The First Afternoon
At this time in the afternoons, Merlin was usually busy tending Arthur's laundry. Or busy polishing Arthur's armour. Or sharpening his sword, or cleaning his rooms, or any of the other myriad menial tasks the bratty prince would heap upon his hapless servant. He would be dashing from laundry room, to armoury, to stables, and back again, never with a moment left to dwell overmuch on his thoughts.
Today, he was left with nothing but his thoughts. Gaius had settled Guillam temporarily in Merlin's room, and had been shut away with the stableman on and off all day; training had been cancelled in respect of the heat, the knights made busy elsewhere; and Arthur—
But Merlin bit off that thought with an audible clack of his teeth. Arthur was not here to clump him around the ears with a hard but not ungentle hand. Arthur was not here, to ask why he insisted upon depriving some village of their idiot(1) – and he was not here for Merlin to thank from the very bottom of his heart. So Merlin only wandered listlessly through Gaius' chambers, gathering bandages and salve, vinegar and cloths. And while he worked, he let his mind paw quietly over the information he had already gathered – about Guillam's magical sleep, and Morgana's unlikely but very nearly fatal accident.
The circumstances of the fall had bothered him from the start. It was true that Morgana's palfrey had thrown a shoe, and in the process lamed its foot enough to cause a stumble the following day – but he had experienced such stumbles himself, many a time. Rarely did they lead to the rider being unhorsed; rarely did they produce such serious injuries as Morgana had suffered. Merlin had evidence enough to convince him that magic had been responsible for Guillam's extended stupor – and if magic had caused the one, then it seemed logical to assume it may also have caused the other.
His next move, then, should be to visit the stables and examine Morgana's palfrey. He should also speak to the stablehands, and see if there had been anything amiss on the night before her fateful ride. Arthur had asked this of him; and though Merlin may not be collecting socks or hammering the dents from a battered hauberk, that meant he still had duties to perform. Even if the prat never got around to appreciating it.
With a new sense of purpose, Merlin closed up his satchel and set it on the table to retrieve later. As he did so, a flash of nausea rumbled from his stomach and up into his throat; he had not eaten since supper last night, and little enough of that. Gaius had pestered him to eat, pushing first the bowl of soup and then the bread insistently against his hands . . . but Merlin hadn't been able to force more than a few mouthfuls into his roiling stomach. Now he turned his back deliberately on the wheel of blue cheese on the table, the barrel of oats and the bottles of ale underneath. Arthur would be without food until Tuesday morning – and so Merlin, too, would be without food until then. He might have been spared both the flogging and the cage itself, but he would not spare himself this. It was the only penance he had left to give.
§
The stables held both fond and frustrating associations for Merlin. On the one hand he loved the vitality of the horses, the warm reek of hay and the soft coo of the pigeons that roosted above. He loved feeding apples to Arthur's two beautiful bays, Llamrei and Hengroen. And he loved the companionship of the stablehands and of old Guillam himself. But he also had memories of long, arduous hours bent over a pitchfork until his back ached; he remembered stumbling home to Gaius long after lights out, with the stench of manure still clinging to his skin. And he remembered Cedric. Cedric, the opportunistic liar who had turned Arthur against him with no more than a day's idle flattery.
The stables were deserted, and for a moment Merlin felt a flash of annoyance on behalf of the absent stablemaster. Gone only four days, and already the boys were taking advantage of that absence. But the annoyance did not last long, or even run very deep – he had been a child himself not so long ago, after all. As much as he loved his mother, he had not been above showing up late to the fields if it suited him. He would feel the call of the earth too strongly, sometimes, to remain within the four stone walls of his home.
The beautifully sweet, prickly-warm aroma of hay enveloped Merlin as soon as he stepped into the barn. Chaff choked the swollen air, making of the sun beams a cathedral of dancing dust motes; and slowly, as Merlin's eyes adjusted to the gloom, the outlines of the two stableboys blurred into focus like an image in a scrying bowl. They were sitting on the lowest of the hay bales, the crumbs of a demolished honey cake scattered across a napkin between them. Both looked up as he entered, immediately on their guard; but they relaxed once they had recognised their visitor, and nodded a cautious greeting.
"Merlin," said Owen, setting down the broken bridle in his lap to look at their visitor. "Did you need something? Has Arthur—"
Has Arthur sent you to muck out his horses, again? It lingered on the dusty-dim air, as clearly as if it had been spoken aloud. Merlin felt a barb of anger catching in his throat at the boy's thoughtlessness – but then Owen's small, sharp face crumpled in realisation, and Merlin found he didn't have the heart to blame the boy for an innocent slip of the tongue. "Arthur's going to be fine," he said. "I just thought I'd look in on Llamrei and Hengroen for him – you know, make sure they're not missing him too much."
"They're in their stalls," Owen assured him, brightly. "I just changed their water, and we're taking them out to pasture a bit later – when it's cooler, like."
"I'm sure they'll like that. And how is Amra doing? Is her leg hurt very badly?"
"Oh, she's doing much better, sir, and she should get the use of her leg back in a few weeks. I was terrified they'd have to put her down, like, if she wasn't going to heal." Owen appeared to be warming to his audience, now; his bright, dark eyes lit with eagerness like those of a dog to its master's call. It never ceased to be a source of amazement, to Merlin – he still felt like an insignificant farm boy in so many ways, and the idea that he was considered a person of importance by this avid young stablehand both amused and disconcerted him. He supposed, as the prince's manservant, he enjoyed a certain notoriety amongst the younger members of the castle staff . . . but it was hard to feel like much of a role model when your job so often consisted of dirty laundry and horse shit.
"That's great," he said, and meant it. "I'm sure you're looking after her very well while Guillam is away."
Merlin glanced, surreptitiously, at the boy who had yet to speak. Rhys was a big, clumsy lad of fifteen or so, with a tangle of wild russet curls that hung perpetually into his eyes. Merlin had only rarely heard him speak; it was common knowledge among the servants that the boy was slow(2), and often had difficulty in expressing himself. But Merlin had sometimes caught him around the stable yard, whittling little figurines from wood or fixing equipment long past the attentions of more experienced men. Now those sure, deft hands appeared to be scraping a piece of cowhide with a flat knife, carving away the treated fur to reveal the crackled skin beneath.
"What's that you're making?" asked Merlin, stepping a little closer.
"Leather," the boy said, and shook the hide in his lap as if to demonstrate. "See?"
Rhys gestured behind him to a mismatched row of bottles and jars, and what appeared to be a lidded stone vat of some kind. None bore labels, but several looked to be full of a dark brown liquid that might have been ale or beer. "Lime," said Rhys, pointing to the closed vat. "Beer," he said, indicating the bottles. "Oak bark."
"He does this all the time," said Owen, with a roll of his eyes. "Never does his fair share of the real work, he's too busy tanning hides and making stupid wooden toys. Aren't you, you big lug?"
Merlin expected a rejoinder of some kind – his own instincts had always led him to talk back, even to royalty – but Rhys only smiled a big, goofy smile, and went back to cleaning his cowhide.
"I wouldn't let the king catch you with all that," said Merlin. "He'd probably think you were brewing magic potions in those jars." But the boy's brief spark of attention had already waned, and he gave no indication that he had even heard the warning.
"I actually wanted to ask you something," said Merlin, turning back to Owen. "You didn't happen to see anyone around the stable yard on Thursday, did you? Someone new, or someone that didn't belong here? It would probably have been towards evening."
"I wasn't here Thursday evening, sir," said Owen. "I was down at the grain store, see, to cart back the oats for the horses. I didn't see nothing."
"Enough of the 'sir', already. It's Merlin. Just Merlin. All right?"
Sometimes, when it was just Arthur and himself, he could forget the rigid social structure that ran through all of Camelot like the rings of a fallen tree; but at other times, like now, that hierarchy seemed so inflexibly engrained in the fabric of the kingdom that he despaired of it ever being allowed to change. Of the Golden Age, and the fair and just Camelot the Great Dragon had promised him.
Sometimes he wondered if it was all just someone's idea of a sick joke, entirely at his expense.
He had just turned to leave when Rhys' quiet voice called him back; and at those four words, Merlin felt his ears prick up and his heart falter momentarily in his chest.
"There was a man."
Merlin turned back. Gently, so as not to startle the nervous boy, he asked: "What man?"
"You didn't tell me about no man, you big goon," said Owen. "When was this?"
"When you was out. Saw him in the South paddock, I did. A man in a cloak. He was looking at me."
Merlin waited for more, feeling a slow fizz beginning in the pit of his stomach. He had been so certain of finding a lead, when he came here. He had tried not to let his disappointment show when Owen proved to have no information worth telling – but now, the hairs at his nape bristled with the possibility of something he could use. So he waited, hardly daring to breathe, for Rhys to continue with his story.
He didn't.
"Well, that was helpful," said Owen, with all the sardonic wryness of Prince Arthur at his best. "The beginning was a bit slow, and you kind of lost momentum in the middle . . . but the ending was good. Well, not good, exactly . . . but at least you managed a complete sentence. Well done, you."
"No," Merlin mused. "No, it could be important. Thank you, Rhys. Let me know how that leather turns out, won't you? And keep the potions away from Uther – he'd have you burned at the stake just for making pile cream, these days."
Rhys only offered up that same oblivious smile again, making of his mouth a bright half-moon in the barn's low light. Merlin nodded, absently . . . but his mind had already taken its leave.
§
The stalls were deserted as Merlin slipped inside. At this time of day the unused horses should be out to graze, or being put through their paces in the arena; but the intolerable heat had put paid even to that. Quiet whinnies and whickers greeted him as he stepped inside, and several of the beasts raised their heads hopefully at his familiar presence. He had always been popular with the horses, much to Arthur's chagrin. The prince would sneer that infuriating, lip-curling sneer, and ask if perhaps Merlin would like to be left alone with them for an hour or two? And Merlin would smile back and say, in the very picture of innocence: "Nah. Wouldn't want to spoil them for their master, now would I?"
Sometimes, Arthur would hit him. But other times . . . other times, he would laugh that spontaneous, uncomplicated laugh that so few people ever got to hear. And it would warm Merlin to his toes that he could elicit such an unguarded sound from this most guarded of men.
Merlin slipped into the stall of Lady Morgana's exquisite grey palfrey, Amra. The beast was restless, and pranced a little to one side as Merlin approached – something the quiet creature had never done with him before. Animals were never nervous around him, and spooked only when some third party or natural danger lay close at hand. They came to him with the unthinking trust of a child to its mother.
Today, Amra was clearly unhappy about something. Cautiously Merlin reached out a hand to her muzzle, and thought towards her with all the warmth of his magic turned outward. It was not telepathy, this primal communication with the beasts; it was more a form of projection, sending out his peace and goodwill in a pulse of softly glowing gold. He silently offered up his friendship to the startled beast . . and, at last, Amra began to grow still. Merlin ran a hand through her smoky silver mane: curved it around to her nose, and down the blaze of white that crested against the pebbled grey. "There you go," he said, soothingly. "It's just me. You know me, don't you? Now let's see what has you so unsettled, eh?"
Closing his eyes, Merlin let his magic feel over the horse's gleaming coat. It was a clean kind of life, a horse. A pure life. No predator or carrion-eater, this; but something that rarely hurt, rarely killed, except in self-defence. He sent his magic deeper: into the muscle, into the bone, feeling the blood pulse hotly through the veins of the living being in front of him.
Until . . . there. Clinging to the front left fetlock and down into the hoof below, Merlin felt a presence that was far from pure. It was a taint, a contamination, and it swarmed like ants over the animal's damaged leg. A spell.
"Oh, now that's just mean," he said, mostly to himself. "You've been like this for four days? No wonder you stumbled, old girl. Here." Carefully Merlin stooped; closed his right hand around Amra's wounded ankle; and with a brief pulse of his magic, broke the spell around the swollen flesh with a satisfying pop!
"I wish I could heal it for you," he said, as he straightened. "But my healing magic is a bit hit-and-miss at the best of times – I'd probably give you a fifth leg, or something. But I'll fetch you some salve when I can, all right? Something to take the pain away."
With a last pat to Amra's velvety long neck, Merlin stood and fished an apple from his pocket. His stomach rebelled at the sight of it, all smooth yellow skin and crisp white flesh. He had not eaten in over a day, now, and his belly raged like a subjugated dragon. He could eat this one apple, couldn't he? Something so small, so unsatisfying, it would hardly be breaking his fast at all . . .
Before he could let his traitorous hands bring the apple to his lips, Merlin shoved it under Amra's inquiring nose. He tried not to think, as she crunched it up with happy little tosses of her head, just how empty and light-headed he really felt.
And he tried not to think, as he turned to leave, just how badly Arthur would have appreciated that apple right about now.
§
There were many things in his life that Arthur would never tell another living soul. That he kept in his chambers the box of lead soldiers his father had once given him as a Yuletide gift; that his first nurse had lulled him to sleep with folk tales that bordered dangerously on the magical; that he sometimes watched the common folk exchanging hugs and brief kisses, and wondered how it might be to show such easy affection without fear of censure.
Or that, when he had walked towards the cage and placed his hands into the waiting manacles, he had been as afraid as any man might have been in his place.
It was that moment that he dreamt of, as the noon hour waned and the heat crushed him relentlessly down into sleep. Because this was another thing that Arthur would never tell another living soul: that as he stood with his back bared and waited for the lash to fall, he had hated his father as he had hated nothing in his life before.
When the clouds began to mass blackly overhead, Arthur could almost imagine that he had called them into being with his own, brief spite. They were a manifestation of his malice, turned outward instead of in. But the clouds passed and his bitterness did not; and so he decided that they could not have been his, after all.
In his dreams, the crowd did not remain silent. They jeered and catcalled, threw stones that grazed the skin from his back. In his dreams, thunder rent the sky and made the courtyard black as night . . . and in his dreams the lightning came, and incinerated them all.
§
He woke to find the sun had eased its way across the sky, and the guard who stood sentry outside his cage had sometime been replaced. What was earlier a grizzled, well-worn soldier had become a stripling of a boy in an ill-fitted tabard, temporarily freed from both mail and helmet as a sop to the heat. He stood with his back to the prince, but Arthur still recognised him at once; his name was Darius, the youngest son of some influential grain merchant, and he was unfitted to anything more challenging than sentry duty. That he had drawn this detail neither surprised nor overly concerned Arthur, but it galled him to think he warranted no better than this young pup for a warden.
"Awake, are you, my lord?" came the youngster's bored, drawling voice. "That's what you want in this weather, is a nice long nap."
Experimentally, Arthur turned his head away from the scorn in the young man's voice. The agony in his back had subsided for a while, submerged under the lassitude of the poppy seed – but at even this small movement it sank its claws into his flesh and tore him open anew. He heard a mewling sound that he did not, at first, understand had come from his own throat; it was too horribly exposed, too utterly cowardly, and he gulped it down like the poison it was.
With flinching movements that tore a gasp up into his throat, Arthur used his left foot to kick off his right boot, and then the left boot with his right. It was a small comfort, and did little to dull his throbbing back or aching head . . . but it was something. Something over which he still had a modicum of control.
"Forgive me for being so bold, Your Highness," the young guard said, "but I thought a knight of Camelot must always equip themselves as befitting his station? At least . . . that's what you told me, the last time we met."
Arthur stared unseeing at the bars before him, and said nothing.
"What I mean to say, sire," the boy went on, "is I fear for the example that has already been set the young soldiers by this . . . unfortunate incident. Their crown prince, and first knight to boot, telling them to abide by their liege lord when he himself does not. And now to let yourself be seen in public in naught but your breeches, well, it just seems improper, is all."
"As you have just so thoughtfully reminded me," said Arthur, "I am still your ranking superior, Darius. You should mind your tongue when you speak to me."
"That big-eared brat of yours doesn't. Talks to you like a mother hen scolding its chick, half the time, and the other half he's busy calling you every name under the sun. But you don't tell him to mind his tongue, do you, sire? Your father, now – he would never show such favour to a worthless peasant. And he wouldn't allow riff-raff like that to cheek him while good men are wasted in the lists. He's a true king, is Uther."
The barb sank in deep, and caught. Before today, no mere guard would have dared address him with such obvious contempt; he would have relieved them of their position before ever the words had finished leaving their mouth. But his public humiliation had changed all of that. No soldier could respect a superior who had openly defied his king and had his back flayed for it. Here he was neither prince nor first knight, but only another convict serving his sentence with as good a grace as he could muster. "What I choose to do with my manservant is none of your concern, soldier. I have my own methods for disciplining Merlin."
"Oh, you have your own methods, I see. Understood, sire." And the insolent wretch gave a curl of a smile that made Arthur's belly kick like a landed fish on a riverbank.
For a time, Arthur said nothing more. He lay on the scalding stones and observed the cocksure little brat with as keen an eye as his pain and his lassitude would allow him. He was just as slovenly and ill-kempt as Arthur remembered: his sword belt a little too loose, his boots a little too scuffed. Patches of stubble pebbled inexpertly shaven cheeks. If this boy had not been youngest son to the grain merchant, he would never have been accepted into the ranks of Camelot's guards – and would not have been even then, if Arthur had had his way.
Arthur remembered the incident, albeit in the vague way that he might remember a particularly drink-addled feast; it left a smudge on the corner of his mind, but made no lasting impression. This Darius had always been a slovenly little beast, too full of his own importance as a rich man's son to really work hard at anything. Used to being a big fish in a small pond, this minnow had resisted Arthur's authority in every way he could.
One day in the early spring, just as the bluebells were unfurling in the woods, Arthur had conducted an inspection of the troops. There had been many fresh recruits in the new year, and it was customary for the first knight to oversee his soldiers when they graduated basic training. There had been nine new faces, he recalled. Eight of these young men had lived up to their promise, and presented themselves properly outfitted for inspection – but the last, Darius, had appeared with his boots uncleaned and his seax(3) replaced with a decidedly non-regulation poniard(4).
"Your seax, soldier," Arthur had barked. "Did you misplace it? Is it in need of repair?"
Darius had glanced only briefly to the offending dagger at his right hip – and then raised slitted, calculating eyes to his prince and said: "No."
"No, what?"
"No. Sire."
"Then perhaps you could tell me why your scabbard currently holds such a trippery-frumpery piece of steel as that one? And why your boots remain unpolished?"
Silence. Though the rank-and-file held their peace, Arthur was aware of their listening ears as he failed to subdue such an upstart recruit as this one.
"My father gave me this poniard," Darius drawled, at last. "Called it a going-away present. As for my boots – well, perhaps I ran out of polish, my lord."
"They have plenty of polish in basic training, soldier," Arthur replied. "So you will take yourself back there, and you will complete the entire course over until you learn what is required of you. Go on. Go. Now."
He had been all-too-aware of the boy's flinty black eyes on him, as he took himself out of line: all-too-aware of the remaining men, lapping up this exchange for the juicy piece of gossip that it was. Arthur had little reason to fear such gossip, though; whatever version of the tale reached his father, he was certain that he had conducted himself in a way befitting the first knight.
"So, did you do it, then?" said Darius now, shaking Arthur from his unpleasant remembrance. "Order your manservant to feed the prisoner against your father's orders, I mean?"
"Would I be here if I hadn't?" Arthur bit.
"Maybe. Seeing as how it was Merlin set to take the lash for it if you didn't. We all know you two enjoy a . . . special relationship, after all. He must serve you better in private than he does his other duties, is all I can say."
At last, something other than this endless, scorching pain. For hours now Arthur had felt nothing but bright agony, darkened at the edges by a weariness he could barely put into words. Now he felt a spark catch hold in his belly, and chase away the lethargy like bugs before a flame. "Your orders are to see that no-one approaches this cage, is that correct?"
Uncertainly, knowing there was a trap but unable to see quite where, Darius nodded.
"Do your orders also state that you must stand where you are in order to execute your duty?"
"No, sire. Only that I have eyes on you at all times."
"Then there is nothing to prevent you from having eyes on me from the other side of the courtyard, now is there?"
Darius hesitated, clearly unwilling to give up his game; but Arthur only fixed him with an impassive stare, and at last the little bastard began to move away. It was as he reached the outer wall that Arthur called, to his retreating back: "And Darius? If I catch you with your sword belt improperly fastened and your boots uncleaned again, you'll be on kitchen duty for a month. Is that understood?"
"Perfectly, sire," Darius growled . . . and said nothing more for the rest of the day.
NOTES:
1) Bonus points for anyone who recognises this quote from another brilliant series featuring Tom Hopper.
2) Although this word would be considered inappropriate today, it is probably the politest term that medieval people might use for somebody with learning difficulties. I didn't want to be too anachronistic and use the correct modern phrase, so I hoped this would be a reasonable compromise.
3) A seax (or hadseax) was a short, single-edged dagger that was used primarily as a utility knife, and was what most men would have worn in Northern Europe at the time. Longer seax, or langseax, often doubled as short swords.
4) A poniard was a thin, stiletto-like dagger whose only real purpose was for up-close-and-personal death blows. It would have been largely useless for woodcraft or hunting, and not the best choice for a soldier to carry.