How to Survive Promotion in the Middle Ages (3/11)
Please see Masterpost for fic headers and author's notes.
Back to Part Two
"So tell me, Guinevere, do you like being Queen?" Sir Rothby asked, leaning forward around his aunt to address her.
It was the fourth night since the Northumbrian party's arrival at Camelot and already Gwen was wishing for a quiet evening alone with Arthur to recover from the day's careful, unceasing diplomacy. It was not to be, however, as feasts were being held each night, partly in honour of their guests and partly to impress upon those guests the wealth and importance of the court of Camelot. Another week remained before the tournament that would close the visit and return the fluster of activity throughout the castle to something approaching normal. Gwen tried not to think ungraciously of how much nicer it would be if the tournament were tomorrow.
Gwen gave Sir Rothby a polite smile, puzzled by his question. It was one she had heard often enough from the nobles of Camelot and come to heartily dislike. Gwen had never felt herself so constantly observed and criticised as she did in the week following Elyan's knighting. She had spent the entire week ducking around corners out of sight to check that she didn't have anything odd on her face. By the end of the week she had determined that the only odd thing people were seeing was a former servant who now had any face at all worth noticing or a name worth remembering.
One feast night, although Gwen had meant to head directly for the Great Hall, her feet had taken her there by way of the kitchens out of a long habit of serving Morgana at the high table. An old friend of hers, Esmeralda, had been busy ferrying dishes into the arms of hall servants and had handed one to Gwen as she came in without even looking up.
Gwen had even taken a few steps out of the kitchen with the dish before she recollected herself and laughed, handing it back to Esmeralda. Esmeralda took it with some confusion and even began to ask what the matter was before she took in Gwen's finer clothes and said, "Oh, I'm sorry... my lady."
Gwen had merely smiled and stood as well out of the way of the crush of activity to ask after Esmeralda's family in the town. Esmeralda's answers were brief - understandably, thought Gwen, who knew what the rush could be like before feasts like tonight's when everyone was celebrating a good harvest for the kingdom.
Gwen did what she could not to get underfoot, and between Esmeralda's terse replies she soaked in the familiar atmosphere of the bustling kitchen. It wasn't until she caught one of the other maids casting an odd look in her direction, which Esmeralda answered with a muttered, "leave it," that Gwen thought of anything being amiss. Then she began to notice that some of the servants were giving the place where she stood a wide berth as they passed to and fro.
Esmeralda, pretending not to see any of it, asked Gwen, "So, what's it like being a fine lady at court, then?"
Gwen, confused and troubled by the behaviour of the other servants, had only stammered something about how strange it was.
"Yes, we all thought it was strange," one of the other kitchen maids, a girl named Jean who Gwen had known for more than ten years, murmured in comment. Another one hissed to silence her, but she went on anyway, "I'm surprised you'd still want to come down here," with a mixture of resentment and scorn that made Gwen feel as though she'd been slapped.
At that point the head cook, separating herself from the direction of the final stages of preparation, came over and gave Gwen a polite curtsey. "Everything is nearly finished here, my lady. You may wish to take your place in the hall before you are missed from the feast."
Gwen, embarrassed at being both deferred to and subtly chastised by a woman she had looked up to as a figure of great authority among the servants, said goodbye to Esmeralda in a state of confusion, and rushed away feeling awful.
After that night, although Gwen still sought out Esmeralda when she could, and they exchanged polite pleasantries, there was a painful consciousness that overshadowed all their later conversations, and Esmeralda never again shared her bitingly worded commentary on the latest town gossip. That one evening and the changes it showed her had hurt Gwen more than all the condescending looks of the courtly ladies who had asked with astonishment, "and you say you were really a servant here? I would never have guessed it, you don't seem like one of them at all."
Eventually Gwen had stopped mentioning her work at the castle altogether and only talked about her father and her brother the blacksmiths. Even so, it seemed many of the courtly ladies couldn't forgive her for being sister to a mere blacksmith, raised to knighthood by the King's whim.
"And what's it like for you being Queen, Guinevere?" they asked, or "How are you adjusting to your new position?" Gwen sometimes thought that if half the ladies at the court envied her for her position, the other half despised her for daring to want it. And yet she hadn't wanted the title they cared so much about - hadn't wanted, even, to be sister to a knight except for Elyan's sake; all she had wanted was to be married to Arthur. It surprised her still that so few people could see the difference between Arthur and the King.
Her one fond memory of being asked such a question was from her wedding night, when she and Arthur had first climbed into bed together, both of them nervous and uncertain. There was something about being actually married and lying together between the sheets with only her thin nightdress separating them that overwhelmed them both with nerves and left Gwen hesitant and speechless. Arthur shifted a little on his side of the bed as if to move closer but didn't actually do anything except clear his throat nervously.
"So, uhm, how do you like being Queen?" he asked, half-propping himself up on his elbow. He affected a casual tone but then he suddenly stopped and flushed bright red. At the same time Gwen felt him pressing against her thigh and broke into a helpless fit of giggling.
"No, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Gwen said breathlessly, "it's just - you sounded like you were asking about the weather." Another burst of giggles escaped her despite her best efforts to contain it. "No - don't," she added as he began to draw away in embarrassment, "what I wanted to say was -" she placed her hand against his cheek and felt the laughter abruptly simmer down to a deep bubbling well of happiness in her chest "- that I don't know much yet about being Queen, but I know - I know that being your Queen makes me happier than I've ever been in my life." By the time she finished the laughter was gone and she felt as solemn and timorous as she had when she stood up before the assembled court for her coronation.
Arthur reached up and laid his fingers against hers and, smiling beneath their joined hands, said, "My Queen."
The next morning, when she still must have been glowing, she was sure, with inner light, Merlin had sidled up to her and asked with a nudge and a grin, "Sooooo, what's it like?"
"Merlin!" Gwen had exclaimed. "I'm not going to talk about that!"
Merlin just looked innocent. "Aren't you going to tell me what it's like, you know... being Queen?" He whispered 'being Queen' as if it were a secret the two of them shared, despite the hundreds of other people who had attended the wedding. "Does it feel different?" he asked, and Gwen would have brushed it off if there hadn't been a hint of seriousness underneath what he said.
"What's it like, being a royal councillor instead of a manservant?" she asked him instead.
Merlin stopped to think about it for a minute, then pronounced, "Completely different and... exactly the same."
Gwen nodded, her lips curving into a secret smile that she thought Merlin could really only half understand the meaning of.
"Everything's exactly the same it was yesterday," Gwen answered him at last, repeating his own words back to him, "and everything is completely different." Then with a giddy laugh she added, "Maybe nothing in the world has changed and I'm simply a new person wearing the same name."
Then she had felt a helpless wash of gratitude come over her for all the ways that Merlin had contributed to her happiness and Arthur had walked in half an hour later to find the two of them still embracing and Gwen crying into Merlin's ridiculous new robes and both of them laughing through it all and Arthur had beat a hasty retreat until they could decide to act sensible again.
Apart from Merlin and Arthur - apart from the people she was closest to - it seemed like anyone who asked Gwen about her new role in the court were really trying to remind her that she was in a place where she didn't belong - one that she hadn't been born to, and one that no one, except Arthur, or Merlin, or perhaps Elyan, had thought she could ever live up to. So she gritted her teeth and started smiling and saying, "I only hope I will be able to do as well by the people of Camelot as they have always done by me."
It was strange that Sir Rothby would ask her a question like that, though. She had never met him before his arrival with his uncle's party; she would not have expected him to know anything of her past or to harbour any resentment against her. Perhaps he knew nothing about it and merely meant to make a polite inquiry about the new responsibilities that came with her marriage. It was strange, though, that he should sound so exactly like one of the gossiping ladies of the court.
Gwen gave her standard response and was surprised by the scorn with which Sir Rothby replied, "What a charming sentiment. How lucky Camelot is to have you for its queen."
Merlin made a loud exclamation of dismay as he knocked his goblet into Sir Rothby's lap.
"I'm sorry, stupid of me," he said, winking at Gwen over Sir Rothby's head as he tried to mop up the worst of the damage, "I must not have been paying attention."
On Merlin's other side, Gwaine was barely bothering to hide his own amusement at Sir Rothby's predicament as the now thoroughly drenched knight excused himself from the table with an embarrassingly placed stain.
Since Gwaine's arrival at the castle, he had made no secret of the fact that he distrusted Sir Rothby and suspected him of every imaginable plot against Camelot in general - and against Merlin in particular. Gwaine had scarcely left Merlin's side since, even trying to follow him into a private meeting with the king. When he had been strongly dissuaded from intruding on their conference, he still stood outside the council chamber doors for an hour, waiting for the meeting to end, as if he had appointed himself Merlin's personal bodyguard.
It was almost comical to watch him walking down the halls of the castle half a step behind Merlin, who was himself following half a step behind Arthur, who in turn grew quickly irritated and tried to get rid of both of them, assuring them that he had a whole castle full of guards to look after him, and didn't need guard dogs to follow him around. However, Merlin had dug in his heels about wanting to be on hand while the delegation were at Camelot, and Gwaine had dug in his heels about leaving Merlin.
Gwen had taken the only sensible route she could see around this whole farce and instead assigned extra guards for Sir Rothby's protection, on the assumption that even if he did have any malicious intentions, any room containing Arthur, Merlin, Gwaine, and a half a dozen official bodyguards would be too crowded for anyone to so much as swing a sword in.
She didn't know what Sir Rothby could have against Merlin, or her, or anyone at Camelot, but perhaps it was simply a reflection of his uncle's attitudes towards the court. If it was, it didn't bode particularly well for Arthur's negotiations with the Earl, but it seemed to her the greater danger was in the chance of breaking the peace than in any personal threat.
So when she met Sir Rothby on his way out to the practice grounds the next morning, she greeted him as warmly as she could, hoped that he was finding his stay at Camelot pleasant, and that he would have a good day's exercise.
"Oh, I'm sure I will," he said, smirking for what reason Gwen couldn't guess. He swung his sword a few times before him as he walked on past her and Gwen saw his guards flinch back a step or two as if expecting the blade to go wide.
A moment or two later, she ran into Gwaine going in the same direction as Sir Rothby, a determined scowl on his face, and she guessed that he knew where Sir Rothby was headed and was hoping for a bit of unfriendly combat on the training grounds. She could only hope that they both had enough good sense not to beat each other into an unfit state for the night's entertainment.
Gwen left them to their fate and went to find Merlin, who probably wouldn't be going anywhere near the practice grounds now that he could get out of it. She found him, after a long and fruitless search of the places he was supposed to be, in Gaius' rooms, which had been shut up ever since Gaius' replacement had taken one look at them and pronounced them "gloomy and unsanitary" and "not at all in accordance with current medical practice" and taken up residence in a set of rooms on the ground floor behind the kitchens, in a spot that coincidentally afforded him an excellent view of all the pretty serving girls' to-ings and fro-ings.
Merlin had promptly suggested putting the old physician's quarters under lock and key and declaring it off-limits to the inhabitants of the castle, citing the presence of certain dangerous poisons "and, uh, some... medical books that people probably shouldn't be able to get a look at. Uh, including the new court physician. Because some of them are... valuable. And they'd only stir up his allergies anyway. Musty, dusty old things. Very unsanitary, as he says. Probably did me some irreparable damage while I was studying them under Gaius' tutelage."
The rooms had accordingly been locked up against Gaius' possible return, and no one allowed into them since, although Gwen had occasionally spotted Merlin sneaking off in that direction with a furtive look on his face. She was left to suspect that he did not include himself in the category of "people who shouldn't be allowed to get their hands on Gaius' books," based on the number of times she had slipped into his new quarters and found him hurriedly shoving a leather-bound volume out of place. It could be, of course, that he was stealing books from Geoffrey's library as well. The court historian had made several complaints on the subject.
Merlin was currently bent over one of these "medical" texts of Gaius', muttering distractedly to himself and so absorbed in turning through the pages that he didn't notice anyone had come in at all until Gwen came up right behind him, leaned over his shoulder and said, "You don't really think that Sir Rothby could be a golem, do you?"
Merlin jumped about a foot back from the table the book was open on, slammed it shut, and collided rather hard with Gwen, stepping on her foot in the process.
"No one's supposed to be in here!" he yelped a good octave higher than his normal pitch. Then he noticed who it was who had startled him and that she was limping over to a chaise so she could sit down and nurse her injured foot. "Oh, Gwen, I'm so sorry, I didn't know it was you."
"It's all right," Gwen said, wincing as she wiggled her toes around. At least they weren't broken. "I didn't mean to come up on you so suddenly, you were very absorbed in what you were doing."
"I'm trying to figure out why Sir Rothby wants to kill me -" Merlin held up a hand as if to forestall her objections "- I know, I know you thought I was just being silly, and to be honest I did too, but now I'm telling you, there's just something not right going on. I thought he was just a sort of natural menace, knocking things over, and not particularly caring if he set fire to people in the process, but the way he acted when we were out alone in the woods together, I'm telling you, Gwen, that man hates me, and I don't know why."
Much to his relief, Gwen nodded seriously. "I believe you. At least, I believe there's something a little off about him. What he said at dinner the other night - it could have just been youthful sarcasm, but it was also - it was a very specific sort of hostility for someone who's never even met any of us before. It doesn't make any sense. I don't think he seems all that much like someone who would risk his own neck to get rid of someone he just didn't like - not openly, anyway. He seems more the sort to hire an assassin to do the dirty work for him. But even that seems a bit extreme for the circumstances."
"I don't know, Gwen, you weren't there in the woods. It was as if - for a while there I was sure that I was his prey, and he didn't care if I knew it. I think - I think he wanted me to be scared of him so he could hunt me down." Merlin shivered at the memory. "And then Gwaine was there, and it was as if nothing had happened. I'm telling you, I don't know whether it was more frightening that he could seem so vicious or that he could hide it so well at a moment's notice."
Gwen frowned. "You don't think he can be - just randomly murderous or anything like that? Or - or working for his uncle? You don't think Rupert wants to - oh, to eliminate Arthur or something? Even if he did, the next person in line for the throne - the one with the most support - would surely be Mor-" she stopped and bit her lip "- anyway, there's no guarantee that whoever took the throne of Camelot would be any more well-disposed towards Northumbria."
"He couldn't want it himself, could he?" Merlin suggested.
"The throne of Camelot?" Gwen said in astonishment. "He couldn't really think it was possible, not with a whole army here with no loyalty to Northumbria at all. He could be thinking that I'd be more likely to be pushed around without Arthur, but really..."
Merlin was nodding along to her reasoning. "Isn't that a little extreme as a negotiating tactic, you mean? Actually killing off the person heading up the other side of the negotiations? When surely all he would have to do is bribe someone here at court to find out whether Arthur's got the stomach for a war over tribute, and I don't think he's done even that. At least I don't think he has - no one's tried to bribe me, anyway," he added, almost a little offended at the thought that someone might not have considered him important enough to at least try to corrupt. "And besides, Rupert's been looking arrogant enough ever since he arrived - he seems to think things will go his way, so what could his nephew possibly be up to?"
"I don't know," Gwen said at last. "I wish I did. It would be nice to have some idea what was going on in my own court, don't you think?"
Merlin sat down next to Gwen, bumping their knees together. "Well, come on, what would life be without a little mystery? Besides, I know something that'll cheer you up." He jostled her affectionately. "Guess what I heard today?"
Gwen raised her eyebrows at him. "What did you hear?"
"Go on," Merlin said, nudging her again, "guess."
Gwen rolled her eyes. "I don't know. Tell me."
"Lancelot's back in Camelot," Merlin announced, sounding very pleased with himself.
Gwen's heart sped up a little despite her very stern directions to it to do nothing of the sort. "Oh yes?" she said, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible.
"Gwaine ran into him on his way here a few days ago. Said they rode together for a while then took different paths. Gwaine thought Lancelot was going to get here first from the way he was behaving - really excited to see his old friends again. Can't imagine why he didn't. Probably got lost in thought, wandering around in the forest, reminiscing..."
Gwen's pulse calmed down a little. "So he isn't actually here in the castle yet?" she asked.
"No, but he's within Camelot's borders, which means he'll be here any time now," Merlin said. "This is going to be great, isn't it? Everyone together again. Lancelot can be a proper knight at last, Arthur won't care who his family was. Him, and Gwaine, and you and Arthur. It's all happening, everyone who should be here will be. It won't matter anymore about the old rules, because it'll be a new sort of place, where everything is better." Merlin had become quite flushed, the tips of his ears practically glowing with his excitement.
"And Arthur will abolish the decree against magic?" Gwen asked gently, reading the unspoken thought behind the words. "Have you asked him about that one yet, Merlin? Or are you only going to ask him to change the rules when it benefits other people? Don't forget that you have friends who want to support you as much as you want to support them."
Merlin ducked his head and began playing with the edge of his tunic with great concentration. "It's not that simple. I can't just - I mean, I know he doesn't think the same things his father did about magic, but it's not just - I can't just ask him to change everything overnight. And he's never known any of the good things that magic can do, the things it could do for Camelot if he'd let - he hasn't seen a sorcerer help him. Not openly."
"Then maybe you should show him one," Gwen said. "I don't mean it has to be - not anyone in particular, not anything big, but, there must be examples of, oh, say, healers and - things like that couldn't be so difficult for him to accept."
Merlin shook his head and choked out, "I can't, Gwen. I know it should be simple just to - even to try to talk about it - but I don't know how. It's been so long and I just can't anymore. I don't know how to start."
"Do you want me to -" she offered, but he just shook his head more vigorously.
"No," he said, "it has to be me, I know that much. Only, let it be when I'm ready?"
"All right," said Gwen, "I don't want to push you, but don't wait too long-" and then she hardened her heart because she had to say it as well "-and don't let somebody else pay the price because they had no one to speak up for them."
"I won't," Merlin said quietly, "I promise."
"I promise you you're going to regret this," Sir Rothby growled as Gwaine stood laughing at the sidelines. He dropped his sword in disgust at Gwaine's feet. "I don't know what kind of a trick you think this is, but if you try anything like that in knightly combat, I shall see to it that Arthur turns you out of this court like the vagabond you are."
The young Sir Bors merely looked confused at the sudden amount of attention he was receiving. A group of knights had collected around him to clap him on the back and get their share of the laugh while Sir Rothby stormed off to lick his wounds in private.
Gwaine had been inwardly seething about Sir Rothby ever since their first meeting and frustrated at his inability to do anything to knock the smirk off the man's face over the way he had treated Merlin. Despite Merlin's assurances, repeated when Gwaine arrived at Camelot, that Gwaine was presently to become one of the knights of King Arthur's court, he had yet to be knighted and as such could take no direct action against Sir Rothby. As a commoner he could not simply march up to Sir Rothby and challenge him to single combat in defense of Merlin's honour: for one thing it would be an almost treasonous offense for a commoner to challenge a knight; and for another Merlin might not feel entirely comfortable with the idea that his honour needed any defending in the first place. So Gwaine had done the only thing he could: if he couldn't fight the man himself he would arrange for someone else to do it for him.
Sir Bors was one of the youngest of the knights at Camelot. He should properly still have been a squire, learning the values and skills of knighthood at the hand of someone more experienced, but he had the misfortune to be an eldest son who had lost his father when he was far too young, and presented with a noble mantle far too big for his shoulders to fill. Sir Bors was awkward and withdrawn in company, unsure of his place among the other knights, and deplorably easy to manipulate into challenging Sir Rothby to a friendly duel.
Gwaine felt almost guilty at how readily Sir Bors had taken up his suggestion, proud and pleased at being noticed by an old friend of the King and Queen. He had been hesitant, and then flattered, and then eager to do anything to prove to Gwaine that he was capable of besting a knight such as Sir Rothby in a practice bout. The more Sir Rothby scoffed at the prospect of such a puny opponent, the more determined Sir Bors became to show his worth before the others. After the first few nudges they practically did the rest of the work themselves, winding each other up until they had agreed to a very public display on the castle grounds.
It would all have been very unfair on Sir Bors if Gwaine hadn't snuck down to the armoury the night before and nicked Sir Rothby's sword. Not that he had really stolen it as such; if it just happened to turn up a day or two later in one of the pig sheds, it wasn't actually theft, just a convenient temporary inconvenience for the knight who was forced at the last moment, albeit with great disdain, to ask to borrow one. Gwaine had just the thing.
Gwaine had acquired "the bastard sword," as he affectionately called it, in one of those accidents of commerce which can happen to anyone who does their weapons shopping under the influence of a large quantity of good mead and a handsome barkeeper who "just happens to know a travelling weapons merchant." Out of the whole affair the thing Gwaine regretted most was missing his chance to tumble the barkeep because he was too busy being buggered over, figuratively speaking, by his friend the weapons merchant.
He woke the next morning to find himself stripped naked and alone in a hayloft with all his valuables missing, one hell of a hangover, and not even any signs that he would have memories of pleasant debauchery to look forward to when his headache faded. The only possession he had been left was the sword purchased at the cost of all his gold, possessions, and shreds of dignity. At such a price, it would have been agreeable if that one remaining possession had actually turned out to be the piece of master craftsmanship formerly advertised. Instead, the first thing it had done was to try to cut off Gwaine's foot. The first thing Gwaine had done was to yell, "You bastard!" and the name had stuck.
It was a sword, or at least it was a long heavy piece of metal shaped like a sword. It was so perversely weighted, however, that the person likely to take the most damage from its blade was the one grasping its hilt; it had an alarming tendancy to swing in the direction exactly opposite to the one you wanted it to go. Gwaine had worked out how to use it in the only way one could, which was through an act of extreme desperation.
He had paid his tab at the inn the night before his gold was stolen; he had not, however, paid the tab that his friend the barkeep had added up in his name. As the friendly barkeep moreover turned out not so much to be an employee of the inn as a man who had simply been helping himself liberally to the stock throughout the preceding night on the basis of a promise of payment in the morning, the owner of the tavern and - coincidentally - of the hayloft in which Gwaine had awoken alone, friendless, naked, and stripped of all worldy goods, was not best pleased with the man's absence or, indeed, Gwaine's presence.
On the bright side, Gwaine had probably set some records in the thousand yard sprint and discovered a surprising aptitude for the use of his one available weapon. By the time he had reached the next town, wearing nothing but a horse blanket and a pair of breeches cleverly constructed out of feed sacks, The Bastard and he had developed a working, if not a fully amicable, relationship.
The Bastard was not, however, a sword that anyone unfamiliar with its peculiar little homicidal quirks could hope to master without practice. Or at least, not without the practice or the astonishing ingenuity sometimes borne out of situations of absolute mortal peril. Sir Rothby had not had any particular need of superhuman creativity in his match against Sir Bors.
Gwaine picked up The Bastard from where Sir Rothby had tossed it aside and demonstrated a few showy cuts and jabs with it as if to say to the other knights, "How ridiculous to blame this poor ordinary sword for his own mistakes! What a sore loser," thus maintaining the illusion that it was the Bastard was anything like a proper, decent weapon. Once the other men were looking the other way, Gwaine quietly traded it for a more even-tempered blade. It was one thing to be able to use the sword, after all; it didn't mean Gwaine had to enjoy the bizarre muscular contortions necessary to the task.
The Bastard was really a weapon best reserved for the hands of your enemies.
Lancelot, who was in fact nowhere near Camelot, watched his opponents practising from his narrow window and listened to what snatches of their boisterous conversation drifted up to his tower room. The brothers practised mostly in regular shifts, two of them turning up at a time with the regularity of clockwork, although sometimes all three were present and two of them fought each other while the third looked on and jeered. Lancelot had begun to be able to tell them apart as much by their manoeuvres and their handling of a sword as by what little he could make out of their individual features from a distance.
Sidney, the youngest brother, and the one who had fetched him such a powerful blow to the head according to Elaine's reckoning, was in some ways the least formidable, despite his strength; he was the most easily upset by feints and verbal taunts in combat, and readily induced to overbalance himself, letting his own weight be used against him. Not an impressive opponent in terms of strategy or skill, but dangerous if he were allowed to break through a canny defense with even a single well-aimed blow; Lancelot had seen him lay out one of his brothers upon the ground with a single hit, when the other had dropped his guard for a moment. William had been nursing his right arm in practice the next day, and Lancelot concluded that to make even one mistake when facing Sidney might be enough to disable him for subsequent rounds.
William was the wiliest of the fighters and no doubt more cunning than either of his brothers. He was least likely to shout out comments as he watched the other two engaged in combat, but Lancelot observed that he often said something to his opponent that, though it was beyond the edge of Lancelot's hearing, reached William's opposite well enough to distract him and allow William to land an otherwise unlikely blow. His style was filled with tricks and feints and quick, sudden movements that had him gone, in the blink of an eye, from the space where his opponent thought he should be and into another from which he could strike an undefended spot or an exposed flank with more efficacy. He used the element of surprise greatly to his advantage: an intelligent opponent, and one it would be foolish to underestimate.
And yet Gregory, the one Lancelot had encountered as the black knight, was perhaps the most effective fighter. He possessed neither his youngest brother's brute force in arms nor the other's subtlety in tactics, but he added to a fair combination of both an instinct for deadly and effective action that the others seemed sometimes to lack. He laid no traps and landed no singly devastating blows, but he seemed to sense the direction from which the next attack would come and the best opportunity to land a hit, and wore his opponents down by a long and sustained mastery of his movements which the others could not match. He was the most likely of the three to win the day against either of his brothers, and it was a rare day on which either of the others managed to gain an advantage over him for long enough to score a point.
Lancelot thought he could understand now why his sister said he was so much put out of countenance by Gwaine's unforeseen attack in the woods. It was no less than Lancelot had felt, no doubt, on being taken unawares by Sidney, whom by all rights he now felt he should have been able to beat in fair and open combat. It was facing Gregory that concerned him most, and he was both glad and sorry to hear that Gregory would be the final of his opponents; glad that he would have the chance to exercise his skills against the others rather than facing Gregory directly after so many days of idle recovery, but sorry to think that any weariness or injury gained from the first two trials might make itself a deciding factor in fighting Gregory in the third.
He took pains to note those occasions on which Gregory's instincts and skills failed him, and found it was most often William who could manage to get underneath his defenses. It was not so much William's cleverly contrived tricks and stratagems that succeeded as his extraordinary speed that sometimes caught his brother off-guard, despite his good instincts, before he could shield himself from a new line of attack. It also seemed that Gregory was not insusceptible to William's verbal jabs, although he fell prey to that sort of distraction less easily than Sidney. Yet once or twice Lancelot saw Gregory forget his defense and attack so wildly, leaving himself open to attack, that Lancelot could only conclude that some unheard taunt of William's had hit its mark far better than his blade.
Lancelot suspected, although it was a tactic he was loath to use unless he were forced to it, that a reminder or two of Gregory's humiliating and unforeseen defeat in the forest might prove a more effective weapon than any other. He also prepared as best he could a line of defense and counterattack for himself that might work against their various styles of combat, based on observing the particular movements they favoured.
The thought that he was able to observe their practices so closely did not seem to occur to the brothers and Lancelot rather wondered sometimes if they had forgotten he was there at all, or did not know how the location of his room allowed him such a good view of their fighting in advance. Lancelot, determined not to confer the same advantage on them, did not insist on his own chance to use the practice grounds, instead running ceaselessly through what exercises he could in the privacy of his own room, pausing only when he felt a return of the pain and disorientation that sometimes still came over him from the blow to his head.
Although he had been given the freedom of the castle, it was still clear to Lancelot that he was no honoured - or indeed welcome - guest, and his appearance was greeted with some suspicion as he roamed the halls of the castle. It seemed that everyone living within the castle walls had by now heard some garbled account of his arrival here and that he was generally considered to be, at best, the unworthy suitor, and, at worst, the infamous abductor of the king's daughter.
He had found out, at least, that the name of the castle was Corbin, and from that had been able to place it within one of the smaller kingdoms that bordered Camelot's lands. What was more, it was well over a two-day ride from Camelot, so his injury must have been more serious than he thought to have kept him unconscious for the time it took to make the journey.
He slept poorly - not because the bed was little more than a hard pallet raised up off the floor, for he had slept on much worse, but because he was troubled by dreams in which he continually rode towards Camelot and was turned or driven off by some invisible force. Camelot seemed to him as an inevitable destination that remained nevertheless firmly out of reach, no matter what he tried.
In his waking hours, he had begun to doubt himself in his reasons for staying. He had seen little of the lady Elaine since the day he had awoken and he had no idea if she still regarded his presence with the same matter-of-fact acceptance of necessity as before or if she had come to regret the idea of a stranger vying for her hand. Her father had visited Lancelot the day after their original conversation, but he seemed mostly concerned with practical arrangements, offering to have the blacksmith's assistant come to check over his borrowed armour (which Lancelot now knew to belong rightfully to the lady Elaine) for proper fit and condition, but Lancelot found it already an almost perfect fit. It was easy to see how it could have been mistaken for his own; a hauberk made to his own measure could scarcely have fitted him better.
The only person Lancelot met with any regularity was Timothy, the boy of whom the lady Elaine had seemed so fond, and who brought him his meals while he stayed there. Lancelot tried once or twice to engage him in conversation, but he seemed shy and rarely spoke if he could avoid answering. Besides Timothy's perfunctory visits to his room, or the occasional encounter as he walked outside to calm his restless legs, most of the people Lancelot saw were from a distance.
There was one figure in particular who intrigued him: a boy, he could not have said who, who snuck out into the practice grounds at night after Pelles' sons had quitted it and when the darkness hid the greatest part of his activity from any chance onlookers. He practised sometimes late into the night, long after Lancelot had gone to bed and risen again out of restlessness. There was something about the way the boy moved that seemed familiar, as if Lancelot had seen him before, and he did sometimes wonder if it might be Timothy who made his secret forays into the forbidden world of knightly combat. It made Lancelot smile to think of another young boy born to a common place in life pursuing the same unlikely dream that he had held when he was young.
Yet the grace and fluidity of the boy's movement seemed to speak against it being the serving boy, who could hardly be so gawky and uncoordinated during the day and then acquire such skill of quick and deadly motion at night. The moves of the figure in the courtyard were practised and sure, although some of them had a formal air of study that suggested they had not often been tried against a real opponent. And yet despite this, Lancelot thought this mysterious boy might make a more interesting swordsman to face than all three of Pelles' sons put together; there was a better combination of strength with purpose, and of thought combined with instinct, that might do more when it was tried than all the over- or under-conscious strategies of any one of the brothers.
One night when Lancelot was feeling particularly restless, he spotted the boy in the yard and crept down the stairs meaning to watch from closer at hand. He followed the stairs down, cautious in the dark, wary of his unfamiliar surroundings and taking care not to waken anyone in the household. Despite his precautions, he took a few wrong turns and nearly ended up falling into the privy. By the time he had successfully retraced his misstep and found his way out to the yard, Lancelot half-expected to find the boy long gone. The solitary figure was still there, though, moving through the same carefully articulated series of steps.
Lancelot couldn't make out much more of the boy's features, even from closer at hand, as the darkness and shadows of the surrounding building still obscured everything but the barest outlines of his movements. Rather than reveal himself and interrupt the boy's practice, Lancelot found a spot sheltered beneath the lintel of the stair door and leaned there for a while to watch. He might have remained unnoticed the whole night, but that the figure stopped in the middle of one sequence to curse in frustration and at the same time stood near enough in the dim moonlight for Lancelot to recognize the face and the voice together.
"Lady Elaine?" He spoke aloud without meaning to. The figure whipped round wildly, looking in a panic for the source of the voice, and in the process of trying to retreat to a more sheltered position unfortunately ran right into Lancelot's own hiding place.
"You-!" she exclaimed and, "let go of me, I'll have you -" as he tried to muffle her exclamations of surprise. She kicked him in the shins for his trouble, until he was forced to let her go and step out into the yard, letting the light hit his face and hoping that no one had been woken by their voices and inspired to look out into the courtyard.
"Oh, it's you," Elaine said scornfully once she had got a look at him. "I thought it was someone who mattered." She seemed to dismiss him as quickly from her thoughts as if he had vanished, and strode on past him to continue with her interrupted exercise.
Lancelot watched with some disbelief, but she seemed to take no more notice of his existence, and as no one looked out from the windows around them to make inquiries, he concluded that they had not raised any general alarm. Indeed, as he looked about himself he found there were not many windows that did open onto the yard besides his own. Most of the others faced in a slantwise direction that overlooked the walls and outside of the keep - the one or two that did face inwards were boarded up.
"You're dropping your elbow," he observed as Elaine emitted another noise of frustration partway through her series of repeated steps.
She looked at him as if he had just begun speaking in a strange and unknown dialect.
"Your right elbow," he repeated, "every time you turn, you let it drop a little, that's why you lose control of the blade like that."
She regarded him suspiciously, as if waiting to see to what fresh disaster this advice might lead, and began the sequence again more slowly.
"There," he said when she came to the same point again and the sword's weight threw her out of balance. "You just did it again - you've got to keep it higher up."
Elaine glared at him. "My elbow is exactly where it's supposed to be."
"Very well, then," Lancelot said, "if you're so sure of yourself, attack me"
She looked sceptical. "You don't have a sword. It might not look good if I killed you in the middle of the night and left your body sprawled across the courtyard."
"So I tried to abduct you again and this time you resisted," Lancelot suggested. "Only I won't be in an danger because you're dropping your elbow."
She glared at him again and said, "Fine, ready to die now?"
He gave a mock bow. "At your command, my lady," he said, then ducked because she had begun to move forward again already, swiftly threatening to decapitate him. He backed away slowly, keeping just out of range of her blade as she stepped forward through the sequence.
Then she came to the turn, her elbow dropped, and Lancelot ducked under the wavering sword to grab her forearm and twist it, forcing the hilt out of her grasp. He caught it neatly in his other hand and went into an en guard position.
"Would you like to try to kill me again now?" he asked.
Elaine looked furious, almost ready to go on the offensive despite the sword that was now pointed in the wrong direction for it. However she merely watched intently as Lancelot began to go through the same series of moves, deliberately letting his elbow drop at the same moment as Elaine had done. She pounced on the opening and almost before he knew what had happened, she had the sword out of his hand again and held against his throat, a look of childish glee on her face.
"So what exactly would you do to stop me slitting your throat?" she demanded.
He held out his hand for the sword, which she offered him hilt-first this time, and demonstrated the move in slow motion, maintaining an excessive degree of formal correctness throughout and keeping his elbow much higher than was strictly necessary. She laughed at him.
"You look ridiculous," Elaine told him, "like a chicken."
"You're too kind," Lancelot said with half a bow. "I am, however, a chicken who could fell you with a single stroke if you tried to get close enough to take my sword from me. I don't recommend you try it." He let his arm drop dramatically so that his elbow was almost level with his knee. "And this," he said, "is what you were doing. Alive -" he lifted his arm exaggeratedly up to the level of his ear "- dead -" and dropped it again, repeating the motion until he did indeed look like a chicken flapping its wing.
Elaine laughed at him some more, but after a few more repetitions she darted in and grabbed the sword back when his grip was weakest. She repeated the set motions over and over, lifting her arm higher as she turned until the whole blade moved in a controlled arc as she wished it to.
"Now come here and try that dodge again," she said with an unholy grin.
Lancelot laughed and held up his hands in surrender. "No fear, my lady, I value my neck too much to test it. Your sword is safe for now."
"I have decided to let you live for the moment," Elaine declared magnanimously, lowering the sword. "You could yet turn out to be useful."
"You haven't had much experience facing off against a skilled opponent, have you?" Lancelot guessed.
Elaine scowled. "After I got past the age of about ten my father insisted that I stop wasting my time playing with my brothers. Before that I could have beaten any one of them, but since we've got older the only person I've had to practice with is Tim, and he can't do much more than play at fighting. Meanwhile they work at it every day and they have each other to learn from. There's only so much you can do with the diagrams in 'The Arte of Knightly Combatte', you know, and they certainly don't fight back or insult your posture - oh damn," she said out of nowhere, "take this and put it away, won't you? Greg will make a fuss over it if it goes missing."
Lancelot caught the sword she tossed at him - thankfully without injury - and started, "What do you -"
"I've got to go," Elaine said, "I'm not supposed to be out at night, and Dame B. will have a fit. It's the third door on the left," she said with apparent irrelevance, "try not to wake Bernhard, he's a light sleeper!" and with that she had vanished back into the castle.
It wasn't until he began to look about for the door she'd mentioned that Lancelot noticed what she had: the pre-dawn light was already growing, and he was standing alone in the open air holding a sword that had, presumably, been stolen from his host's armoury. He hastened into the shadow of the building and searched for the mysterious third door.
Lancelot tried the first entrance he found, hoping it concealed a corridor with at least three doors and a sleeping guard named Bernhard behind it. It turned out instead to be the door to a root cellar, which he determined by banging his head on the low ceiling and fetching up face-first in a barrel of rutabagas.
Through the next door he found his horse, which he was pleased to find had after all been brought with him and put in the castle stables. He patted Ambulatrix affectionately. She opened a single sleepy eye, regarded him with brief approval, and went back to sleep. He left her to her slumbers. His next try led to another courtyard, identical in all but size to the one he had left, being a good deal larger. The next door led to a covered walkway which, he was pleased to discover, contained a superfluity of doors. The third door on his left he opened carefully, mindful of the sleeping Bernhard, and found himself in the castle armoury.
Seeing no sign of a guard, he took his time looking over the weapons racks until he found the empty place where Gregory's sword must have resided. A long table beneath it held the various pieces of chainmail that must belong to Pelles' family; that hauberk could only have been made to fit Sidney's girth and broad shoulders. He was surprised to note a fourth set of armour - the one designated for him to wear in the tournament - that had been laid out alongside the rest. It was Elaine's, of course, and it occurred to him that this was probably the first time all four siblings' sets of armour had been set out together like this, and how much more appropriate it would be if the last suit were there awaiting its proper owner and not set aside for a chance interloper to use.
He would have liked to stay and admire the craftsmanship of the individual pieces, but the hour was growing later and the absent guard might not be absent long. Besides, the sons of Pelles began their training early in the day, as he had had occasion to witness from the clanging that ofttimes woke him from his bed. Lancelot turned to go and as he did he trod upon something soft. An instant later a loud and querulous yelping arose from under the table.
Bernhard, it turned out, was a guard dog, and whatever his normal disposition, he did not take kindly to having his tail stepped on. Few animals, in Lancelot's experience, ever did.
Lancelot tried a placatory "good dog" and a "nice Bernhard" and, when the beast still would not be quiet, attempted to edge towards the exit, but Bernhard was having none of it. He followed at Lancelot's heels, barking furiously, and snapping whenever Lancelot made a movement towards the door. After several agonizing minutes,the door opened and a friendly looking guard opened the door and came in pike-first.
"Ah, right," Lancelot said, his empty hands held out in a conciliatory gesture, "I can explain."
"Intruder in the armoury!" the guard cried out, paying no heed to Lancelot's frantic shushing noises, and soon it seemed as though the whole castle were echoing with the phrase. The only person who was likely to sleep through it, Lancelot thought a little resentfully, was the lady Elaine.
A handful of other assorted guards, some of them not even fully dressed yet, crowded around to lend their support to their fellow while Bernhard ran around Lancelot's ankles, barking happily at his captured prey. It was in this ludicrous situation that Sidney found Lancelot when he arrived to investigate the hubbub.
"That's all right, Ed," said Sidney to one of the guards, whose trousers were hanging a little precariously about his hips. "It's nothing to be alarmed about, just our visitor. Yes, thank you for getting here so quickly, Simon, I can take it from here."
From up close, Sidney had a broad, affable face and it was one the guards clearly respected, because they shuffled off on their business with courteous nods and nary a discontented murmur at being deprived of their captive, leaving Lancelot alone with Sidney and the guard dog.
The dog proved to be another among Sidney's admirers; Sidney whistled once, a short low note, and the barking mass of teeth and confusion fell quiet in an instant, returning docilely to his place beneath the table, where he curled up with his tail around his body to continue his morning nap.
Sidney looked as embarrassed as Lancelot felt about their meeting. The tips of his ears, sticking out of a nest of brown and curly hair, were tinged a deep pink.
"Sorry about all the ruckus," he said, "should have thought you'd want to get in here. Suppose you'll want all the practice you can get before the contest?"
Lancelot, who could think of nothing he wanted less at the moment than more practice, balked internally at the idea, but agreed because he could think of no better excuse for his presence.
"Well then," Sidney said with a cheerful grin, clapping his alarmingly muscular hands together, "let's get you ready, shall we?"
Lancelot, despairing silently of polite escape, allowed himself to be dragged around the armoury and equipped for a full and rigorous workout.
Sidney began gathering up his own armour, saying, "We've got your sword and things somewhere around - oh, here, the other bits and bobs will be in the stables, I expect. Though, um," he added, looking askance at the rather dinged and worn sword that Lancelot produced from his reclaimed belongings, "if you'd prefer to borrow one of mine..."
Lancelot shook his head. This blade had seen him through grimmer times than this young man - not yet even fully grown, for all his early bulk and muscle - could possibly have seen in his lifetime.
"Well, there's a smith in town if you want the edge sharpened -" Sidney halted at that train of thought, perhaps recalling that he was one of the people on whom its keenness was to be tested.
They prepared in silence after that, Lancelot feeling more and more the weariness of an already long night's work. Sidney kept stealing what he must have thought were subtle glances in Lancelot's direction, but were actually quite obvious, watching him closely until they strode out into the yard together.
Lancelot didn't last long against him. Fatigue did the work of a millstone dragging him down and he stumbled beneath a barely skillful blow from Sidney in the first bout.
Sidney offered him a hand up afterwards with all good grace. Lancelot rather got the impression that Sidney had knocked his feet out from under him as gently as he could manage, and Lancelot was suitably grateful for the effort.
"Listen, I'm sorry about knocking you out like that - not just now, I mean, though that too, but back in the woods, really," Sidney said in a rush, and for the first time Lancelot could really see the resemblance to his sister; hers was clearly a garrulous family. "Only we didn't know, you see, what had really happened. Greg had only told us some story about being ambushed in the woods and something about you behaving badly to Elaine and, well, all I wanted to say is, if you're the one she wants to run away with that's all right by me, and I'm sorry about all this other business. I'll do my best not to kill you in the tournament if I can help it, though you may want to get some practice between now and then if you want to make a decent show of it - and before you face the others, especially Greg. He hasn't got over things yet and it looks as though you need the practice pretty badly." He came to a stop at last, exuding amiability and good intent, though still a little pink from his joint exertion and embarrassment.
Lancelot thanked him kindly for his advice, accepted yet another apology for getting his skull bashed with a rock which Sidney "never thought would hit him that hard" and climbed the tower stairs to collapse on his bed.
Well, he thought, during his last moments of consciousness before his head hit the pillow, if he had wanted to convince the brothers that he wasn't a threat in combat, he had just succeeded.
Part Four
Crossposted from http://themadlurker.dreamwidth.org/62714.html at Dreamwidth.
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Back to Part Two
"So tell me, Guinevere, do you like being Queen?" Sir Rothby asked, leaning forward around his aunt to address her.
It was the fourth night since the Northumbrian party's arrival at Camelot and already Gwen was wishing for a quiet evening alone with Arthur to recover from the day's careful, unceasing diplomacy. It was not to be, however, as feasts were being held each night, partly in honour of their guests and partly to impress upon those guests the wealth and importance of the court of Camelot. Another week remained before the tournament that would close the visit and return the fluster of activity throughout the castle to something approaching normal. Gwen tried not to think ungraciously of how much nicer it would be if the tournament were tomorrow.
Gwen gave Sir Rothby a polite smile, puzzled by his question. It was one she had heard often enough from the nobles of Camelot and come to heartily dislike. Gwen had never felt herself so constantly observed and criticised as she did in the week following Elyan's knighting. She had spent the entire week ducking around corners out of sight to check that she didn't have anything odd on her face. By the end of the week she had determined that the only odd thing people were seeing was a former servant who now had any face at all worth noticing or a name worth remembering.
One feast night, although Gwen had meant to head directly for the Great Hall, her feet had taken her there by way of the kitchens out of a long habit of serving Morgana at the high table. An old friend of hers, Esmeralda, had been busy ferrying dishes into the arms of hall servants and had handed one to Gwen as she came in without even looking up.
Gwen had even taken a few steps out of the kitchen with the dish before she recollected herself and laughed, handing it back to Esmeralda. Esmeralda took it with some confusion and even began to ask what the matter was before she took in Gwen's finer clothes and said, "Oh, I'm sorry... my lady."
Gwen had merely smiled and stood as well out of the way of the crush of activity to ask after Esmeralda's family in the town. Esmeralda's answers were brief - understandably, thought Gwen, who knew what the rush could be like before feasts like tonight's when everyone was celebrating a good harvest for the kingdom.
Gwen did what she could not to get underfoot, and between Esmeralda's terse replies she soaked in the familiar atmosphere of the bustling kitchen. It wasn't until she caught one of the other maids casting an odd look in her direction, which Esmeralda answered with a muttered, "leave it," that Gwen thought of anything being amiss. Then she began to notice that some of the servants were giving the place where she stood a wide berth as they passed to and fro.
Esmeralda, pretending not to see any of it, asked Gwen, "So, what's it like being a fine lady at court, then?"
Gwen, confused and troubled by the behaviour of the other servants, had only stammered something about how strange it was.
"Yes, we all thought it was strange," one of the other kitchen maids, a girl named Jean who Gwen had known for more than ten years, murmured in comment. Another one hissed to silence her, but she went on anyway, "I'm surprised you'd still want to come down here," with a mixture of resentment and scorn that made Gwen feel as though she'd been slapped.
At that point the head cook, separating herself from the direction of the final stages of preparation, came over and gave Gwen a polite curtsey. "Everything is nearly finished here, my lady. You may wish to take your place in the hall before you are missed from the feast."
Gwen, embarrassed at being both deferred to and subtly chastised by a woman she had looked up to as a figure of great authority among the servants, said goodbye to Esmeralda in a state of confusion, and rushed away feeling awful.
After that night, although Gwen still sought out Esmeralda when she could, and they exchanged polite pleasantries, there was a painful consciousness that overshadowed all their later conversations, and Esmeralda never again shared her bitingly worded commentary on the latest town gossip. That one evening and the changes it showed her had hurt Gwen more than all the condescending looks of the courtly ladies who had asked with astonishment, "and you say you were really a servant here? I would never have guessed it, you don't seem like one of them at all."
Eventually Gwen had stopped mentioning her work at the castle altogether and only talked about her father and her brother the blacksmiths. Even so, it seemed many of the courtly ladies couldn't forgive her for being sister to a mere blacksmith, raised to knighthood by the King's whim.
"And what's it like for you being Queen, Guinevere?" they asked, or "How are you adjusting to your new position?" Gwen sometimes thought that if half the ladies at the court envied her for her position, the other half despised her for daring to want it. And yet she hadn't wanted the title they cared so much about - hadn't wanted, even, to be sister to a knight except for Elyan's sake; all she had wanted was to be married to Arthur. It surprised her still that so few people could see the difference between Arthur and the King.
Her one fond memory of being asked such a question was from her wedding night, when she and Arthur had first climbed into bed together, both of them nervous and uncertain. There was something about being actually married and lying together between the sheets with only her thin nightdress separating them that overwhelmed them both with nerves and left Gwen hesitant and speechless. Arthur shifted a little on his side of the bed as if to move closer but didn't actually do anything except clear his throat nervously.
"So, uhm, how do you like being Queen?" he asked, half-propping himself up on his elbow. He affected a casual tone but then he suddenly stopped and flushed bright red. At the same time Gwen felt him pressing against her thigh and broke into a helpless fit of giggling.
"No, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Gwen said breathlessly, "it's just - you sounded like you were asking about the weather." Another burst of giggles escaped her despite her best efforts to contain it. "No - don't," she added as he began to draw away in embarrassment, "what I wanted to say was -" she placed her hand against his cheek and felt the laughter abruptly simmer down to a deep bubbling well of happiness in her chest "- that I don't know much yet about being Queen, but I know - I know that being your Queen makes me happier than I've ever been in my life." By the time she finished the laughter was gone and she felt as solemn and timorous as she had when she stood up before the assembled court for her coronation.
Arthur reached up and laid his fingers against hers and, smiling beneath their joined hands, said, "My Queen."
The next morning, when she still must have been glowing, she was sure, with inner light, Merlin had sidled up to her and asked with a nudge and a grin, "Sooooo, what's it like?"
"Merlin!" Gwen had exclaimed. "I'm not going to talk about that!"
Merlin just looked innocent. "Aren't you going to tell me what it's like, you know... being Queen?" He whispered 'being Queen' as if it were a secret the two of them shared, despite the hundreds of other people who had attended the wedding. "Does it feel different?" he asked, and Gwen would have brushed it off if there hadn't been a hint of seriousness underneath what he said.
"What's it like, being a royal councillor instead of a manservant?" she asked him instead.
Merlin stopped to think about it for a minute, then pronounced, "Completely different and... exactly the same."
Gwen nodded, her lips curving into a secret smile that she thought Merlin could really only half understand the meaning of.
"Everything's exactly the same it was yesterday," Gwen answered him at last, repeating his own words back to him, "and everything is completely different." Then with a giddy laugh she added, "Maybe nothing in the world has changed and I'm simply a new person wearing the same name."
Then she had felt a helpless wash of gratitude come over her for all the ways that Merlin had contributed to her happiness and Arthur had walked in half an hour later to find the two of them still embracing and Gwen crying into Merlin's ridiculous new robes and both of them laughing through it all and Arthur had beat a hasty retreat until they could decide to act sensible again.
Apart from Merlin and Arthur - apart from the people she was closest to - it seemed like anyone who asked Gwen about her new role in the court were really trying to remind her that she was in a place where she didn't belong - one that she hadn't been born to, and one that no one, except Arthur, or Merlin, or perhaps Elyan, had thought she could ever live up to. So she gritted her teeth and started smiling and saying, "I only hope I will be able to do as well by the people of Camelot as they have always done by me."
It was strange that Sir Rothby would ask her a question like that, though. She had never met him before his arrival with his uncle's party; she would not have expected him to know anything of her past or to harbour any resentment against her. Perhaps he knew nothing about it and merely meant to make a polite inquiry about the new responsibilities that came with her marriage. It was strange, though, that he should sound so exactly like one of the gossiping ladies of the court.
Gwen gave her standard response and was surprised by the scorn with which Sir Rothby replied, "What a charming sentiment. How lucky Camelot is to have you for its queen."
Merlin made a loud exclamation of dismay as he knocked his goblet into Sir Rothby's lap.
"I'm sorry, stupid of me," he said, winking at Gwen over Sir Rothby's head as he tried to mop up the worst of the damage, "I must not have been paying attention."
On Merlin's other side, Gwaine was barely bothering to hide his own amusement at Sir Rothby's predicament as the now thoroughly drenched knight excused himself from the table with an embarrassingly placed stain.
Since Gwaine's arrival at the castle, he had made no secret of the fact that he distrusted Sir Rothby and suspected him of every imaginable plot against Camelot in general - and against Merlin in particular. Gwaine had scarcely left Merlin's side since, even trying to follow him into a private meeting with the king. When he had been strongly dissuaded from intruding on their conference, he still stood outside the council chamber doors for an hour, waiting for the meeting to end, as if he had appointed himself Merlin's personal bodyguard.
It was almost comical to watch him walking down the halls of the castle half a step behind Merlin, who was himself following half a step behind Arthur, who in turn grew quickly irritated and tried to get rid of both of them, assuring them that he had a whole castle full of guards to look after him, and didn't need guard dogs to follow him around. However, Merlin had dug in his heels about wanting to be on hand while the delegation were at Camelot, and Gwaine had dug in his heels about leaving Merlin.
Gwen had taken the only sensible route she could see around this whole farce and instead assigned extra guards for Sir Rothby's protection, on the assumption that even if he did have any malicious intentions, any room containing Arthur, Merlin, Gwaine, and a half a dozen official bodyguards would be too crowded for anyone to so much as swing a sword in.
She didn't know what Sir Rothby could have against Merlin, or her, or anyone at Camelot, but perhaps it was simply a reflection of his uncle's attitudes towards the court. If it was, it didn't bode particularly well for Arthur's negotiations with the Earl, but it seemed to her the greater danger was in the chance of breaking the peace than in any personal threat.
So when she met Sir Rothby on his way out to the practice grounds the next morning, she greeted him as warmly as she could, hoped that he was finding his stay at Camelot pleasant, and that he would have a good day's exercise.
"Oh, I'm sure I will," he said, smirking for what reason Gwen couldn't guess. He swung his sword a few times before him as he walked on past her and Gwen saw his guards flinch back a step or two as if expecting the blade to go wide.
A moment or two later, she ran into Gwaine going in the same direction as Sir Rothby, a determined scowl on his face, and she guessed that he knew where Sir Rothby was headed and was hoping for a bit of unfriendly combat on the training grounds. She could only hope that they both had enough good sense not to beat each other into an unfit state for the night's entertainment.
Gwen left them to their fate and went to find Merlin, who probably wouldn't be going anywhere near the practice grounds now that he could get out of it. She found him, after a long and fruitless search of the places he was supposed to be, in Gaius' rooms, which had been shut up ever since Gaius' replacement had taken one look at them and pronounced them "gloomy and unsanitary" and "not at all in accordance with current medical practice" and taken up residence in a set of rooms on the ground floor behind the kitchens, in a spot that coincidentally afforded him an excellent view of all the pretty serving girls' to-ings and fro-ings.
Merlin had promptly suggested putting the old physician's quarters under lock and key and declaring it off-limits to the inhabitants of the castle, citing the presence of certain dangerous poisons "and, uh, some... medical books that people probably shouldn't be able to get a look at. Uh, including the new court physician. Because some of them are... valuable. And they'd only stir up his allergies anyway. Musty, dusty old things. Very unsanitary, as he says. Probably did me some irreparable damage while I was studying them under Gaius' tutelage."
The rooms had accordingly been locked up against Gaius' possible return, and no one allowed into them since, although Gwen had occasionally spotted Merlin sneaking off in that direction with a furtive look on his face. She was left to suspect that he did not include himself in the category of "people who shouldn't be allowed to get their hands on Gaius' books," based on the number of times she had slipped into his new quarters and found him hurriedly shoving a leather-bound volume out of place. It could be, of course, that he was stealing books from Geoffrey's library as well. The court historian had made several complaints on the subject.
Merlin was currently bent over one of these "medical" texts of Gaius', muttering distractedly to himself and so absorbed in turning through the pages that he didn't notice anyone had come in at all until Gwen came up right behind him, leaned over his shoulder and said, "You don't really think that Sir Rothby could be a golem, do you?"
Merlin jumped about a foot back from the table the book was open on, slammed it shut, and collided rather hard with Gwen, stepping on her foot in the process.
"No one's supposed to be in here!" he yelped a good octave higher than his normal pitch. Then he noticed who it was who had startled him and that she was limping over to a chaise so she could sit down and nurse her injured foot. "Oh, Gwen, I'm so sorry, I didn't know it was you."
"It's all right," Gwen said, wincing as she wiggled her toes around. At least they weren't broken. "I didn't mean to come up on you so suddenly, you were very absorbed in what you were doing."
"I'm trying to figure out why Sir Rothby wants to kill me -" Merlin held up a hand as if to forestall her objections "- I know, I know you thought I was just being silly, and to be honest I did too, but now I'm telling you, there's just something not right going on. I thought he was just a sort of natural menace, knocking things over, and not particularly caring if he set fire to people in the process, but the way he acted when we were out alone in the woods together, I'm telling you, Gwen, that man hates me, and I don't know why."
Much to his relief, Gwen nodded seriously. "I believe you. At least, I believe there's something a little off about him. What he said at dinner the other night - it could have just been youthful sarcasm, but it was also - it was a very specific sort of hostility for someone who's never even met any of us before. It doesn't make any sense. I don't think he seems all that much like someone who would risk his own neck to get rid of someone he just didn't like - not openly, anyway. He seems more the sort to hire an assassin to do the dirty work for him. But even that seems a bit extreme for the circumstances."
"I don't know, Gwen, you weren't there in the woods. It was as if - for a while there I was sure that I was his prey, and he didn't care if I knew it. I think - I think he wanted me to be scared of him so he could hunt me down." Merlin shivered at the memory. "And then Gwaine was there, and it was as if nothing had happened. I'm telling you, I don't know whether it was more frightening that he could seem so vicious or that he could hide it so well at a moment's notice."
Gwen frowned. "You don't think he can be - just randomly murderous or anything like that? Or - or working for his uncle? You don't think Rupert wants to - oh, to eliminate Arthur or something? Even if he did, the next person in line for the throne - the one with the most support - would surely be Mor-" she stopped and bit her lip "- anyway, there's no guarantee that whoever took the throne of Camelot would be any more well-disposed towards Northumbria."
"He couldn't want it himself, could he?" Merlin suggested.
"The throne of Camelot?" Gwen said in astonishment. "He couldn't really think it was possible, not with a whole army here with no loyalty to Northumbria at all. He could be thinking that I'd be more likely to be pushed around without Arthur, but really..."
Merlin was nodding along to her reasoning. "Isn't that a little extreme as a negotiating tactic, you mean? Actually killing off the person heading up the other side of the negotiations? When surely all he would have to do is bribe someone here at court to find out whether Arthur's got the stomach for a war over tribute, and I don't think he's done even that. At least I don't think he has - no one's tried to bribe me, anyway," he added, almost a little offended at the thought that someone might not have considered him important enough to at least try to corrupt. "And besides, Rupert's been looking arrogant enough ever since he arrived - he seems to think things will go his way, so what could his nephew possibly be up to?"
"I don't know," Gwen said at last. "I wish I did. It would be nice to have some idea what was going on in my own court, don't you think?"
Merlin sat down next to Gwen, bumping their knees together. "Well, come on, what would life be without a little mystery? Besides, I know something that'll cheer you up." He jostled her affectionately. "Guess what I heard today?"
Gwen raised her eyebrows at him. "What did you hear?"
"Go on," Merlin said, nudging her again, "guess."
Gwen rolled her eyes. "I don't know. Tell me."
"Lancelot's back in Camelot," Merlin announced, sounding very pleased with himself.
Gwen's heart sped up a little despite her very stern directions to it to do nothing of the sort. "Oh yes?" she said, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible.
"Gwaine ran into him on his way here a few days ago. Said they rode together for a while then took different paths. Gwaine thought Lancelot was going to get here first from the way he was behaving - really excited to see his old friends again. Can't imagine why he didn't. Probably got lost in thought, wandering around in the forest, reminiscing..."
Gwen's pulse calmed down a little. "So he isn't actually here in the castle yet?" she asked.
"No, but he's within Camelot's borders, which means he'll be here any time now," Merlin said. "This is going to be great, isn't it? Everyone together again. Lancelot can be a proper knight at last, Arthur won't care who his family was. Him, and Gwaine, and you and Arthur. It's all happening, everyone who should be here will be. It won't matter anymore about the old rules, because it'll be a new sort of place, where everything is better." Merlin had become quite flushed, the tips of his ears practically glowing with his excitement.
"And Arthur will abolish the decree against magic?" Gwen asked gently, reading the unspoken thought behind the words. "Have you asked him about that one yet, Merlin? Or are you only going to ask him to change the rules when it benefits other people? Don't forget that you have friends who want to support you as much as you want to support them."
Merlin ducked his head and began playing with the edge of his tunic with great concentration. "It's not that simple. I can't just - I mean, I know he doesn't think the same things his father did about magic, but it's not just - I can't just ask him to change everything overnight. And he's never known any of the good things that magic can do, the things it could do for Camelot if he'd let - he hasn't seen a sorcerer help him. Not openly."
"Then maybe you should show him one," Gwen said. "I don't mean it has to be - not anyone in particular, not anything big, but, there must be examples of, oh, say, healers and - things like that couldn't be so difficult for him to accept."
Merlin shook his head and choked out, "I can't, Gwen. I know it should be simple just to - even to try to talk about it - but I don't know how. It's been so long and I just can't anymore. I don't know how to start."
"Do you want me to -" she offered, but he just shook his head more vigorously.
"No," he said, "it has to be me, I know that much. Only, let it be when I'm ready?"
"All right," said Gwen, "I don't want to push you, but don't wait too long-" and then she hardened her heart because she had to say it as well "-and don't let somebody else pay the price because they had no one to speak up for them."
"I won't," Merlin said quietly, "I promise."
"I promise you you're going to regret this," Sir Rothby growled as Gwaine stood laughing at the sidelines. He dropped his sword in disgust at Gwaine's feet. "I don't know what kind of a trick you think this is, but if you try anything like that in knightly combat, I shall see to it that Arthur turns you out of this court like the vagabond you are."
The young Sir Bors merely looked confused at the sudden amount of attention he was receiving. A group of knights had collected around him to clap him on the back and get their share of the laugh while Sir Rothby stormed off to lick his wounds in private.
Gwaine had been inwardly seething about Sir Rothby ever since their first meeting and frustrated at his inability to do anything to knock the smirk off the man's face over the way he had treated Merlin. Despite Merlin's assurances, repeated when Gwaine arrived at Camelot, that Gwaine was presently to become one of the knights of King Arthur's court, he had yet to be knighted and as such could take no direct action against Sir Rothby. As a commoner he could not simply march up to Sir Rothby and challenge him to single combat in defense of Merlin's honour: for one thing it would be an almost treasonous offense for a commoner to challenge a knight; and for another Merlin might not feel entirely comfortable with the idea that his honour needed any defending in the first place. So Gwaine had done the only thing he could: if he couldn't fight the man himself he would arrange for someone else to do it for him.
Sir Bors was one of the youngest of the knights at Camelot. He should properly still have been a squire, learning the values and skills of knighthood at the hand of someone more experienced, but he had the misfortune to be an eldest son who had lost his father when he was far too young, and presented with a noble mantle far too big for his shoulders to fill. Sir Bors was awkward and withdrawn in company, unsure of his place among the other knights, and deplorably easy to manipulate into challenging Sir Rothby to a friendly duel.
Gwaine felt almost guilty at how readily Sir Bors had taken up his suggestion, proud and pleased at being noticed by an old friend of the King and Queen. He had been hesitant, and then flattered, and then eager to do anything to prove to Gwaine that he was capable of besting a knight such as Sir Rothby in a practice bout. The more Sir Rothby scoffed at the prospect of such a puny opponent, the more determined Sir Bors became to show his worth before the others. After the first few nudges they practically did the rest of the work themselves, winding each other up until they had agreed to a very public display on the castle grounds.
It would all have been very unfair on Sir Bors if Gwaine hadn't snuck down to the armoury the night before and nicked Sir Rothby's sword. Not that he had really stolen it as such; if it just happened to turn up a day or two later in one of the pig sheds, it wasn't actually theft, just a convenient temporary inconvenience for the knight who was forced at the last moment, albeit with great disdain, to ask to borrow one. Gwaine had just the thing.
Gwaine had acquired "the bastard sword," as he affectionately called it, in one of those accidents of commerce which can happen to anyone who does their weapons shopping under the influence of a large quantity of good mead and a handsome barkeeper who "just happens to know a travelling weapons merchant." Out of the whole affair the thing Gwaine regretted most was missing his chance to tumble the barkeep because he was too busy being buggered over, figuratively speaking, by his friend the weapons merchant.
He woke the next morning to find himself stripped naked and alone in a hayloft with all his valuables missing, one hell of a hangover, and not even any signs that he would have memories of pleasant debauchery to look forward to when his headache faded. The only possession he had been left was the sword purchased at the cost of all his gold, possessions, and shreds of dignity. At such a price, it would have been agreeable if that one remaining possession had actually turned out to be the piece of master craftsmanship formerly advertised. Instead, the first thing it had done was to try to cut off Gwaine's foot. The first thing Gwaine had done was to yell, "You bastard!" and the name had stuck.
It was a sword, or at least it was a long heavy piece of metal shaped like a sword. It was so perversely weighted, however, that the person likely to take the most damage from its blade was the one grasping its hilt; it had an alarming tendancy to swing in the direction exactly opposite to the one you wanted it to go. Gwaine had worked out how to use it in the only way one could, which was through an act of extreme desperation.
He had paid his tab at the inn the night before his gold was stolen; he had not, however, paid the tab that his friend the barkeep had added up in his name. As the friendly barkeep moreover turned out not so much to be an employee of the inn as a man who had simply been helping himself liberally to the stock throughout the preceding night on the basis of a promise of payment in the morning, the owner of the tavern and - coincidentally - of the hayloft in which Gwaine had awoken alone, friendless, naked, and stripped of all worldy goods, was not best pleased with the man's absence or, indeed, Gwaine's presence.
On the bright side, Gwaine had probably set some records in the thousand yard sprint and discovered a surprising aptitude for the use of his one available weapon. By the time he had reached the next town, wearing nothing but a horse blanket and a pair of breeches cleverly constructed out of feed sacks, The Bastard and he had developed a working, if not a fully amicable, relationship.
The Bastard was not, however, a sword that anyone unfamiliar with its peculiar little homicidal quirks could hope to master without practice. Or at least, not without the practice or the astonishing ingenuity sometimes borne out of situations of absolute mortal peril. Sir Rothby had not had any particular need of superhuman creativity in his match against Sir Bors.
Gwaine picked up The Bastard from where Sir Rothby had tossed it aside and demonstrated a few showy cuts and jabs with it as if to say to the other knights, "How ridiculous to blame this poor ordinary sword for his own mistakes! What a sore loser," thus maintaining the illusion that it was the Bastard was anything like a proper, decent weapon. Once the other men were looking the other way, Gwaine quietly traded it for a more even-tempered blade. It was one thing to be able to use the sword, after all; it didn't mean Gwaine had to enjoy the bizarre muscular contortions necessary to the task.
The Bastard was really a weapon best reserved for the hands of your enemies.
Lancelot, who was in fact nowhere near Camelot, watched his opponents practising from his narrow window and listened to what snatches of their boisterous conversation drifted up to his tower room. The brothers practised mostly in regular shifts, two of them turning up at a time with the regularity of clockwork, although sometimes all three were present and two of them fought each other while the third looked on and jeered. Lancelot had begun to be able to tell them apart as much by their manoeuvres and their handling of a sword as by what little he could make out of their individual features from a distance.
Sidney, the youngest brother, and the one who had fetched him such a powerful blow to the head according to Elaine's reckoning, was in some ways the least formidable, despite his strength; he was the most easily upset by feints and verbal taunts in combat, and readily induced to overbalance himself, letting his own weight be used against him. Not an impressive opponent in terms of strategy or skill, but dangerous if he were allowed to break through a canny defense with even a single well-aimed blow; Lancelot had seen him lay out one of his brothers upon the ground with a single hit, when the other had dropped his guard for a moment. William had been nursing his right arm in practice the next day, and Lancelot concluded that to make even one mistake when facing Sidney might be enough to disable him for subsequent rounds.
William was the wiliest of the fighters and no doubt more cunning than either of his brothers. He was least likely to shout out comments as he watched the other two engaged in combat, but Lancelot observed that he often said something to his opponent that, though it was beyond the edge of Lancelot's hearing, reached William's opposite well enough to distract him and allow William to land an otherwise unlikely blow. His style was filled with tricks and feints and quick, sudden movements that had him gone, in the blink of an eye, from the space where his opponent thought he should be and into another from which he could strike an undefended spot or an exposed flank with more efficacy. He used the element of surprise greatly to his advantage: an intelligent opponent, and one it would be foolish to underestimate.
And yet Gregory, the one Lancelot had encountered as the black knight, was perhaps the most effective fighter. He possessed neither his youngest brother's brute force in arms nor the other's subtlety in tactics, but he added to a fair combination of both an instinct for deadly and effective action that the others seemed sometimes to lack. He laid no traps and landed no singly devastating blows, but he seemed to sense the direction from which the next attack would come and the best opportunity to land a hit, and wore his opponents down by a long and sustained mastery of his movements which the others could not match. He was the most likely of the three to win the day against either of his brothers, and it was a rare day on which either of the others managed to gain an advantage over him for long enough to score a point.
Lancelot thought he could understand now why his sister said he was so much put out of countenance by Gwaine's unforeseen attack in the woods. It was no less than Lancelot had felt, no doubt, on being taken unawares by Sidney, whom by all rights he now felt he should have been able to beat in fair and open combat. It was facing Gregory that concerned him most, and he was both glad and sorry to hear that Gregory would be the final of his opponents; glad that he would have the chance to exercise his skills against the others rather than facing Gregory directly after so many days of idle recovery, but sorry to think that any weariness or injury gained from the first two trials might make itself a deciding factor in fighting Gregory in the third.
He took pains to note those occasions on which Gregory's instincts and skills failed him, and found it was most often William who could manage to get underneath his defenses. It was not so much William's cleverly contrived tricks and stratagems that succeeded as his extraordinary speed that sometimes caught his brother off-guard, despite his good instincts, before he could shield himself from a new line of attack. It also seemed that Gregory was not insusceptible to William's verbal jabs, although he fell prey to that sort of distraction less easily than Sidney. Yet once or twice Lancelot saw Gregory forget his defense and attack so wildly, leaving himself open to attack, that Lancelot could only conclude that some unheard taunt of William's had hit its mark far better than his blade.
Lancelot suspected, although it was a tactic he was loath to use unless he were forced to it, that a reminder or two of Gregory's humiliating and unforeseen defeat in the forest might prove a more effective weapon than any other. He also prepared as best he could a line of defense and counterattack for himself that might work against their various styles of combat, based on observing the particular movements they favoured.
The thought that he was able to observe their practices so closely did not seem to occur to the brothers and Lancelot rather wondered sometimes if they had forgotten he was there at all, or did not know how the location of his room allowed him such a good view of their fighting in advance. Lancelot, determined not to confer the same advantage on them, did not insist on his own chance to use the practice grounds, instead running ceaselessly through what exercises he could in the privacy of his own room, pausing only when he felt a return of the pain and disorientation that sometimes still came over him from the blow to his head.
Although he had been given the freedom of the castle, it was still clear to Lancelot that he was no honoured - or indeed welcome - guest, and his appearance was greeted with some suspicion as he roamed the halls of the castle. It seemed that everyone living within the castle walls had by now heard some garbled account of his arrival here and that he was generally considered to be, at best, the unworthy suitor, and, at worst, the infamous abductor of the king's daughter.
He had found out, at least, that the name of the castle was Corbin, and from that had been able to place it within one of the smaller kingdoms that bordered Camelot's lands. What was more, it was well over a two-day ride from Camelot, so his injury must have been more serious than he thought to have kept him unconscious for the time it took to make the journey.
He slept poorly - not because the bed was little more than a hard pallet raised up off the floor, for he had slept on much worse, but because he was troubled by dreams in which he continually rode towards Camelot and was turned or driven off by some invisible force. Camelot seemed to him as an inevitable destination that remained nevertheless firmly out of reach, no matter what he tried.
In his waking hours, he had begun to doubt himself in his reasons for staying. He had seen little of the lady Elaine since the day he had awoken and he had no idea if she still regarded his presence with the same matter-of-fact acceptance of necessity as before or if she had come to regret the idea of a stranger vying for her hand. Her father had visited Lancelot the day after their original conversation, but he seemed mostly concerned with practical arrangements, offering to have the blacksmith's assistant come to check over his borrowed armour (which Lancelot now knew to belong rightfully to the lady Elaine) for proper fit and condition, but Lancelot found it already an almost perfect fit. It was easy to see how it could have been mistaken for his own; a hauberk made to his own measure could scarcely have fitted him better.
The only person Lancelot met with any regularity was Timothy, the boy of whom the lady Elaine had seemed so fond, and who brought him his meals while he stayed there. Lancelot tried once or twice to engage him in conversation, but he seemed shy and rarely spoke if he could avoid answering. Besides Timothy's perfunctory visits to his room, or the occasional encounter as he walked outside to calm his restless legs, most of the people Lancelot saw were from a distance.
There was one figure in particular who intrigued him: a boy, he could not have said who, who snuck out into the practice grounds at night after Pelles' sons had quitted it and when the darkness hid the greatest part of his activity from any chance onlookers. He practised sometimes late into the night, long after Lancelot had gone to bed and risen again out of restlessness. There was something about the way the boy moved that seemed familiar, as if Lancelot had seen him before, and he did sometimes wonder if it might be Timothy who made his secret forays into the forbidden world of knightly combat. It made Lancelot smile to think of another young boy born to a common place in life pursuing the same unlikely dream that he had held when he was young.
Yet the grace and fluidity of the boy's movement seemed to speak against it being the serving boy, who could hardly be so gawky and uncoordinated during the day and then acquire such skill of quick and deadly motion at night. The moves of the figure in the courtyard were practised and sure, although some of them had a formal air of study that suggested they had not often been tried against a real opponent. And yet despite this, Lancelot thought this mysterious boy might make a more interesting swordsman to face than all three of Pelles' sons put together; there was a better combination of strength with purpose, and of thought combined with instinct, that might do more when it was tried than all the over- or under-conscious strategies of any one of the brothers.
One night when Lancelot was feeling particularly restless, he spotted the boy in the yard and crept down the stairs meaning to watch from closer at hand. He followed the stairs down, cautious in the dark, wary of his unfamiliar surroundings and taking care not to waken anyone in the household. Despite his precautions, he took a few wrong turns and nearly ended up falling into the privy. By the time he had successfully retraced his misstep and found his way out to the yard, Lancelot half-expected to find the boy long gone. The solitary figure was still there, though, moving through the same carefully articulated series of steps.
Lancelot couldn't make out much more of the boy's features, even from closer at hand, as the darkness and shadows of the surrounding building still obscured everything but the barest outlines of his movements. Rather than reveal himself and interrupt the boy's practice, Lancelot found a spot sheltered beneath the lintel of the stair door and leaned there for a while to watch. He might have remained unnoticed the whole night, but that the figure stopped in the middle of one sequence to curse in frustration and at the same time stood near enough in the dim moonlight for Lancelot to recognize the face and the voice together.
"Lady Elaine?" He spoke aloud without meaning to. The figure whipped round wildly, looking in a panic for the source of the voice, and in the process of trying to retreat to a more sheltered position unfortunately ran right into Lancelot's own hiding place.
"You-!" she exclaimed and, "let go of me, I'll have you -" as he tried to muffle her exclamations of surprise. She kicked him in the shins for his trouble, until he was forced to let her go and step out into the yard, letting the light hit his face and hoping that no one had been woken by their voices and inspired to look out into the courtyard.
"Oh, it's you," Elaine said scornfully once she had got a look at him. "I thought it was someone who mattered." She seemed to dismiss him as quickly from her thoughts as if he had vanished, and strode on past him to continue with her interrupted exercise.
Lancelot watched with some disbelief, but she seemed to take no more notice of his existence, and as no one looked out from the windows around them to make inquiries, he concluded that they had not raised any general alarm. Indeed, as he looked about himself he found there were not many windows that did open onto the yard besides his own. Most of the others faced in a slantwise direction that overlooked the walls and outside of the keep - the one or two that did face inwards were boarded up.
"You're dropping your elbow," he observed as Elaine emitted another noise of frustration partway through her series of repeated steps.
She looked at him as if he had just begun speaking in a strange and unknown dialect.
"Your right elbow," he repeated, "every time you turn, you let it drop a little, that's why you lose control of the blade like that."
She regarded him suspiciously, as if waiting to see to what fresh disaster this advice might lead, and began the sequence again more slowly.
"There," he said when she came to the same point again and the sword's weight threw her out of balance. "You just did it again - you've got to keep it higher up."
Elaine glared at him. "My elbow is exactly where it's supposed to be."
"Very well, then," Lancelot said, "if you're so sure of yourself, attack me"
She looked sceptical. "You don't have a sword. It might not look good if I killed you in the middle of the night and left your body sprawled across the courtyard."
"So I tried to abduct you again and this time you resisted," Lancelot suggested. "Only I won't be in an danger because you're dropping your elbow."
She glared at him again and said, "Fine, ready to die now?"
He gave a mock bow. "At your command, my lady," he said, then ducked because she had begun to move forward again already, swiftly threatening to decapitate him. He backed away slowly, keeping just out of range of her blade as she stepped forward through the sequence.
Then she came to the turn, her elbow dropped, and Lancelot ducked under the wavering sword to grab her forearm and twist it, forcing the hilt out of her grasp. He caught it neatly in his other hand and went into an en guard position.
"Would you like to try to kill me again now?" he asked.
Elaine looked furious, almost ready to go on the offensive despite the sword that was now pointed in the wrong direction for it. However she merely watched intently as Lancelot began to go through the same series of moves, deliberately letting his elbow drop at the same moment as Elaine had done. She pounced on the opening and almost before he knew what had happened, she had the sword out of his hand again and held against his throat, a look of childish glee on her face.
"So what exactly would you do to stop me slitting your throat?" she demanded.
He held out his hand for the sword, which she offered him hilt-first this time, and demonstrated the move in slow motion, maintaining an excessive degree of formal correctness throughout and keeping his elbow much higher than was strictly necessary. She laughed at him.
"You look ridiculous," Elaine told him, "like a chicken."
"You're too kind," Lancelot said with half a bow. "I am, however, a chicken who could fell you with a single stroke if you tried to get close enough to take my sword from me. I don't recommend you try it." He let his arm drop dramatically so that his elbow was almost level with his knee. "And this," he said, "is what you were doing. Alive -" he lifted his arm exaggeratedly up to the level of his ear "- dead -" and dropped it again, repeating the motion until he did indeed look like a chicken flapping its wing.
Elaine laughed at him some more, but after a few more repetitions she darted in and grabbed the sword back when his grip was weakest. She repeated the set motions over and over, lifting her arm higher as she turned until the whole blade moved in a controlled arc as she wished it to.
"Now come here and try that dodge again," she said with an unholy grin.
Lancelot laughed and held up his hands in surrender. "No fear, my lady, I value my neck too much to test it. Your sword is safe for now."
"I have decided to let you live for the moment," Elaine declared magnanimously, lowering the sword. "You could yet turn out to be useful."
"You haven't had much experience facing off against a skilled opponent, have you?" Lancelot guessed.
Elaine scowled. "After I got past the age of about ten my father insisted that I stop wasting my time playing with my brothers. Before that I could have beaten any one of them, but since we've got older the only person I've had to practice with is Tim, and he can't do much more than play at fighting. Meanwhile they work at it every day and they have each other to learn from. There's only so much you can do with the diagrams in 'The Arte of Knightly Combatte', you know, and they certainly don't fight back or insult your posture - oh damn," she said out of nowhere, "take this and put it away, won't you? Greg will make a fuss over it if it goes missing."
Lancelot caught the sword she tossed at him - thankfully without injury - and started, "What do you -"
"I've got to go," Elaine said, "I'm not supposed to be out at night, and Dame B. will have a fit. It's the third door on the left," she said with apparent irrelevance, "try not to wake Bernhard, he's a light sleeper!" and with that she had vanished back into the castle.
It wasn't until he began to look about for the door she'd mentioned that Lancelot noticed what she had: the pre-dawn light was already growing, and he was standing alone in the open air holding a sword that had, presumably, been stolen from his host's armoury. He hastened into the shadow of the building and searched for the mysterious third door.
Lancelot tried the first entrance he found, hoping it concealed a corridor with at least three doors and a sleeping guard named Bernhard behind it. It turned out instead to be the door to a root cellar, which he determined by banging his head on the low ceiling and fetching up face-first in a barrel of rutabagas.
Through the next door he found his horse, which he was pleased to find had after all been brought with him and put in the castle stables. He patted Ambulatrix affectionately. She opened a single sleepy eye, regarded him with brief approval, and went back to sleep. He left her to her slumbers. His next try led to another courtyard, identical in all but size to the one he had left, being a good deal larger. The next door led to a covered walkway which, he was pleased to discover, contained a superfluity of doors. The third door on his left he opened carefully, mindful of the sleeping Bernhard, and found himself in the castle armoury.
Seeing no sign of a guard, he took his time looking over the weapons racks until he found the empty place where Gregory's sword must have resided. A long table beneath it held the various pieces of chainmail that must belong to Pelles' family; that hauberk could only have been made to fit Sidney's girth and broad shoulders. He was surprised to note a fourth set of armour - the one designated for him to wear in the tournament - that had been laid out alongside the rest. It was Elaine's, of course, and it occurred to him that this was probably the first time all four siblings' sets of armour had been set out together like this, and how much more appropriate it would be if the last suit were there awaiting its proper owner and not set aside for a chance interloper to use.
He would have liked to stay and admire the craftsmanship of the individual pieces, but the hour was growing later and the absent guard might not be absent long. Besides, the sons of Pelles began their training early in the day, as he had had occasion to witness from the clanging that ofttimes woke him from his bed. Lancelot turned to go and as he did he trod upon something soft. An instant later a loud and querulous yelping arose from under the table.
Bernhard, it turned out, was a guard dog, and whatever his normal disposition, he did not take kindly to having his tail stepped on. Few animals, in Lancelot's experience, ever did.
Lancelot tried a placatory "good dog" and a "nice Bernhard" and, when the beast still would not be quiet, attempted to edge towards the exit, but Bernhard was having none of it. He followed at Lancelot's heels, barking furiously, and snapping whenever Lancelot made a movement towards the door. After several agonizing minutes,the door opened and a friendly looking guard opened the door and came in pike-first.
"Ah, right," Lancelot said, his empty hands held out in a conciliatory gesture, "I can explain."
"Intruder in the armoury!" the guard cried out, paying no heed to Lancelot's frantic shushing noises, and soon it seemed as though the whole castle were echoing with the phrase. The only person who was likely to sleep through it, Lancelot thought a little resentfully, was the lady Elaine.
A handful of other assorted guards, some of them not even fully dressed yet, crowded around to lend their support to their fellow while Bernhard ran around Lancelot's ankles, barking happily at his captured prey. It was in this ludicrous situation that Sidney found Lancelot when he arrived to investigate the hubbub.
"That's all right, Ed," said Sidney to one of the guards, whose trousers were hanging a little precariously about his hips. "It's nothing to be alarmed about, just our visitor. Yes, thank you for getting here so quickly, Simon, I can take it from here."
From up close, Sidney had a broad, affable face and it was one the guards clearly respected, because they shuffled off on their business with courteous nods and nary a discontented murmur at being deprived of their captive, leaving Lancelot alone with Sidney and the guard dog.
The dog proved to be another among Sidney's admirers; Sidney whistled once, a short low note, and the barking mass of teeth and confusion fell quiet in an instant, returning docilely to his place beneath the table, where he curled up with his tail around his body to continue his morning nap.
Sidney looked as embarrassed as Lancelot felt about their meeting. The tips of his ears, sticking out of a nest of brown and curly hair, were tinged a deep pink.
"Sorry about all the ruckus," he said, "should have thought you'd want to get in here. Suppose you'll want all the practice you can get before the contest?"
Lancelot, who could think of nothing he wanted less at the moment than more practice, balked internally at the idea, but agreed because he could think of no better excuse for his presence.
"Well then," Sidney said with a cheerful grin, clapping his alarmingly muscular hands together, "let's get you ready, shall we?"
Lancelot, despairing silently of polite escape, allowed himself to be dragged around the armoury and equipped for a full and rigorous workout.
Sidney began gathering up his own armour, saying, "We've got your sword and things somewhere around - oh, here, the other bits and bobs will be in the stables, I expect. Though, um," he added, looking askance at the rather dinged and worn sword that Lancelot produced from his reclaimed belongings, "if you'd prefer to borrow one of mine..."
Lancelot shook his head. This blade had seen him through grimmer times than this young man - not yet even fully grown, for all his early bulk and muscle - could possibly have seen in his lifetime.
"Well, there's a smith in town if you want the edge sharpened -" Sidney halted at that train of thought, perhaps recalling that he was one of the people on whom its keenness was to be tested.
They prepared in silence after that, Lancelot feeling more and more the weariness of an already long night's work. Sidney kept stealing what he must have thought were subtle glances in Lancelot's direction, but were actually quite obvious, watching him closely until they strode out into the yard together.
Lancelot didn't last long against him. Fatigue did the work of a millstone dragging him down and he stumbled beneath a barely skillful blow from Sidney in the first bout.
Sidney offered him a hand up afterwards with all good grace. Lancelot rather got the impression that Sidney had knocked his feet out from under him as gently as he could manage, and Lancelot was suitably grateful for the effort.
"Listen, I'm sorry about knocking you out like that - not just now, I mean, though that too, but back in the woods, really," Sidney said in a rush, and for the first time Lancelot could really see the resemblance to his sister; hers was clearly a garrulous family. "Only we didn't know, you see, what had really happened. Greg had only told us some story about being ambushed in the woods and something about you behaving badly to Elaine and, well, all I wanted to say is, if you're the one she wants to run away with that's all right by me, and I'm sorry about all this other business. I'll do my best not to kill you in the tournament if I can help it, though you may want to get some practice between now and then if you want to make a decent show of it - and before you face the others, especially Greg. He hasn't got over things yet and it looks as though you need the practice pretty badly." He came to a stop at last, exuding amiability and good intent, though still a little pink from his joint exertion and embarrassment.
Lancelot thanked him kindly for his advice, accepted yet another apology for getting his skull bashed with a rock which Sidney "never thought would hit him that hard" and climbed the tower stairs to collapse on his bed.
Well, he thought, during his last moments of consciousness before his head hit the pillow, if he had wanted to convince the brothers that he wasn't a threat in combat, he had just succeeded.
Part Four
Crossposted from http://themadlurker.dreamwidth.org/62714.html at Dreamwidth.
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