I know you've all been waiting to read about Merlin sparring with Gwaine, but it's actually in the next chapter, sorry

Arthur

8:00 Clean the King's chambers (put away laundry, dust, make bed, clean up breakfast)

9:00 Wash laundry and hang to dry

Merlin left to start the knight's training and Arthur was determined to do everything he had to get done to go to the end of the practice and watch Merlin try and lead it. He pulled out the piece of parchment that listed his duties as Merlin's manservant.

Put away laundry, dust, make bed, clean up breakfast

He could do this. Laundry and cleaning up the breakfast tray had to be done once he left his chambers, so he had to dust and make the bed. That would be easy. Arthur refolded the parchment and moved over to the bed.

He pulled up the sheets first. They bunched up at the top of the bed. Arthur frowned. His sheets were longer than the bed. How did that work?

He moved to the foot of the bed and pulled the sheets and the comforter back down, pulling them halfway off the bed. Arthur growled. Why were sheets so hard to work with?

Arthur threw both the sheets and the comforter on the floor. Then he dropped all of his pillows next to them. He needed a clean slate.

Arthur smoothed out the bottom sheet and then spent an embarrassingly long time separating the top sheet from the comforter. None of which involved falling to the floor tangled in the sheet. Not at all.

Once he had the top sheet free, he laid it out over the bed. It was longer than the bed still. Well he is nothing if not a problem solver. Arthur took the bottom end of the sheet and shoved it between the bed frame and the mattress. He was fairly confident that was how they were supposed to work.

The king-turned-servant stepped back to admire his work. The high end sheets were decently smooth at the head of the bed and only slightly crumpled at the foot. Good enough. He threw the Camelot red comforter over the top, making sure it covered the imperfections in his work.

Time to dust. Arthur glanced around the room. It wasn't as if it was dirty in here. If anything, Merlin actually did a better job than usual yesterday since he was sleeping in here.

Merlin slept in here. Arthur banged his head against the wall. Merlin used the sheets, which meant Arthur needed to wash them. He had just put them on the bed. Arthur groaned aloud to the empty room.

Arthur quickly removed the sheets and threw them in the basket left in the corner of the room, along with the nightclothes Merlin had been wearing.

He glanced around once more to see if anything needed to be dusted. The only thing that looked like it was even remotely dirty was the windowsill. Arthur hadn't brought a rag with him since he wasn't planning on cleaning the floors until later, so he pulled his sleeve over his hand and rubbed it across the windowsill.

He nodded to himself before moving to gather the remains of the breakfast tray in one hand and holding the laundry basket on his hip with the other.

He didn't get very far. He made it only the few steps to stand in front of the door before he realized that Merlin had closed the door when he had left and Arthur's hands were full. Instead of putting something down to open the door, Arthur kicked it in frustration.

After a few kicks, the door opened to show a confused Harold looking in at Arthur. Arthur attempted to shove past the other manservant and began awkwardly walking down the hall.

"It's faster if we go this way." Harold called after him.

Arthur spun around without a word, but with a very angry scowl.

The two quickly dropped off the breakfast tray and made their way to the laundry room. There wasn't a spot of space in the whole room that wasn't filled with motion. Maidservants and manservants were washing and hanging and drying and scrubbing, and Arthur, well Arthur was standing dumbfounded. He had no idea what he was doing. Harold looked as if he was trying not to roll his eyes as Arthur shot him a desperate glance.

Harold motioned for Arthur to follow him as he weaved through the many people with ease, just as he had done in the kitchens that morning. Arthur was much less graceful and had to mumble a few 'sorrys' as he accidentally bumped into other servants. He wondered how Merlin ever managed to move through this room without crashing into every other person.

Harold stood waiting for him in front of a circular tub with a washboard sticking out the top. Arthur stared dumbly at the washtub for a moment before remembering he would have to actually use it in order to do laundry and he had never washed clothing in his life. "How do I use the washboard?" He asked Harold in a voice he hoped was quiet enough that the other servants didn't hear him. He wasn't blushing, but he was dangerously close; it was as if he could feel the eyes of every servant in the room on him, laughing at his inability to do basic chores.

In actuality, most of the servants had stared at him for a moment or two when he had first walked in but were now back to getting their own laundry done.

Harold gestured for Arthur to dump the basket of dirty laundry into the washtub, then motioned for Arthur to follow him again, this time out through a door that led to the courtyard. The two each picked up a bucket on the way out, at Harold's instruction, and walked to the well pump at the edge of the lower town.

It took Arthur an embarrassingly long time to realize that they were getting water for the laundry and he had dumped the clothes and sheets into an empty tub.

Harold had Arthur pump the water to fill both buckets and then handed both of them to him. "You can't carry one of the buckets?" Arthur asked with annoyance.

Harold laughed, ever so slightly patronizingly, but that could have just been Arthur's imagination. "Servants usually don't travel in pairs. We have to carry both buckets ourselves, and you will need both to do all of the laundry."

Arthur scowled, but picked up both buckets and awkwardly tried not to spill water out of either of them. By the time they made it back to their washtub, Arthur had only spilled about two handfuls of water out of one of the buckets. He thought that was pretty good for his first try; maybe he'd ask Merlin for some frame of reference, but then again, Merlin would probably just laugh at him for not having ever done it before.

"You pour one bucket of water over the laundry and then take the soap and lather one piece of clothing at a time, scrubbing it over top of the washboard to get out any dirt or stains." Harold explained patiently. "Then you use the other bucket to rinse them out."

Arthur nodded along even though he still wasn't entirely clear on how the washboard worked. He poured the water over the clothing, like he had been told to do, and then sat down on the little wooden stool next to the tub, grabbing the soap.

He plunged his hand in to grab the first item of clothing and flinched at the temperature of the water. It was freezing. How did they manage this during the winter? It was barely the beginning of autumn and Arthur felt as if his hands would fall off from the cold water.

Determined not to be beaten by Merlin's chores Arthur gritted his teeth and began to scrub the first shirt from the pile.

Almost an hour later he had finished scrubbing and rinsing the clothes and they looked… acceptable. Well in all honesty, they looked the same as they had before he had washed them, they were just wet now.

Arthur followed Harold's instructions on wringing the laundry out before they took the basket over to the clotheslines to hang everything.

He was interrupted after hanging his first shirt—sideways—by a servant trying to hang a large set of sheets. Likely he was one of the council members' servants, but it wasn't someone Arthur knew.

"Could you hold up that side while I pin this up?" The man looked as if he was about to disappear into the sheet. Arthur quickly shot a glance at Harold to see if he would help the man since Arthur was attempting to hang another shirt, but Harold had left him to help out some of the maidservants hanging towels.

Dropping the shirt back into his basket, Arthur rushed to grab the end of the sheet the manservant was holding before he tracked it through the dirt.

The man nodded gratefully and swiftly pinned up his side before moving to pin up Arthur's side as well.

"Thanks, I usually get Harold to help me with this, but he's off flirting."

Arthur laughed. "You're welcome. I uh, might have you help me with mine since, as you said, Harold has left me to go flirt."

"Sure. Merlin has helped me plenty of times, the least I can do is help out his substitute."

"Substitute?!" Arthur exclaimed.

The manservant raised both hands in surrender, but an amused smile crossed his face. "His words, not mine."

"Oh, I'll be having words with him." Arthur mumbled. He angrily pulled his own sheets from his pile of laundry, wordlessly handing one end to the man he was talking to. The man who was now snickering at Arthur's scowl. Merlin seemed to be rubbing off on the servants.

"So how has your morning as a servant compared to your morning as king?"

Arthur scowled even more. It couldn't hurt to be honest; he knew Merlin would be telling everyone tomorrow anyways. "I was hit with a spoon in my own castle."

"The whacking spoon!" The man laughed.

"Does everyone know about this specific spoon except me?"

"Yeah, I mean every servant has been hit by it. It's like a rite of passage."

Arthur rolled his eyes. "How many times have you been hit with this so called whacking spoon?"

"Only once. I was smart enough to not try again after the first time."

"What about Merlin? Do you know how many times he's been hit with it?"

"I haven't been here as long as he has, but from what I've been told, he used to get whacked almost daily and then got into arguments with Mary about her telling him he needed to eat more and then stopping him from eating."

Arthur smiled. One could almost call it a fond smile. "That sounds like him." Arthur bent over, his hand searching the laundry basket and coming up empty. They had finished hanging everything while they were talking, much faster than he had expected.

"Well thank you for your help, ah—" Arthur stumbled realizing he didn't know the man's name. "I'm sorry, I don't know your name."

"It's John." John held out his hand and Arthur shook it, smiling.

Arthur wandered around the laundry rooms looking for Harold. He was stopped and asked for help no less than three more times and learned three more names. Tim, Jake, and Felicity.

Harold had flirted his way to the other side of the room and was reluctantly pulled away from a pretty brunette maid named Susan. The two then walked out, leaving the empty laundry basket with a stack of others by the door.