Ealdor, five years ago.
Merlin had just returned the last ewe to the fold, and shut the fence tight behind her, when he heard the noise drifting across the evening air. It was the sound of many voices lifted in anger and high emotion. It was a dull roar, an evil noise, the kind that made one's hackles rise, touching something primitive in the body's memory. Even had Merlin not been sensitive to the loud, angry voices of men, because they were so often directed at him, he would have known there was nothing good in that sound.
"Stay," he said firmly, to Jess and Patch, who were watching him with nervous expressions, their ears pricked. He trusted the instincts of animals more than those of men, but being an Ealdorman, his own instinct was to hurry towards the danger. Shepherds knew that it was always better to face a wolf down than let it stalk you from behind.
When he reached the outskirts of the village, his heart sank.
Most of the village folk were gathered in a mute audience by the banks of the rushing river. In their midst, knights wearing the black-and-white colours of King Cenred, and the yellow of Baron Holbert, were dragging a woman behind them. Some of the Ealdormen were in league with the knights, carrying blazing torches, and flanking King Cenred's entourage.
Merlin scanned the faces of the crowd until he found his mother. She widened her eyes and shot him a forceful look, which clearly meant, Do not interfere. He could see the fear behind her anger. He had never known her to show fear of anything, except… except when Merlin himself was in danger.
Merlin walked closer, moving slowly enough not to draw attention to himself, until he joined the edges of the crowd. He saw his mother begin to sidle between people, trying to draw nearer to him, and he avoided looking at her.
The knights had brought justicers and their own clerics with them. One of these men was shouting, addressing the crowd.
"Do not obstruct the law! The accused, known to you as Hazel, is charged with practicing witchcraft, and unlawfully consorting with malefic spirits!"
Things were starting to become clear to Merlin. No one in their right mind could think Hazel was a witch. It was true she was a beautiful young woman, who could bind wounds, brew remedies, gather herbs and make poultices. She did know places in the forest where rare flowers bloomed, and she knew the fairylore of the stone circles and healing springs. But simply knowing tales of fairies and the Old Religion did not make someone a witch, any more than knowing stories about dragons in the caves made one a dragonslayer.
Several young men did bear Hazel a grudge. She was not as free with her favours as they would have liked. Merlin had even heard a rumour that the Baron's son had taken an interest in Hazel, after seeing her at the market fair last summer. Merlin had not paid much attention at the time, but he knew that saying no to nobles was seldom a good idea. He wondered if Hazel had turned down one man too many.
His mother had warned him about this the last time it had happened. Two winters ago, the Baron's men had knocked on the door of old Jasper and his wife Leah, and taken them away. The Baron's clerks said that Jasper and his wife had broken the law by living outside the designated districts, and concealing their religion from the authorities. But Merlin's mother said that Jasper had a distant relation who had lent money to the Baron. When King Cenred had raised taxes for his latest expedition against Camelot, he had ordered the Avramite moneylenders to call in their debts. The Baron owed a lot of money to Jasper's people, and he found it easier to make his debts disappear by imprisoning or expelling the Avramites until the loans were forgiven, rather than paying them back.
"Listen to me, Merlin," Hunith had said, taking her son by the arms and shaking him. "Hunger does terrible things to a person. Jasper and Leah lived here for as long as I can remember. They were friends with everyone, part of our lives. And someone who knew them sold them for a loaf of bread. It is dangerous to be different. Do not trust anyone. You must fit in."
And Merlin had tried, for his mother's sake. God knew he had tried, though it hadn't come naturally to him. No matter how much he tried to blend in, how much he suppressed his curse, others saw something that marked him as different, as fair game for their hostility. He would always be an outsider, even in the place he'd been born.
Two men from the village were roughly handling Hazel, tying a thick rope about her waist. One end of the rope was tossed to the opposite river bank, where a waiting villager grabbed hold of it.
"Now we shall see," said one of the king's officials, "how the accused fares in the trial by Water. God hath appointed for us Water as a cleansing Element. He opened the floodgates of Heaven to purge the world of sin, and only Noah's family passed through unscathed. His Chosen People passed through the waters of the Red Sea, but the heathen Pharaoh and all his hosts were drowned. Now the witch, having rejected the water of her baptism, will not be taken into the bosom of Water, but will be rejected by it, and float upon its surface."
"Stop this!" Father Swithun, the fussy local priest, emerged from the crowd, with his black cassock fluttering around his legs. "How dare you perpetrate this outrage in the name of religion! I have known this woman and her family for years! Hazel is not a sorceress! What right have you to terrorise the people of this village?"
The official displayed a large scroll, bearing the seal of the Baron. "Do you interfere with the king's sovereignty, and the exercise of his sworn baron's rights and privileges over his own dominion?"
One of the Baron's priests confronted Father Swithun. "Father, you were responsible for the spiritual health of this community! And you allowed a nest of vipers to hide within your flock! Witches, like their master the Evil Angel, do not fly alone, but teem in great numbers. How many other sorcerers have you permitted to take refuge here?" The priest stabbed an accusing finger at Father Swithun. "See how ardently you defend the beautiful maiden! Has she bewitched you as well?"
Members of the crowd began to pull back from Father Swithun, not wanting that accusing finger to fall upon them. Perhaps the Father had been ensorcelled, after all. It was a strange thing, wasn't it, a priest speaking against another priest, in defence of a witch?
Men on either side of the riverbank now pulled on the ropes, hoisting Hazel out onto the river's surface, suspending her like a roped bull. She screamed in fear, then, for she had never been drawn to the water as a child, and she did not know how to swim. Riverwater soaked through the green wool of her skirt, making it cling to her legs immodestly, as men jeered and leered around her.
"Dunk the witch!" they shouted. "Dunk the witch!"
Someone took hold of Merlin's arm. It was Hunith, her eyes shining with tears. At first Merlin was confused - he had not thought his mother so close to Hazel - but then he understood. She was seeing him in the river. If the people would do this to an innocent woman, what would they do when they discovered a real sorcerer lived among them?
"Look away," she said softly, reaching up for the back of Merlin's head, and pulling his face down into her shoulder. But he wrenched himself out of her grip. He had to watch. Because this was his future if he stayed in Ealdor. And he had to remind himself that this was another person, like Jasper, like Leah, whom he had failed to save through his own inaction.
The tension in the ropes relaxed. Everyone watched, with bated breath, to see if the woman would float on the river's surface. Merlin felt a flash of hot anger burning inside him. Father Swithun had just preached to them in a sermon that the Lord had walked on the sea, and it was a great sign and wonder. Why did people revere miracles when they came from the saints, but despise them as marks of sorcery in others? Why was it that if one man walked on the waters he was a prophet, but if a woman of the Old Religion did it, she was a witch?
Hazel floated for a moment, and then slipped under the surface of the river. The waters closed over her head, churned to white foam by the thrashing of her limbs, and then went black and glassy.
"Don't look," said Hunith, but her voice came from far away.
Something strange happened to Merlin. He felt a prickling at the nape of his neck, and a warm rushing wind, as if a great beast had breathed upon him. And he felt a great gale blow across the surface of the river, though nothing stirred, and none but him was touched by it.
The waters opened to him, turning transparent as glass, and he saw the woman going down into the blackness. The river filled his vision. Its waters boiled, giving off mist. The village wavered around him, as if covered by a veil of liquid. He saw shining towers rising behind the people, their ancient stones twined in strange geometries.
There was another shore beyond the river. A river should not have more than two banks, but this one did. There was another place across the waters, where misty shapes gathered, women in robes of red, black and white, watching Hazel descend into the gloom.
But Hazel was not alone. There were figures in the water with her, women robed in light, rising from the black depths. In their lead there was a maiden, pale as ice, with a fall of black hair and eyes blue as the currents she swam in, and in her hands there was the ghost of a gleaming sword.
The daydream lasted for an instant, and then Merlin was back to reality, grounded by the shouts of the people, and the touch of his mother's arm.
"No more," Hunith was saying. "This can't go on, Merlin. This won't be your future."
And Merlin knew she would send him away now, even into danger, anywhere but here. Like Jochebed casting her son into the river, she would throw his life into the hands of Fate.
Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from sin.
Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
- A Psalm of David
Merlin frowned when he entered the king's bedroom. The bathtub was out, and a servant was setting two buckets of water down on the floor beside a dozen others.
"What are you doing here?" Merlin asked.
The servant jumped. He looked a few years younger than Merlin, and was thin, but wearing well-fitting clothes. He must have been in the employ of the royal household for a while, though Merlin did not know him well. Many servants, as well as nobles, had been promoted in the aftermath of Morgana's invasion. Death had a way of opening up career opportunities.
"The king asked me to bring up water for 'is bath. 'E went to say 'is prayers."
"You are not to enter this room unless His Grace or I am here."
"But the king said-"
"And I say it is the king's will that none enter his chambers unsupervised. If you have a reason to be in here, and the king is away, send for me. Do you understand?"
The servant bowed low.
"You may leave."
As the servant was crossing the floor, Merlin opened the laundry basket and looked through the contents.
"Wait. Did you bring these up?"
The servant made a low nod.
"We'll keep them this time. But tell the laundress that the king has his sheets and linen perfumed with herbs. He is particular about his personal cleanliness. She should know that by now. I can't do everything in this castle myself."
The servant bowed again. He had mousy brown hair and a pinched face. He was not unpleasant looking, but he had that wiry appearance Merlin recognised among commoners, which spoke of hunger during childhood.
"Your name is Rafe, isn't it? Your mother owns a bakery."
"Yes, Master." Rafe pressed his hands. "I didn't mean to be careless, Master. Please give me another chance. My Mam can't bake so good since she took a wound in the fightin', and none of 'er customers have coin to pay 'er. I need this job, see."
"I didn't mean to be harsh," Merlin said. "I'm sure you do a fine job. Only we must be extra vigilant with the king's safety. His enemies are everywhere."
"I will try 'arder, Master."
"See that you do."
Before the servant could reach the doorway, Merlin touched his arm, stopping him again. Merlin's hand went into his pocket, and fished out a handful of silver coins.
"Take these to your Mam. And tell her to keep a batch of cream rolls for me when I'm next down her way."
The look of gratitude on the lad's narrow face was pathetic. "God and 'is saints keep you, Master," he said, reverently accepting the coins, and bowing his way out of the room.
Merlin went to the window and looked down into the courtyard. How many times had he and Arthur stood here side by side, looking out on undead knights, strange beasts, marauding armies? They had been mere boys then. All he saw now was the soldiers of Camelot training to fight the city's foes. And the masses of common people swarming beside them, a sea of want, poverty and desperation. Those sights never changed.
What had he done for the people of the city in all the years he had been here? Or for the people of the Old Religion? The Druids said he was some kind of prophet. If so, he must be the most ineffective one in the world.
But I have kept Arthur alive, he thought. That was what Kilgharrah told me I must do, all those winters ago. And I have devoted myself to that, with more fervour than the Great Dragon or I could have predicted. Arthur is nothing to Kilgharrah, a means to an end. Kilgharrah wanted me to save Arthur so the new Albion could be born, and magic return to the land. But to me, Arthur has become the end in himself. I have lost sight of everything else…
What seed did Kilgharrah plant in me when I was a lost boy, looking for purpose in the world? And did he know what bitter fruit it would bear?
Dragons are magical creatures. We sorcerers have to learn incantations slowly and painfully. We babble like babies, struggling to shape the world to our will. But dragons have magic in their breath and spells as their native language. They know the Old Tongues, from the dawn of creation, and they may not lie outright, but they speak in riddles.
When Kilgharrah told me my destiny, was he revealing the future to me, or creating it by his own will? All those times he told me who I was, and why I must serve Arthur, was Kilgharrah binding me by magics too subtle for me to know? Can a dragon ever merely speak, without imposing his dominion on the world, reshaping everything around him?
That old lizard was imprisoned beneath Camelot for twenty years. But the chains he used to bind me to Arthur were stronger by far than his own shackles. Not even a magic blade can cut me asunder from Camelot now.
Kilgharrah… what were you to me? Friend, prophet, puppetmaster? Did it please you to feed me half-truths and watch me make choices, believing they were my own doing? Were you genuinely fond of me? Did it hurt you to use me as a pawn in the service of a higher cause?
Everything you were to me, friend and foe, I must be to Arthur now...
The door opened, and the king came in, looking troubled.
"Ah, Merlin," he said. "Just the man I want to see."
"It's unusual for you to attend prayers first thing in the morning, sire," Merlin observed.
"Yes," said Arthur distantly. Then, as if a thought had just occurred to him, he said, "I never see you in church."
"My lord, you are the king. It is your duty to set a pious example to your subjects. I belong to the lower orders of society. Morals are a luxury we can't afford, like Frankish cheese."
"You never stop talking nonsense, do you? I see the water's ready for my bath."
"Sire," said Merlin, moving towards the king, "if you need something done in your chambers, it's best that I handle it. It doesn't matter how long another servant has been in your service. We need to minimise your exposure to risk."
Arthur gave Merlin a look. "Are you concerned about me, Merlin?" he said, half-mockingly.
"I'm concerned about the welfare of the realm. Sovereignty currently resides within your person, and there is no heir. It is my duty to protect you as the embodiment of the State, even if you are a cabbagehead."
"I will choose to interpret that as affectionate rather than treasonous."
The king began stripping his clothes off, without waiting for assistance, and flinging them onto the nearby table. Years of remonstrations by Merlin had not changed this carelessness of his.
There was something mysterious about watching Arthur divest himself, taking off the robes of state to become an ordinary man. The first time it had happened, Merlin had been appalled. In Ealdor young children might run about naked or swim nude in the river, but by the age of reason, reckoned at seven years, everyone was firmly impressed with the indecency of their own bodies. Even married couples would rarely see each other completely naked. That seemed to be the case among the commoners in Camelot, also, except those who frequented the public baths. Most people took responsibility for their own cleanliness, and kept as many of their garments on as possible at all times, lest they be stirred by the sight of their own flesh into outlandish behaviour.
The ease with which the nobles of the Citadel, so proper and elaborately dressed in public, would expose their own nakedness in front of their servants had bemused Merlin. Eventually, he came to realise that there were three reasons for it. Firstly, the nobles did not see their servants as people in the full social sense, but as extensions of their own selves. Arthur would not get embarrassed being touched by his own hands, so he should not be embarrassed being undressed by Merlin, either. The very names of the servants - handmaiden, footman, body servant - showed them not to be separate people, but limbs acting in the service of their masters.
Secondly, in the case of the young male nobles like Arthur, much of their lives were spent in training and campaigning. There was very little privacy in a camp, and soldiers learnt to eat, sleep, bathe, and toilet in close proximity to each other. Merlin had not enjoyed that at all, the first few times he had experienced it. He had been a loner as a child, enjoying silence and solitude. Having to sleep each night in the company of loud, rambunctious knights had not appealed to him. Undressing his pale, spindly limbs in front of leering, swaggering warriors appealed even less.
Finally, in the case of the highest ranking nobles, such as Arthur, there was a sense in which their bodies were not their own. The body of the king was identified with the body of the kingdom. In some sense Arthur was a public commodity, and he had learnt from birth that the most intimate questions of his personal life were affairs of state. That saddened Merlin. The lowest commoners, like him, enjoyed a privacy and dignity of their own persons that Arthur could never know.
Now, as Arthur approached the tub, Merlin noticed something unusual about his movements. He was travelling stiffly, keeping his chest deliberately facing Merlin. He maintained that angle even as he clambered over the side, and as he lowered himself into the water he winced, as though from a battle injury.
"Are you all right?" Merlin asked.
"I will be in a minute," said the king quietly.
"I have some good news. Since our finances have improved, I managed to acquire some of that soap of Bardulia you like."
Arthur perked up for a moment, but then his face drooped. "No, Merlin. I think you'd better use that nasty stuff you used before."
"You're… volunteering for lye. When there's Bardulian soap on hand." Merlin was nonplussed. He was not the most attentive to the Church's cycle of feasts, but he knew that Lent was long gone, and that Arthur liked having his comforts when at home in the Citadel.
"Yes. Where do you get lye, anyway?"
"It's very simple. You just take ashes out of a fireplace and boil them, and use the water."
Arthur's face wrinkled. "You've been washing me with ashy water? From a fireplace?"
"It's very clean, sire. My mum used to wash sheets and linens in it. Your own laundresses use it on your clothes, only you can't smell it because I make them use perfumes. Also, we washed ourselves with it in Ealdor all the time. It kills lice and purges the skin."
"It kills lice? God, no wonder I can feel my face peeling off. Is that why girls in the lower town and country have that nasty raw look about them?"
"My mum does not have a nasty raw look about her, sire," Merlin said reproachfully. "Mind you, she would sometimes put a paste on her skin made from flaxseed oil and curds, which she said protected her from the elements, so maybe that helped."
Arthur looked further sickened by this. Images of poor peasant women with skin flayed from ashwater and faces caked with dairy products were doubtless floating before him. "I don't need to hear any more about your village's degenerate hygiene practices, Merlin."
"I can't believe," said Merlin, "that you are so unmanned by a bit of lye. I heard a bard calling you Arthur Ironside the other day, and singing that Southron arrows broke against your skin. He called you a young dragon, and said that your scales were tough and scarred from all the Saxon lances you'd shrugged off. But really, you're like the princess in that fairytale, who was so delicate she could feel a pea through eighteen mattresses."
"That's enough, Merlin. Bring on the lye. We'll see who's a princess."
Merlin took up the jug of caustic liquid and advanced towards his king. Something made him go around the side of the tub. He stopped, and went on a bit further, until he could see the top of Arthur's back clearly, where it emerged from the water.
The jug almost slipped from his hand.
"Arthur," Merlin said.
Arthur, as if he wanted this to be over with, leaned forward in the tub, exposing more of his back.
"Arthur," Merlin said again. "What happened to your back?"
"It's nothing," Arthur muttered.
"Did you do this to yourself?" Merlin remembered the mention of early morning prayers. "Did Rhodri make you-"
"No one made me," Arthur said. "I chose."
The king's back was scored by three fresh, broad cuts, too shallow for a blade. He had struck himself with some kind of religious implement, of the sort used by mad monks to flagellate themselves in the throes of ascetic fervour.
"Arthur," Merlin said yet again, and he was surprised to hear his voice breaking, like that of a little boy on the verge of tears. "Are you… punishing yourself for something?"
"Yes. It's called repentance, Merlin. You should try it some time."
If only you knew, Merlin thought. But I was always more subtle than you. My wounds aren't in my flesh.
Droplets of garnet oozed down the king's back, slipping into the water, filling it with curling ribbons of red. Blood had seeped onto his fingers. He rubbed his hands, one against the other, trying to make them clean, but he only spread the stain further.
"Wash me, Merlin," Arthur said helplessly.
Merlin did as he was asked. No doting mother ever washed her newborn son so tenderly and carefully as Merlin bathed his king that day. Arthur winced and gritted his teeth, but he made no sound as Merlin cleaned the wounds, and brought salves and linens to bind and dress them.
Merlin, for his part, was glad he stood behind Arthur, so the king could not see how his eyes shone with repressed tears.
A/N: A note on Ealdor/Essetir - I don't think the show gives us clear information about the public opinion of magic there. The consensus in fandom seems to be that it's legal, because Cenred openly allied with Morgause, and used the Cup of Life on his army. That does raise the question of why Hunith sent Merlin away to Camelot, and why Will seems to be the only other person who knew about Merlin's magic. Perhaps it was just a plothole.
I've decided to make Albion generally view magic in a negative light. Otherwise I can't think why a magical kingdom wouldn't be the dominant power in the island already. Camelot may be the only kingdom to have explicitly gone to war with the Old Religion, and essentially committed a genocide against sorcerers. But there's a lot of room between full criminalisation of a minority, and full acceptance and integration of them into all levels of society.
There are examples from religious history. There were places in medieval Europe where Jews were eventually expelled (late medieval Spain, infamously). Other kingdoms tolerated them, because they were useful, but they still faced persecution, and were vulnerable to violence if they became too prominent or gained too much social status. Catholicism was criminalised during the English Reformation. Once being Catholic was legal again, there was still suspicion of their loyalties and exclusion from political office. Another example: the decriminalisation of homosexuality. Even when it was no longer a crime in the Anglophone world, for generations afterwards the majority of people still strongly disapproved of it and thought it was a moral evil.
We don't get an indication that high priestesses or Druids have flourished in or allied with any other kingdom. The costumes of the other kingdoms seem to be generic High Middle Ages or Anglo-Saxon/Celtic, and we have no indication of any "Old Religion" having official status. For now I'm going to run with the assumption that sorcerers aren't as badly persecuted outside Camelot, and some of them have risen to power and become successful, but they are generally a minority that needs to keep their heads down, because public opinion can turn against them quickly.