A Good Man is Hard to Find
Six
Merlin ran to Mary's house without stopping. The streets were emptying as rapidly as they had done at curfew the night before, but the town hummed with fearful tension.
Mary opened the door by a finger's width at his knock and glared suspiciously out into the rain. She admitted him without comment. Inside, their meagre possessions had been bundled up, and William and the children were packing the last of their food into a burlap sack. Gwen was not there.
"You're leaving?" Merlin gawped moronically.
"We won't be safe here much longer," William said gruffly, not looking up.
Merlin blinked. "There are people hiding in the forest. The knights will come here, soon."
"There's more fighting coming," croaked Mary, "and your shining heroes will not arrive in time to prevent the queen taking revenge for what happened today. Not in time to save your precious king, either, I would expect." Mary's tone contained no trace of apology now. "I wish you no ill, Merlin – take an old woman's advice and run now. You may live to see the world put to rights again, but I doubt that I will. Go home to your peasant mother and forget that you were ever friends with a king."
Merlin gaped at her, then turned and left the house without speaking.
The rain had eased to a fine drizzle, and the streets were quiet. He headed towards the castle, glancing to right and left in some panic, looking for some hint of Gwen. He needed to be at the lake by nightfall, but for now walking away from the city would feel horribly like taking Mary's nihilistic advice. Forget that you were ever friends with a king...
What sort of a friend had he been? A friend who led him into a trap, let him turn himself in, stood and watched him tortured, and then come within inches of saving him only to abandon him again... It was a catalogue of failures. However much he reproached himself, though, he knew Arthur would forgive him for all that. Losing Guinevere in the riot, though? Arthur would have his head...
Dread gnawed at his insides. She was tough, he knew, and she had more common sense than he did, but the situation in the courtyard had been desperate. Not to mention, since Arthur's capture she'd been distracted with worry, and he suspected her of doing something brave and reckless.
~/~/~/~/~
For a long time, Gwaine had repeated Arthur's name; then he had moved on to abusing him in colourful language to get a rise out of the silent king, until Gaius had finally snapped at him. When he lapsed back into silence, his mood was black. He was furious with his own impotence, stuck here in a cell while momentous things were happening.
~/~/~/~/~
Arthur found himself lying on his belly, his hands loose at last and lying bonelessly on either side of his head. He remembered Merlin's brief, mad appearance – cutting him loose and promising rescue before, for once, following Arthur's orders and running off. The whole episode was hazy and ludicrous, like a dream. But Leon was alive, with other refugees from Camelot. Merlin was still alive. And, Arthur considered, he himself was still alive, which he had not expected. The dirty straw and cold stone under his face and hands told him he was back in the dungeon. He considered moving. For now, his body seemed to have forgotten that it was half-shredded. But he needed to be sure that he could move.
He gathered his strength and rolled onto his side. His back flared back to life fiercely enough to put him out again, but he blinked back the nausea and breathed out slowly. Oh, definitely he was alive. He wasn't sure, any more, that he felt that was entirely a good thing.
He curled his legs in front of him and laboriously rolled to his knees, bracing the heels of his hands against the floor. Now that his wrists were no longer bound, the pain of broken fingers was making itself known, a dull throb to accompany the symphony of agony in his back. He decided against trying to stand, and instead leaned one shoulder very gingerly against the wall. He was breathing in harsh pants, and he noticed that his hands were trembling. It occurred to him that he was dangerously cold.
He tried to speak, once the room stopped swaying, but there was no strength in his voice. He coughed and tried again. "Gwaine?" His throat was so raw his voice sounded like that of a man four times his age, but at least the word was recognisable. He heard a grunt from the other side of the wall.
"Arthur? Damn, we thought they'd killed you."
Arthur considered. "How long...?"
"Three or four hours, maybe, since they brought you back. You were only gone for a couple of hours. We heard a battle. What happened?"
Three or four hours was long enough for Merlin to reach the forest. How far in would Leon's camp be? Some distance, surely. Leon was no fool, and would have hidden his followers well. How long would it take them to produce a viable plan and return? Merlin could be hot-headed, like Arthur himself, but Leon was a good tactician. Arthur shuddered suddenly. What if, next time Morgana showed him a row of corpses with a smile on her lips, it was Merlin, Leon, Percival... Guinevere? Had he given Merlin his consent to a doomed rescue mission?
"Arthur? Are you still with us?" Gwaine's voice was sharp.
"I... am. There was... a riot. In the square."
"A riot against Morgana?" Gwaine asked softly.
"Yes." Arthur closed his eyes as nausea made his vision waver. It was getting hard to concentrate again. "Morgana stopped it. With magic." There was something else he needed to tell them, but he had to pause for breath, pressing his forehead against the wall. "Merlin was there. He says more are coming. He says he's coming back." Arthur was faintly aware that his voice was pathetic with foolish hope.
"Where did you see Merlin, Arthur?" Their voices were much gentler now, as though they suspected that he was delirious.
"In... in the square. The castle courtyard."
"What did he say to you?"
"He..." Arthur struggled to remember. Perhaps he had hallucinated Merlin? "He said Leon is alive. With others. In the woods..." Arthur faltered into silence. He was looking at his left hand, and thinking miserably about how the bones would need setting.
"Arthur, listen to me. I need you to tell me what happened to you," Gaius said, reasonably. Arthur decided he didn't understand the question, and he couldn't be bothered to ask for an explanation, and it hurt to speak anyway. He stared woozily at the cracks in the wall, wiggling like spiders. "Arthur!" somebody demanded. He felt annoyed for a moment, and then decided he lacked the energy to be annoyed. He was the king, after all, and he would go to sleep if he wanted to. He opened his mouth to tell them so, and got as far as "Gmuh..." before he slumped sideways and crashed to the floor hard enough to make his bones rattle.
~/~/~/~/~
Gwaine met Elyan's eyes and frowned. Arthur's disjointed tale provoked more questions than it answered, the most pertinent being what the hell was wrong with him. The man who'd announced that three of his fingers were broken as dispassionately as if he were commenting on the weather suddenly seemed barely coherent. Not to mention the four-hour nap he'd taken in the middle of the day. And now, yet again, he was ignoring all attempts to speak to him. Something was very wrong indeed.
~/~/~/~/~
Guinevere limped through the drizzle, clutching a tiny packet to her chest. It had been risky, going back to her house, but in the wake of the riot, nobody had been watching a lone woman's movements in the lower town. There was some activity now, as a few more townspeople tried to get outside the walls before the gates could be properly garrisoned. The city was shivering in anticipation of Morgana's retribution. It had been a long, agonizing wait, crouched in the cottage entrance waiting for the streets to clear. Her limbs felt stiff and bruised from the tension which felt like it would never leave her body.
Gwen ignored everyone, walking in the opposite direction. Nobody tried to stop her.
After Merlin's grip slipped from her wrist she had stumbled towards one wall, frightened by the force of the crowd. Somebody had kicked her hard in the knee as she tried to move against the flow, and she'd gone down. For a terrible moment she expected to be trampled into the dust, and then some distraction had cleared a path to a cart and she'd crawled underneath. Another woman and two small children were huddling there, and the woman placed a shaky finger to her lips when she saw Gwen.
She hadn't really been able to see what was going on from her hiding place, but she had gazed out at the confusion of legs and howling and rain. It wasn't until the sudden intervention of Morgana's fearsome magic that she'd caught sight of Merlin and Arthur, and a rush of hope had filled her upon finding them together. Only moments later, she was disappointed and furious to see Merlin fleeing alone. She searched for Arthur, but escaping rioters and the glare of the fire in the rain obstructed her vision for a few seconds, and when she found him he was being half-carried, half-dragged out of sight by a couple of battered guards. Her heart had sunk.
It had taken only moments to remember the time she sprung Sir Leon from Camelot's dungeons during Morgana's brief first reign. The imprint of the key was still in her house, under the floorboards. And the tiny barred window, at ground level in the town square – that hadn't gone anywhere either.
And now she could see the grill, low enough to look more like a drain than a window. She unwrapped the little bundle in her hands and sat down with her back against the wall, pulling her the many destitute women who used to beg on this square. Arthur's relaxation of various taxes and laws had reduced their number, and Morgana's martial law seemed to be keeping the streets subdued for the present. Today, unsurprisingly, there was nobody here but Gwen.
~/~/~/~/~
Gwaine yelped in indignation when something heavy fell from above and clipped him on the ear. "What the bloody hell...?"
He found the key on the floor beside him, and looked up at the window, so small it seemed to emphasise the gloom in the cell rather than relieving it. Now, it was partially obscured by a cloak.
"Who's there?" he hissed.
Elyan glanced at him questioningly. Gwaine staggered to his feet and craned his neck up at the window.
"Guinevere."
The last person he would have expected.
"My lady!" he greeted her.
"Who – Gwaine? Sorry, Sir Gwaine..."
"Are you well, my lady?"
"Don't call me lady, you rogue. I am... unhurt. Is Arthur with you?"
The knights exchanged glances. "He is here, but in the next cell. We cannot see him. He's not... making a lot of sense," Elyan explained to his sister. She gasped softly, recognising him.
"Elyan? I am glad to hear your voice." She faltered. "Arthur is wounded. Morgana..." she pressed on, her voice cracking. "Morgana had him flogged this morning."
Gwaine swallowed, hard. That explained a lot. He had only seen one or two men flogged in his life, but the sight was difficult to forget. He was surprised they'd got as much sense from the king as they had.
"You have the key?" Gwen asked at length.
Gwaine picked it up, rubbing the side of his head ironically.
"It will open the inner doors. The outer door is barred on the outside, so you must wait for the guards to come."
"Thank you..." Gwaine began.
"Wait – this is important. The guards come at dawn, and nightfall?"
"Yes. And at whatever time Morgana tires of tormenting her brother."
Gwen made a soft, distressed noise, and then pushed on, determinedly. "Do nothing tonight. I must go now, to meet with Merlin, Leon and the others. The attack will come at dawn. It will help if you can open the gates from the inside."
Gwaine gaped. "So it's true – Arthur did see Merlin in the courtyard?"
"Merlin spoke with him," Gwen said. She still wasn't sure what to think of Merlin's actions.
"He told us there was a riot."
"That's true. It was terrible," she paused, tense. "I must go. Good luck."
"Be careful, my lady!" Gwaine called. Elyan kissed his fingers and held them out towards the window in farewell.
Gwaine stroked the key. It was galling to have to delay action until morning, now that he held the key in his hands. At least, however, if they could open the inner doors, they would be able to finally check on the state of the silent king.