Alaia Skyhawk: Hehehehe, time for some more chuckles :)

Disclaimer: I don't own Merlin.

Music: The Forged Seal (Merlin OST)

"Whom History Won't Remember" Episode: N/A

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Chapter 12: The Meaning of Manners ~Part 3~

Pouch of copper shillings hidden inside his jacket, having swapped them with the silver pennies given to him by a certain prince, Merlin had a rather definite urge to whistle cheerfully to himself as he proceeded through the castle. Besides the unavoidable chores of meals, fireplace, laundry, and making the bed, Arthur had given him the entire rest of the day to make all the preparations and arrangements for this. It would also be Merlin who would cover this evening while the prince was at Gwen's home, a task the servant wasn't going to complain about.

After all, why should he? Arthur was going to decline any invitations that might come to dine with others tonight, even his father, and have his meal in his chambers before retiring to bed early to rest his wounded side. And of course if he was going to say Arthur had dined in his room he would have to get a meal for him from the kitchens, and then sit in the prince's chambers sending away anyone who might come knocking so they wouldn't disturb the prince's 'rest'.

Merlin grinned to himself... Obviously, the plates of food would have to return to the kitchens empty. Something told him 'Arthur' was going to get a very good meal brought to his chambers tonight.

He smothered that grin when one of the resident noblemen entered the far end of the hallway, pointedly not looking at the man even if he didn't bow his head slightly in submission like so many servants did. He got a small scowl for his efforts, or lack thereof, but he knew nothing would come of it. So long as he never said anything insulting to the cranky individuals around here, they couldn't complain about him. One of the bonuses of being Arthur's personal manservant.

That minor irritation passed, Merlin at last reached his destination and climbed the short flight of stairs that led to Morgana's chambers. He was in luck when he opened the door the tiniest bit, as Gwen was out of sight and Morgana was looking in the door's direction. He waved at her to come over, with a finger over his lips to indicate she do it without greeting him, and she did so. Approaching him with a small frown.

"What is it?"

Merlin peered towards the other half of the rooms, where Gwen could be heard making the bed, and then smiled at the king's ward.

"Could you keep Gwen in the castle until the Great Bell has tolls tonight? I'm cooking a meal for her as a surprise. Don't tell her."

Morgana's frown became a conspiring smile, as she too glanced in Gwen's direction. Gwen didn't get special surprises very often, and she was more than game to help with one.

"She won't suspect a thing."

"Thanks."

Merlin stepped back and closed the door, holding in laughter as he made his way down the steps again, then towards the stairway down to the main castle entrance. Of course, she'd have been a bit less cooperative if she'd known Arthur was the one making the meal, admittedly with a bit of help. She'd have teased him mercilessly for it, and demanded to know why he'd even decided to do it. Nope, that would have been a bit awkward, so it was best avoided.

The following trip to the market was uneventful, as Merlin stopped by Gwen's house to borrow a basket and them proceeded to load it with all manner of things from the various stalls. Arthur had been more than generous with the amount of coin he'd handed over for the endeavour, and he clearly didn't have a clue how much things usually cost. There was still quite a bit left over once all the food was bought, so Merlin used the remainder to buy two long lengths each of cream and lilac coloured cloth. Gwen could make herself a very nice dress out of those, so he doubted Arthur would complain if he found out what the leftover coin had been spent on.

He returned to Gwen's house, putting the cloth on a shelf in the pantry area with a small note on top of it to tell Gwen where it had come from when she should find it. He then unloaded the array of vegetables, herbs, and a chicken onto the table near the hearth. The chicken needed to be plucked, and quite honestly he knew Arthur would more than likely make an utter mess of that task, so Merlin found a small sack to put the feathers into and started on that himself. Gwen could always sell the feathers for a copper penny, to the woman in the market who made cheap pillows for the less well-off residents of the city.

That job done, Merlin also reasoned that getting Arthur to gut the dead bird with any degree of real speed would also be a waste of time... Then again, making him watch that process might be fun.

A wicked grin crossed the warlock's face at that thought, and he set the chicken aside before going to get the hearth-fire going. He'd purloin some wood from the castle wood-store tomorrow while getting more for Arthur's chambers, to make up for what he was using now from the limited supply of it in the little lean-to on the side of her house.

He'd just got the fire up to a nice cheerful blaze when at last the front door opened and a figure in the now familiar hooded blue cloak came in. Arthur took it off and hung it up, and then regarded his servant expectantly.

"So, where do we start?"

Composing his expression to bland and business-like, Merlin moved from the hearth to where the chicken lay on a chopping board. Fresh from the market, and only having been plucked less than an hour ago by himself, it still had head and feet attached. The one Arthur had eyed up cluelessly two days ago had already been fully prepared by Gwen, so now he was going to see the process of how to do that.

This was going to be fun.

"I've already plucked the chicken, but it needs to be tidied up and gutted before we cook it. Stand and watch. I don't want you making a mess of this bit, since I highly doubt you've ever had to gut anything yourself other than a rabbit or two."

Arthur looked like he was about to retort, but was cut off from speaking by the thunk as Merlin cut the chicken's head off followed by removing its feet at the knee joint. He then averted his eyes, a little green at the edges as Merlin then mercilessly got on with the task of gutting.

"N-no, I can't say I have."

Merlin kept his back to Arthur, desperately trying not to laugh at how much of a wimp he was turning out to be. Put him on a battlefield and he'd happily hack his attackers to bits. But ask him to watch as a chicken is gutted ready for cooking?

He rinsed his gory hands off in one of three buckets of water he'd gone and got, and then grabbed Gwen's spit-rod from where it hung above the hearth.

"Come here. I'll show you how to secure it to this. We need to tie the stubs of the legs together first, to stop them flapping around while the chicken is turned on the spit, but we also need to make sure the spit doesn't turn without also turning the bird."

Arthur came over, pushing up his sleeves and trying not to look awkward as he was practically walked through the process. Merlin then took the chicken on its rod over to the hearth, and slotted the pole onto the two hooks that would suspend it over the flames.

He then sat on a stool beside the fire and began slowly turning the spit, Arthur staring at him confused for several seconds before speaking.

"What now?"

Merlin smiled, and pointed to the pile of vegetables on the table, and the paring knife helpfully put near them.

"Now you peel those so we can cook them. The chicken will take about an hour, which is long enough to prepare and cook the vegetables. Once it's cooked I'll put it in a covered pot near the fire along with everything else, to keep them hot but without them drying out until Gwen gets here. We started cooking early, because I wanted to make sure I'd have time to fix any disasters you might cause. On the other hand, if you don't completely fail at something, we'll have time to do something interesting to go with everything. Now go on, start peeling."

Arthur narrowed his eyes a little.

"You do realise that you're giving orders to a prince?" Merlin didn't even dignify that with an answer, since his expression said it all. He just raised an eyebrow, and pointed to himself and then the door. It was self-explanatory. 'I give the orders on this, or I walk out and leave you to it.' Arthur caved in and stalked over to the table. "Fine, peeling vegetables it is."

Merlin watched as the prince picked up a turnip and stared at it as if wondering where to start, before setting it on the table and trying to peel it with the knife the way you'd hold a knife to cut up food already cooked and on your plate. It was after observing him take a full five minutes to produce one shabbily-peeled turnip, that Merlin let out an exaggerated sigh and got up.

"Here, you turn the spit, and not too fast. This is going to take forever otherwise." He divested Arthur of the paring knife, and picked up another turnip. "To think you can skin a rabbit but not a turnip. Watch, this is how you're supposed to do it." Merlin trimmed the leaves off the top first, and the scrawly end of root off the bottom, before throwing both them and the peelings Arthur had made into a bucket by the end of the table. "Some of the pig farmers outside the city walls will pay up to five coppers a week for scraps to feed their animals. Gwen gets two, since she lives by herself and doesn't have many scraps. But still, it's two coppers. It's enough for a small loaf of bread. So all bread, vegetable, and fruit scraps go in the bucket. As for the chicken guts, they can be prepared further and boiled to make stock for soups and stews. Nothing goes to waste in a commoner household, they can't afford it."

Turnip now topped and tailed, he cupped it in his left hand and set the paring knife so it was held cutting edge towards him in his fingers, while his thumb rested on the vegetable itself for grip. He then began to turn it using thumb and left hand, pulling the knife through it just before the surface and working his way down it in a spiral. The result was the peel coming away in one continuous strip instead of in the many small pieces Arthur had managed.

Arthur could only watch in envy at how easy his manservant made it look, before he was thrust back to the table to finish off the job by peeling some carrots and a parsnip. Merlin then directed him to cut them into reasonably small pieces, and throw them into the pot of boiling water over the fire.

They swapped places again then, so that Merlin could chop some herbs to toss into the pot as well, along with grinding up some dried rosemary to dust over the now starting-to-crisp chicken. They were both sat down then, Arthur turning the spit and Merlin relaxed in a chair the other side of the hearth, until the servant upon poking the bird with a knife to check it by some undefinable method, declared that it was cooked and so were the vegetables.

He directed Arthur to scoop the vegetables out of the water and put them in a large dish he'd set out, following them by adding the de-spitted chicken to it and covering them with a lid. He put that dish on the hearthstone, and then retrieved the chicken guts he'd set aside in a bowl.

"Now to clean the usable bits from among this lot, and boil them. The water from the vegetables has the flavour from them as well as the herbs I put in, so we won't be wasting it. When I'm done with it, Gwen will be able to add any leftovers from the meal tonight to the pot, and cook it up as a stew for tomorrow."

Arthur watched as Merlin dumped the less-desirable bits of guts into the scraps bucket, and tied the remainder up in a scrap of muslin to keep them together before dumping the bundle in the pot.

"So where did you learn all this? Getting so many meals out of all this and wasting so little."

Merlin turned to him blandly.

"You've led a sheltered life, Sire, so I will take that question seriously. It's learnt through necessity, Sire. The poor can be extremely resourceful in getting the most out of what little they can afford." He looked out the window to check the position of the sun, the long shadows showing it was now late into the afternoon but there was still a little time before sundown. "I've got time to show you something special, for the desert, before we wash everything we've used for the cooking. And by that, I definitely mean both of us. This was your idea, so you help with the clean-up."

It was now that Merlin revealed a slightly artistic side. Showing Arthur how to cut a small melon in half so that when you separated the two sides they looked like a pair of flowers. The trick being not to pull them apart until you serve them for maximum effect in impressing the one you were dining with. And then, after making the prince help with washing everything they'd used, Merlin gave Arthur some final tips for serving up before leaving with the promise to send Gwen his way as soon as he got back to the castle.

Arthur was left standing alone in the house, with nothing to do but light some candles and move the covered dish to the table with the help of a cloth so he didn't burn his fingers on it.

He was attempting to carve the chicken when Gwen, following the sudden insistence of Morgana that she should go home for the night after Merlin had 'dropped by to deliver a sleeping draught', came in through the door and paused at the threshold in surprise.

"What's all this?"

Arthur, looking rather awkward, ceased his attempts to cut up the roasted bird and cleared his throat.

"To make up for when I lied to you. I said I would cook you a meal, and now I have." He paused for a moment. "Merlin showed me how."

Gwen continued to stare for a moment longer, before starting to chuckle.

The following day, she confronted Merlin when they passed each other in the castle, her smile warm with gratitude.

"Thank you for what you and Arthur did yesterday. I appreciate it. We had a wonderful evening, and that pot of stock you left me to make stew with was perfect."

Merlin returned her smile mischievously.

"I should be thanking you. After whatever you said you him while he was staying with you, the past few days are the nicest I think he's ever been to me. 'Please's and 'thank you's all over the place... I told him off for it, the sincerity of it was starting to get a bit creepy."

The two of them looked at each other before bursting out laughing. Neither of them would let the prince forget this for a long time.

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Alaia Skyhawk: Hee hee, can you tell I'm a cooking fanatic? I love cooking, and making things from scratch, and making interesting meals out of leftovers. I had so much fun with what was left of the xmas dinner stuff. Bubble and Squeak, a curry, and I even managed a fruit pie made from the leftover apple and cranberry sauces. Good fun :)