rosa_acicularis (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rosa_acicularis) wrote2010-09-17 03:31 pm
rosa_acicularis) wrote2010-09-17 03:31 pm
Merlin Fic: The Goose Girl 4/4
Title: The Goose Girl
Characters: Full series one cast.
Rating: Teen.
Betas:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eponymous_rose, lalaithlockhart, and significantowl.
Warnings: None.
Summary: "For shall I tell you truth? You seemed that wave about to break upon me and sweep me from my hold upon the world." Nimueh returns to Camelot. AU after series one.
part one part two part three
++
Bess hasn’t been inside the Great Hall since she returned to Camelot.
In some ways it is much as it was before – long, heavy tables and the hazy glow of torchlight, the thick smells of rich food and too many bodies too close together. She’d loved feasts, before, had loved the pageantry, the gossip and the crowd. In those days Camelot had been a young city, bright and fierce and loud, and Uther’s court had been one of revels and wine, poets and song.
Now the Hall is silent. Bess stands behind Morgana’s chair at the high table, wine jug gripped tight in her hands. Uther sits less than six feet away.
It’s curious, how much and yet how little she feels, standing there staring at the back of his grey head. He looks old and hollow, nothing like the man of her memories or the ghoul of her nightmares, and she finds that she pities him. He is so much less than he was.
The king’s face is blank, his stern features slack and still. Like every one of the two hundred some lords, ladies, knights, servants, and villagers crammed into the Great Hall that night, he stares at the open door and waits for Arthur.
Bess and Merlin stand against the wall, fighting to keep their dismay from showing on their faces.
“This,” Merlin says under his breath, “is an awful plan.”
“You only think that because I came up with it and you didn’t.” She pokes his side. “Try to look a little more lovesick and a little less like you’re about to vomit.”
“Maybe that’s just how I look when I’m in love,” Merlin says. “And stop poking me.”
A goose girl has no place at a royal feast, even as a servant, and Bess had been at a loss for an excuse to attend. But with Gwen home sick—
(“She sent me a note this morning,” Morgana had told them, pale with anger. “In ten years of service she’s missed exactly one day of work, and that was when her father was murdered.” Merlin’s face had gone pinched with worry, and Arthur – well, Arthur had looked a bit like he was going to vomit, which makes Bess wonder.)
—Morgana would need someone to serve her at the feast, so she’d temporarily promoted Bess to the lofty position of handmaiden. As it turned out, she needn’t have bothered; the Hall is thick with people who don’t belong, scullery maids and dirty-faced village children and castle guards who are meant to be on duty. They stand silent and perfectly still, food and wine forgotten, and wait for their prince.
There are a few exceptions. Bess spots a jolly, red-faced lord seated at one of the lower tables who’s too deep in his cups to notice anything’s amiss. After a bit of squinting and a lot of imagination she matches a name to the face. It’s Lord Urry – older, fatter, and drunker, but undoubtedly the same man. He’d been a great wit in his prime, and a minor warlock. Once Bess had taught him how to unlock doors with a word, and later had reason to regret it.
Bess nudges Merlin and sends a meaningful glance in Urry’s direction. Merlin’s eyes go wide. “Lord Urry? Really?”
She gives him a small half-shrug. “Nowhere near powerful enough to do this, and I can’t imagine why he would. He picked the winning side during the early days of the Purge, and it’s treated him well.” She scans the rest of the crowd. “See anyone else?”
Merlin worries his lip with his teeth. After a moment he asks, “Why are you so sure the sorcerer will be here?”
Bess smiles grimly. “Because whoever they are, they like spectacle. Using your spell as a diversion, channeling your power, the mist, the scale of it all – they put a lot of effort into this show, and they’ll need to be close enough to enjoy the end result. They have to be here; they don’t have a choice.”
Merlin is quiet, and they stand side by side in silence, watching the crowd. “You know a lot about this.”
“I read a lot,” Bess says, and then the doors open and Arthur enters the Hall.
He does look very handsome, if still a bit nauseous, and he hesitates just inside the doors as every head in the Great Hall turns as one to take him in. Torchlight shines golden on his pale hair and the strong line of his jaw, and the Hall gasps, a single stunned breath rattling through two hundred throats. The sound is like thunder.
“Erm,” Arthur says, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other. “Sorry I’m late?”
The Great Hall smiles at him. It is the same smile on every face, on every child and lady and knight, and each mouth moves in time with the others, a slow spread of lips to reveal teeth. Despite Morgana’s worries, there is no lust or want in that smile – only helpless, mindless adoration.
Bess swallows hard. “You were right,” she says. “This is an awful plan.”
Arthur crosses the Hall to sit beside the king, and every chair and bench creaks as their occupants slowly shift in their seats, following Arthur with their eyes. “Father,” Arthur murmurs, looking down at his empty plate. “Morgana.”
“Arthur,” Uther says, the happiness in his voice as fixed and strange as his smile. “I am glad you are here.”
“Thank you,” Arthur says.
“For a while,” Uther says, “you were not here, and that was unpleasant.”
“Yes,” Arthur says. “Um. Sorry about that.” He turns to the woman sitting to his right and says, “Enjoying the feast, Lady Elaine?”
Lady Elaine is a handsome auburn-haired woman with an aristocratic nose and arched eyebrows, and her sharp face is ill suited for smiling. She beams at Arthur and says, “Now that you are here, my lord.”
“Yes,” the Hall choruses as one. “Now that you are here, my lord.”
Arthur goes pale. “Thanks,” he says faintly. “That’s…very kind.”
Merlin pushes away from the wall and leans over Arthur’s shoulder. “Would you like me to fill your cup, sire?”
“God, yes,” Arthur says, and Merlin does. Afterward he does not move away, but stays at Arthur’s side, the knuckles of his left hand almost touching Arthur’s arm. Merlin glances back at Bess, giving her a wide-eyed look that says, What next? Bess shrugs.
No clue, she mouths. Improvise.
Morgana clears her throat and turns to Uther. “My lord, there is no food.”
“Food?” Uther says.
“Arthur might be hungry,” Morgana says, and the smile falls from Uther’s face, from every face in sight.
“Arthur,” Uther says in the wounded voice of a bewildered child, “are you hungry?”
“No,” Arthur says immediately, “I’m fine,” but the prince has had an active sort of day, what with the whacking at people with swords and the plotting against sorcerers, and his stomach betrays him. It growls, and the sound rings impossibly loud in the worshipful silence of the Hall.
“You there,” Uther calls to the nearest person who looks like she might know something about kitchens and the food that isn’t on their plates. A frizzy-haired scullery maid steps forward and curtseys.
“Yes, sire?” she says, and Bess knows her voice – it’s the much-abused Elise of Penny’s gang of kitchen miscreants. Her eyes are locked on Arthur, and she looks as if she’s about to faint.
“Arthur is hungry,” Uther says. “Where is the food?”
Elise’s bottom lip trembles. “There is no food,” she says. “We were so looking forward to the feast that we forgot to prepare any.”
Arthur snorts. “Well, that doesn’t make much sense, does it?” Merlin kicks his chair. “What?” Arthur says, twisting in his seat to glare at Merlin. “It doesn’t.”
Elise gives a tiny hiccup of a sob and stutters, “I-I-I’m sorry,” before bursting into tears.
The entire Hall bursts into tears with her.
Uther and his lords, the knights and the ladies of the court, the servants and the villagers and the stern-faced ambassadors from Mercia – they weep together and in perfect unison, choking out the same shameless, violent sobs, and it is as if the castle itself is weeping, as if the cries come not from many voices but from a single throat, something deep and forgotten beneath the stones.
All of Camelot weeps but for old Lord Urry, snoring into his doublet, three terrified serving girls about to bolt for the doors, and the Lady Elaine of Mercia, who turns genteelly in her chair and grins at Merlin like a cat who’s spotted a bird with a crippled wing.
“I knew it!” Merlin says, punching the air. “I knew it was you!”
Arthur stands. “Now, hold on—”
“No, no,” Lady Elaine says, “he’s quite right. I’m a sorceress.” She stands, sweeping her skirts out behind her. “It’s sort of predictable, if you think about it.”
“I’ve suspected you all along,” Merlin says. “Haven’t I, Bess?”
He has, and now that she’s looking, Bess can see why. Lady Elaine plays her part perfectly, from the practiced note of feminine sweetness in her voice to the elegant turn of her wrist, but there is something feral in her eyes, something she can’t quite hide. It makes Bess press back against the wall behind her, her fingers gripping stone. “Merlin,” she says, “we should, we should really—”
“And who is this little thing?” Lady Elaine says, peering past Merlin to see Bess’ face. “Your simple-minded sidekick? Kid sister? Team mascot?”
Arthur steps forward, placing himself between Merlin and Lady Elaine. “She is none of your concern.”
“And she’s not little,” Merlin says from over Arthur’s shoulder.
Arthur elbows Merlin in the chest, pushing him further back. “What have you done to these people? What is your purpose here?”
Lady Elaine taps a delicate finger against her chin. “Well, my lord, since you’ve asked so nicely, I’ll tell you: I’ve come to Camelot to enchant your subjects, murder your father, and seize your kingdom – on behalf of my brother, actually, which is rather tedious, but I do enjoy any excuse to get out of that shithole we call a castle.” She pauses, considering. “Also, I enjoy travel on general principle.”
Merlin and Arthur gape at her.
Morgana steps forward, a sword she’d nicked from one of the weeping knights hidden behind her back. “You will undo this spell, Elaine.”
“My Lady Morgana.” Lady Elaine grins at her, showing teeth. “You look tired, my dear. Something keeping you awake at night?” She moves to Arthur, resting her pale hand on his arm. “You know, my lord, your servant wasn’t the only one with suspicions. Dear Morgana’s been having me followed since my first week here.” She tilts her head, and her grin turns sharp. “Funny that she neglected to mention it. Still, I’m sure there’s a perfectly innocent explanation.”
Arthur pulls away. “That’s enough.”
Lady Elaine sighs. “Yes, I suppose it is.” She lifts her hand and fire blossoms in her palm like a rose – glowing red, then violet, and finally blue-white with heat. She raises her arm. “This was a nice conversation. It makes me sad that we won’t have another.”
“Merlin, now!” Bess shouts, and Merlin murmurs the words under his breath. For a terrible moment nothing happens, and then forty well-hidden stink bombs fizzle and explode, filling the Great Hall with a thick, wretched-smelling smoke.
Lady Elaine shrieks in frustration, and her fireball slices through the smoke as a shadow that could be Arthur knocks into a shadow that could be Merlin and they both tumble to the floor, the fire sizzling through the space where’s Merlin’s head had been, scorching the wall behind them.
“How annoying,” Lady Elaine says, and another fireball sparks to life in the haze of smoke.
Morgana’s bony hand grabs Bess by the wrist and pulls her down to where the smoke is thickest, and Bess scrabbles over the stone floor until she finds Merlin’s arm. She hooks her fingers into his sleeve and Merlin reaches for Arthur as Arthur reaches for the king, and then the prince leads them all stumbling out of the Great Hall, hidden by the smoke and the smell and the love-lost fools of Camelot still sobbing the broken syllables of Arthur’s name, their hands held over their hearts.
++
Arthur drags them through winding corridors and down steep staircases until they reach an alcove not far above the dungeons. Only then do they release each other’s hands and slump against the cool stone walls, breathing hard. Arthur tries to keep his father on his feet but Uther crumples, his face hidden in his hands as he weeps.
Arthur kneels beside him. “Please,” he says. “Please stop. Look, I’m right here. I’m fine.”
“I cannot bear it,” Uther says, but it is not his voice alone. They hear its echo from the dungeons below, from all those in the castle above. Uther gives a wrenching sob, turning away from his son and pressing his face into the stone of the wall. “I cannot bear it. It is too much. I cannot, I cannot…” His voice fades to a murmur, and he mouths the same words, over and over again: I cannot bear it. I cannot, I cannot.
Morgana touches Arthur’s shoulder. “Arthur, being near you – I think it’s making him worse.”
“No,” Arthur says, shaking her off. “He said it was better when I was here, when I was with him. He said—”
“You should have left him behind,” Bess says, and when the other three turn to stare at her, it is somehow Merlin who looks the most betrayed.
“He’s helpless, Bess,” Merlin says. “Elaine would have killed him.”
“And now he’ll live long enough for the spell to drive him mad.” Bess folds her arms over her chest, fingernails digging into her own skin. “Arthur, you’re hurting him. Move away.”
Uther lifts his head, his eyes red and swollen and unseeing. “That voice,” he rasps. “I know that voice.”
Arthur stumbles to his feet, away from the king. “All those people – we just left them there.” His hand moves to the hilt of his sword. “I’m going back.”
“Yes,” Merlin says, “because that’s exactly what this day needs – you getting set on fire by a crazed sorceress.”
“Do shut up, Merlin,” Arthur says, and Merlin is about to retort when an explosion rocks the castle, shaking the stones beneath their feet. Bess falls back, out of the shelter of the alcove, and she watches as the tapestries at the top of the staircase above burst into flame. Merlin tugs her to her feet, and she holds tight to his arm and pulls him close.
“Merlin, she needed your power for a reason,” Bess whispers. “She could never have cast a spell like this without it. You’re stronger than she is. You can stop this.”
“I can’t,” Merlin says, looking back at Arthur, at Uther huddled against the wall. “You know I can’t.”
There’s another explosion, closer still. “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Lady Elaine sing songs, the words echoing in the corridor above. “Hiding, are we? I like a bit of a game, my pets, but I should warn you – I do tend to cheat.”
Morgana pulls Bess and Merlin back into the alcove, her face flushed with heat from the fires. “Arthur, the hidden passage through the dungeon. Do you remember the way?”
“Of course,” Arthur says, unsheathing his sword. “You take them to safety, and I’ll buy you the time you need.”
“Please, Merlin,” Bess says. “You know I’m right.”
Merlin’s mouth thins into a stubborn line and he steps in front of Arthur, blocking his path. “Sire.”
“There’s no time to argue, Merlin,” Arthur says, and he steps forward, expecting Merlin to move out of his way. He doesn’t.
“You’re right,” Merlin says. “There’s no time.” He takes a deep breath. “Arthur, do you trust me?”
“Merlin—”
“Do you?”
For a moment Arthur looks as if he’s about to shove Merlin aside, but then he deflates, his shoulders slumping, his young face tired and dirty and frightened. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, of course I do.”
Merlin exhales. “Then you’ll take Morgana and Bess—”
Morgana raises her sword and delicately clears her throat.
“Then you’ll take Bess to Gaius and help them find a way to stop the spell.” Arthur opens his mouth to object, but Merlin grabs his arm, fingers closing tight above his elbow. “You said you trusted me. Was that a lie?”
Arthur steps back, shaking his head, and pulls his arm from Merlin’s grasp. “Merlin, my father—”
“I cannot,” Uther murmurs, heartbroken. “I cannot bear it.”
“I’ll protect him,” Merlin says. “You have my word.”
“Olly olly oxen free,” Lady Elaine calls out, her voice high and mad and all too close, and Bess slips her fingers into Arthur’s hand.
“We should probably run,” she says, and they do.
++
The hidden passage through the dungeon isn’t so much hidden as half-collapsed, and though Bess has an easy enough time of it, Arthur keeps knocking his head against the ceiling.
“This was considerably less painful when I was a few inches shorter,” he says, rubbing his forehead. He tightens his grip on her hand, and she can’t help but be grateful – the darkness makes her uneasy, and it is as if his voice and sweat-damp hand are the only links between her and the world above. The world that presses down on her now, stone and earth and distant sky.
“How far underground are we?” she asks, and then fervently wishes she hadn’t.
“Far,” Arthur says, guiding her around a pile of rubble. “We need to move faster.”
Bess squeezes his hand. “Merlin will be all right. I’m sure of it.”
Just before they’d escaped into the dungeon they’d heard Elaine’s shout of discovery and the spell that followed. Merlin had shouted back, and not even someone with Arthur’s knack for willful ignorance could mistake his words for anything but magic.
Arthur grunts. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Right,” Bess says. “Good. Me either.” She pauses. “Not that I know anything about it. Whatever ‘it’ may be. I haven’t a clue what we’re not talking about, actually, and I’d ask, only you said you didn’t want to talk about it.”
There’s a sudden drop in the path ahead of them; Arthur jumps down, then turns to guide Bess’ jump, his hands on her waist. “Let me guess,” he says when her feet are on the ground again. “You don’t deal well with enclosed spaces.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Bess says.
Bess waits for the passage to climb toward the surface, but it never does – they travel deeper and deeper into the tunnels and caverns hidden beneath the castle, and as her panic rises Bess fights to keep her breath slow and even, focusing on the gentle rise and fall of her chest and thinking calm thoughts.
“Stop panting like that,” Arthur says. “It’s annoying.”
“I’m not,” Bess says, “you’re imagining things,” but now that she’s listening she hears it too – soft, gasping breaths and the sharp sounds of a creature in pain. She stops walking. “That’s not me.”
He tugs on her hand. “There’s no shame in being frightened, Bess, and certainly no point in lying about it. We’re all scared of something, you know. Even I—”
Something small and furry brushes against her ankle, and Bess is about to shriek when Arthur gasps and drops her hand, leaving Bess alone in the dark.
“It’s just a rat,” she says. “Please, Arthur. I can’t see you. I can’t see anything.”
“Like the starlings,” Arthur says, his voice shaking, and Bess realises that the small sounds have grown louder, that the breaths have multiplied by the hundreds, by the thousands, and now she can smell them, the sour stink of their twitching, furred bodies, the skitter and scrape of their feet against stone. She wonders if Arthur can feel their eyes on him, their devotion and their heartbreak. She reaches for him in the darkness.
“Please, Arthur. We have to help Merlin.”
A hand seizes hers, and she holds it tightly. “Sorry I let go,” he says after a moment. “I didn’t mean to.”
“I was fine,” Bess lies. “Just worried about you, sire.”
“Such loyalty,” Arthur says wryly, his hand clammy in hers.
They take a few hesitant steps and the path clears before them, the rats cringing away from Arthur the way a moth once burned shudders from flame. Arthur’s steps grow quicker, less cautious, and after that they run through the passage in silence, scraping their palms bloody when they fall and running still, and Bess knows they’re nearly to the surface when they hear the weeping again, the cries of Camelot above.
“It is too much,” the voices say, and the words echo through the tunnel, shaking the stones. “I cannot bear it, I cannot, I cannot.”
“You said it would get worse,” Arthur says. “What could be worse than this?”
Bess is glad he can’t see her face. “I think I see a light,” she says. She pulls him forward. “Is that a door?”
The door is locked, warped with age and rot. Arthur opens it with one good slam of his shoulder, and they stumble into the empty, moonlit courtyard.
Bess takes a deep breath of clear night air and looks up at the sky. “I’m so happy I could cry.”
“Please don’t,” Arthur says, sounding pained, and then they’re running again, back into the castle and up the stairs and into Gaius’ workroom, where the tables are boiling with experiments and stacked high with books and Gaius crouches on the floor, cradling a weeping Gwen in his arms.
“Guinevere,” Arthur breathes, and takes a halting step forward.
Gwen lifts her tear-stained face, her eyes shining in the candlelight. “No,” she whispers. “Please, no.” Her body shakes, not simply with tears, but something more – tremors that rattle her teeth and jerk back her head. Gaius shakes with her, struggling to hold her steady.
“Impossible,” Bess murmurs. “She’s fighting the spell.”
“At great risk to her health,” Gaius says, breathless, and Bess hurries over to relieve him, pulling Gwen into her arms. Her skin is hot to the touch, beyond any fever Bess has seen, and Bess knows death well enough to know this – Gwen has little time left.
Gaius stands, supporting himself on a nearby chair. “Gwen came to warn me, sire. It seems she’s been resisting the enchantment since she first felt its effects this morning.” He pauses. “She knows what’s coming next.”
“Arthur,” Gwen says in a voice like broken glass. She clutches Bess’ arm, her eyes red-rimmed and unseeing. “You have to tell him.”
“I’m here,” Arthur says, gripping the doorframe, afraid to come closer. “Am I – Gwen, am I hurting you?”
“Yes,” she gasps, reaching for him with one trembling hand. “But no, don’t leave, please don’t—”
“Hush,” Bess says. “He’s here.” She smoothes the tangled hair from Gwen’s sweat-soaked face, and beckons Arthur closer with a tip of her head. He takes a few hesitant steps toward them.
Gwen looks sightlessly into Bess’ eyes, and when she speaks Bess can hear the effort in it, the battle for every word. “When it’s done, you have to tell him. You have to make him understand. They hurt so much and so terribly and they can’t stop, they can’t ever stop.” She laughs, a harsh, pained sound from the back of her throat. “How can they, when it feels like he’s all we have left? Like he’s all we ever were?”
Arthur kneels beside them, and his fingers hover over Gwen’s shaking hands. “Guinevere, I—”
“Don’t you dare,” Gwen says, suddenly furious. She struggles free of Bess’ arms and shoves Arthur in the chest. “Don’t you dare apologise to me, Arthur Pendragon. Don’t you dare feel guilty. If I love you it will be because I damned well want to, and not because any stupid spell tricks me into it. That is my final word on the matter.” She sags against him, her head hanging low. “Sorry,” she murmurs into his shoulder. “That was rude.”
Arthur looks up, his eyes bright. “Gaius—”
Gaius rubs his hand over his mouth. “There’s nothing I can do for her. I do not know how to break the spell, and that is her only cure.”
The castle shakes with a distant explosion. Bess meets Gaius’ eyes and sees the question there. “He’ll be fine,” she says. “Morgana is with him.”
“Morgana,” Gwen groans into Arthur’s shirt. “Morgana will be so angry.”
Arthur raises an uncertain hand to the back of her head, his fingers brushing the skin of her neck. “Morgana is always angry. It would frighten me more if she weren’t.”
Gwen smiles up into his face, her eyes luminous with tears. “Arthur,” she says. “Arthur, you have to know. It wasn’t your fault.”
There is a sharp sound from the window, and something dark strikes the glass. Bess stands, walks over to the window and opens it. The night air is thick and hot and still, and it carries the cries from the castle around them. Bess looks down at the courtyard below. “I don’t see anything,” she says.
It happens again at another window, and then another. A small dark snap against the glass that disappears as quickly as it comes, again and again and again until something flies through the open window, brushing past Bess’ face and slamming into the stone wall at the other side of the room. It makes a soft, sickening sound as it hits, then slides to the floor. Bess crosses the room slowly, bends down and gently lifts the dead bird in her cupped hands.
“It’s a starling,” she says. “Its neck is broken.”
Gaius slams the window closed, and a heartbeat later the windows are dark with feathers, the sound of snapping bone like hailstones against the glass, like any other summer storm.
“It is too much,” Gwen says. “I cannot bear it.” She touches Arthur’s face with one finger, tracing the curve of his shaking mouth. “I cannot.”
Bess cradles the broken bird in her hands and watches as Arthur holds Gwen in his arms, as Gaius listens helplessly for the next explosion from a distant battle. She steps back, her breath coming fast, and hears the storm outside, the single voice speaking through the people of Camelot.
I cannot, I cannot.
She steps back into a table and knocks the book of magic onto the floor. It falls open to a page covered in her old handwriting, the sharp, spiking script that distinguishes her words from those of all the others who have owned the book in its time. She kneels on the floor and turns to the page with the charm to protect against love spells.
At the bottom of the page she finds note crammed into the margin, an aside written in a cramped, almost illegible hand; Nimueh had written: Largely ineffectual, like most charms of this nature, and easily broken. A waste of time and milk, really – destroy the token (lock of hair, toenail clipping, intimate item of clothing, etc.) and you destroy the spell. Don’t know why I bothered.
“No,” Bess says, dropping the book. “It can’t be that simple.”
“Bess?” Gaius says, but Bess is already throwing herself up the stairs to Merlin’s room. The lock of hair is still on the bed where they’d left it, and Bess’ hand shakes as she plucks it from the sheets and staggers back down the stairs.
“Bess,” Gaius says, “what are you—”
She holds up her hand. “I don’t know,” she says. “Just give me a candle.”
He does, and she holds the hair to the flame.
The world goes suddenly, horribly silent.
On the floor, Gwen wrinkles her nose. “What’s that awful smell? Is someone’s hair on fire?”
Arthur stares at Gwen, wide-eyed with shock, and she stares back.
“Arthur,” she says, her hands fluttering over her mouth. “Sire. My lord.”
Arthur jerks his arms away, releasing her from his embrace. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
“You have snot on your collar,” she says.
Arthur looks down. “So I do,” he says, and his grin, as Elise the scullery maid would say, is like a sunrise – gold and warm and new.
Gaius takes the candle from Bess’ hand and gives her shoulder a pat. “Well done,” he says. “Though it would’ve been nice if you’d thought of it sooner.”
Arthur helps Gwen to her feet. “Gaius,” she says, “where’s Merlin?”
Bess and Gaius exchange an anxious look. “Well,” Bess says, and then she stops. She smells something more than burnt hair, something like the scent of a flame just before it is lit, and she stumbles away from the windows, fear and memory rising in her throat like bile.
The night sky crackles with light, an unnatural, blinding fire that pierces the darkness in the courtyard below. It fades, and the room shakes a little in the thunder that follows.
Arthur frowns. “Was that lightning?”
“No,” Gaius says, and with a single, hard look at Bess, he walks out the door.
++
Bess almost doesn’t follow.
She waits at the top of the staircase, listening to the echo of their footsteps against stone. The castle is so quiet now, almost funereal in its silence, and Bess thinks about simply walking away, retreating to empty corridors and the small bed that awaits her in the servant’s hall. She thinks about walking past the hall and continuing to the castle gates, passing into the hills and the forests and a life where Camelot is just a memory, a white blur on the horizon.
Gaius’ hands are clenched into fists, hidden in the bells of his sleeves, and behind him Arthur takes Gwen’s arm as he helps her down the stairs, his fingers covering hers. In a moment they will be gone, will disappear around the corner and leave Bess standing alone. They will forget she was ever there.
“Bugger that,” Bess says, and trips down the steps after them.
The stones of the courtyard are pale in the moonlight, the sky clear above. Gaius grabs Bess’ arm, and she follows his gaze – Merlin and Morgana stagger toward them from the castle gates, looking as if they’d just fought a duel to the death and won by a very narrow margin indeed. They are bruised and limping and a little singed, but they are undoubtedly alive.
Morgana’s dress is in tatters, and she drags a broken sword behind her, its tip scraping against stone. “I can’t believe she got away,” she says, and kicks sullenly at a rock in her path. It’s only Merlin’s hand on her elbow that stops her from toppling over.
Merlin nods, wiping at the blood dripping from his nose, which is almost certainly broken. “Yeb,” he says. “Bery annoying. But at beast be bidn’t bie.”
Morgana frowns at him. “What?”
“At beast be bidn’t—”
“At least we didn’t die,” Arthur translates. “Yes. Congratulations on that, by the way.”
Morgana looks right past Arthur and squeals Gwen’s name at the top of her lungs, tackling her handmaiden with her arms outstretched. Gwen is already much recovered, but Morgana’s weight seems to be a bit much for her; she gives Gaius a pleading look.
“Concussion, I bink,” Merlin says. “Baking her boopy.”
“Making her loopy,” Arthur corrects quickly, and Gaius’ eyebrow returns to its normal latitude. He takes Morgana’s arm and gently disentangles her from Gwen.
“There, there, my dear. Let me see your pupils.”
Bess steps forward to inspect Merlin’s nose. She pokes at it with one finger, and he yelps. “Yep,” she says. “Definitely broken.” She pulls a handkerchief from her dress pocket and holds it carefully to his nose, soaking up the blood.
“Bhat bid you bo?” he asks.
“It was the lock of hair. I burned it, and the spell ended.” She shrugs. “It was pure luck.”
Merlin smiles. “I boubt bat.”
“As do I,” Lady Elaine says, appearing in swirl of flame behind him. She sits astride a great dark horse, her cloak flowing long behind her. “You spoiled my fun, little girl. I won’t forget it.”
“All right, that’s enough,” Bess says. “I’m of average height for my age. How many times am I going to have to say it?”
“Ignore her, Bess,” Morgana says, lifting her chin. “She knows when she’s been beaten.”
Elaine turns to Morgana, her lips curved into something like a smile. “You and the servant still breathe, my lady, because the child made me swear I would not kill you. A life for a life, or some nonsense like that.” The horse moves restlessly beneath her, and she rolls her eyes. “Boys, you know. So sentimental.”
“Mordred,” Arthur says softly, almost too softly to be heard, and Bess shudders. There is something about that name. Something that she’s forgotten.
Elaine grins. “Well, I hate to terrorize and run, but I’ve got people to see, dissent to sow.” She blows Merlin a kiss. “See you later, Ears. Give Uther my best.” She spurs the horse into a gallop, and as she rides through the gates of Camelot fire curls through her outstretched hand, curving into a bow. For a terrible moment Bess knows what is coming but cannot react, cannot move, and then Elaine draws back her arm and fires the flaming arrow at Arthur’s heart.
It stops, sizzling in the air just in front of his chest. The arrow hovers there, unnatural and unmoving, and Arthur takes a single, deliberate step to one side. He clears his throat. “Merlin.”
“Oh,” Merlin says, and the arrow slams harmlessly into the door behind them. Gwen gapes, but Morgana, Gaius, and Bess watch Arthur, the hard line of his mouth and the tightness around his eyes. None of them breathe.
“Huh,” Arthur says, and brushes a bit of ash from his shirt. “Lucky she was such a rotten shot.”
Merlin grins, sagging with relief. “Yeb,” he says. “Bery lucky.”
Arthur wraps his arm around Merlin’s shoulders. “You really should stop talking, Merlin. You sound like an idiot.” He pauses. “More so than usual, I mean.”
“Merlin,” Gwen says, her voice breaking. “Merlin, you’re—”
“About to collapse, I should think,” Gaius says. “Merlin, Morgana – I’d like to attend to your injuries immediately. You, Gwen, should be resting.” He shakes his head and turns with a sigh to climb the stairs again. “Bess, you know where I keep the salves for mild burns. I’ll need that, an anti-inflammatory for Merlin’s nose, and a number of bandages of various dimensions and thicknesses…” He disappears into the castle, still giving orders. Bess and the others stay in the courtyard, standing in a quiet circle.
“We drew Elaine away from Uther as quickly as we could,” Morgana says. “He should be by the dungeons.”
“I should find him,” Arthur says. He doesn’t move. For a long moment no one speaks.
Gwen looks again at the arrow embedded in the door, her face expressionless and still in the faint light. “It was you, wasn’t it, Merlin? You cured my father of that plague, and when they accused me of sorcery you tried to confess. You saved his life.” She turns back to him. “How many times have you saved us all?”
“Ib’s nob thab thimble,” Merlin says, anguished, and Arthur gently cuffs the back of his head.
“For pity’s sake, Merlin, just say you’re welcome and be done with it.”
Merlin looks down at his feet, his arms folded across his thin chest and Bess’ bloody handkerchief crushed in his hand. “You’re belcome.”
Gwen steps forward and kisses his swollen cheek, her eyes bright, and Bess remembers the taste of the plague that had almost killed Gwen’s father, that had killed so many in so little time. She’d shaped it with her own hands, had smiled at still bodies beneath white sheets and the terror of a city she now calls home, and while it was Uther’s hatred that took Gwen’s father in the end, Bess’ revenge nearly claimed him first.
Bess moves back, drawing away from the circle, but before she can disappear into the night Morgana takes her hand. Her fingers are cold and surprisingly strong, and she pulls Bess back to the others. “No, I don’t think so,” she says softly, into Bess’ ear. “It’s too late for that.”
Bess watches Merlin smile and knows she’s right.
++
Three days later the heat breaks, and it begins to rain.
The geese shelter beneath the willow at the pond’s edge, shaking the warm damp from their feathers and picking resentfully at the grass growing between the tree’s heavy roots. Bess climbs up, past the willow’s lower limbs and higher than she’s dared to venture before. The branches are strong enough to hold her but they move with the wind, swaying her from side to side. She closes her eyes and lets herself be carried, listening to the wind in the leaves. It sounds like water, like waves against the shore; Bess holds her hand over her heart and feels its beat, warm and steady against her palm.
A goose honks, and Bess hears a muttered curse from below. She closes her eyes tighter, holds her breath and keeps perfectly still, like when she was small and thought that if she wanted it hard enough she could make herself disappear.
It hadn’t worked then, either.
“Oh, hello,” Merlin says, panting a little as he climbs. “Fancy meeting you here.”
Bess opens her eyes. “So you’re not executed, then.”
“Not yet,” Merlin says, and heaves himself up onto a nearby branch. It creaks ominously, and his adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. “You’d know that if you hadn’t spent the last few days hiding up here like an antisocial tree sloth.”
“I’m not hiding,” Bess says, though she is. She watches as Merlin settles onto his branch, one skinny long leg swinging on either side. He’s soaked to the skin, his hair plastered to his head and dripping. He leans back against the trunk and chews meditatively on his thumbnail, apparently in no hurry to break the silence. Bess scowls down at him. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“Well, why aren’t you executed? You and Elaine weren’t exactly subtle, you know.”
Merlin shrugs. “Seems the only bit the king really remembers about that night was Elaine’s little speech about murdering him and seizing the crown for her brother. I think he’s too worked up about that to worry about much else.” He tips his head back, his hair dark against the wood. “He threw the rest of the Mercian delegation into the dungeons. Arthur’s with him right now, trying to talk him out of executing them for sorcery.”
“They’re probably innocent.”
“Yes,” Merlin says dryly, “because Uther usually cares about that.”
“It’d be a declaration of war, Merlin. A war we really can’t afford to fight.”
“I know,” he says. “I’ve already had this conversation three times today – once with Gaius and twice more with Arthur. War with Mercia would be a disaster.” He tries to rub his hand over his face, but flinches when his fingers brush his swollen nose. “Ow.”
“It looks better,” Bess says. “Not quite so purple. Did you use magic?”
Merlin shakes his head. “No. I don’t know many healing spells.” He pauses. “Do you?”
Bess sighs. “Merlin—”
He sits up, his expression earnest. “I know you don’t want to talk about it, Bess, and I understand, I do, but the Great Dragon said—”
“The Great Dragon is a great pain in my arse,” Bess says, “and if you haven’t learnt by now that he can’t be trusted, then you’re even slower than you look.”
Merlin’s face darkens. “I don’t trust him. I haven’t since he sent me to Nimueh and expected me to bargain my mother’s life for his freedom.”
Bess’ fingernails sink into the bark of the branch beneath her. “The Dragon needs Arthur to live long enough to become king, Merlin. So do we, come to that.”
“He lied to me.”
“And you lied to Arthur. Now Arthur will lie to the king and keep your secret.” She raises an eyebrow. “How’s he taking that, by the way?”
“I think he’s decided to pretend he knew all along. Mostly, we’re not talking about it.”
“An excellent plan,” Bess says. “We should follow his example.”
Merlin draws his legs up onto the branch and hugs his knees to his chest. “You know, I asked Gaius about you. About your magic.”
Bess looks away. “Well,” she says through the sudden tightness in her throat, “I bet that was a short conversation.”
“It was. He told me your parents died when you were small and that you were raised by his sister, who was a powerful sorceress. He said she taught you everything she knew about magic, even though you had no talent for it.” He pauses. “He said she died last autumn, and that’s why you came to Camelot.”
Bess is fairly certain Gaius has never had a sister; she hangs her head and tries to look appropriately tragic. She wonders if she should attempt a sniffle.
Merlin watches her face. “You must miss her.”
“Oh, I do,” Bess says. “Terribly.”
“What was her name?”
Bess’ mind goes blank. “Um,” she says.
Merlin nods and sits back against the willow’s trunk. He doesn’t look angry, exactly, but he doesn’t look pleased either. He folds his arms across his chest. “Arthur, on the other hand, seems to be under the impression that your mother was a handmaiden here at court. He says that over the years she’s told you all sorts of hilarious bedtime stories about Uther’s court and his queen’s nutty high jinks. Which is pretty impressive when you consider that according to Gaius your mother’s been dead since you were an infant.”
“Er,” Bess says.
“And, of course, if you look in the steward’s staff registry it says that you come from a small village called Three Trees Crossing, where your only living family is your father, who is neither a sorceress nor a former handmaiden, but a fairly prosperous barley farmer.” Merlin watches her carefully, his eyes hard. “Bess, the Dragon called you old friend.”
Bess looks down at the branches below, the rain-heavy leaves and the dizzying distance to the ground. She bites her bottom lip. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“The truth would make a nice change.”
“Ah yes,” she says. “The truth.” She looks up. “Who was your father, Merlin?”
He flinches. “I don’t see what that has to do with—”
“It doesn’t. It’s a question I have no business asking, and you have no reason to answer it.” She smiles at him, a little sadly. “We have a right to our secrets, Merlin.”
Merlin nods once, his expression unreadable in the murky grey-green light. “All right,” he says.
She frowns. “All right?”
Merlin reaches up and pulls himself onto her branch. He sits beside her, his knee bumping hers. “Yeah. I mean, I don’t like that you lied to Arthur, and I don’t like that Gaius lied to me, but—” He shrugs. “I trust you.”
They are such simple words when heard from his lips, and she wonders if they mean so little to him, wonders that he says them so easily. A man like Merlin cannot afford to give his trust cheaply, and yet she can see it in his eyes – the simple, unerring certainty that even if she is not what she seems, she is worthy of his faith. Merlin trusts her, and it’s terrifying.
“You shouldn’t,” Bess says, her heart in her throat. “Merlin, I—”
He slides closer on the branch, and she feels the heat of his shoulder, his shirt damp with rain. “Tell me how to fix my nose.”
Bess shakes her head. “I don’t know.”
“I think you do.”
“I think you’re an ass.”
“Bess,” Merlin says, and he doesn’t say anything more, just lets the sound of her name fill the silence. The wind moves through the trees.
Bess takes a deep, steadying breath. “Ágíeme,” she says, careful to keep the power from her voice. “Focus on the proper shape of the nose, the knitting of the bone. The cartilage. Focus, inhale, and—”
“Ágíeme,” Merlin says, and his eyes flash gold. His nose makes a strange popping sound, and he groans. “Okay, that really hurt.”
“Don’t be such a baby,” Bess says. She pokes gently at the swelling around his nose. “I think it worked. The bruises are already starting to fade.” She smiles. “Not bad for your first try.”
He grins, a quick flash of teeth. “What can I say? I’m a quick study.”
“Sure you are,” she says, sliding away on the branch, putting a little much needed space between them. “I’m surprised Gaius hasn’t taught you that one. I can’t imagine he doesn’t know it.”
Merlin shrugs and looks down at his hands. “Maybe he’s forgotten.”
“Maybe,” Bess says. They sit quietly for a moment.
Merlin runs a hand through his rain-wet hair, and his fringe sticks up absurdly. “Gaius thinks the more I know about my magic the more I’ll be tempted to use it. He thinks I’m not as cautious as I should be, and he’s right.”
Bess scowls. “Oh, and so keeping you ignorant and untrained is safer?”
He stiffens. “I’m not ignorant.”
“You really are.” She sighs, feeling old. “You don’t understand, Merlin – it’s dangerous. You have so much power, and you have no idea how to control it. Elaine took advantage of that, and I promise you she won’t be the last. You need to learn that there’s more to magic than frying evil sorceresses and polishing Arthur’s armour.”
“Fine,” Merlin says. “Then why don’t you teach me?”
Bess blinks. “I walked right into that, didn’t I?”
“You really did,” Merlin says, and grins.
There’s a loud honk from below, and Bess hears someone say, “I’d reconsider the wisdom of that, if I were you. I’m quite close with the castle butcher.” There’s a silence, and then Gaius adds, “I thought not.”
Merlin rolls his eyes and calls, “We’re up here, Gaius.”
A moment later Gaius shuffles into view, his head tilted back and his arms folded over his chest. Bess covers her mouth to stifle a laugh. “Nice hat, Gaius.”
He adjusts the brim of his rather feminine peaked hat. “Thank you, Bess. I find it very practical in this weather.” He turns a glare on the still dripping Merlin. “And if you catch cold, sir, you won’t get any sympathy from me. I told you to wait until a break in the rain.”
Merlin’s face is the picture of innocence. “I had to tell her about the Mercians, didn’t I?”
Gaius looks entirely unconvinced. “In that matter you’re both somewhat behind on recent events. Uther has sent the delegation from Mercia home unharmed. They are to inform King Bayard that his daughter has been revealed as a sorceress and an enemy of the crown.”
“That should go over well,” Merlin mutters.
“What about Prince Urien?” Bess says. “Elaine claimed he was behind the whole thing.”
“There is no proof of that,” Gaius says, “and there won’t be. Urien is far too clever. We have only Lady Elaine’s accusation as evidence, and as the Mercians pointed out, Elaine is quite clearly mad.”
Merlin frowns. “So what do we do?”
Gaius smiles, his eyes tired. “We wait, Merlin. We wait and see.” He reaches up and straightens his hat. “Now. Are you two going to spend all evening in that tree or are you coming in for supper?”
Merlin’s eyes light up with something considerably more gluttonous than magic. “Supper,” he says rapturously, already clambering down from one branch to the next. “I’m starving.”
“Imagine my surprise,” Gaius says.
Bess doesn’t move, and before Merlin is halfway to the ground he stops and looks up at her. “Aren’t you coming?”
Bess meets Gaius’ eyes through the branches and leaves between them. He could have handed her over to Uther the moment he recognised her for what she was; instead he’d given her tea and acceptance and something very like family, and the only thing he’d asked of her in return was that she stay away from Merlin. He’s trying to protect them both, protect them from Bess’ past and Merlin’s power, and what would he say if he knew Bess has all but agreed to teach Merlin the magics he will not?
“Of course she’s coming,” Gaius says, holding Bess’ gaze. “Hurry along, Bess. If Merlin beats us back, by the time we arrive there won’t be food left to feed a dormouse.”
“That is a slanderous lie,” Merlin says. “Just because I have a healthy appetite—”
“A healthy appetite for a horse, maybe,” Bess says, and Gaius chuckles at Merlin’s outraged squawk. Bess begins to climb down quickly after him, nearly snagging her skirts on a broken branch. Her feet hit the ground a moment before Merlin comes tumbling down after her. She grabs his arm to steady him, but her eyes are on Gaius. “Are you sure you want me to come?”
Gaius gives her a severe look. “I thought I’d made it perfectly clear that you were always welcome to join us. You are not a guest, Bess; I did not think you would require special invitation.”
She looks down to hide her smile. “Sorry, Gaius.”
“Yes. Well.” The corner of Gaius’ mouth twitches. “Perhaps you can make it up to me by teaching Merlin how to enchant a broom without first setting it on fire. I’ve had to replace three in the last month; the castle steward has begun to look at me rather oddly.” He turns and begins the walk back to the castle, rain rolling off the brim of his strange peaked hat. Bess thinks she can hear him whistle.
“I don’t set the brooms on fire,” Merlin says from behind her. “I only singe them a little.”
Bess turns to him. “If I agree to teach you, you have to do exactly as I say. Even if I am younger than you.”
“And a girl,” Merlin adds.
“I’ll tell Morgana you said that.”
“I’ll tell Arthur you stare at his arse.”
Bess narrows her eyes at him. “Oaf.”
“Midget.”
“Moron.”
Merlin grins. “Goose girl.”
Bess grits her teeth and holds out her hand. “So? Do you agree to my terms?”
“With all my heart,” Merlin says, and shakes her hand. Before she can pull it away again, he bends down and presses a sloppy kiss to her knuckles.
She pulls a face and wipes her hand on her dress. “You’re disgusting, you know that? Absolutely disgusting.”
Merlin laughs, stumbling out from under the protection of the willow’s branches, and for an airless, frozen moment he seems a shadow cast upon the walls of the castle, a dark silhouette against cloud-pale stone. Then she blinks, and it’s only Merlin – standing in the rain, waiting for her to follow him home.
++
Characters: Full series one cast.
Rating: Teen.
Betas:
eponymous_rose, lalaithlockhart, and significantowl. Warnings: None.
Summary: "For shall I tell you truth? You seemed that wave about to break upon me and sweep me from my hold upon the world." Nimueh returns to Camelot. AU after series one.
part one part two part three
++
Bess hasn’t been inside the Great Hall since she returned to Camelot.
In some ways it is much as it was before – long, heavy tables and the hazy glow of torchlight, the thick smells of rich food and too many bodies too close together. She’d loved feasts, before, had loved the pageantry, the gossip and the crowd. In those days Camelot had been a young city, bright and fierce and loud, and Uther’s court had been one of revels and wine, poets and song.
Now the Hall is silent. Bess stands behind Morgana’s chair at the high table, wine jug gripped tight in her hands. Uther sits less than six feet away.
It’s curious, how much and yet how little she feels, standing there staring at the back of his grey head. He looks old and hollow, nothing like the man of her memories or the ghoul of her nightmares, and she finds that she pities him. He is so much less than he was.
The king’s face is blank, his stern features slack and still. Like every one of the two hundred some lords, ladies, knights, servants, and villagers crammed into the Great Hall that night, he stares at the open door and waits for Arthur.
Bess and Merlin stand against the wall, fighting to keep their dismay from showing on their faces.
“This,” Merlin says under his breath, “is an awful plan.”
“You only think that because I came up with it and you didn’t.” She pokes his side. “Try to look a little more lovesick and a little less like you’re about to vomit.”
“Maybe that’s just how I look when I’m in love,” Merlin says. “And stop poking me.”
A goose girl has no place at a royal feast, even as a servant, and Bess had been at a loss for an excuse to attend. But with Gwen home sick—
(“She sent me a note this morning,” Morgana had told them, pale with anger. “In ten years of service she’s missed exactly one day of work, and that was when her father was murdered.” Merlin’s face had gone pinched with worry, and Arthur – well, Arthur had looked a bit like he was going to vomit, which makes Bess wonder.)
—Morgana would need someone to serve her at the feast, so she’d temporarily promoted Bess to the lofty position of handmaiden. As it turned out, she needn’t have bothered; the Hall is thick with people who don’t belong, scullery maids and dirty-faced village children and castle guards who are meant to be on duty. They stand silent and perfectly still, food and wine forgotten, and wait for their prince.
There are a few exceptions. Bess spots a jolly, red-faced lord seated at one of the lower tables who’s too deep in his cups to notice anything’s amiss. After a bit of squinting and a lot of imagination she matches a name to the face. It’s Lord Urry – older, fatter, and drunker, but undoubtedly the same man. He’d been a great wit in his prime, and a minor warlock. Once Bess had taught him how to unlock doors with a word, and later had reason to regret it.
Bess nudges Merlin and sends a meaningful glance in Urry’s direction. Merlin’s eyes go wide. “Lord Urry? Really?”
She gives him a small half-shrug. “Nowhere near powerful enough to do this, and I can’t imagine why he would. He picked the winning side during the early days of the Purge, and it’s treated him well.” She scans the rest of the crowd. “See anyone else?”
Merlin worries his lip with his teeth. After a moment he asks, “Why are you so sure the sorcerer will be here?”
Bess smiles grimly. “Because whoever they are, they like spectacle. Using your spell as a diversion, channeling your power, the mist, the scale of it all – they put a lot of effort into this show, and they’ll need to be close enough to enjoy the end result. They have to be here; they don’t have a choice.”
Merlin is quiet, and they stand side by side in silence, watching the crowd. “You know a lot about this.”
“I read a lot,” Bess says, and then the doors open and Arthur enters the Hall.
He does look very handsome, if still a bit nauseous, and he hesitates just inside the doors as every head in the Great Hall turns as one to take him in. Torchlight shines golden on his pale hair and the strong line of his jaw, and the Hall gasps, a single stunned breath rattling through two hundred throats. The sound is like thunder.
“Erm,” Arthur says, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other. “Sorry I’m late?”
The Great Hall smiles at him. It is the same smile on every face, on every child and lady and knight, and each mouth moves in time with the others, a slow spread of lips to reveal teeth. Despite Morgana’s worries, there is no lust or want in that smile – only helpless, mindless adoration.
Bess swallows hard. “You were right,” she says. “This is an awful plan.”
Arthur crosses the Hall to sit beside the king, and every chair and bench creaks as their occupants slowly shift in their seats, following Arthur with their eyes. “Father,” Arthur murmurs, looking down at his empty plate. “Morgana.”
“Arthur,” Uther says, the happiness in his voice as fixed and strange as his smile. “I am glad you are here.”
“Thank you,” Arthur says.
“For a while,” Uther says, “you were not here, and that was unpleasant.”
“Yes,” Arthur says. “Um. Sorry about that.” He turns to the woman sitting to his right and says, “Enjoying the feast, Lady Elaine?”
Lady Elaine is a handsome auburn-haired woman with an aristocratic nose and arched eyebrows, and her sharp face is ill suited for smiling. She beams at Arthur and says, “Now that you are here, my lord.”
“Yes,” the Hall choruses as one. “Now that you are here, my lord.”
Arthur goes pale. “Thanks,” he says faintly. “That’s…very kind.”
Merlin pushes away from the wall and leans over Arthur’s shoulder. “Would you like me to fill your cup, sire?”
“God, yes,” Arthur says, and Merlin does. Afterward he does not move away, but stays at Arthur’s side, the knuckles of his left hand almost touching Arthur’s arm. Merlin glances back at Bess, giving her a wide-eyed look that says, What next? Bess shrugs.
No clue, she mouths. Improvise.
Morgana clears her throat and turns to Uther. “My lord, there is no food.”
“Food?” Uther says.
“Arthur might be hungry,” Morgana says, and the smile falls from Uther’s face, from every face in sight.
“Arthur,” Uther says in the wounded voice of a bewildered child, “are you hungry?”
“No,” Arthur says immediately, “I’m fine,” but the prince has had an active sort of day, what with the whacking at people with swords and the plotting against sorcerers, and his stomach betrays him. It growls, and the sound rings impossibly loud in the worshipful silence of the Hall.
“You there,” Uther calls to the nearest person who looks like she might know something about kitchens and the food that isn’t on their plates. A frizzy-haired scullery maid steps forward and curtseys.
“Yes, sire?” she says, and Bess knows her voice – it’s the much-abused Elise of Penny’s gang of kitchen miscreants. Her eyes are locked on Arthur, and she looks as if she’s about to faint.
“Arthur is hungry,” Uther says. “Where is the food?”
Elise’s bottom lip trembles. “There is no food,” she says. “We were so looking forward to the feast that we forgot to prepare any.”
Arthur snorts. “Well, that doesn’t make much sense, does it?” Merlin kicks his chair. “What?” Arthur says, twisting in his seat to glare at Merlin. “It doesn’t.”
Elise gives a tiny hiccup of a sob and stutters, “I-I-I’m sorry,” before bursting into tears.
The entire Hall bursts into tears with her.
Uther and his lords, the knights and the ladies of the court, the servants and the villagers and the stern-faced ambassadors from Mercia – they weep together and in perfect unison, choking out the same shameless, violent sobs, and it is as if the castle itself is weeping, as if the cries come not from many voices but from a single throat, something deep and forgotten beneath the stones.
All of Camelot weeps but for old Lord Urry, snoring into his doublet, three terrified serving girls about to bolt for the doors, and the Lady Elaine of Mercia, who turns genteelly in her chair and grins at Merlin like a cat who’s spotted a bird with a crippled wing.
“I knew it!” Merlin says, punching the air. “I knew it was you!”
Arthur stands. “Now, hold on—”
“No, no,” Lady Elaine says, “he’s quite right. I’m a sorceress.” She stands, sweeping her skirts out behind her. “It’s sort of predictable, if you think about it.”
“I’ve suspected you all along,” Merlin says. “Haven’t I, Bess?”
He has, and now that she’s looking, Bess can see why. Lady Elaine plays her part perfectly, from the practiced note of feminine sweetness in her voice to the elegant turn of her wrist, but there is something feral in her eyes, something she can’t quite hide. It makes Bess press back against the wall behind her, her fingers gripping stone. “Merlin,” she says, “we should, we should really—”
“And who is this little thing?” Lady Elaine says, peering past Merlin to see Bess’ face. “Your simple-minded sidekick? Kid sister? Team mascot?”
Arthur steps forward, placing himself between Merlin and Lady Elaine. “She is none of your concern.”
“And she’s not little,” Merlin says from over Arthur’s shoulder.
Arthur elbows Merlin in the chest, pushing him further back. “What have you done to these people? What is your purpose here?”
Lady Elaine taps a delicate finger against her chin. “Well, my lord, since you’ve asked so nicely, I’ll tell you: I’ve come to Camelot to enchant your subjects, murder your father, and seize your kingdom – on behalf of my brother, actually, which is rather tedious, but I do enjoy any excuse to get out of that shithole we call a castle.” She pauses, considering. “Also, I enjoy travel on general principle.”
Merlin and Arthur gape at her.
Morgana steps forward, a sword she’d nicked from one of the weeping knights hidden behind her back. “You will undo this spell, Elaine.”
“My Lady Morgana.” Lady Elaine grins at her, showing teeth. “You look tired, my dear. Something keeping you awake at night?” She moves to Arthur, resting her pale hand on his arm. “You know, my lord, your servant wasn’t the only one with suspicions. Dear Morgana’s been having me followed since my first week here.” She tilts her head, and her grin turns sharp. “Funny that she neglected to mention it. Still, I’m sure there’s a perfectly innocent explanation.”
Arthur pulls away. “That’s enough.”
Lady Elaine sighs. “Yes, I suppose it is.” She lifts her hand and fire blossoms in her palm like a rose – glowing red, then violet, and finally blue-white with heat. She raises her arm. “This was a nice conversation. It makes me sad that we won’t have another.”
“Merlin, now!” Bess shouts, and Merlin murmurs the words under his breath. For a terrible moment nothing happens, and then forty well-hidden stink bombs fizzle and explode, filling the Great Hall with a thick, wretched-smelling smoke.
Lady Elaine shrieks in frustration, and her fireball slices through the smoke as a shadow that could be Arthur knocks into a shadow that could be Merlin and they both tumble to the floor, the fire sizzling through the space where’s Merlin’s head had been, scorching the wall behind them.
“How annoying,” Lady Elaine says, and another fireball sparks to life in the haze of smoke.
Morgana’s bony hand grabs Bess by the wrist and pulls her down to where the smoke is thickest, and Bess scrabbles over the stone floor until she finds Merlin’s arm. She hooks her fingers into his sleeve and Merlin reaches for Arthur as Arthur reaches for the king, and then the prince leads them all stumbling out of the Great Hall, hidden by the smoke and the smell and the love-lost fools of Camelot still sobbing the broken syllables of Arthur’s name, their hands held over their hearts.
++
Arthur drags them through winding corridors and down steep staircases until they reach an alcove not far above the dungeons. Only then do they release each other’s hands and slump against the cool stone walls, breathing hard. Arthur tries to keep his father on his feet but Uther crumples, his face hidden in his hands as he weeps.
Arthur kneels beside him. “Please,” he says. “Please stop. Look, I’m right here. I’m fine.”
“I cannot bear it,” Uther says, but it is not his voice alone. They hear its echo from the dungeons below, from all those in the castle above. Uther gives a wrenching sob, turning away from his son and pressing his face into the stone of the wall. “I cannot bear it. It is too much. I cannot, I cannot…” His voice fades to a murmur, and he mouths the same words, over and over again: I cannot bear it. I cannot, I cannot.
Morgana touches Arthur’s shoulder. “Arthur, being near you – I think it’s making him worse.”
“No,” Arthur says, shaking her off. “He said it was better when I was here, when I was with him. He said—”
“You should have left him behind,” Bess says, and when the other three turn to stare at her, it is somehow Merlin who looks the most betrayed.
“He’s helpless, Bess,” Merlin says. “Elaine would have killed him.”
“And now he’ll live long enough for the spell to drive him mad.” Bess folds her arms over her chest, fingernails digging into her own skin. “Arthur, you’re hurting him. Move away.”
Uther lifts his head, his eyes red and swollen and unseeing. “That voice,” he rasps. “I know that voice.”
Arthur stumbles to his feet, away from the king. “All those people – we just left them there.” His hand moves to the hilt of his sword. “I’m going back.”
“Yes,” Merlin says, “because that’s exactly what this day needs – you getting set on fire by a crazed sorceress.”
“Do shut up, Merlin,” Arthur says, and Merlin is about to retort when an explosion rocks the castle, shaking the stones beneath their feet. Bess falls back, out of the shelter of the alcove, and she watches as the tapestries at the top of the staircase above burst into flame. Merlin tugs her to her feet, and she holds tight to his arm and pulls him close.
“Merlin, she needed your power for a reason,” Bess whispers. “She could never have cast a spell like this without it. You’re stronger than she is. You can stop this.”
“I can’t,” Merlin says, looking back at Arthur, at Uther huddled against the wall. “You know I can’t.”
There’s another explosion, closer still. “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Lady Elaine sing songs, the words echoing in the corridor above. “Hiding, are we? I like a bit of a game, my pets, but I should warn you – I do tend to cheat.”
Morgana pulls Bess and Merlin back into the alcove, her face flushed with heat from the fires. “Arthur, the hidden passage through the dungeon. Do you remember the way?”
“Of course,” Arthur says, unsheathing his sword. “You take them to safety, and I’ll buy you the time you need.”
“Please, Merlin,” Bess says. “You know I’m right.”
Merlin’s mouth thins into a stubborn line and he steps in front of Arthur, blocking his path. “Sire.”
“There’s no time to argue, Merlin,” Arthur says, and he steps forward, expecting Merlin to move out of his way. He doesn’t.
“You’re right,” Merlin says. “There’s no time.” He takes a deep breath. “Arthur, do you trust me?”
“Merlin—”
“Do you?”
For a moment Arthur looks as if he’s about to shove Merlin aside, but then he deflates, his shoulders slumping, his young face tired and dirty and frightened. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, of course I do.”
Merlin exhales. “Then you’ll take Morgana and Bess—”
Morgana raises her sword and delicately clears her throat.
“Then you’ll take Bess to Gaius and help them find a way to stop the spell.” Arthur opens his mouth to object, but Merlin grabs his arm, fingers closing tight above his elbow. “You said you trusted me. Was that a lie?”
Arthur steps back, shaking his head, and pulls his arm from Merlin’s grasp. “Merlin, my father—”
“I cannot,” Uther murmurs, heartbroken. “I cannot bear it.”
“I’ll protect him,” Merlin says. “You have my word.”
“Olly olly oxen free,” Lady Elaine calls out, her voice high and mad and all too close, and Bess slips her fingers into Arthur’s hand.
“We should probably run,” she says, and they do.
++
The hidden passage through the dungeon isn’t so much hidden as half-collapsed, and though Bess has an easy enough time of it, Arthur keeps knocking his head against the ceiling.
“This was considerably less painful when I was a few inches shorter,” he says, rubbing his forehead. He tightens his grip on her hand, and she can’t help but be grateful – the darkness makes her uneasy, and it is as if his voice and sweat-damp hand are the only links between her and the world above. The world that presses down on her now, stone and earth and distant sky.
“How far underground are we?” she asks, and then fervently wishes she hadn’t.
“Far,” Arthur says, guiding her around a pile of rubble. “We need to move faster.”
Bess squeezes his hand. “Merlin will be all right. I’m sure of it.”
Just before they’d escaped into the dungeon they’d heard Elaine’s shout of discovery and the spell that followed. Merlin had shouted back, and not even someone with Arthur’s knack for willful ignorance could mistake his words for anything but magic.
Arthur grunts. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Right,” Bess says. “Good. Me either.” She pauses. “Not that I know anything about it. Whatever ‘it’ may be. I haven’t a clue what we’re not talking about, actually, and I’d ask, only you said you didn’t want to talk about it.”
There’s a sudden drop in the path ahead of them; Arthur jumps down, then turns to guide Bess’ jump, his hands on her waist. “Let me guess,” he says when her feet are on the ground again. “You don’t deal well with enclosed spaces.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Bess says.
Bess waits for the passage to climb toward the surface, but it never does – they travel deeper and deeper into the tunnels and caverns hidden beneath the castle, and as her panic rises Bess fights to keep her breath slow and even, focusing on the gentle rise and fall of her chest and thinking calm thoughts.
“Stop panting like that,” Arthur says. “It’s annoying.”
“I’m not,” Bess says, “you’re imagining things,” but now that she’s listening she hears it too – soft, gasping breaths and the sharp sounds of a creature in pain. She stops walking. “That’s not me.”
He tugs on her hand. “There’s no shame in being frightened, Bess, and certainly no point in lying about it. We’re all scared of something, you know. Even I—”
Something small and furry brushes against her ankle, and Bess is about to shriek when Arthur gasps and drops her hand, leaving Bess alone in the dark.
“It’s just a rat,” she says. “Please, Arthur. I can’t see you. I can’t see anything.”
“Like the starlings,” Arthur says, his voice shaking, and Bess realises that the small sounds have grown louder, that the breaths have multiplied by the hundreds, by the thousands, and now she can smell them, the sour stink of their twitching, furred bodies, the skitter and scrape of their feet against stone. She wonders if Arthur can feel their eyes on him, their devotion and their heartbreak. She reaches for him in the darkness.
“Please, Arthur. We have to help Merlin.”
A hand seizes hers, and she holds it tightly. “Sorry I let go,” he says after a moment. “I didn’t mean to.”
“I was fine,” Bess lies. “Just worried about you, sire.”
“Such loyalty,” Arthur says wryly, his hand clammy in hers.
They take a few hesitant steps and the path clears before them, the rats cringing away from Arthur the way a moth once burned shudders from flame. Arthur’s steps grow quicker, less cautious, and after that they run through the passage in silence, scraping their palms bloody when they fall and running still, and Bess knows they’re nearly to the surface when they hear the weeping again, the cries of Camelot above.
“It is too much,” the voices say, and the words echo through the tunnel, shaking the stones. “I cannot bear it, I cannot, I cannot.”
“You said it would get worse,” Arthur says. “What could be worse than this?”
Bess is glad he can’t see her face. “I think I see a light,” she says. She pulls him forward. “Is that a door?”
The door is locked, warped with age and rot. Arthur opens it with one good slam of his shoulder, and they stumble into the empty, moonlit courtyard.
Bess takes a deep breath of clear night air and looks up at the sky. “I’m so happy I could cry.”
“Please don’t,” Arthur says, sounding pained, and then they’re running again, back into the castle and up the stairs and into Gaius’ workroom, where the tables are boiling with experiments and stacked high with books and Gaius crouches on the floor, cradling a weeping Gwen in his arms.
“Guinevere,” Arthur breathes, and takes a halting step forward.
Gwen lifts her tear-stained face, her eyes shining in the candlelight. “No,” she whispers. “Please, no.” Her body shakes, not simply with tears, but something more – tremors that rattle her teeth and jerk back her head. Gaius shakes with her, struggling to hold her steady.
“Impossible,” Bess murmurs. “She’s fighting the spell.”
“At great risk to her health,” Gaius says, breathless, and Bess hurries over to relieve him, pulling Gwen into her arms. Her skin is hot to the touch, beyond any fever Bess has seen, and Bess knows death well enough to know this – Gwen has little time left.
Gaius stands, supporting himself on a nearby chair. “Gwen came to warn me, sire. It seems she’s been resisting the enchantment since she first felt its effects this morning.” He pauses. “She knows what’s coming next.”
“Arthur,” Gwen says in a voice like broken glass. She clutches Bess’ arm, her eyes red-rimmed and unseeing. “You have to tell him.”
“I’m here,” Arthur says, gripping the doorframe, afraid to come closer. “Am I – Gwen, am I hurting you?”
“Yes,” she gasps, reaching for him with one trembling hand. “But no, don’t leave, please don’t—”
“Hush,” Bess says. “He’s here.” She smoothes the tangled hair from Gwen’s sweat-soaked face, and beckons Arthur closer with a tip of her head. He takes a few hesitant steps toward them.
Gwen looks sightlessly into Bess’ eyes, and when she speaks Bess can hear the effort in it, the battle for every word. “When it’s done, you have to tell him. You have to make him understand. They hurt so much and so terribly and they can’t stop, they can’t ever stop.” She laughs, a harsh, pained sound from the back of her throat. “How can they, when it feels like he’s all we have left? Like he’s all we ever were?”
Arthur kneels beside them, and his fingers hover over Gwen’s shaking hands. “Guinevere, I—”
“Don’t you dare,” Gwen says, suddenly furious. She struggles free of Bess’ arms and shoves Arthur in the chest. “Don’t you dare apologise to me, Arthur Pendragon. Don’t you dare feel guilty. If I love you it will be because I damned well want to, and not because any stupid spell tricks me into it. That is my final word on the matter.” She sags against him, her head hanging low. “Sorry,” she murmurs into his shoulder. “That was rude.”
Arthur looks up, his eyes bright. “Gaius—”
Gaius rubs his hand over his mouth. “There’s nothing I can do for her. I do not know how to break the spell, and that is her only cure.”
The castle shakes with a distant explosion. Bess meets Gaius’ eyes and sees the question there. “He’ll be fine,” she says. “Morgana is with him.”
“Morgana,” Gwen groans into Arthur’s shirt. “Morgana will be so angry.”
Arthur raises an uncertain hand to the back of her head, his fingers brushing the skin of her neck. “Morgana is always angry. It would frighten me more if she weren’t.”
Gwen smiles up into his face, her eyes luminous with tears. “Arthur,” she says. “Arthur, you have to know. It wasn’t your fault.”
There is a sharp sound from the window, and something dark strikes the glass. Bess stands, walks over to the window and opens it. The night air is thick and hot and still, and it carries the cries from the castle around them. Bess looks down at the courtyard below. “I don’t see anything,” she says.
It happens again at another window, and then another. A small dark snap against the glass that disappears as quickly as it comes, again and again and again until something flies through the open window, brushing past Bess’ face and slamming into the stone wall at the other side of the room. It makes a soft, sickening sound as it hits, then slides to the floor. Bess crosses the room slowly, bends down and gently lifts the dead bird in her cupped hands.
“It’s a starling,” she says. “Its neck is broken.”
Gaius slams the window closed, and a heartbeat later the windows are dark with feathers, the sound of snapping bone like hailstones against the glass, like any other summer storm.
“It is too much,” Gwen says. “I cannot bear it.” She touches Arthur’s face with one finger, tracing the curve of his shaking mouth. “I cannot.”
Bess cradles the broken bird in her hands and watches as Arthur holds Gwen in his arms, as Gaius listens helplessly for the next explosion from a distant battle. She steps back, her breath coming fast, and hears the storm outside, the single voice speaking through the people of Camelot.
I cannot, I cannot.
She steps back into a table and knocks the book of magic onto the floor. It falls open to a page covered in her old handwriting, the sharp, spiking script that distinguishes her words from those of all the others who have owned the book in its time. She kneels on the floor and turns to the page with the charm to protect against love spells.
At the bottom of the page she finds note crammed into the margin, an aside written in a cramped, almost illegible hand; Nimueh had written: Largely ineffectual, like most charms of this nature, and easily broken. A waste of time and milk, really – destroy the token (lock of hair, toenail clipping, intimate item of clothing, etc.) and you destroy the spell. Don’t know why I bothered.
“No,” Bess says, dropping the book. “It can’t be that simple.”
“Bess?” Gaius says, but Bess is already throwing herself up the stairs to Merlin’s room. The lock of hair is still on the bed where they’d left it, and Bess’ hand shakes as she plucks it from the sheets and staggers back down the stairs.
“Bess,” Gaius says, “what are you—”
She holds up her hand. “I don’t know,” she says. “Just give me a candle.”
He does, and she holds the hair to the flame.
The world goes suddenly, horribly silent.
On the floor, Gwen wrinkles her nose. “What’s that awful smell? Is someone’s hair on fire?”
Arthur stares at Gwen, wide-eyed with shock, and she stares back.
“Arthur,” she says, her hands fluttering over her mouth. “Sire. My lord.”
Arthur jerks his arms away, releasing her from his embrace. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
“You have snot on your collar,” she says.
Arthur looks down. “So I do,” he says, and his grin, as Elise the scullery maid would say, is like a sunrise – gold and warm and new.
Gaius takes the candle from Bess’ hand and gives her shoulder a pat. “Well done,” he says. “Though it would’ve been nice if you’d thought of it sooner.”
Arthur helps Gwen to her feet. “Gaius,” she says, “where’s Merlin?”
Bess and Gaius exchange an anxious look. “Well,” Bess says, and then she stops. She smells something more than burnt hair, something like the scent of a flame just before it is lit, and she stumbles away from the windows, fear and memory rising in her throat like bile.
The night sky crackles with light, an unnatural, blinding fire that pierces the darkness in the courtyard below. It fades, and the room shakes a little in the thunder that follows.
Arthur frowns. “Was that lightning?”
“No,” Gaius says, and with a single, hard look at Bess, he walks out the door.
++
Bess almost doesn’t follow.
She waits at the top of the staircase, listening to the echo of their footsteps against stone. The castle is so quiet now, almost funereal in its silence, and Bess thinks about simply walking away, retreating to empty corridors and the small bed that awaits her in the servant’s hall. She thinks about walking past the hall and continuing to the castle gates, passing into the hills and the forests and a life where Camelot is just a memory, a white blur on the horizon.
Gaius’ hands are clenched into fists, hidden in the bells of his sleeves, and behind him Arthur takes Gwen’s arm as he helps her down the stairs, his fingers covering hers. In a moment they will be gone, will disappear around the corner and leave Bess standing alone. They will forget she was ever there.
“Bugger that,” Bess says, and trips down the steps after them.
The stones of the courtyard are pale in the moonlight, the sky clear above. Gaius grabs Bess’ arm, and she follows his gaze – Merlin and Morgana stagger toward them from the castle gates, looking as if they’d just fought a duel to the death and won by a very narrow margin indeed. They are bruised and limping and a little singed, but they are undoubtedly alive.
Morgana’s dress is in tatters, and she drags a broken sword behind her, its tip scraping against stone. “I can’t believe she got away,” she says, and kicks sullenly at a rock in her path. It’s only Merlin’s hand on her elbow that stops her from toppling over.
Merlin nods, wiping at the blood dripping from his nose, which is almost certainly broken. “Yeb,” he says. “Bery annoying. But at beast be bidn’t bie.”
Morgana frowns at him. “What?”
“At beast be bidn’t—”
“At least we didn’t die,” Arthur translates. “Yes. Congratulations on that, by the way.”
Morgana looks right past Arthur and squeals Gwen’s name at the top of her lungs, tackling her handmaiden with her arms outstretched. Gwen is already much recovered, but Morgana’s weight seems to be a bit much for her; she gives Gaius a pleading look.
“Concussion, I bink,” Merlin says. “Baking her boopy.”
“Making her loopy,” Arthur corrects quickly, and Gaius’ eyebrow returns to its normal latitude. He takes Morgana’s arm and gently disentangles her from Gwen.
“There, there, my dear. Let me see your pupils.”
Bess steps forward to inspect Merlin’s nose. She pokes at it with one finger, and he yelps. “Yep,” she says. “Definitely broken.” She pulls a handkerchief from her dress pocket and holds it carefully to his nose, soaking up the blood.
“Bhat bid you bo?” he asks.
“It was the lock of hair. I burned it, and the spell ended.” She shrugs. “It was pure luck.”
Merlin smiles. “I boubt bat.”
“As do I,” Lady Elaine says, appearing in swirl of flame behind him. She sits astride a great dark horse, her cloak flowing long behind her. “You spoiled my fun, little girl. I won’t forget it.”
“All right, that’s enough,” Bess says. “I’m of average height for my age. How many times am I going to have to say it?”
“Ignore her, Bess,” Morgana says, lifting her chin. “She knows when she’s been beaten.”
Elaine turns to Morgana, her lips curved into something like a smile. “You and the servant still breathe, my lady, because the child made me swear I would not kill you. A life for a life, or some nonsense like that.” The horse moves restlessly beneath her, and she rolls her eyes. “Boys, you know. So sentimental.”
“Mordred,” Arthur says softly, almost too softly to be heard, and Bess shudders. There is something about that name. Something that she’s forgotten.
Elaine grins. “Well, I hate to terrorize and run, but I’ve got people to see, dissent to sow.” She blows Merlin a kiss. “See you later, Ears. Give Uther my best.” She spurs the horse into a gallop, and as she rides through the gates of Camelot fire curls through her outstretched hand, curving into a bow. For a terrible moment Bess knows what is coming but cannot react, cannot move, and then Elaine draws back her arm and fires the flaming arrow at Arthur’s heart.
It stops, sizzling in the air just in front of his chest. The arrow hovers there, unnatural and unmoving, and Arthur takes a single, deliberate step to one side. He clears his throat. “Merlin.”
“Oh,” Merlin says, and the arrow slams harmlessly into the door behind them. Gwen gapes, but Morgana, Gaius, and Bess watch Arthur, the hard line of his mouth and the tightness around his eyes. None of them breathe.
“Huh,” Arthur says, and brushes a bit of ash from his shirt. “Lucky she was such a rotten shot.”
Merlin grins, sagging with relief. “Yeb,” he says. “Bery lucky.”
Arthur wraps his arm around Merlin’s shoulders. “You really should stop talking, Merlin. You sound like an idiot.” He pauses. “More so than usual, I mean.”
“Merlin,” Gwen says, her voice breaking. “Merlin, you’re—”
“About to collapse, I should think,” Gaius says. “Merlin, Morgana – I’d like to attend to your injuries immediately. You, Gwen, should be resting.” He shakes his head and turns with a sigh to climb the stairs again. “Bess, you know where I keep the salves for mild burns. I’ll need that, an anti-inflammatory for Merlin’s nose, and a number of bandages of various dimensions and thicknesses…” He disappears into the castle, still giving orders. Bess and the others stay in the courtyard, standing in a quiet circle.
“We drew Elaine away from Uther as quickly as we could,” Morgana says. “He should be by the dungeons.”
“I should find him,” Arthur says. He doesn’t move. For a long moment no one speaks.
Gwen looks again at the arrow embedded in the door, her face expressionless and still in the faint light. “It was you, wasn’t it, Merlin? You cured my father of that plague, and when they accused me of sorcery you tried to confess. You saved his life.” She turns back to him. “How many times have you saved us all?”
“Ib’s nob thab thimble,” Merlin says, anguished, and Arthur gently cuffs the back of his head.
“For pity’s sake, Merlin, just say you’re welcome and be done with it.”
Merlin looks down at his feet, his arms folded across his thin chest and Bess’ bloody handkerchief crushed in his hand. “You’re belcome.”
Gwen steps forward and kisses his swollen cheek, her eyes bright, and Bess remembers the taste of the plague that had almost killed Gwen’s father, that had killed so many in so little time. She’d shaped it with her own hands, had smiled at still bodies beneath white sheets and the terror of a city she now calls home, and while it was Uther’s hatred that took Gwen’s father in the end, Bess’ revenge nearly claimed him first.
Bess moves back, drawing away from the circle, but before she can disappear into the night Morgana takes her hand. Her fingers are cold and surprisingly strong, and she pulls Bess back to the others. “No, I don’t think so,” she says softly, into Bess’ ear. “It’s too late for that.”
Bess watches Merlin smile and knows she’s right.
++
Three days later the heat breaks, and it begins to rain.
The geese shelter beneath the willow at the pond’s edge, shaking the warm damp from their feathers and picking resentfully at the grass growing between the tree’s heavy roots. Bess climbs up, past the willow’s lower limbs and higher than she’s dared to venture before. The branches are strong enough to hold her but they move with the wind, swaying her from side to side. She closes her eyes and lets herself be carried, listening to the wind in the leaves. It sounds like water, like waves against the shore; Bess holds her hand over her heart and feels its beat, warm and steady against her palm.
A goose honks, and Bess hears a muttered curse from below. She closes her eyes tighter, holds her breath and keeps perfectly still, like when she was small and thought that if she wanted it hard enough she could make herself disappear.
It hadn’t worked then, either.
“Oh, hello,” Merlin says, panting a little as he climbs. “Fancy meeting you here.”
Bess opens her eyes. “So you’re not executed, then.”
“Not yet,” Merlin says, and heaves himself up onto a nearby branch. It creaks ominously, and his adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. “You’d know that if you hadn’t spent the last few days hiding up here like an antisocial tree sloth.”
“I’m not hiding,” Bess says, though she is. She watches as Merlin settles onto his branch, one skinny long leg swinging on either side. He’s soaked to the skin, his hair plastered to his head and dripping. He leans back against the trunk and chews meditatively on his thumbnail, apparently in no hurry to break the silence. Bess scowls down at him. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“Well, why aren’t you executed? You and Elaine weren’t exactly subtle, you know.”
Merlin shrugs. “Seems the only bit the king really remembers about that night was Elaine’s little speech about murdering him and seizing the crown for her brother. I think he’s too worked up about that to worry about much else.” He tips his head back, his hair dark against the wood. “He threw the rest of the Mercian delegation into the dungeons. Arthur’s with him right now, trying to talk him out of executing them for sorcery.”
“They’re probably innocent.”
“Yes,” Merlin says dryly, “because Uther usually cares about that.”
“It’d be a declaration of war, Merlin. A war we really can’t afford to fight.”
“I know,” he says. “I’ve already had this conversation three times today – once with Gaius and twice more with Arthur. War with Mercia would be a disaster.” He tries to rub his hand over his face, but flinches when his fingers brush his swollen nose. “Ow.”
“It looks better,” Bess says. “Not quite so purple. Did you use magic?”
Merlin shakes his head. “No. I don’t know many healing spells.” He pauses. “Do you?”
Bess sighs. “Merlin—”
He sits up, his expression earnest. “I know you don’t want to talk about it, Bess, and I understand, I do, but the Great Dragon said—”
“The Great Dragon is a great pain in my arse,” Bess says, “and if you haven’t learnt by now that he can’t be trusted, then you’re even slower than you look.”
Merlin’s face darkens. “I don’t trust him. I haven’t since he sent me to Nimueh and expected me to bargain my mother’s life for his freedom.”
Bess’ fingernails sink into the bark of the branch beneath her. “The Dragon needs Arthur to live long enough to become king, Merlin. So do we, come to that.”
“He lied to me.”
“And you lied to Arthur. Now Arthur will lie to the king and keep your secret.” She raises an eyebrow. “How’s he taking that, by the way?”
“I think he’s decided to pretend he knew all along. Mostly, we’re not talking about it.”
“An excellent plan,” Bess says. “We should follow his example.”
Merlin draws his legs up onto the branch and hugs his knees to his chest. “You know, I asked Gaius about you. About your magic.”
Bess looks away. “Well,” she says through the sudden tightness in her throat, “I bet that was a short conversation.”
“It was. He told me your parents died when you were small and that you were raised by his sister, who was a powerful sorceress. He said she taught you everything she knew about magic, even though you had no talent for it.” He pauses. “He said she died last autumn, and that’s why you came to Camelot.”
Bess is fairly certain Gaius has never had a sister; she hangs her head and tries to look appropriately tragic. She wonders if she should attempt a sniffle.
Merlin watches her face. “You must miss her.”
“Oh, I do,” Bess says. “Terribly.”
“What was her name?”
Bess’ mind goes blank. “Um,” she says.
Merlin nods and sits back against the willow’s trunk. He doesn’t look angry, exactly, but he doesn’t look pleased either. He folds his arms across his chest. “Arthur, on the other hand, seems to be under the impression that your mother was a handmaiden here at court. He says that over the years she’s told you all sorts of hilarious bedtime stories about Uther’s court and his queen’s nutty high jinks. Which is pretty impressive when you consider that according to Gaius your mother’s been dead since you were an infant.”
“Er,” Bess says.
“And, of course, if you look in the steward’s staff registry it says that you come from a small village called Three Trees Crossing, where your only living family is your father, who is neither a sorceress nor a former handmaiden, but a fairly prosperous barley farmer.” Merlin watches her carefully, his eyes hard. “Bess, the Dragon called you old friend.”
Bess looks down at the branches below, the rain-heavy leaves and the dizzying distance to the ground. She bites her bottom lip. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“The truth would make a nice change.”
“Ah yes,” she says. “The truth.” She looks up. “Who was your father, Merlin?”
He flinches. “I don’t see what that has to do with—”
“It doesn’t. It’s a question I have no business asking, and you have no reason to answer it.” She smiles at him, a little sadly. “We have a right to our secrets, Merlin.”
Merlin nods once, his expression unreadable in the murky grey-green light. “All right,” he says.
She frowns. “All right?”
Merlin reaches up and pulls himself onto her branch. He sits beside her, his knee bumping hers. “Yeah. I mean, I don’t like that you lied to Arthur, and I don’t like that Gaius lied to me, but—” He shrugs. “I trust you.”
They are such simple words when heard from his lips, and she wonders if they mean so little to him, wonders that he says them so easily. A man like Merlin cannot afford to give his trust cheaply, and yet she can see it in his eyes – the simple, unerring certainty that even if she is not what she seems, she is worthy of his faith. Merlin trusts her, and it’s terrifying.
“You shouldn’t,” Bess says, her heart in her throat. “Merlin, I—”
He slides closer on the branch, and she feels the heat of his shoulder, his shirt damp with rain. “Tell me how to fix my nose.”
Bess shakes her head. “I don’t know.”
“I think you do.”
“I think you’re an ass.”
“Bess,” Merlin says, and he doesn’t say anything more, just lets the sound of her name fill the silence. The wind moves through the trees.
Bess takes a deep, steadying breath. “Ágíeme,” she says, careful to keep the power from her voice. “Focus on the proper shape of the nose, the knitting of the bone. The cartilage. Focus, inhale, and—”
“Ágíeme,” Merlin says, and his eyes flash gold. His nose makes a strange popping sound, and he groans. “Okay, that really hurt.”
“Don’t be such a baby,” Bess says. She pokes gently at the swelling around his nose. “I think it worked. The bruises are already starting to fade.” She smiles. “Not bad for your first try.”
He grins, a quick flash of teeth. “What can I say? I’m a quick study.”
“Sure you are,” she says, sliding away on the branch, putting a little much needed space between them. “I’m surprised Gaius hasn’t taught you that one. I can’t imagine he doesn’t know it.”
Merlin shrugs and looks down at his hands. “Maybe he’s forgotten.”
“Maybe,” Bess says. They sit quietly for a moment.
Merlin runs a hand through his rain-wet hair, and his fringe sticks up absurdly. “Gaius thinks the more I know about my magic the more I’ll be tempted to use it. He thinks I’m not as cautious as I should be, and he’s right.”
Bess scowls. “Oh, and so keeping you ignorant and untrained is safer?”
He stiffens. “I’m not ignorant.”
“You really are.” She sighs, feeling old. “You don’t understand, Merlin – it’s dangerous. You have so much power, and you have no idea how to control it. Elaine took advantage of that, and I promise you she won’t be the last. You need to learn that there’s more to magic than frying evil sorceresses and polishing Arthur’s armour.”
“Fine,” Merlin says. “Then why don’t you teach me?”
Bess blinks. “I walked right into that, didn’t I?”
“You really did,” Merlin says, and grins.
There’s a loud honk from below, and Bess hears someone say, “I’d reconsider the wisdom of that, if I were you. I’m quite close with the castle butcher.” There’s a silence, and then Gaius adds, “I thought not.”
Merlin rolls his eyes and calls, “We’re up here, Gaius.”
A moment later Gaius shuffles into view, his head tilted back and his arms folded over his chest. Bess covers her mouth to stifle a laugh. “Nice hat, Gaius.”
He adjusts the brim of his rather feminine peaked hat. “Thank you, Bess. I find it very practical in this weather.” He turns a glare on the still dripping Merlin. “And if you catch cold, sir, you won’t get any sympathy from me. I told you to wait until a break in the rain.”
Merlin’s face is the picture of innocence. “I had to tell her about the Mercians, didn’t I?”
Gaius looks entirely unconvinced. “In that matter you’re both somewhat behind on recent events. Uther has sent the delegation from Mercia home unharmed. They are to inform King Bayard that his daughter has been revealed as a sorceress and an enemy of the crown.”
“That should go over well,” Merlin mutters.
“What about Prince Urien?” Bess says. “Elaine claimed he was behind the whole thing.”
“There is no proof of that,” Gaius says, “and there won’t be. Urien is far too clever. We have only Lady Elaine’s accusation as evidence, and as the Mercians pointed out, Elaine is quite clearly mad.”
Merlin frowns. “So what do we do?”
Gaius smiles, his eyes tired. “We wait, Merlin. We wait and see.” He reaches up and straightens his hat. “Now. Are you two going to spend all evening in that tree or are you coming in for supper?”
Merlin’s eyes light up with something considerably more gluttonous than magic. “Supper,” he says rapturously, already clambering down from one branch to the next. “I’m starving.”
“Imagine my surprise,” Gaius says.
Bess doesn’t move, and before Merlin is halfway to the ground he stops and looks up at her. “Aren’t you coming?”
Bess meets Gaius’ eyes through the branches and leaves between them. He could have handed her over to Uther the moment he recognised her for what she was; instead he’d given her tea and acceptance and something very like family, and the only thing he’d asked of her in return was that she stay away from Merlin. He’s trying to protect them both, protect them from Bess’ past and Merlin’s power, and what would he say if he knew Bess has all but agreed to teach Merlin the magics he will not?
“Of course she’s coming,” Gaius says, holding Bess’ gaze. “Hurry along, Bess. If Merlin beats us back, by the time we arrive there won’t be food left to feed a dormouse.”
“That is a slanderous lie,” Merlin says. “Just because I have a healthy appetite—”
“A healthy appetite for a horse, maybe,” Bess says, and Gaius chuckles at Merlin’s outraged squawk. Bess begins to climb down quickly after him, nearly snagging her skirts on a broken branch. Her feet hit the ground a moment before Merlin comes tumbling down after her. She grabs his arm to steady him, but her eyes are on Gaius. “Are you sure you want me to come?”
Gaius gives her a severe look. “I thought I’d made it perfectly clear that you were always welcome to join us. You are not a guest, Bess; I did not think you would require special invitation.”
She looks down to hide her smile. “Sorry, Gaius.”
“Yes. Well.” The corner of Gaius’ mouth twitches. “Perhaps you can make it up to me by teaching Merlin how to enchant a broom without first setting it on fire. I’ve had to replace three in the last month; the castle steward has begun to look at me rather oddly.” He turns and begins the walk back to the castle, rain rolling off the brim of his strange peaked hat. Bess thinks she can hear him whistle.
“I don’t set the brooms on fire,” Merlin says from behind her. “I only singe them a little.”
Bess turns to him. “If I agree to teach you, you have to do exactly as I say. Even if I am younger than you.”
“And a girl,” Merlin adds.
“I’ll tell Morgana you said that.”
“I’ll tell Arthur you stare at his arse.”
Bess narrows her eyes at him. “Oaf.”
“Midget.”
“Moron.”
Merlin grins. “Goose girl.”
Bess grits her teeth and holds out her hand. “So? Do you agree to my terms?”
“With all my heart,” Merlin says, and shakes her hand. Before she can pull it away again, he bends down and presses a sloppy kiss to her knuckles.
She pulls a face and wipes her hand on her dress. “You’re disgusting, you know that? Absolutely disgusting.”
Merlin laughs, stumbling out from under the protection of the willow’s branches, and for an airless, frozen moment he seems a shadow cast upon the walls of the castle, a dark silhouette against cloud-pale stone. Then she blinks, and it’s only Merlin – standing in the rain, waiting for her to follow him home.
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But it makes me want to try, anyway. I'm not a regular Merlin watcher, though I've got the general gist of the action. But this- this makes me reconsider that. Because there is something wonderful and bright and sad about them, this little group, and in your hands it really becomes something powerful. I love Bess and Merlin and Gaius, and I love Arthur and his horse, and I love Morgana and Gwen and Morgana's sword. I love that Bess is so angry, so deeply angry, and she still wants biscuits. I love how human and vulnerable they all are.
And this:
Merlin laughs, stumbling out from under the protection of the willow’s branches, and for an airless, frozen moment he seems a shadow cast upon the walls of the castle, a dark silhouette against cloud-pale stone.
Everything that is, and could be. You have such a gift, and I'm continually grateful that you share it.
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Nimueh gets a second chance to be a different person and she chose right... I'm happy for this :D
Also now Merlin has a new teacher who can actually taught him tons of things... Arthur knows as does Gwen... even Morgana has a new chance.
I think this was awesome, and I'm thinking you are planing a sequel?? That will be great also, just don't make Bess evil ok, pretty please!!
Be well and thanks for this great story!!!
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(Anonymous) 2010-09-19 01:11 am (UTC)(link)no subject
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♥
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In other words: omg so gooooood I love every word of it.
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The rats with an Arthur infatuation creeped me out. The tone of the ending was just right. I could keep on listing things I love about this fic for a very long while, but I think you get the picture.
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Thank you :)
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I love how you've made Bess her own character, but still with Nimueh's anger simmering under the surface. I love her delightfully snarky relationship with the dragon, Merlin and Gaius. I love Morgana's dramatic entrence and your letting her help save the day. I love how well you used Gwen and her feelings for Arthur. I loved Morgana's concussion and Merlin's broken nose.
And I loved the goose chasing Merlin up a tree.
Basically: ♥
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Most of all, though, I think your Merlin and Bess are both brilliant. I love Bess for having Nimueh's rage, but has kept every bit of her other characters, too - what a wonderful original character to tell us this story - she's so strong and so central to the way this story goes, which is brilliant. And Merlin! Charming and sweet, but still powerful. People don't usually manage to balance his power with the considerably more goofy Merlin we get on the show, but you've managed it so perfectly. And I loved that he was intelligent enough to figure out that Bess isn't who she says she is, all on his own.
I adored the story, too, and the way you dropped hints throughout the story as we got to the actual enchantment. But I loved every bit of this, all your little details and your dialogue and the way you managed to cut through to the heart of what I love about this show - interesting adventures with lovely characters and fantastic relationships.
Ah. Just wonderful! This is the gen fic I'll be rec'cing to anyone who asks.
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:D
I love how having these two personalities meshing together inside makes both Bess and Nimueh better for it. Bess is more confident and adorably snarky, and Nimueh gains back her compassion and humanity. THANK YOU for fleshing out her character in such an ingenious way.
And everyone else: GAHH they felt so true to character--well, in Morgana's case, at least the S1 Morgana in her kickassery that I miss so dearly--but you gave them depth and such HUMOR, I love them all here. :D :D :D
::TOTALLY MEM-ING THIS LIKE A MOFO::
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I know that you're busy with other writings (I have finished Sherlock now, too, so I can keep up with that if needs be), and that the sequel to this story frightens you due to your foolhardy ambition or something like that, but I would love to see more. Even if you never finish and just post little snippets, that would be okay.
This story is really good. I was reluctant to read it at first (seeing as I'd only heard of Merlin and wasn't even sure which one was Arthur and which one was Merlin in the icons) but I'm really glad I did. I fell in love with every single one of the characters, from Bess's father to Gaius. Even Penny Goodfoot -- I didn't like her, but she was so real that it was hard not to appreciate her.
Thank you for writing, and for sharing.
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DUDE.
This was amazing and perfect. And awesome and other adjectives I can't think of because my brain has been broken by the awesomeness.
Going into my faves.
Also a sequel/continuation of this would be fantastic.
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This was planned as one of a long series of fics about Bess, but I just don't think I'm ever going to find the time and energy to write them. I did, however, post a snippet of a theoretical sequel here (http://rosa-acicularis.livejournal.com/30316.html#cutid2), and you never know - it might just suck me back in. It's happened before.
Thanks for reading!
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The ending note is lovely, with Merlin's future (all of their futures) looming above them, but the implication that they're going to be together throughout it <3
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This is amazing and wonderful and everything I didn't know I wanted, or indeed needed, until I read it. Nimueh's death at the end of S1 was the first moment where I really felt like the show was operating on some kind of fundamentally different moral principle than I'd expected, and my first inkling about how the female characters in general were going to be treated by the narrative. But this... I think I'd like this to be my new canon, please.
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Oy, yes. In retrospect, I suppose we should have known poor Morgana was doomed to become a smirking cartoon villain; they killed off Nimueh too early and too cheaply, and there was a smirk vacuum that needed filling. Merlin does some things so well, but boy can it do a big thing badly.
Show frustrations aside, thank you so much for the wonderful comment! I'm a big fan of yours, so I'm pretty psyched about it. ;)
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