A/N:
Now that we've caught up with the characters currently outside of Camelot, this chapter picks up on Sunday morning where Ch. 100 left off on Saturday night (when Merlin, in his post-torture haze, told Marrock that Morgana has magic). Chapter 100 wrapped up a sub-arc, and together Ch. 101-102 launch the next one. ;)
Credits: I don't own Merlin. AlexandarCho of deviantART owns the fantastic cover art (used here with the artist's gracious permission). The chapter title comes from a line in Mumford and Sons' song Below My Feet (if you want a multimedia experience, I recommend that song as a soundtrack for this chapter).
Warning: Morgana has a flashback to some events that happened concurrently with the torture sequence in Ch. 100 as she processes some of the emotional fallout of those events. I believe I've been careful to handle this in a way that's not graphic (the focus is on Morgana's emotional state, not on any details of what Aredian did to Merlin in Ch. 100), but just to be on the safe side, I'm flagging that scene block with a trigger warning (***TW*** inserted at the beginning and end of the scene block in question).
On with the fic!
Chapter 102: For All My Sweat, My Blood Runs Weak (Part 2)
Ylva woke early in the morning; she often did these days because of the baby. But tired is still better than nauseous, she thought, exceedingly grateful that she'd made it past those early months. She shivered; the bed was colder than usual. Rolling over, she realised Marrock wasn't beside her.
Did he not come home last night?
She knew he'd worked late like he had most nights since Gaius had left for Sheffield, but he'd always made it home by dawn before. Still puzzled, she sleepily pulled a warm shawl around her shoulders.
Tea would help. Can't think properly without it, not when our little one insists on keeping me awake at all hours, she thought with a fond smile.
Slipping her feet into sheepskin slippers to fend off the winter chill, she padded out to the front room to put a kettle on the hearth, only to see her husband sitting at the table with his eyes fixed on the middle distance.
"Marrock?"
He startled at her voice. "Oh! Did I wake you, love?"
"No," she said, shaking her head as she patted the growing bump. "Our little one's turning into a bit of a kicker, I'm afraid."
Marrock nodded absently, as though still lost in his thoughts.
Best to give him space to think, she decided, then moved to stoke the fire back to life from the previous evening's embers. While the crackling fire chased away the last of the night's chill from the air, she filled the kettle and suspended it on the hook about the flames. After allowing the tea to steep, she pulled out two earthen mugs from the cupboard and filled them. The sharp, rich scent of the tea wafted up from the cups. She breathed deeply, letting the familiar, soothing fragrance ground her and chase away the lingering shadows that had haunted her restless dreams in the fleeting moments between their baby's fluttering kicks.
With the all-important task of tea-making complete, she glanced over at Marrock, who still sat at the table, still leagues away in his thoughts as he twisted his silver wedding band around and around on his finger. She chewed her lip for a moment before nodding decisively and retrieving from the cupboard the tiny cone of sugar wrapped in cloth—a lavish wedding gift Ylva's merchant father had imported from his Moorish trading partners—which they saved for special occasions.
It's the least I can do, given the circumstances.
After scraping a bit into Marrock's tea, Ylva slid the steaming cup in front of her husband and sat down across from him. He looked up, as though he'd forgotten she was still in the room with him. His shoulders slumped a fraction as he wrapped his hands around the warm cup and broke his pensive silence.
"I... I didn't mean for this to happen, any of it."
Ylva took a careful sip of her steaming tea and nodded encouragingly.
"I just…I just wanted to do the right thing." He clutched the mug closer and looked at her with wide, earnest eyes. "You know that, right?"
"I know," she said softly.
"I didn't think it would end up like this. I never wanted to put you or our baby in danger."
He pushed aside the untouched tea to put his head in his hands. She took another sip of her tea and waited quietly until he spoke again.
"It's just, um, all the things I saw and heard…I don't know what to do now."
He'd told her about what he'd overheard on the night when he'd turned a blind eye during Gaius' visit. He'd told her about what had happened this week—even about the food he'd smuggled into the dungeons on Tuesday evening. She knew the whole situation had been wreaking havoc on his conscience.
But there's more, isn't there? she realised. Something he hasn't told me yet.
"And now…?" she asked, letting the words hang in the air as an invitation.
"Late last night," he began, "Merlin finally woke up."
Nefoedd.
She bit back the exclamation—and her questions—through sheer force of habit. Marrock continued, unaware of her near slip.
"Briefly, that is. I wasn't sure how lucid he'd be when he finally came to. He was out cold for hours after…and the things he endured, Ylva, I can't even—"
He broke off, blinking rapidly. She reached across the table to clasp his hand.
"I'm so sorry you had to witness that first-hand, especially when Princess Morgana—"
"No," he said, swiping quickly at his eyes. His voice was thick with emotion. "It was a small price to pay because the gamble paid off, her gamble…"
Abruptly, his hand tensed in hers.
"What is it?" she asked. "Did something else happen last night?"
Marrock nodded mutely, then took a long swallow of his cooling tea. Ylva waited again, stroking reassuring circles on the back of his hand with her thumb as her husband gathered his thoughts.
"Merlin wasn't awake for long, but when he was, he said…" Marrock trailed off, shaking his head as though to clear it. "But that can't possibly be true."
"What did he say?" Ylva asked, fear prickling cold in her heart.
"He said…that Princess Morgana has magic."
Nefoedd!
That time she very nearly let the word slip. She hadn't known whether she'd wanted to be right or whether she'd hoped that she'd been horribly wrong when she'd noticed an adder stone pendant—much like the one Ylva herself had been wearing—layered in with Princess Morgana's fashionable necklaces while the princess regent had been hearing petitions in open court on Thursday.
If Princess Morgana truly does have magic, and if she was wearing an adder stone while Emrys was—
Marrock interrupted her thoughts, unaware of her fears as he admitted, "And now I don't know what to think."
She scrambled to focus on the present, on Marrock, who sat across from her in the midst of the worst existential crisis she knew he'd ever faced. Don't think about all of that, not right now. Focus on him. She squeezed his hand.
"Did you, um, do you believe him?" she asked cautiously.
"I feel like I shouldn't," he said, "He could barely speak, and he didn't even know what day it was. But…"
"But?"
"But it makes sense…and I hate that it does."
Marrock sighed and pulled his hand away, picking up his cup and draining the rest of his tepid tea. Pushing back from the table, he rose and crossed to pull the kettle off the fire. He moved mechanically as he refilled both of their cups, like his body had detached from his thoughts as he continued speaking.
"I thought at first that maybe I'd misheard, but when I tried to clarify, he confirmed it. And for the love of Camelot, the way he said it was so very Merlin."
Marrock gave an incredulous huff as he set the kettle back on the hook.
"He'd not been awake even a full minute before he was asking if she was all right. He'd just been through—" He gave an involuntary shudder. "—that, but he was worried about her."
Emrys is a good man, she thought—though she didn't dare speak the thought aloud, not even to Marrock. Not yet, at least. But one day, maybe…
She tried to quash her hopes for the moment, asking instead, "What do you want to do now?"
Marrock groaned, dropping back into his chair and rubbing his temples.
"That's the problem; I don't know."
Then maybe I need to try this another way. "So what would you have done differently?"
"What?" he asked, dropping his hands and looking at her in confusion.
"You said you didn't mean for things to turn out the way they have. Which of the choices you've made—that we made—do you think were wrong?"
"Um…"
"Might it help to go over them one by one?"
"Um, all right…uh, first, at Pontefract, I asked why Merlin spared some of us."
"Was asking wrong?"
Marrock shrugged miserably. "The king would have seen it as treason."
"But was it wrong?"
At the shift in her tone, he glanced over at her for a moment, then scrubbed a hand through his short, bushy hair as he answered honestly, "I…I didn't think so."
"Marrock," she said gently, "Would you have been able to let it go if you hadn't asked?"
He scratched a thumbnail across a chipped spot on the mug's handle.
"No," he admitted, "Probably not."
"So if you could go back to that moment—make the decision all over again, knowing what you know now—would you choose not to ask?"
He sighed. "I think…I think I would still ask—because if I hadn't, I would have been ignorant of a life debt which I owed, and that would have been dishonourable," he concluded, much as she had expected he would.
He has always been a good man.
"I wish," he continued, "that I could have repaid that debt some other way. Then I wouldn't have…"
He sighed and reached for his fresh mug of tea, taking a long swallow.
"I know," she began, hoping her words could reassure him, "I know it didn't turn out like we'd planned, but we talked about your options, remember? We agreed that it was the best option, given how close to death Merlin was."
"If we'd known then that he'd pull through, that we'd have more time to plan—"
"True," she agreed quickly, "but we couldn't very well have assumed his magic would heal him, could we?"
"I suppose not," he said with a wry smile. "It's just…" The smile slipped from his lips. "Everything's gotten so complicated, and I can't un-complicate it without putting you and our baby at risk!"
That's hardly new, though. I'm at risk for simply existing, and so is our child. But she couldn't very well tell him that—Not yet—so she said, "If you didn't have to worry about us, what do you think you would do?"
"I think I should tell someone what I've heard, but…but I can't prove any of it. All I have is what I heard Merlin and Gaius say, and even if I believe them, I can't just go accusing the Princess Regent of treason! And even if I did, I'd have to implicate myself to do it."
He shrugged miserably.
"But," he continued, "how can I do nothing? It goes against my oaths of fealty as a knight."
"Do you think," she asked carefully, "that Camelot is in danger?"
Marrock snorted. "Camelot's always in danger."
Ylva smiled ruefully. "Fair point."
"But," Marrock continued, "I don't know for sure if what I know is actually a danger."
"How do you mean?"
"Since she's been regent, she hasn't—to the best of my knowledge—done anything to harm Camelot directly." He paused and took a sip of his tea. "Not technically, anyway."
Ylva waited, hoping he'd elaborate. She didn't have to wait long.
"Technically," he said, picking at the chipped mug again as he spoke in a detached, empirical tone, "she was aiding and abetting a sorcerer by interfering in the interrogation process, but…"
"But?"
"But how can what she did—standing up to Aredian, pushing for a binding resolution against torture—how can those things be bad? Those are the sorts of things a good leader should do! It's what Arthur would've—"
He cut himself off abruptly, looking at her with wild, desperate eyes.
"What do I do now, Ylva?" he asked brokenly.
"Is it wrong," she asked gently, keeping him grounded while keeping the conversation on track even as hope sparked to life in her heart, "to want to ban torture?"
"No." He said the simple word with visible relief.
"Was it wrong to use non-violent political means to achieve that?"
"No," he said again, then added with an incredulous laugh, "and it's even less wrong if she's really a sorceress. I can't imagine that outright enchanting Lord Chaucer to vote yea could've been any more difficult than what she actually did."
Ylva couldn't help but agree with a small, sardonic smile of her own. "I doubt she'd be much of a sorceress or a threat to Camelot if she weren't even powerful enough to work an enchantment like that."
Marrock's expression fell. "But Merlin is. Powerful enough, I mean."
"Is he a threat to Camelot?" Ylva asked, carefully trying once again to keep them on course.
"In his current condition? Hardly."
"If he wasn't injured? If he wasn't in the dungeons?"
Marrock raised his eyebrows. "Ylva, he's a powerful sorcerer; of course he would be!"
And, oh, it hurt her heart to hear him say it like that, but he wasn't finished.
"I told you what he did at Pontefract. He could have killed all of us without lifting a finger."
She tightened her grip on her teacup, bracing herself. "But he didn't, did he?"
Marrock stared at her for a moment before he deflated completely, his head pillowed on his arms. His words were muffled against the table.
"No, he didn't."
Emboldened, she dared to make another slight push. "Tell me again what he told you when you questioned him at Pontefract?"
"He…he did what he did to protect Arthur…" he said, lifting his head to look at her, "…and he spared the rest of us for our families' sakes."
She reached out and gently drew one of his hands into hers before reframing the question once more.
"Marrock, do you believe that Arthur is a threat to Camelot?"
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
***TW***
Morgana woke with a cry on her lips. The nightmarish images lingered in her mind's eye even as she flung off the stifling bed linens. She welcomed the chill of the icy flagstones under her bare feet, letting the sharp sensation anchor her in the present moment as she crossed to fill a cup of water from the sideboard with trembling hands. She drank deeply; the cold water soothed her burning throat as she tried to clear away the images and sensations from her mind, just as she'd done countless times after nights haunted by terrifying, incomplete visions of the future.
This time was different, though.
The images which had haunted her dreams this morning weren't of the future, but of the past. She hugged her arms close against the memory of Aredian's sharp blades and took deep, steadying breaths against the memory of drowning under his dark spellwork.
Never again, she reminded herself like a mantra. He can't hurt Merlin, or me, or anyone else in Camelot like that ever again.
The council had finally, finally passed the binding resolution yesterday morning, putting an end to the torture once and for all. As far as Morgana knew, though, Merlin hadn't regained consciousness by the time she'd collapsed into bed just after supper yesterday evening, utterly wrung out like a wash rag. Now she wondered whether Merlin would carry the same kinds of memories when he awoke—when, not if—or whether being unconscious for so long might mercifully mean he wouldn't remember all of it the way she did.
She knew, though, that the particular memories that had woken her were ones that he wouldn't share: the sounds of Merlin's cries echoing in the dungeons and the taste of the bile she forced down as she sat across the small table from Lord Chaucer, desperately trying to maintain her composure even as she hoped Lord Chaucer would lose his. Just like in her dreams throughout the night, the scenes replayed in her waking mind's eye:
It had truly been an act of desperation. The council had failed to pass the motion with the required majority on Wednesday morning, just after Aredian's torture began in earnest. Sir Marrock had made full reports on the prisoner's imperilled welfare to both Morgana and the council, but even the emotions that leaked into his stoic words hadn't been enough to move the remaining members of Uther's Old Guard to compassion—not when Aredian had countered that his methods were necessary to extract results for the safety of the kingdom. She'd met again with each of the four lords who'd refused to negotiate before, but she'd failed to sway any of them sufficiently to secure the one last 'yea' vote needed to pass the measure with the required supermajority. Thursday and Friday's council meetings had ended with the same gridlock. By Friday afternoon, Morgana had been at her wits' end. She had felt utterly drained from the respite she'd offered Merlin as often as she'd been able to escape the public eye. On top of that, her head had ached from dealing with all of the council's politicking and paperwork, not to mention the lingering tension in her shoulders from her herculean efforts to stay calm during the several hours she'd had to spend listening to routine petitions during the open court session on Thursday. When Gwen had arrived in Morgana's chambers to help her dress for supper on Friday, she'd found Morgana in tears.
'How can they not care?' she'd wept as Gwen—tears in her own eyes—had held her tightly. 'If they'd felt what he—what I—then they'd never…'
And suddenly Morgana had had an idea. It hadn't been a good idea, not really, but she had been desperate.
If I can't win them away from Aredian's views with mere words, then I must give them something more—something Aredian can't downplay or justify. I have to make it so they could no longer turn a blind eye.
She'd immediately summoned Sir Marrock and briefly outlined her intentions. To her surprise, he had agreed to her request immediately without any hint of reluctance.
He must be desperate, too.
Thus, at the very last minute, she'd relocated the supper meeting she'd scheduled with Lord Chaucer—yet another negotiation attempt—from the stately council chambers to the dank dungeons, just a few cells down the row from Merlin's. She'd watched as the lord's eyes had grown wide with horror as Sir Marrock had escorted him to the cell where Morgana had sat daintily sipping her wine even as she'd tried to hide the way her hand trembled. She'd done her very best to act as though the situation had been perfectly normal—no different than if they'd been dining in the council chambers—by going through the usual motions with a singular focus.
'Please, take a seat, my lord,' she'd said to Lord Chaucer, but he had hesitated even as Sir Marrock had begun dutifully laying out the meal.
She'd asked Sir Marrock to handle all of the logistics because the poor knight had already witnessed the horror, and she'd wanted to spare Gwen—and everyone else in the castle aside from certain sanctimonious councillors—from similar trauma. After Sir Marrock had finished serving the food with truly remarkable white-knuckled composure, he'd stepped past Lord Chaucer out of the cell, shutting the cell door with an ominous clang before taking up a protective sentry post just outside it. Per her request, he'd made a show of leaving it unlocked, of course; she certainly wasn't going to give her detractors any ammunition about imprisoning political opponents.
Lord Chaucer had simply stood there staring at her with his mouth hanging open for a long moment before he'd blurted, 'What is the meaning of this?!'
'Oh, please don't look so put out, Lord Chaucer,' she'd admonished, skirting the line between innocent and patronising. 'I wanted to keep an eye on the interrogation but didn't want to cancel our appointment, so I simply moved the location. Two birds, one stone, you see.'
She'd forced herself to calmly take another sip of wine before she'd added pointedly, 'Since you've thrice voted against the binding resolution to ban enhanced interrogations, I presume you don't mind.'
Lord Chaucer had glanced quickly between Sir Marrock and the cell door.
'You can't…you can't keep me here against my will!' he'd protested faintly, flinching violently as another cry nearly drowned out his words.
'No, of course not,' she'd agreed smoothly, setting down her wine. 'Sir Marrock is simply here for your protection. You are free to leave whenever you wish.'
With that, Lord Chaucer had sat with obvious reluctance, and Morgana had guided the conversation to banal tax levy topics. In what had felt like a bitter twist of irony, she had found herself feeling grateful for every gruelling hour she had spent debating tax minutiae and reading dry, convoluted records; she'd become so familiar with the topic that she could have debated tax policy in her sleep. Consequently, she'd been able to divert most of her concentration to desperately keeping her magic in check as it had fought over and over to reach out to Merlin's despite the adder stone pendant muting their connection and shielding her from his pain. Hearing and seeing had been bad enough; to have felt as well would have made it utterly impossible to do what she had needed to do. Even as she'd smiled cordially at Lord Chaucer, she'd clenched her fists in her lap as she'd reined in her distraught magic, swallowing down bile and clinging to her last shreds of self-control for Merlin's sake.
The only way I'll win this gamble is if I can hold it together longer than Lord Chaucer can.
She had carefully controlled the flow of the conversation, creating long, painful pauses as often as possible and moving on only when she'd thought the lord looked ready to bolt.
Lord Chaucer had flinched at each fresh cry, sloshing his red wine over the rim of his cup like spilt blood. After he'd dropped his fork for the third time, he had stood abruptly.
"I…I cannot do this any longer. Please,' he had begged. 'This is torturous.'
'Do you mean dining here with me? Or—' she'd continued, dropping her dispassionate facade altogether as she'd gestured angrily in the direction of Merlin's cell, '—do you mean that interrogation?'
Her tone had made it perfectly clear what the only acceptable answer would be.
'Please,' he'd begged again, 'Please, I didn't know, I couldn't—'
Morgana had arched an eyebrow in undisguised disdain as cold fury had flooded her voice.
'Be that as it may, Lord Chaucer, having heard all of this—' she'd declared, gesturing again toward Merlin's cell, '—you may choose to look the other way, but you can never again say you did not know.'
Lord Chaucer had swayed on his feet, looking as though he might vomit, and had nodded his full understanding before fleeing the cell. Sir Marrock had given her a stoic nod before he'd dutifully followed the lord to escort him safely from the dungeons. Morgana had heard retching from the stairwell leading up out of the dungeons just before she, too, had broken down.
The council had convened again on Saturday morning, where a pale, stuttering Lord Chaucer had cast the deciding vote, and the binding resolution had finally, finally passed.
But now, even as the pale grey sky signalled the arrival of a new day, Morgana knew she wouldn't be able to forget the sound of Merlin's agony and might never again drink red wine without tasting bitter bile. She shook her head to clear it, but to no avail. It would take more than that to suppress those memories.
The important thing, she thought for the hundredth time as she crossed to the chest and pulled out her gambeson and maille, just as she had the previous Sunday, is that the gamble paid off.
***end TW***
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Morgana had been on the training field, brutally deconstructing a wood and straw training dummy with her blade, for nearly two hours by the time Gwen tracked her down.
Morgana's stomach dropped as she took in Gwen's uncomfortable, apologetic expression.
"Oh, no," she muttered, stepping off the training field to go to her. What's happened now?
"A messenger just arrived for you; Sir Bellenger has escorted him to the council chambers to wait."
"From Gaius?" she asked, wondering if perhaps he'd sent them an update on the king's condition. And that's just one of many problems we've yet to address.
Gwen shook her head. "No, it's…it's from King Cenred. About, um, about your invitation."
Morgana cursed under her breath as a wave of memories came flooding back—memories from before Emrys' final message had arrived barely two weeks ago. She remembered Morgause's dramatic arrival in Camelot and the surprising proposal-by-proxy from Cenred which her sister had delivered. Morgana remembered, too, how she had asked Morgause to convey to Cenred an invitation to visit Camelot to discuss his proposed alliance further.
"Oh, for the love of Camelot—"
In the turmoil of the past two weeks, she had forgotten about Cenred completely.
A/N:
More plot twists! Ylva has secrets, Marrock is trying to decide if Arthur is a threat to Camelot, Morgana just pulled off an insane plan, and Cenred's coming to Camelot!
If, like Morgana, you had forgotten about Cenred and Morgause in this fic, may I direct you to Ch. 70-71 for a refresher? ;) In those chapters (2600 words combined), Ambrosius the falcon delivered a letter to Merlin at Níþdraca just before Leon defected and everything went completely pear-shaped. In that letter, Morgana tells Emrys about Morgause's visit to Camelot and Merlin processes his gut reaction to the possibility that Morgana might accept Cenred's proposal. Also, in the 2nd scene of Ch. 80, Morgana receives Emrys' final letter before he supposedly died at Níþdraca. That letter concluded with the following post-scripts:
"P.S. Regarding the matter you wrote to me about: Be extremely wary of Cenred. In my experience, he is callous, corrupt, and cold-hearted.
P.P.S. ...and also a supercilious prat."
Chapter notes:
So, the sugar in scene 1 is slightly anachronistic, since according to my very cursory research, the earliest written record of sugar in the British Isles was apparently ~1099 AD, and it remained a rare, expensive luxury (sometimes used medicinally) for a long time thereafter. Since I'm very loosely setting this in ~1100 AD (with stuff pulled from ~500 years in both directions because if canon can do it, so can I!), I feel like I can get away with it. I mean, if Tristan and Isolde have trading connections to get frankincense in S4 (presumably from the Middle East), then I don't see why Ylva's merchant father wouldn't be able to acquire some sugar from the late 11th century Islamic kingdoms of the Iberian peninsula. So, um, there's that.
Nefoedd = Welsh expression which, as I understand it, is used as an exclamation like 'good heavens!'
I pulled one of Morgana's lines in her convo with Lord Chaucer from a speech that the abolitionist William Wilberforce gave in Parliament in 1791 in which he advocated for abolishing the slave trade. In that speech, he sought to sway his fellow MPs by presenting visceral details of the atrocities of the slave trade before stating bluntly: "Having heard all of this, you may choose to look the other way, but you can never again say you did not know." *Wilberforce mic drop*