How to Survive Promotion in the Middle Ages (1/11)

[themadlurker]

Please see Masterpost for fic headers and author's notes.



"MERLIN!!!"

The shout echoed throughout the Great Hall of Camelot, magnified by the ancient, vaulted ceilings. The Hall itself was more ancient than any of its current occupants, older even than the castle itself. Before the Pendragons had lived at Camelot, there had been a castle, and before the castle, there had been a Hall, built by one of a handful of feuding warlords, their names now lost to the centuries. The Hall remained, still broad enough and long to house an entire army of one of the kings of old, if they each took their place at one of the mead benches along the walls and slept on pallets of straw laid out across the floor.

The ancient and venerable Hall had never before been so crowded that its occupants could barely move. Those who could manage it had confined themselves to skirting the very edges of the hall, where the tables usually laid out for a feast had been pushed aside so near the wall that there was no space to pass by them or, at least, not while anyone was sitting at them. Since many of the courtiers tended to gravitate towards the Great Hall soon after breakfast on any day when a major feast was to be held, this had been causing a certain amount of traffic congestion all morning.

Baffled servants, attempting to bring platters of food into the Hall for the midday meal, had become trapped in the empty corners of the room and were reduced to sliding the dishes as far along the tables as they could reach and relying optimistically on the hungry courtiers to pass along the bounty when new dishes made their way out of the kitchens.

Overall, the room was a perfect illustration of why, although trying to fit a square peg into a round hole may be the most fruitless exercise known to mankind, trying to fit a round table into a rectangular hall comes pretty close.

The high table, set aside for King Arthur, Queen Guinevere, and their most trusted knights and retainers, stood empty. It was at the far end of the hall from the great main doors, which on the one hand meant that it was one of the few parts of the room free of excess table, but on the other hand meant that no one - say, for example, the King and Queen - could get to it via the main doors.

As King Arthur had just discovered.

The table must have appeared, as far as anyone could guess, sometime between the last watch and when the servants came in to set out the tables for the midday meal. In that time, however, no one had thought to inform the King about the rearrangement. Or perhaps no one had wanted to be the one to tell him. Either way, the first hint Arthur got that anything was amiss was when he walked into the Hall in deep conversation with Gwen and ran bang up against the problem. Literally.

No one in the Hall that morning knew how the new table had got there, and Arthur was no exception. He did, however, have a keenly developed instinct for these sorts of occurrences, honed by years of finding his odd socks balled up and stuffed into the quiver for his hunting arrows. Usually he didn't know what was going on until he was standing in the middle of the forest with only one sock on and an arrow that wouldn't unstick itself from the quiver until he gave it a mighty yank and hit Sir Leon in the face with an unexpected projectile of woolen footwear. And so he did what he had always done on such occasions, which was to shout "Merlin!" angrily at the top of his lungs because somewhere, somehow, Merlin was going to be involved.

It was one of the sadly mysterious aspects of his life: whatever the trouble was, Merlin would either turn out to be at the bottom of it or to be the only person who could fix it - which was usually because he was at the bottom of it.

Beside him, Guinevere winced at the volume of the shout, and the rest of the court of Camelot collectively edged away - so far as they could, given the space constraints - from their discontented sovereign.

A voice just behind Arthur's elbow said, "Yes?" quietly and the King tried to jump about a foot in the air in his surprise. Since there was no space for this sort of thing, he banged his shins hard against the table. Again.

Guinevere, who in her short time as Queen of Camelot had already developed some of the grace and dignity befitting her status, managed not to giggle too loudly. Arthur did his best to pretend she hadn't giggled at all.

She followed the not-quite-giggle with a look of concern and asked if he was all right with a suitable amount of sympathy and a minimum of mirth. Even more importantly, she didn't make any comments about the great King Arthur being engaged in single combat with a table, even though Arthur could see a sparkle in her eye that told him she could think of half a dozen things to say on the topic if she chose. That was the wonderful thing about Guinevere, really. She understood him. She waited to make embarrassing observations until after they were no longer in public.

Some people weren't so considerate.

"Oh good, you found it," said Merlin, while Arthur tried not to hop around in pain and wondered whether drawing his sword against a piece of furniture would be seen as a gross over-reaction.

"Are you telling me," said Arthur slowly and ominously, "that you know something about this -" he searched for an appropriate epithet. "Monstrosity" seemed about right, although perhaps a bit of an over-reaction for someone who had fought actual monsters.

"Yep!" Merlin announced cheerfully. "No, there's no need to thank me. Happy one month anniversary, you two, you deserve it."

Arthur spluttered. "Thank you!" he exclaimed incredulously.

"You're welcome!" Merlin beamed.

"What do you - you mean you - aagh!" said Arthur and then retreated into silent, internal gibbering.

An old familiar impulse moved him to direct some friendly violence against Merlin's person, possibly a good thwap to the back of the head, but he was sadly restrained by the presence of most of his nobles, who had stopped milling around jockeying for space at the trestle tables in favour of watching the scene. Arthur couldn't very well begin strangling his councillors openly at court; it was the sort of thing that might make his people nervous about their new king.

Arthur wished, and not for the first time, that he had never elevated Merlin to his new post. No one cared if the king happened to trip and shove a servant's head into a soup bowl at dinner, but they looked askance at abuse of the upper orders. This more than anything convinced him that there was something wrong with the degree of emphasis Camelot laid on the social orders.

"I don't know what to say," said Gwen into the awkward hush that had fallen over the Great Hall. "It's very... nice, Merlin. Thank you."

She turned to her side for help, but Arthur seemed to have used up his capacity for speech. No doubt he could have come up with any number of choice words if he hadn't been surrounded by any number of courtiers and imbued with a young and fledgling aura of majesty. He could hardly pick up his royal goblet and fling it at Merlin's head in front of company. He managed a few indistinct gurgles that could have been approval or could, equally, have been the first murmurings of a discontented digestive system. After that, Gwen was on her own.

"It's very big," she added in desperation, trying to make it sound like a good thing. "And very... round. It's a very circular circle. Really, it's a very nice, big, round table. Er."

She was babbling and perfectly aware of every pair of expectant eyes watching her. It was all very well to babble when you were a lady's maid, or even when you became a minor lady at court; Gwen had made very definite plans, however, not to become known as the babbling queen, and here was Merlin, upsetting it all.

If it were anyone but Merlin, she wouldn't be having this problem. No doubt if this had been one more in the parade of bizarre wedding gifts she and Arthur had received, the royal couple, new as they were at giving receptions, could have met it with a polite and noncommittal, "How very kind, thank you for your good wishes." The strangest had been a long, multi-pronged metal instrument that Gwen, for all her years of familiarity with the blacksmith's forge, had never seen the like of. Gwen and Arthur had later speculated privately on what its intended function was, but at the time simply thanked the lord of Essex kindly and despatched it discreetly to the castle kitchens to see if they could use it as some kind of a roasting spit.

The table, though, wasn't simply one more unusual gift; it was a gift from Merlin, and he was watching the pair of them with an eager, hopeful look, as if he were a dog that had triumphally deposited a dead rabbit at its master's feet. If Gwen couldn't find something to say about it, he'd probably catch on and then he'd mope about it and Gwen would feel guilty and a bad friend.

"What a... surprise," she tried, without specifying the type of surprise. That, at least, was honest. She and Arthur had agreed that they probably weren't going to be receiving a wedding gift from Merlin, unless it was something like a stuffed chicken clearly stolen from the castle kitchens or a bunch of wildflowers for Gwen.

True, Merlin had told them he was working on a big wedding gift that was taking a bit longer than expected, but Arthur took this to mean that he'd forgotten the date of their wedding, while Gwen more charitably assumed Merlin had accidentally set his intended gift on fire. Either way, they hadn't been expecting to come into the great hall one morning and find their courtiers nervously edging around a giant wooden table that took up most of the room.

"Why don't we all sit down?" she suggested at last, out of desperation.

She caught the attention of the castle steward, who was standing by with a grave, deferential look that made Gwen suspect he was snickering on the inside. The man's apparant seriousness was usually in direct proportion to the degree of silliness he was having to ignore from his masters. Gwen managed to indicate to him that the smaller tables should be removed for now to make space, and the general silence resolved itself into a chaos of grinding table legs against the stone floor and complaints as nobles stepped on each other's feet trying to move out of the way. Then the old tables were gone and their load transferred to the new one and there was room again - almost - to breathe.

She took Arthur's arm as they made their way at last to their accustomed seats at the far end of the Hall and walked closely by him so that no one else would notice that the King was still limping slightly from his brief battle with a stationary piece of wood.

Merlin trailed after them seeming blissfully oblivious to all the trouble he had caused and took the seat on Gwen's left hand. He had originally taken his place there shortly after Gwen's marriage, once her brother had left the court and she wanted a friendly face nearby. Their heads often bent together at a feast in a private joke, and now the position prevented Arthur from glaring at him, in case anyone - particularly Gwen herself - might think he was directing the glare at her as well.

Technically, Merlin should have been nearer to Arthur, since he was one of his councillors, even though the appointment had been as much Gwen's idea as his. Arthur had been lamenting the poor quality of the noble candidates available for his privy council and joked that even Merlin would be an improvement on some of these second sons of obscure barons who were being foisted on him. Merlin had said that the King must be desperate if he was willing to admit to Merlin's superiority and the two of them had laughed about it while Merlin brushed at a pair of boots.

They were sitting in Arthur's chambers at the time, Gwen curled up in a chair by the fire doing some plainwork that should properly have been left to her own maid but that she couldn't bring herself to let go of. There was something comfortable and familiar about the old habit, just as there was to spending a quiet evening with Merlin while they both worked away at their servants' duties - even though one of them was no longer a servant. It was the reason Merlin was sitting on the hearth in the King's private chamber, cleaning the royal boots where they lay rather than spiriting them away to be tended to invisibly in the servants' quarters and brought back cleaned as if by magic. Arthur had merely rolled his eyes at the informality of the situation and told Merlin to try not to make more of a mess than he'd started with.

"Why not?" Gwen said, so long after the topic had passed that the other two looked at her in confusion.

"Why not make Merlin a councillor?" she elaborated. "He already does the job, unofficially, better than most of the nobles at court, and you can't say there isn't a precedent." She grew flustered under their twin stares as she added, "I mean, if one servant can become Queen, why can't another sit on the privy council?"

The point that finally convinced Arthur, however, seemed to be that if Merlin was appointed to the council, he would have to sit through the same long, tedious council meetings and - more importantly - would have to do so wearing a set of official councillor's robes whose design, Arthur was delighted to discover when he consulted Geoffrey of Monmouth on the topic, was even more ridiculous than that of the official servant's hat that Merlin had conveniently lost, found in a second-floor privy, lost, burned, unsuccessfully attempted to feed to wild animals, recovered in pieces and finally buried in an unknown location in the north country.

In the long and tedious hours of state governance that Arthur anticipated enduring, it was a small comfort to think of being able to watch Merlin struggle under his bright blue and overlong robes and a very large, soft, pointed hat that rested primarily on his ears and frequently dropped down to cover his face entirely. Of course, the robes were a formality that did not need to be observed except on official occasions, but Arthur had so far managed to keep this a secret from Merlin.

And so Merlin was made Lord of the Royal Bedchamber and Protector of the King's Person, provided with the title to a very swampy and midge-infested plot of land that nobody else wanted, and given the respect and acknowledgment due to his many years of faithful service.

Admittedly, a large part of the reward for that service consisted of making Merlin wear a very silly pointed hat, but it had, after all, been intended as a reward in kind.

It was one of those things that had seemed like a good idea at the time. If Gwen could interpret Arthur's thunderous expression, though, the King was currently wishing that he didn't have to consider Merlin's new social status as a barrier to yelling and/or throwing things at him from the dinner table.

On Arthur's right, Sir Leon offered some remark about the situation of Camelot's grain stores. Arthur took up the topic, and the assembly drew a collective breath of relief as informal conversation began and so, at last, did the day's feasting.

When there was enough conversation to cover what he said, Merlin leaned in to say in Gwen's ear, "How annoyed would you say he is, on a scale of 'throwing rotten tomatoes' to 'my secret half sister is leading an army against me on the day of my father's funeral'?"

"That's not funny, Merlin," Gwen replied under her breath, managing to keep up a very solemn expression. She should have known that Merlin wasn't as innocent in the matter as he was pretending. "Your timing is terrible. You know how worried he is about the delegation from Northumbria."

"If they're going to support Morgana anyway, I don't know why he's even letting them come here," Merlin muttered under his breath.

He stabbed viciously at a piece of meat on his plate, sending it unfortunately catapulting into the breast of the young Sir Bors' tunic. Sir Bors, who hadn't been paying attention, peered down at it in some bewilderment before shrugging, resigned to the mystery, and removing it to his plate.

Gwen prodded Merlin beneath the table to restrain his silent snickering. "Arthur can't just refuse to see his father's old allies, it would look like he was betraying ties of fealty -"

"- or like he was afraid of a knife in the back," Merlin muttered, adding, "which he should be. There's enough people coming in the delegation to hide a dozen assassins, you do know that, don't you?"

Gwen bit her lip and stared down hard at the plate in front of her. "Of course I see that, I wish I didn't, but.... but he can't let that stop him doing the right thing. And the right thing has to be to try to keep the peace, hasn't it? If he didn't let them come - if he didn't at least try, he wouldn't be Arthur, would he?"

They both turned to look at the king, who noticed their joint gaze just as he was putting a piece of chicken in his mouth. He lowered it hastily and surreptitiously checked his reflection in his goblet in case there was something on his face or dripping down his front. He found nothing, but continued to dart suspicious glances over at them. Gwen merely smiled at him, sweetly and disarmingly, and he turned back to the discussion of land tax rates with the mildly uncomfortable certainty of someone who knows he is being talked about, but doesn't know what is being said.

"By the way," Gwen said over her shoulder to Merlin, "if I were to suggest that the servants move this table out of the way for a while, how exactly would that work?"

"It might not - technically - be possible," Merlin admitted. "But, uh, I could probably get it out of the way before the delegation arrives, if that's what you want."

"I hope you didn't go to all this trouble just to annoy Arthur," said Gwen. "I'm sure your heart's in the right place, Merlin, but it's a little extreme."

Merlin gave her an open, guileless look that she didn't entirely trust. "Honestly, Gwen," he said, "it's a wedding present. It's important, you know. Symbolically."

"Of what, exactly?" Gwen asked sceptically, who knew well enough that "symbolically" could mean "symbolic of my ongoing quest to annoy Arthur."

"I'm not sure yet," Merlin admitted. "It was just one of those things that... you know how sometimes things happen because they had to happen, so you have to do them so they'll have happened, even though you don't know why?"

Gwen just stared at him.

"Never mind," said Merlin hastily. "It was just something I had a feeling about. I can move it out of the way until you're ready to use it. But you will be, someday."

Gwen caught the guilt in his look and sighed. "This is going to be another one of those things, isn't it?" she asked him. "Something I'm going to have to forget about so that I don't have to tell my husband, the King, that one of his most trusted advisors was flouting the laws of Camelot underneath his very nose."

Merlin grinned back at her unrepentantly. "Something like that," he said.

"Then I don't want to know," Gwen said decisively. "Just promise me you don't have any more surprises in mind for this week?"

Merlin smiled without much conviction. "Er..."

"Merlin!"

"It's all right, it's a good thing, I promise," Merlin said hastily. "You remember Lancelot, right?"

Gwen's hand suddenly fumbled and knocked into her glass, which wavered but implausibly righted itself before it could tip over and spill.

Merlin, ignoring her carelessness with impeccable obliviousness, beamed. "I know Arthur was going to send messengers, but it was so easy for me to go - and now he can be here within the week! Isn't that good news?"

"Right," Gwen said, a little choked, "of course, how wonderful."

The woods that bordered Camelot were known for their seemingly inexhaustable supply of villains, brigands, and assorted bandits who could usually be relied upon to provide some form of diversion for the passing travellers. Passing through them on his way to the border, Lancelot was finding his path strangely quiet and peaceable. It was not that he was hoping to be ambushed, as such, but he would have welcomed a little hearty physical activity as distraction from his thoughts.

Since the forest had so far failed to supply, he rode on uninterrupted at an easy pace along the path that would eventually take him, after much meandering, out of the woods and across the fields to the castle. By the end of the day's ride, even allowing for casual banditry and a certain amount of dragging his heels, Lancelot would be once more within the boundaries of that kingdom in which he had not set foot for almost four years. He had felt a sense of keen anticipation when he first set out on the long road back, but since then his confidence had waned. It was not so much that he doubted his reception at Arthur's court; he trusted implicitly in Merlin's message of welcome. It was more that he wondered how much he had glorified those few short weeks he had spent at Camelot when compared with years of lonely travels and unhallowed quests.

There was also a bitter taste in his mouth, much as he tried to ignore it, from the news that Camelot had a new queen. He could not tell himself that this was a surprise, not after even the short time that he had observed Arthur and Guinevere together, all those years ago, but the idea that he had done the honourable thing by stepping aside had never been so unwelcome. He had allowed himself to imagine, as one does when the ground one sleeps on is hard and unyielding and the road is empty of company, the pragmatic choices a prince might be forced to make with regards to marriage, and how sweet it might be to find Gwen still waiting, unwed, hoping for his return...

It was a foolish fancy and one he meant to forget before he passed through the castle gates again, but he couldn't help lingering just a little along the way, as if that faint and slender hope could yet be maintained so long as he did not see her or witness their happiness with his own eyes.

Lancelot was rudely awakened from his wishful thinking by a piercing cry farther along the road and he spurred his mount on to reach the source of the noise. This was the adventure one expected to find.

In a clearing - no more than a bare patch of dirt by the side of the road - a knight in armour with a jet black tunic over his mail held a young woman, much smaller than himself, in a tight grasp and seemed to be dragging her towards his horse. She was struggling and protesting this treatment vociferously but without much effect.

The knight had the young woman by the waist, locked beneath his arm, but as Lancelot approached she wriggled out, directing a wallop at his chest. The stroke bounced harmlessly off his armour and she uttered a very unladylike expression over her injured hand. The knight took the opportunity to reestablish his grip and this time brought his arm to bear against her throat. Her struggles against it rendered her briefly silent and Lancelot feared that in a moment she would faint.

"Hold, sir!" Lancelot cried as he reached them, drawing his sword and levelling it at the unfamiliar knight. "Unhand that lady at once, or I will teach you better manners."

The knight turned with some surprise to face him and drew his sword. As he did, his grip must have slackened slightly, for the lady, finding her breath again, swore colourfully and stomped on the black knight's foot. Her captor yowled, but held all the more insistently as she struggled against him.

Lancelot brought his sword to bear as near the offending knight as he could without endangering the lady. "You will face me in combat, sir, or I will -"

Whatever he would have said was lost in a loud clang, as the unknown knight's sword dropped from his suddenly limp fingers, the rest of him following a moment later. With the knight's bulk out of the way, there was another figure visible behind him, this one attired more simply, and wielding a broken-off piece of tree branch.

"What a lot of people fail to take into account when they consider helmets," said the figure, "is that that much metal slamming into your head is as bad as four pints of ale on an empty stomach. It's got a bit of a kick." The interloper looked up at Lancelot with a grin.

He wore no armour, although he carried a sword in his other hand, and he looked as though he had just rolled out of a hayloft or a pile of leaves. A piece of unidentifiable vegetation still stuck out of his dark and tousled hair.

"An honourable man would not have struck unseen from behind," Lancelot pointed out, sheathing his sword unused.

"An honourable man wouldn't have been cavorting around in the forest with kidnapped maidens," the stranger pointed out with irritating justice. "However, if I have in any way inconvenienced you by rescuing your lady..."

"I'm not his lady," the girl protested at the same time that Lancelot exclaimed, "She's not my lady!"

The two looked at each other in surprise and the girl added, "but you don't need to sound so offended by the idea."

"I merely meant that she is as much a stranger to me as you are," Lancelot clarified. "That was not the reason for my rescue."

"I think you'll find I was the one who did the rescuing," the man said. "You were just the decoy."

"If you two don't mind," the girl said a bit waspishly, "I was quite capable of rescuing myself."

"My apologies, my lady," the other man said, sketching out a mock bow. "Would you like us to tie you up or perhaps revive the gentleman in black so you can do the honours yourself?"

She looked him up and down assessingly. "You look too much like you might enjoy it."

Lancelot, seeing the chance to extend the proper courtesy, offered, "I assure you, my lady, that you will be brought to no harm."

"I should hope not," she huffed. "Do you have any idea who my father is?"

"I'm sorry, my lady, I do not - I do not know your name," Lancelot said apologetically.

"No, of course you don't, why should you? You obviously don't move in the right circles and I have no intention of introducing myself to a couple of forest ruffians." She prodded the still-unconscious knight with the toe of her shoe. "I don't know what's become of this kingdom, but at least under Uther's reign there was some sort of order along our borders. If one was going to be ambushed, one could be sure of its being by someone of good class at least."

She gave her abductor a final, futile kick, then stormed off towards the road. Lancelot felt he should really offer to escort her to safety, but was less sure that he could guarantee his own safety if he did.

The stranger, perhaps catching his conflicted expression said, "Just wait a moment."

Lancelot, bewildered, watched as the girl disappeared around a bend in the road and was concealed from sight by the trees. He turned to ask his companion what he had meant, but found him holding up a hand for silence. Another moment later, the girl reappeared, her head still held high, trying unsuccessfully to disguise the fact that one of her shoes was broken.

She tried to keep her eyes somewhere on the road over Lancelot's left shoulder when she spoke as if asking a casual question, "Is this the road to Camelot?"

Before Lancelot could answer, the other man interjected, "I think you'll find your horse tied up about half a mile along the way, just where the road forks towards the east."

The girl jerked her head in what could, at a stretch, have been polite acknowledgement.

Lancelot forced himself to say, "If you require an escort, I am bound for Camelot as well."

She stared at him in astonishment, as if the very suggestion was a new indignity. "Who said anything about going to Camelot? What would I want to do there? Papa says now the King's gone and married himself off there's no point any of the noble families visiting unless they're hoping to get in the middle of some sort of ghastly civil war."

Lancelot frowned with concern. "I had not heard any news of civil war. Surely there can be no question left about the succession now?"

The girl shrugged with a complete lack of interest. "I don't know if there's a question about anything, but there is an army in the north that Papa says is going to support the Lady Morgana if she comes to claim the throne. It wouldn't really be changing the succession at all if the King was dead, anyway, would it?" She took a few steps along her way, then paused to narrow her eyes at the two of them. "Don't try to follow me," she commanded.

Lancelot, relieved of the need to place chivalry over his own preference for travelling companions, happily obeyed. He offered a bland smile to his fellow rescuer, who seemed to take it as an opening for small talk.

"So, what's your story, then?" he asked Lancelot conversationally. "You're headed to King Arthur's court as well?"

"I was... forced to leave the court while the late King Uther reigned. Now that his son is king I have come back to take my place by his side."

The other man frowned. "I was banished by Uther from the kingdom of Camelot," he said, eyeing Lancelot suspiciously as if he could have anticipated the story, "and was forbidden to return until his son took his place on the throne and I could return to fight by his side."

Lancelot fought down a very unconstructive instinct to protest that he thought he had probably been banished by Uther first, because banishment wasn't something he generally liked to brag about. Instead he pointed out, "We are probably not the only ones hoping to find a better welcome in the new king's court."

The man laughed. "Uther certainly knew how to make enemies out of potential allies, if that's what you mean. Oh well, we former exiles will simply have to stick together. I'm Gwaine," he said, proffering his hand to shake.

Lancelot took it and did his best to smile in a friendly manner. "Lancelot," he said. And then it occurred to him to wonder how many more times he would introduce himself like that. If Arthur's promise held true, he might soon be Sir Lancelot, a knight of Camelot once more. The thought warmed him and his smile grew to a more genuine one without his permission.

Gwaine vanished briefly, producing a horse from a spot at the edge of the clearing where dense foliage had so far served to conceal it, and then joined Lancelot.

"What about him?" Lancelot gestured to the knight in black who was just beginning to groan and stir.

Gwaine mounted without a backwards glance and merely spurred his horse onwards. "People who use their horses to abduct young women in the forest don't deserve to keep them," he said, misinterpreting the source of Lancelot's concern.

"But shouldn't we bring him before the king for judgment?" asked Lancelot, concerned by this cavalier attitude toward justice.

"And if he turns out to be the son of some important noble who the king can't afford to offend?" Gwaine asked. When Lancelot didn't answer, he added, "Have heart, he could still fall down into a ditch during the night and decide not to come out to trouble anyone again."

Lancelot, still unsatisfied that the course of action was right, but not prepared to carry the knight behind him all the way to Camelot, went along with Gwaine, leaving the knight to his own fortune.

Now that he had a travelling companion, Lancelot decided with the perversity of hindsight that he would have preferred to be left alone with his thoughts. Whenever two people are thrown together while travelling in the same direction along the same road, there is the awkward and inevitable necessity of small talk. Lancelot and Gwaine fell into an intermittent pattern of talk, trading comments on the weather, the state of the roads, the surprising lack of violence they had encountered along the way, and at last came to rest inexorably on the one topic which Lancelot wished most to avoid: their destination.

"How did you come to hear that you were wanted back at court?" Lancelot inquired, more out of politeness than because he wanted to know, after a long pause in which neither of them had had anything to say. He tried to guess at the time it would take them to reach the castle, and whether this unexpected companionship would be likely to have to extend into another day.

"Oh, my friend Merlin told me," Gwaine said. "He came to find me as soon as he could get away after the coronation. Gods, but it'll be good to see him again. And Gwen. Have you ever met her?"

Lancelot could only nod in confusion, but Gwaine seemed untroubled by his silence.

"Of course, she would have been a servant when you were there - ah, you have? She'll make a fine queen, don't you think?" said Gwaine with satisfaction. "It's easy to see where her heart lies. Arthur is a lucky man."

Lancelot would have ground his teeth, but found his jaw too tightly clamped shut to move them at all.

It couldn't be that many miles left to Camelot.

There was nothing that said the Lord of the Royal Bedchamber and Protector of the King's Person had to help the King get dressed for the feast, but old habits died hard and Merlin began to rummage through Arthur's wardrobe without prompting.

"What was all that business about the Kingdom of Northumbria?" Merlin asked while Arthur changed from formal attire to even-more-formal attire. The delegation had arrived that afternoon, a little earlier than he'd anticipated. Although they were well within their predicted time and all the necessary preparations had been made, Arthur couldn't help feeling caught off guard and unprepared for the degree of ceremony expected of him. He had watched his father meet dozens of such diplomatic parties, but nothing had prepared him for the reality of being at the centre, the crux of it all.

"The Kingdom of Northumbria is centuries older than Camelot," Arthur replied absently. "Rupert's ancestors were kings before the Pendragon name existed - not something he's likely to let me forget." Arthur had read and rehearsed so much of Albion's history in preparation that it spilled out of his brain without conscious effort. Geoffrey of Monmouth had even wiped away a tear of pride after Arthur recited the entire lineage of the Northumbrian royal family backwards by birth order a few days before.

"But doesn't the Earl swear allegiance to Camelot?" Merlin asked in some confusion, having seen Arthur greet the Earl as he would another king or someone else of equal status.

"In theory, he does, of course," Arthur explained, "but in practice the Kingdom of Northumbria has always been an independent realm. The fealty the old Earl swore to my father was a part of the truce negotiated after his armies failed to take some of the lands along our borders. He sent us soldiers and grain as tribute only because he believed my father's army could take it by force if he neglected it. However it has been a long time since our forces were tried against each other in battle, and perhaps the new Earl thinks better of Northumbria's chances. Hand me that jacket, will you?"

"The one with... uh, the one with the tassels?" Merlin asked with a smirk.

"Yes, Merlin, the one with the tassels." Arthur glared, but it failed to restrain Merlin's mirth. "It was a gift from the late Earl's daughter. One of her first attempts at fancy embroidery, I believe. Her mother mentioned it particularly last night as something that would give her pleasure to see once more as reminding her of her dearly departed child, and I don't mean to risk giving offense by refusing her request."

"So you're just going to offend everyone else by inflicting the sight of it on the rest of us instead?" Merlin asked, holding the jacket at a safe distance, as if one of the bright red tassels might actually leap out and attack him. "Couldn't you just give it back to them as a token of remembrance or something?"

"Do you have any concept the magnitude of insult it would represent to return such a gift?" Arthur asked incredulously. "Sometimes I wonder if you have simply not been paying attention to what goes on around you. Our entire system of alliances is represented and confirmed by gifts, marriages, and grants of land. Returning a formal gift would be like inviting them to leave Camelot."

Merlin grinned. "I can see how handing that jacket to anyone could be an affront - sorry," he added, at Arthur's look.

Arthur merely rolled his eyes and returned to worrying over the topic of Northumbria's loyalty. He recited some more of the history of the realm for Merlin's benefit.

"Then, by the time the current Earl came to power," he continued, "my father's health was already declining. The tribute we received grew less while we were in no position to contest it, and now that he is gone, there has been no sign of continued fealty at all. The young Earl did not even see fit to attend my father's funeral."

"But couldn't that just be because he'd heard rumours of the attack?" Merlin asked with a yawn.

Arthur stood before the long mirror in the room, staring back at himself, looking unfamiliar and grim in his crown and formal garb. Did he look like a king? Would Rupert look at him and see any trace of his father? Or just a young boy trying to fill big robes?

"It's possible," he allowed, "but if that was why he didn't come, it doesn't bode well for this visit. It might even mean that Northumbria has turned its support to Mor- to my sister. Or simply that they are waiting to see which of us will emerge the stronger. Or for the two of us to wipe each other out so Northumbria can march in and take control of Camelot's lands. In any case, it isn't a good sign that they have waited this long to..." he glanced over at Merlin and found him sitting with half-lidded eyes staring into the fire. "You're not paying attention are you?"

Merlin's head snapped up from where it had been beginning to nod against his chest. "What? No, absolutely. Big, scary kingdom. Armies. Lots of sword brandishing."

Arthur sighed heavily. "And now I have to go convince the little twerp that he's risking an open war with Camelot by withholding the traditional tribute."

"The little twerp?" Merlin repeated.

"Our friend the noble Earl," Arthur specified. "The question is, though, is Camelot really in any position to threaten war? I won't be the one to lose all that my father gained in his lifetime, I can't let that happen, but I won't be a king who starts wars over political affronts, either."

"Seems to me like you need a third option," Merlin said helpfully.

"Brilliant thinking, Merlin, got any of those hidden away up your sleeve?" Arthur snapped, then quickly deflated. "No, never mind, neither have I. I need one, though, and fast. I'm not at all sure these talks are going to go well for Camelot. Speaking of which, I want you to entertain the Earl's nephew, you know, the one who's been sulking around the place since they arrived - Sir Rothby. He's the Earl's presumptive heir, so someone important has to look after him. Only I can't spare anyone who's actually important to the negotiations, and it'll keep you both out of the way."

"Thanks, that's really touching," Merlin said, then frowned. "Anyway, are you sure that's such a good idea? He was giving me the strangest looks all through the reception. I don't think he likes me very much."

"Come on, Merlin, he doesn't even know you. He hasn't had a chance to dislike you yet, unless-" Arthur peered at his councillor suspiciously "-you haven't managed to do something to offend him already?"

Merlin held his hands up in a gesture of complete innocence. "Nothing, I swear. It's as if he just doesn't like the look of me."

"Well, that's understandable enough," Arthur said generously. "Just don't let me down. We need things to go smoothly as long as they're here."

"About that..." Merlin coughed nervously. "Seeing as you weren't so keen on that little surprise of mine the other day..."

"You mean the enormous wedding present the castle servants still haven't found a way to remove from the hall? Or even to move out of the way? What did you do to it, Merlin, glue the thing to the floor?" Arthur asked with more amusement than irritation.

"Something like that," Merlin said. "It'll be gone in the morning. Listen, there was something - I thought it would be a nice surprise, you know, but maybe it's better if you know - I found Lancelot. He's promised to be in Camelot sometime in the next few days."

Arthur broke into a smile, more relaxed and happy at the news than he had felt all day. "Now, that is good news. It will be good to have him here with us at last. I need people around me I can count on." He made a final adjustment one of his shirt cuffs, and headed for the door.

"You can count on me you know," Merlin said, sounding somewhat stung, "and Gwen. You're not doing this entirely on your own."

Arthur paused and clapped Merlin on the back. "I know," he said, "I know, I couldn't-" he took a deep breath and stared hard at a spot over Merlin's shoulder, avoiding eye contact "-I couldn't do this without you - without the both of you."

The road seemed to stretch and extend itself out before them the longer they rode, leaving Lancelot to wonder dismally if they would ever actually reach it or if he was doomed to interminable days of travelling with Gwaine. It was not that the man was such bad company in himself, but Lancelot felt they had little in common outside a small, private world of friends in Camelot, and the more Gwaine talked of those friends, the more Lancelot grew impatient to be at the journey's end.

They were within sight of Camelot, the uppermost towers of the castle rising from the forest in the distance, when Gwaine suggested bedding down for the night. Lancelot agreed reluctantly. His own preference would have been to carry on through the darkening gloom of the evening, arriving perhaps when most of the castle had retired and he could seek out his old friends for a less formal welcome. His companion made such a quiet entrance less likely - or was it that he didn't like to think of witnessing a private reunion, such as he pictured for himself, including this stranger as well?

They spread their blankets on the ground on either side of a small fire, Lancelot laying his out so he could lie and watch the last of the grey twilight while it picked out the upper turrets of the castle before it faded completely into darkness.

Wisps of smoke curled up from unseen sources hidden by the last range of trees between them and their destination. As he lay watching the plumes rise up and disperse, Lancelot tried to imagine which of them might come from one of the great fires in the castle, and which from a house and a forge where he had visited once years ago.

On the other side of the fire, Gwaine's thoughts were occupied in exactly the opposite direction. He watched the forest they had passed through during the day and the path they had taken as it disappeared into the gloam, and considered whether it would be better just to turn around now and take the same road back. No doubt he would be welcome, but he had few friends waiting for him at Camelot besides Merlin. The King and Queen would remember him kindly, he hoped, but there would be more who knew him as a man who got thrown out of taverns than who believed he belonged among King Arthur's court. Gwaine wasn't even sure he could count himself in the second category.

And if he did take up a place at court as one of Arthur's knights, what then? It was the same life he had always despised, the life his father might, perhaps, have led if he still lived. Would his father have been bound to Arthur's court himself, if he had? Would he have brought his son with him to become a knight, or sent Gwaine alone to make alliances on his own? Certainly Gwaine would not have had the freedom to walk away from a life among the nobility altogether.

Now, though, now he could still, if he chose, walk back into the woods and out of the power of any prince's command. With every hour that passed before the dawn, he was losing his chance at freedom, to be his own master and not beholden to any man. And yet he made no move to leave the small and flickering circle of firelight. He knew without question that he would stay on until the morning and, when it came, would cross the rest of the distance to the castle gates.

He would have liked to have a pragmatic reason for this certainty. No doubt he would enjoy better comforts at Camelot and a better life, by the world's measure. If he was honest with himself, though, he had thought of none of this when he made his decision. Merlin had asked him to come back and Gwaine had said yes without thinking and now, although he did not know why, he was bound to follow this path until its end.

Gwaine lay awake late into the night, long after he had woken Lancelot for his turn to keep watch. Although it was a dark night, with very few stars and only the slenderest moon, it seemed as though he could pick out the outline of every tree along the forest's edge. They swam in the darkness, hazy edges blending into each other's shadows and reforming every time he blinked. His eyes blinked more as the branches twisted into strange and unfamiliar shapes, swimming more the farther his eyelids drooped, until he was watching them in his dreams instead, unaware that he slept.

Part Two

Crossposted from http://themadlurker.dreamwidth.org/62057.html at Dreamwidth.
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