"Arthur!" Gwaine shouted, bursting into his chambers with the same flagrant disregard for position as Merlin. "Sire, they have found a body."
Arthur could feel his heart plummet, dropping into his stomach, weighty as lead. They'd all lived in denial, in their own way, each of the knights and Merlin's friends, and himself all clinging to some small hope that the favored servant had somehow, miraculously survived the fall. The idea of their being a body, of the possible end to their hope, made Arthur feel ill. "Is it him?" he managed to croak out. "Is it Merlin?"
"The body was dragged from the waters near a village five miles from where Merlin fell," Gwaine replied. His voice was quiet, almost a whisper; it seemed to Arthur it was a most unnatural thing. "It's said that the man was young, perhaps twenty summers, and dark-haired."
"If it's him," Arthur says, almost to himself, "I'll have to write Hunith."
Gwaine nods. "The knights have already packed. We await your command."
The way he says it, though, it sounds as though they would leave no matter what he said, so he told Gwaine they'd leave in an hour and began packing his things. He did it in half the time that Merlin would have, and somehow that made him ache more.
It turned out that it wasn't only the knights that were packed and prepared to make the journey, but Gaius and Guinevere as well. The old leech sat upon a sway-backed pony, an expression on his wizened features that seemed to dare Arthur to try and forbid him to come along, so the Prince walked by and said nothing. "Your father will be safe in the care of his servants until tomorrow," Gaius said, suddenly, needing to explain himself.
"I'm sure he will."
Arthur was secretly thankful his father was still ill, recovering for all that had happened to him when Morgana had briefly taken the throne of Camelot. It made it so there was no one to tell him that going off on journeys for the sake of missing and probably dead servants was foolhardy and pointless. Arthur already knew those things and he didn't care. It didn't negate the fact that Merlin would have done the same for him, or that Hunith deserved a body for the funeral pyre.
They rode the entire day, stopping only once to eat and allow the horses a moment of respite. It was sunset when they reached the little village where the body had been found. It was bigger than Ealdor, but not by much and as the party rode in the children came out and ran alongside, the little girls offering up fistfuls of wildflowers to the visitors. The whole thing was a like a bizarre parade and made it seem all the more worse when a crochety old man hobbled out of his home, a young boy at his elbow, and said, "S'pose you'll be wanting to see the body, then."
"Aye," replied Arthur.
The old man led them to a little ramshackle barn that hugged the side of the rushing river. As the boy busied himself with opening the heavy doors, the man asked, "You hoping to find someone here?"
"My ward," Gaius replied, while at the same time Gwen said, "Our Merlin."
The doors were heaved open and they all tiptoed into the dark barn. Inside it was as cold and silent as a tomb, but still smelled like a barn with earthy smell of hay mixing with the vile scent of the oxen. On a woven mat lay the body of the drowned man, covered hastily in a discarded horse blanket. No one moved at first, so it was the boy that finally went and squatted next to the body, pulling the blanket back away from the man's face. Everyone in the room seemed to draw in a sharp breath.
It wasn't Merlin. The boy under the blanket was far younger in appearance than Merlin, with smooth features in contrast to Merlin's sharp angular ones, and he was perhaps an inch shorter than Arthur's manservant. The body itself was bloated and blue, the skin mottled and waxy, but the cause of the poor man's death was not plain. Perhaps he'd simply fallen in and gotten caught in the river's strong current, Arthur mused.
"It isn't him," Gwen sighed behind him.
"Praise be," said Gauis.
As if sensing what everyone was thinking, Percival quietly offered, "He could yet live."
Everyone nodded.
"Yes," Arthur replied. "It would be just like him."
Harvey woke up from a dream where shadowed men, garbed in silver and gold, lay themselves down in tall grasses around him and found himself weeping. It had felt so real and had been so joyous that waking up to find himself in his father's house next to the mill seemed a disappointment. The dreams felt like memories, but he'd wake up and find the names of the men slipping away, the memories fading from his mind.
It's all right, Aldith's hands said, as they stroked his hair soothingly.
In a way, Harvey loathed his sister for her sympathy. He didn't want to coddled or fussed over, especially by a eleven-year-old child. Yet, somehow, he allowed it. He found he could deny his family nothing.
The dreams themselves were unyielding and when he and Aldith could find moments alone together, he would tell them to her. Sitting right in front of her and never mumbling, like Odo had instructed him, he'd describe the people and places he could almost remember. Odo wouldn't have understood the dreams, he might have thought it too much like the magic tricks that Harvey had displayed for his sister's pleasure and Harvey had no interest in receiving a beating for dreams, though he doubted his father would actually do such a thing. Still, he kept his counsel as he knew Aldith would keep hers and the dreams became like a wonderful secret between them.
It had been this way since the accident. Odo had told him he'd stumbled while walking along the banks of the river and had fallen in. The current easily pulled him into the narrow leet and the magnificent waterwheel had struck him and trapped him under the water until Odo had dropped the sluice gate at the head of the leet and had dove in after him. He had no recollection of the event, or his life before it. All the mechanisms he couldn't name, the people he couldn't recall, the niggling voice in the back of his head were all jumbled together and lost in chaos of his mind. Harvey often felt frustrated at how little he knew of himself.
He'd woken up a week after the accident, naked and wrapped in a half dozen blankets, in a bed he couldn't recall sleeping in. His father was leaning over him, smoothing his fringe back from his forehead and smiling down at him while his younger sister, Aldith, sat on the edge of the bed as silent as ever. He'd started when he first opened his eyes. For a moment, he thought his father's shaggy blonde hair seemed familiar, but the thought flitted out of his mind as quickly as it had come in.
"Who...?" he'd started, but Odo had shushed him gently and reached up with his other hand to lay it on his chest. The movement startled him, though, and he felt a a sharp stabbing in his already throbbing head as the magic he'd forgotten he even had leapt out and pushed Odo away, as instinctual as ducking a blow. The burly miller stumbled back, landing on the ground a few feet a way and knocking over a stool that had been set by the fire.
Aldith had gasped at the magical display while Odo had stumbled up, grabbing hold of him by the shoulders and shaking him roughly. "You don't do that, you understand?" he shouted. "They would kill you, rob you from your bed in the night to meet the headman's ax by morning. There's to be no magic here. Understand?"
Harvey had nodded. The weak, injured part of him had felt chastised and small then, but some other part of him, the part that still tingled with magic, told him to sit up straight and hold his chin a bit higher-like a prince. But, as quickly as Odo's anger had come, it receded. He leaned over Harvey once again and said, "Tell us your name, lad."
It should have been easy. He should have been able to open is mouth and have his name fall out, but that's not what happened. Instead he struggled to remember what it was, the way the letters curled around his tongue. Stamping down the panic that grew inside of him, he stuttereed, "I-I don't know."
His father patted his knee with a heavy, calloused hand. "Don't fret. You're safe here lad." He paused, casting a pointed glance over to Aldith before continuing. "We protect you, son, you know that. You're Harvey. You remember. That there is your sister, Aldith."
"You're my father?" he asked, and Odo smiled, nodding.
Harvey was still in awe of that idea, though he couldn't understand why. Like the mill itself, the miller who was his father was something to stand in wonder and amazement at, something to appreciate. He was everything Harvey thought father's were supposed to be-like gods to their children, both loving and fearsome. Someone to both adore and tremble at. That was Odo, who would pat his shoulder, offering a small bit a praise and then chastise him for doing something foolish, making him feel much younger than his nineteen years. He was Harvey could ever ask for in a father and Harvey loved him for it.
It was Odo who minded him that first week after he woke up. He abandoned the mill to help Aldith in making poultices and pressing cup after cup of bitter willow bark tea into his hands. When Harvey would wake up confused and admittidly frightened, not knowing where he was, Odo would be there to quietly remind him. It was Odo who encouraged him to get up and walk around their little house, and didn't make a fuss at all when Harvey was sick all over the kitchen floor.
Still, Harvey healed unnaturally fast and found himself going with his father to the mill by the end of that first week. If anyone in the house thought his recovery strange or miraculous, no one said. Life carried on, and Harvey learned as his little family told him stories of himself.
