Chapter 4: The Full Cup Inn
It didn't take as long as Merlin had thought, to leave Camelot. Packing the wagon and saying farewells had occupied the morning, that was all.
He and Freya ate their midday meal – cold sausage and cheese with bread, packed by the landlady of the rooms where Gaius and Merlin had spent the night – on the bench seat of the wagon. As he drove the pair of grays through the streets, sometimes at less than a walk, due to the busyness of the city, toward the south gate.
Neither of them said much, though Merlin was willing to lay that to the noise and near-impossibility of carrying on a conversation without shouting, rather than to reluctance to speak, at least on her part.
Since that morning behind the physician's office, when Gaius made him undress to check his bruises from the tavern fight, he hadn't paid much attention to most of what the old man said to him, half of which was intended to provoke a response. He humored the old physician more than he responded to jibes or attended to advice. Yet Gaius' words at their parting that morning had stuck in his mind.
"Take care of her," the old man had said seriously, no trace of his usual humorous glint. "You take care of her. Away from Emmett's Creek, she will need you. She will need you."
Had something like that come from Shasta's mouth, and with only slightly different inflection, Merlin would have taken it as teasing intended to goad him into an admission of some kind. Something nearer the heart, like.
But Gaius had been serious.
What did he think Merlin could do for her? He had nothing to offer anyone, anymore. He was nothing. Just an empty body waiting to die. It hadn't happened for him during the last six months; he guessed it could wait another two weeks til they reached Turad and he handed her to her mother's cousin. Or a little longer, if he found aught to interest him with Morgana's organization. Or if Emmett's Creek was serious, and insistent, about having him as a reeve.
Freya said something he didn't catch, lost in the bray of a recalcitrant donkey off to the side. He leaned toward her to indicate she should repeat herself, caught two words – want more – in the rising inflection of a question. She held the last chunk of bread from their loaf, along with scraps and crumbs of the cheese scattered on the blue cotton of the towel it had been wrapped in, and gestured that he should take what he wanted.
He shook his head, and she wrapped the towel up, tucking the corners in neatly and turning to store it behind their seat in the back of the wagon.
The crowds thinned considerably as they left the city through the south gate; those who lived and worked outside the city walls having their midday meals where they were rather than re-entering the city.
The white cap Freya wore to protect her hair from the dust of the road left a small fringe of black hair above her eyes, and in front of her ears, and hid none of her face. The plain straw hat she wore was flat- and wide-brimmed, offering shade but no more cover for her expression than the cap. She'd been watching him since he'd handed her up to the seat, outside the stable where the horses and wagon had been lodged during her stay in Camelot. More than she'd been watching anything else around her as they left the city.
She'd never had trouble speaking her mind to him before – never talkative, but never shy or self-conscious, as she was now. What had changed? Why did he suddenly make her feel so uncomfortable? Was she re-considering riding with him to Turad?
"Did Gaius tell you we saw your company march into the city, yesterday morning?" Freya said finally.
The sun was in the last quarter of the sky and sliding down to the horizon, throwing long shadows over the hills and fields. Merlin flipped a rein to keep the horses moving at a fast walk. Freya turned her head slightly to see his face, but didn't show any offense when he didn't respond, and continued, quickly enough that he wondered if she had expected him to answer at all.
"I wasn't sure if it was you, until we saw you again at the barracks," she went on, then paused for a moment to clutch at the seat as they rattled through a rough patch in the road. "We were there all afternoon, helping the corps physician patch up cadets. Until we heard they were emancipating you." She paused again – maybe she was allowing him a chance to say something if he wished. "They rather expected you to be in the line for the physician's care. But you weren't," she added unnecessarily.
Still he said nothing, not sure what she was trying to get at.
"No one was sure if you'd been injured or not – someone said you were limping, but it could have been your shoes…" She trailed off and shifted on the seat to look down at the boots he'd worn in Emmett's Creek – and long before that, if the truth be known – that he'd gotten back with the rest of his personals. "I know you don't like people to help you," she said hesitantly. Even from the corner of his eye he could tell her gaze had intensified on him. "You don't like to admit when you're hurt…"
"Are you asking if I'm capable of seeing you safely to your cousin's?" he said, putting just enough humor into the question that she would know he wasn't angry at her roundabout questions.
Her intensity lessened somewhat, perhaps in relief that he hadn't taken offense. "No, I'm asking if you're all right," she answered. "There was blood on your face –" She reached as if she would nudge his hat back to inspect the inch-long scar at his hairline.
He jerked back and shot a glare at her as a near-instantaneous reaction.
She froze for a second, her face shocked, then pulled back and tucked her hand into her lap, turning forward and straightening mechanically. She didn't try to speak again until the sun was touching the horizon.
He'd been watching for their destination for half of an hour already; the days were getting longer and it was possible to travel during twilight, after the sun had set but before true dark, but he didn't want to have to walk at the horses' heads with a lantern, or to miss whatever dinner might await them. He gave the reins a cut and the grays obediently increased their walking pace.
"Are we–" she said in a low voice, half-turning to him, then paused and started again. "Did you have someplace in mind to stop for the night?"
Freya didn't look up to meet his eyes, so instead of merely nodding, he said, "Spring's a busy time in the Creek?"
She looked at him then, a swift startled glance. "Spring is a busy time everywhere, I guess," she answered, her tone betraying confusion.
"Gaius said no one else could spare a month's worth of traveling, Turad and back," Merlin said, making it into a question, but with no pressure to answer.
"Shasta mentioned you," Freya said, but sounded troubled.
"Why did you agree?" Merlin said neutrally. Far up the road he could make out the tiny earth-colored blocks of the town they were approaching. Rockchest, if he was right. No walking in the road with a lantern, then, and they'd be there in time for a hot meal.
Freya's mouth opened to reply, but no words came out, and she pressed her lips together again, giving him a troubled glance.
Maybe it was a trust issue. He didn't figure he'd changed much, but she'd gone from being a married woman to a widow, at least in her own eyes, and he guessed that such a change in status would change the way a woman viewed herself, the world, former acquaintances.
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He hadn't answered Freya's question about where and when they were to stop, though she'd tried to phrase it so he wouldn't take offense. Was he waiting for her to decide where to make camp? Or was his question about her agreement to ride with him an indirect rebuke to let him handle things?
His face was expressionless, the shadow of the brim of his hat across his jaw. She remembered that this was the way she'd seen him first – the side of his face as he refused to look at her, refused to take Shasta's complimentary bowl of soup from her hand. He'd needed a shave then, too.
As she debated whether to mention the need to stop and make camp before dark, again, he spoke and interrupted her dilemma.
"The night I came to the Creek?" His tone invited her to remember, but she was too startled at his speaking her own thought back to her to respond. He didn't look at her, however, didn't seem to notice the lack. "Percival and Shasta didn't want to leave you alone with me, in Whatley's cell," he continued. "But you weren't afraid of me. Not then, and not after. Why?"
The biggest reason had been because she was used to physical abuse from Padlow, and other kinds of hurt from the townsfolk. She hadn't expected any different from him, hadn't believed he could hurt her in any way that was new to her. She'd endured it all before, and survived. He hadn't been a threat to her in any real way. He talked tough, but from the very first, spinning her out of the way of the dart's path as skillfully as a professional dancer, his touch had always been protective.
That was the most obvious reason. But there was more to it than that, now. Which was why, for the second time, she didn't answer. But he still didn't seem to notice.
"You told Shasta, what could I do to you? and you told me, nothing that hasn't happened before." She waited for him to bring up the more personal aspects of her unhappy marriage, which she'd hinted at to him, but she was pretty sure he understood most of the worst. He was silent for a moment, though, then said, "Past six months have been better for you? Friends and neighbors friendlier and… neighborly?"
She risked a glance at him. He had made a joke? Merlin? That was almost as surprising as the volume of words. His face was still expressionless; he still focused his gaze on the road ahead and the team of grays, rather than her.
"Strangers now coming to town, looking to make trouble for you again, without even knowing you," he went on. "And with the situation so reversed, who do you trust?"
Freya had been so focused on Merlin and his unusual willingness to talk that she'd given little notice and no thought whatsoever to the tiny cluster of buildings they were coming to, and was surprised when the wagon lurched from the road into a tight yard between a smallish two-story building and a larger barn, both needing new paint. Two men in rough clothing sauntered from the barn, while a young girl in a dirty apron hurried with a pair of buckets out to the covered well just beyond the open doors of the barn.
She stared around her as Merlin halted the team at an angle where they could back the wagon into the barn. A weathered sign hung from a post at the open doorway of the two-story building, picturing a rough pewter goblet tipping to spill two drops of blood-red wine.
Merlin used his boot to set the brake, and swung himself down. He spoke for a minute to the older of the two men, a broad-shouldered stable-hand with tight black curls, and passed around the wagon to her side.
She quickly retrieved her personal case from behind the seat. Merlin reached up for her waist and helped her jump down, as she held her skirt away from the wheel. He let his hands rest for a moment, reminding her strongly of how he'd touched her to spin her away from Burton's dart.
But doubts immediately sprang up – what was he thinking as he touched her so? Were certain more intimate desires occurring to him?
"What are you afraid of?" he said, in a low quiet voice, those penetrating blue eyes so close to her she almost stopped breathing.
It took her a moment to realize he meant it as a continuation, a conclusion of his conversation with her. He said it as a question she was to consider, not answer, as though he expected she didn't yet know the answer. Even as she opened her mouth with no clear idea of what might come out, he turned to lead her inside, and she trailed dumbly after him.
They entered the two-story building under the sign of the full cup. As Merlin stood back to allow the girl with her stained apron to rush past with her full water-buckets, Freya couldn't help but notice how different this place was from Percival's tavern.
The dooryard was plain dirt, with animal waste scuffed and packed in, marred with puddles collected and dried over the years. The dirt had been tracked up on the narrow and uneven porch, and she could tell from the way it had drifted up the support posts and the lintel of the door, that no one was in the habit of sweeping.
It seemed no one was in the habit of cleaning much at all. The small paned windows were dim with grime, and the floorboards inside almost invisible beneath layers of mud and straw. The tiny fire – thankfully unnecessary this far into spring – flickered fitfully in a choking nest of ash. A skinny slat-ribbed mutt in a corner was lapping a spill of what Freya hoped was gravy, as his master shoveled food into his mouth without looking up.
The door faced the stairway to the second floor, which two women were descending as Merlin shut the door behind Freya. They wore the plain brown dresses of lower-class working women, but no aprons; she guessed them to be visiting guests rather than employees of the establishment.
Freya smiled at them as they came down far enough to bring their faces into view, and was surprised and a little dismayed, when neither returned her wordless greeting.
The one, narrow-faced and crook-nosed, whispered something to her companion, blocky and squint-eyed, and they both studied her sharply as they rounded the corner to the dining area – four small and mostly tilted tables surrounded by a motley unmatched collection of chairs. They continued their scrutiny of her – her dress, her hat, the small traveling case in her hand – over their shoulders as they sat at a table opposite to the lone man.
The dog had its paws on the table now, licking gravy from the tabletop where it had spilled from the plate. The man didn't take any notice of the women, or his dog, and they ignored him as well.
Merlin moved out from behind her, hat in hand, and ducked through the doorway opposite the dining room on the other side of the stair. He waited a moment, taking in whatever activity there was in the kitchen – Freya could see a cupboard, the end of a table that held a large bowl of greens and a chopping knife.
"Two dinners, bread and cider," Merlin said to someone she couldn't see.
Freya turned back to discover the two women in low conversation with each other, their eyes now appraising Merlin. What are they saying? Did they take him for older than he was, as she had done, as all Emmett's Creek had done, last year? Or did they know him for little more than a child, as far as months and years went?
A stray thought caught her cross-wise – did they think he was her husband?
Merlin's hand at her back made her jump; to cover her startlement she moved forward to the first table on the front wall between the window and the door. There were two chairs, but though Merlin pulled the near one out, he stepped around her again and waited with his hand on the back of the second chair til she'd taken the first.
He twisted his chair so the back would be to the wall, before sitting, and hung his hat over the back of it. He sat with his boots out, ankles crossed, arms crossed over his chest, eyes on the floor, a frown line between his eyebrows. He didn't appear to have paid any more attention to the man and his dog, or the two women, than one initial room-sweeping glance.
Freya noticed suddenly that the hair on his head was about as long as his eyelashes, and the shortness of it made his lashes look longer, somehow.
She could feel herself blushing at the thought, and lowered her own eyes to the crumb-covered table. There was a smear halfway between him and her, maybe butter or grease – then it was covered by pewter goblets, plates set down, one after the other. Steamy and overflowing with thick, lumpy gravy, liberally ladled over pot roast, potatoes, and what looked to be last fall's carrots, alike.
Freya looked up as the serving woman – the cook? the owner? the innkeeper's wife? – licked gravy from her thumb, and dug their tableware from an apron pocket. The girl with the stained apron was serving the two sharp-eyed women in the corner.
It smelled good, anyway. Freya took a deep breath and let it out, trying to calm the anxiety she couldn't explain, even to herself… Afraid? He thought she was afraid? What did he think she was afraid of?
Was he right?
Freya reached for her spoon and knife, and realized that they were in Merlin's hand, stretched toward her handle-first. She took them, uncomprehending, until he began to wipe his own on a napkin held in his other hand, already smudged from those he'd cleaned for her first.
"Thank you," she said softly, surprised, but he gave no sign he'd heard.
She tried to eat her fill, tried not to think how dirty the kitchen might be, tried not to scrape her spoon along the bottom of the plate.
Merlin ate sitting sideways, his back to the wall, seeming to take in everything while noticing nothing in particular. She thought it would be awkward for him, but he ate left-handed as though he'd done it all his life, and never spilled, though she'd seen him at his dinner often enough in Percy's Place to know he was right-handed.
The dog put its head on its master's boot as he finished and lit a pipe, tossing his used match onto his plate. The two women were still giving Freya – and sometimes Merlin – more of their attention than their own dinners, or each other, or the other man.
She wondered if they were staying the night here also, and if the inn had private bedrooms with locks on the inside of the doors, upstairs.
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Merlin had regretted his decision to stay at the Full Cup Inn since he'd pulled into the dooryard. The barn's accommodations for horses and wagons couldn't hold a candle to the stable next to Elyan's forge, and if anyone gave one-tenth the attention to cleaning the place that Shasta and Gwen and Freya had given to Percival's Place, he'd eat his boots, road-muck and all.
The place was quiet now, and dark. No candle left on a tabletop for late customers; no late customers, so far. He could hear the old man, snoring on his cot in the men's sleeping room. The dog lay beneath the cot and snored, too.
Merlin sat on the floor in the hall, leaning against the outer wall of the women's sleeping room, right beside the door. His hat and boots were on the floor next to him. He was counting again, though not because he was trying to sleep. No, tonight he counted to keep himself awake, to keep track of the passing hours til daylight.
Had Freya noticed the scrutiny of the two plainly-dressed women, now sleeping in cots alongside hers in the women's room? Had she guessed it was anything more than rudeness? He'd have warned her but for the knowledge that she wouldn't sleep a wink if he had. She wouldn't be able to keep her suspicion of them from showing on her face, and that might have provoked them.
So here he sat and listened, breathing silently through his mouth, and counted, waiting for dawn.
A floorboard creaked, behind him in the women's room. He tensed to leap to his feet, and waited. Old structures always creaked, and this one hadn't been exceptionally well-made. He'd reacted twice already this night to creaks and groans the inn made on its own. So he waited.
Nothing. Nothing. He could feel the grime from the floor under his palms, his fingertips. Sticky, greasy, gritty–
A soft moan. Had he imagined it? Was it a sound made by a sleeper?
The old man snored. The dog whimpered in its sleep, made shuffling noises on the bare floor. Snored again in harmony with its master.
Merlin rose silently to his stockinged feet, eased sideways to the door and leaned his ear against it. A rustle of cloth – could be someone rolling over, adjusting a blanket. Another low moan, more of a grunt.
And the gasp of air taken swiftly into lungs in fright. Maybe just a nightmare.
Merlin swung open the door and was halfway into the room regardless – and was glad he had. By the light of a single candle, tilting dangerously on the sloping canvas of an empty cot, he could see Freya wrestling with the stouter of the two women, while the sharp-faced one tossed Freya's new dark-blue dress aside and yanked the top of the traveling case open. He acted without thinking, leaping over two empty cots and two with rumpled abandoned blankets, to reach them.
Of course his feet thudded on the board floor, but the speed of his rush brought him up beside the last cot as the stout woman was still turning. The surprise of his appearance was enough for Freya to twist free, but like all of her kind – and Merlin himself, once upon a time – the stout woman reacted swiftly. A blade flashed toward him; with his right hand he tossed Freya backwards onto her cot, his left avoided the knife to grasp the woman's wrist and yank her forward. One of his outstretched feet was enough to trip her up, and she went sprawling over her companion, knocking Freya's case loose from her fingers.
Keeping himself between the two women, struggling to extract themselves from each other, and Freya, he snatched her dress up from the floor, and glanced back at her swiftly.
She was huddled on her knees on the cot, eyes dark and face pale even in the dim candlelight. Her fists were close under her chin, her bent arms bared by a sleeveless shift hugged tight to her body. Her hair had been let grow, he thought distractedly, in the six months that had passed, and was fanned over her shoulders, thick and dark and curly from being pinned under her cap all day.
"Get dressed," he told her, handing her the garment he held. "We're not staying."
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Thud.
The wagon quivered, and Freya was instantly awake under the woven wool blanket in the back. Her eyes flew open, she could see the corner of a crate of supplies and the top of the water barrel outlined against the deep blue dawn sky. She heard the jingle of a harness buckle, thud of a hoof stomped on the grassy earth. And a low male voice, spoken soothingly from somewhere nearby.
Merlin was hitching the horses to the wagon, though it was still too early, too dark to see much.
Freya shifted slightly so her shoulders lay flat against the bed of the wagon and stared up into the sky, where only a few of the brightest stars were still visible. The wagon tilted, shuddering into motion, settled into a sway, but Merlin had not climbed to the driver's seat. He must be walking at the horses' heads with a lantern, she concluded. Walking, when every step was a limp; she had no idea, still, what had happened or how bad his injury was.
Merlin was a walking – well, limping – contradiction. Eighteen years old, and yet he looked and acted – and thought, probably – like a man with a good extra decade of years. He seemed to have forgotten his youth, himself. Which was why it was disconcerting for her to remember. Ask him for help and he was more likely to walk away than agree. Thank him, and he ground his teeth in irritation. Yet here he was, enduring pain without a word of complaint to help her, the wife – widow, rather – of the man who'd murdered his family.
What would it matter to him to wait two more hours til daylight, when he could ride? There was no need, really, to travel yet. A few more hours closer to Turad and her mother's cousin wouldn't make much difference when they were still this far away.
And Merlin had assured her that no one would be following to ask questions about what had happened at the Full Cup.
After a while, the wagon stopped; the sky had lightened considerably. Freya half-rose on her elbow, turning to watch over the edge of the side of the wagon as Merlin approached.
His limp seemed worse to her, but he lifted himself to the seat easily enough. He glanced over his shoulder at her as he set the darkened lantern under the seat; he didn't smile, but his expression softened perceptibly. It was as good as a greeting, from him.
"Morning," she ventured. He nodded, then turned to flip a rein and click his tongue at the horses to start them up again. She moved around til she could sit sideways, her back propped against a crate, to watch the countryside come into view with the dawning day. And to watch the comfortable slouch of Merlin's back.
It was very quiet out here, compared to Camelot at the same time of morning. Even compared to Emmett's Creek, where everyone would be stirring about morning chores. She took a deep breath of fresh cool air, deep as her lungs could take, and let it out slowly.
"Merlin," she said. He shifted on the seat enough that he could still focus on the team and the road, yet indicate to her that he was listening. "Why did we leave? Why did we not – stay?"
He didn't look back, took a moment to respond. "Two possibilities," he said. "They could've been local, familiar faces, whether their – purse-snatching – was known or not. That case, we could've been charged instead."
"Charged?" she said, surprised. "You mean, by the reeve? Fines or jail time?"
"Or stocks, whippings." He didn't sound too concerned, but though she found that extreme hard to believe, Merlin wasn't one to lie, or even exaggerate. "Second possibility, they're strangers like us. Then it's our word against theirs. Even toss who they believe. Better not wait to find out."
Freya thought about that a while. It seemed unfair to her, unjust. She stole another glance at Merlin's back. He had a lot more experience with the judicial system than she had, but – no one had ever called Padlow to account, for years and years. Years of abuse suffered, ignored, or occasionally aided by Reeve Whatley. She had never really thought whether that situation was highly unusual for the land at large, or whether it was a common trend uncovered.
Truth? Justice? Even Percival had joined the posse – understandable, but still illegal. No wonder folk paid revengers like Merlin to right the wrongs done to them.
"You all right?" His words startled her into looking up. He glanced back at her in a way that made her think he'd looked back more than once.
She looked down at the blanket rumpled across her legs, closed her eyes and felt again the stout woman's hard, heavy hands on her. It had not been an unfamiliar sensation, the rough violence forcing her to comply, to surrender. She shuddered.
"First time you fought back?" he asked her.
She didn't answer his question immediately, but laid her blanket aside, rose carefully to her feet, and lifted the skirt of her dress to step over the low back of the driver's seat. She held the seat itself for balance, but noticed that he passed both sets of reins to his left hand as if in readiness to help her if she needed it. She settled herself on the seat and smoothed her skirt, straightening her back and gazing distantly down the deserted dirt track.
"I always felt it wrong to defend myself against my husband," she said.
He growled in his throat and she glanced warily at him, feeling a chill run up her spine, but he made no comment, merely re-adjusted his grip on the reins.
"I felt it would make the situation worse," she said haltingly, wanting to be sure that voicing these thoughts for the first time would not upset him unduly. "He was never one to admit a mistake, or change his mind, especially when faced with – resistance." She looked at him suddenly, reminded that such resistance, or the threat of it, had gotten his family killed, and decided that she'd said enough.
Merlin didn't speak much of the rest of the day, but still seemed polite and open, if somewhat preoccupied with the care of the horses. She guessed no one would ever accuse him of being talkative, but she was beginning to feel more comfortable with him again.
Her new status as widow rather than wife hadn't really affected her – or maybe it just hadn't sunken in – until she'd left Emmett's Creek. Everyone there had known who she was, and had mostly ignored her, or treated her with stiff kindness or awkward pity. No one had made advances of any kind to her, ever, except Padlow and Burton. Her life with her mother had been quiet to the point of reclusion, their contact with strangers limited, and Freya had never felt the lack of anything more.
But when she arrived in Camelot, strangers – men – had noticed her, had smiled and tipped their hats and turned their heads as she walked past.
It made her aware of herself in a way she never had before. If she was honest with herself, she had to admit that this new self-consciousness had a lot to do with the awkwardness she felt toward Merlin, not because of any change in the way he treated her.
Questions came subtly as they waited day after day in the capital. Would he smile as those other men had, with speculation in an up-and-down gaze? Would he tip his hat to her as an admiring man to an attractive woman? Would he turn his head to keep watching her as they passed each other? And what would she do if he did? For the few days before the return of his cadet company and the surprise of his emancipation, she had felt a faint warm anticipation when she thought of him.
But after discovering his age to be more than a year younger than herself, she felt acutely and uncomfortably aware of that disparity. Part of her still wondered if she would attract his attention, but part of her was still trying to adjust to the fact of his youth and the uncertainty it brought her. Would he consider her as a man considers a woman? Did she want him to?
She was musing over this, half-asleep and only half-aware of him next to her on the driver's seat of the wagon, swaying as the wheels bumped into and out of hardened ruts, warm in the late afternoon sun on their faces. Then he cleared his throat.
"I was told certain things about the Full Cup," he said. "Things I did not find to be true."
She waited a moment, but he said nothing further for long moments. Was he trying to apologize? She realized, then, that he'd planned to stop there, that he hadn't simply happened upon the place and made a quick decision on the moment. He hadn't been waiting for her to decide anything, yesterday, nor to direct him in their preparations for the night. Today, though…
"I assumed," Merlin said, paused, then went on without meeting her eyes, "that you would rather sleep in a house, in a bed, with other folk around, than camp out in a field or clearing, with none for miles, maybe. But…" he stopped again.
She watched him, not saying anything herself, wondering what he was really trying to convey. His blue working-man's shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, cuffs rolled up past his elbows, the scars at his wrists exposed. He sat with his broad-brimmed hat low over his eyes, one foot up on the buckboard, leaning forward with his forearms on his knees, reins held loosely between strong fingers. Try as she might, she could not see anything of an eighteen-year-old about him. There wasn't a hint of hesitation or self-consciousness.
And, oddly, she thought of the day Percival had carried him downstairs to the tub in the small room off the kitchen at Shasta's insistence that he needed a proper bath, the day she'd walked in on them unknowingly. He'd been standing in the tub – giving Shasta trouble, she was sure, from the look on Shasta's face and the way her fists dug into her hips – stark naked and glistening wet.
Before she'd reacted and put her hand before her eyes, in the moment when she'd frozen and forgot what she was saying, she'd seen him begin to turn to see her. Exactly as if he'd been fully dressed, hat and boots, cuffs and collar buttoned, turning from a casual drink at the bar. He hadn't blustered, flushed, tried to cover himself.
She'd tried to apologize later, sitting on the stairs with him looking gray and drawn, but not a bit embarrassed. And there'd never been any pretense with him, never any of the flirtatious games she had seen young men play with Gwen, before Arthur. He'd never taken the slightest interest in her as a woman, had never shown attraction to her – or any woman, that she'd ever witnessed.
Well, she reasoned, why should he be interested in her? Perhaps he felt hatred for her, or disgust… but though she'd seen hatred in his blue eyes every day of his time in Emmett's Creek, there had never been disgust when he looked at her. Hardness, as though he instinctively steeled himself against her. Considering whose wife she'd been, she didn't blame him.
Did Padlow's death change the way he saw her? Would his lack of romantic invitation still make her feel safe to be with him?
"We can reach another inn around nightfall," Merlin continued, and she pulled her thoughts back to their conversation. "It's the Red House, in Field Springs." He glanced aside at her, a quick light flash of blue eyes and an upturned corner of his mouth. "By reputation, I'd say I'd have to sleep outside your door–"
Was it her imagination, or had he almost said again? He had burst into the women's sleeping room very swiftly the previous night, she remembered, and still dressed but for his boots.
"Were you sleeping outside the door last night?" she said, surprised.
His lips tightened in a faint grimace. "Those two were amateurs," he said. "They were eyeing you and me both from the minute we walked in. They discussed their options during dinner, the likelihood that you held our coin, or further valuables, rather than me, the chances you would resist with any real skill in self-defense."
"Which I didn't," Freya sighed, feeling some heat rise in her cheeks.
Another glance under his hat brim, longer but still coolly assessing. "You did well for someone untrained," he said.
She felt inordinately pleased. Did that count as a compliment? From someone like Merlin, yes, she decided.
Then he said, "I could teach you a little, if you wanted." There was silence, then he repeated, almost apologetically, "If you wanted."
"Thank you," she said softly. "That would probably be – useful." Was fighting ever going to be the right thing to do, for her? Yes, maybe. Last night, resistance had come to her instinctively – had she been wrong to do so? Was it right to allow someone to rob you, if you could fight back?
"We can stay tonight at the Red House," Merlin said, "if you prefer it to cooking over a fire and sleeping in the wagon."
If he'd been waiting outside her door, listening for those two women thieves to make their move, noises no one else in the house would have heard, not even the old man or the dog sleeping across the hall, he'd not been sleeping. And after seeing her tucked into the middle of the wagon bed, he'd walked the team several miles down the road before pulling onto a grassy sward and unhitching for a few hours. He'd been up early, again, walking the team to make more progress on their trip, and now he was offering to sacrifice another night's sleep for her preference.
The question was, would she feel comfortable with the alternative he suggested? She felt sure that if she wasn't, he would be able to tell.
On the way to Camelot, she and Gaius had lived out of the wagon just as Merlin was suggesting. She had wondered in a vague way if it would remind her too strongly of Padlow, and the only other trip she'd ever made, the way he'd taken her as his wife in spite of her frightened struggling, had laughed at her halting attempt to discuss their relationship, had casually allowed her to change her destination from Turad to Emmett's Creek, had mocked her labels of husband and wife. Because she meant nothing to him. Gaius, besides being more than old enough to be her father, had always been a thorough gentleman to her, and the trip had proved no different. He was kind and wry and gentle and courteous as ever.
Did she really think Merlin would do less? Or more?
She contemplated the possibility, the very worst that could happen, that Merlin would do as Padlow had, and take her as wife. She tried to imagine him looming over her in the dark, ripping clothing, slapping her hands aside – she tried to imagine further, and couldn't.
What she thought of was the day Padlow returned to Emmett's Creek, and walked into the office where they were talking with Gaius. When Merlin had discovered that his despised enemy was only a skinny girl and a closed door away. He'd been furious, but she'd turned him with a single touch, and he'd never laid a rough hand on her at all.
He'd had opportunities in the Creek to force her. He'd had opportunity just last night after they'd left the Full Cup. He could have climbed into the wagon where she lay, and he hadn't. She couldn't really see him reaching for her with the greedy look Padlow had often worn.
And if he did?
She would live. She would hurt, and she would heal. She had plenty of such memories.
Freya had worked hard to behave respectfully toward Padlow without feeling any of it come naturally. And there was nothing – really, nothing – that she didn't respect about Merlin. Some that she didn't agree with, maybe, some that she was sure he was wrong about, but she could understand those things about him, understand his choices.
It would be disappointment she would feel in remembering another such occurrence involving Merlin, disappointment that he would stoop to such a thing, disappointment that he was like Padlow at all. It would come closer to breaking her heart than years of such with Padlow had. But… Merlin taking her as his wife would not be as bad, on the whole, as Padlow had been. She took a deep breath.
"We brought supplies for dinner?" she said.
Padlow would have bridled at the question, hollered at her for questioning his planning and judgment, called her names and raised a hand to strike her, likely as not. Merlin merely nodded, waited silently for her to continue.
"I can't see spending any more coin to stay at a place that – probably will be? dangerous to us," she said tentatively.
He nodded again, accepting that as her answer without comment.
A/N: So, yay! my NaNoWriMo '22 story is finished! I'm going to be posting it on fiction press under the same author name as here, for those of you who expressed interest in reading and providing feedback... but I think I'm going to keep posting chapters from Revenger instead of returning to Psych Ops, at least for now...