclaveret off when he struggles free and once more he jumps on the knight.
“If you don’t mind, Your Highness, I think I’ll sit at the far end of the table,” says the knight.
“What a terrible thing to have to do,” the king replies, “but your lady will sit right here, next to me, so that you won’t feel insulted.”
The king enthusiastically pats the seat to his left (his wife was on his right and once seated, the lady found it most taxing to move) and the baroness sits down warily.
“Your Highness,” whispers the king’s counselor, “perhaps this wolf is trying to tell us something.”
“What would he be trying to tell us?” asks the king, understandably perplexed. “Biscuit, are you trying to tell us something?”
At which point, Bisclaveret, leaps up one last time and rips the very nose out of the center of his wife’s face.
“Oh, good God,” says the king, “were you teasing him?”
The wife tries hard to get away from Bisclaveret, but Bisclaveret is still, having had the first satisfaction in close to a year.
“Send for a doctor,” screams the wife.
“You must have been doing something.”
“I was not.”
“Perhaps,” says the counselor, “it is some wrongdoing from the past.”
“Yes,” says the king. “What have you done to Biscuit?”
And finally, the baroness, due to the gaping wound in the center of her face, is disposed to tell the truth.
“Give the wolf his robe,” the baroness shrieks to the knight. “Give Bisclaveret his robe back now!”
The knight returns the baron’s robe. The knight and baroness are banished. The baron is restored.
“Bisclaveret” was a favorite of my mother’s. Once when I was eight years old, I woke up, having thrown off my covers, to see her beautiful pale face pulling the comforter up to my chin. She was in a T-shirt from Hawaii that had palm trees and surfers on it. Her legs were bare and, I noticed, very thin. She was thin, although I don’t think they’d figured out at that point what was wrong with her.
“I was lonely. Did I wake you up?”
“Yes. I’m glad you did.”
She told me the story of Bisclaveret. I remember her hands moving around in the dark air and her laughing, because to her it was a funny story. I remember her reaching for my nose at the end and pretending to have captured it when I was already too old not to recognize that it was the tip of her thumb in her fist. I think my mother loved the tale of Bisclaveret because the real wolf in the story was the baroness. It’s the baroness who is awakened by the existence of the unknown. She betrays the baron, warms her bed with another man. She is brutally, physically punished, forced to go through life with her face—the seat of all things human—altered.
Even though the baroness didn’t win, my mother was pleased that not all wolves were men. I remember her sitting on the foot of my bed with her T-shirt stretched tight over her knees. The light from the bathroom across the hall kept the room dimly lit so I could see her profile.
“What happened next?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“After the baron got his castle back. Was he still a werewolf?”
“I suppose he was,” said my mother. “I don’t know why he wouldn’t be.”
“And what happened to the baroness?”
“Oh I don’t know. I suppose the knight left her. Men don’t like women without proper noses. She had to go live in a shack far from town. She raised goats and the goats were her only friends. During the Inquisition, she was probably burned as a witch.”
“That’s awful,” I said.
“Well,” my mother said, looking over her shoulder and into the hall light, “things often are.”
28
The rain had finally stopped and now the days were bright and beautiful. A few daffodils raised their heads around the property. Even one rogue red tulip had popped up by the house, but how could I enjoy the weather when I missed Arthur? Ann called every day, sounding nuttier each time, and I felt sorry for her. Without Boris, she didn’t really know what to do with her time except to look for him. Now the police were involved, but Boris remained silent and hidden. Kevin was company, but not much in the way of conversation. The nights were lonely. Because of this, I had taken to sleeping on the couch in the living room. The idea of going to bed depressed me and I started sleeping in shallow fits, wrapped up with the dog in the stadium blanket. The couch faced the sliding doors to the deck and on clear nights I could see the moon rising and a smattering of stars from where I lay. I was half-asleep with the TV muttering when I first saw her. She was on the deck, her pale face watching me. I watched, completely still, and she stepped back from the window. The TV threw up a sudden bright reflection and she disappeared from view. I jumped up and pulled the sliding door open. There was no one there.