Rheged Part 1
He wasn’t a sour man.
Not even his enemies would call him such.
Not even the ones he’d run through.
He was easy going; it was his natural state of mind.
But at this moment, right now, leaning here uselessly against a pillar at the edge of Camelot’s Throne Room, he was skirting as close to the borders of nasty bad temper as he ever came.
It was the heat. Partly. Stinking. Stifling. Thick and filthy. And right then, to wind the spring of his irritation tighter, hair-trigger tight, a tickling drop of sweat, running disgustingly slowly between his shoulder blades, down to enter the swamp at the small of his back.
He looked around him darkly at the others in the room. All of them must be suffering equally, though few of them showed it, all of the knights and nobles and ladies standing here just like he was, wearing clothing so unseasonal only lunatics would consider it for this roasting hot early summer. And that’s what they all were, he thought grimly. Lunatics. Courtiers. When thefuck had he agreed to become one of those?
The man leaning next to him straightened suddenly, alert and respectful;forcing off the drowsy, buzzing heat, just like everyone else in the crowded hall.
Gwaine though, Gwaine deliberately took his time to straighten; a tiny, private, ridiculous rebellion, but one that left him feeling marginally more his old self.
He let out a heavy, weary breath and tried to pay proper attention to the small party which had just arrived in the hall from a doorway across from the twin thrones of Camelot. The sight, if anything, made his mood worsen.
“Nice of them to remember we’re here,” he muttered to the man beside him, and there it was. Sourness. He’d been trying for playful. The heat, he thought again.
And yes, he acknowledged, mildly ashamed, jealousy; it’d been far too long since he’d emptied his balls with any real enjoyment. But he was still sensible - and loyal - enough to keep his voice low. The days of easy, friendly insults, shouted openly, were rarer now.
“They love each other above all else. They deserve their happiness,” Percival replied quietly, the dignity of it, a kind of quiet reproach.
Gwaine pursed his lips; after all it was hardly an insightful statement given the obvious mutual regard which had been playing out in front of them for years, but something… almost dogged in the other man’s tone shook him to a kind of alertness and drew his glance.
They’d found themselves talking about Lancelot the night before, a few of them, half into their cups. It had taken ale, and a lot of it, to loosen their tongues at last, to force them to address their own long ago guilt, but Gwaine had forgotten until then that Percival had become a knight of Camelot as Lancelot’s friend, closer to him then than anyone save Merlin.
The friendship had thinned and loosened over time as Percival and Elyan became closer, and Lancelot had held himself just that bit apart, but even so… Gwaine knew the bond and the debt were still there.
Not that it mattered really, because they’d all let him down in the end, believing things of him so easily when they should have known that something was fishy. Instead they’d all just …sucked up the tale, and condemned Lancelot as a man who’d betrayed his king and his honour for a woman. A man they didn’t think about or speak of for years.
His memory should have been glorious; his brothers of the Round Table should have fought for the truth for him. But instead…
Gwaine frowned uneasily at Percival; at the strange conflict he could see on his friend’s handsome face as he watched the new arrivals. He fancied suddenly that he could see emotions flipping through those soft, blue eyes like slips of paper in the wind.
What was he seeing?
Guilt, he thought, sadness, resentment perhaps, and back to guilt again. Percival always had been painfully honourable.
They hadn’t known the real story of Lancelot’s true role for long… that it had all been a vicious game by Morgana Pendragon, and Gwaine had played enough of those with her himself to know that a man was nothing but a pawn when she turned those cold, cold eyes on you. The image of a girl’s pretty face winked, suddenly, disobediently, into his mind... a girl he hadn’t given a thought to for many a long day.
Eira. Sweet, innocent, lovely Eira. Morgana’s creature. Who would have made of Gwaine, a dupe and a fool. Long dead now, and rotting.
He shoved the memory aside impatiently... focussed instead, on one who deserved his guilt. Their guilt.
Lancelot had loved Gwen beyond all else, and Percival had known that from his time with him before Camelot, just as well as Gwaine had, because of Merlin.
They’d all just taken Arthur’s part, cared about his pain, and Gwen’s, and forgotten Lancelot’s; forgotten his devotion to Guinevere and Arthur, his generosity and stoicism, watching the woman he adored devoting herself to someone else.
And after he’d died for them, his friends had ended up betraying him. Condemning him. None of them had even asked what Merlin had done with his body.
Last night’s belated confessions had shown painfully that Percival felt guiltier than any of them.
Gwaine held his narrowed gaze on the bigger man for a long moment, waiting, then, when all he could see once more was Percival's usual good natured serenity, he followed his line of sight again.
Arthur and Gwen had all but slipped into the throne room, rather than entering in procession as a king and his consort should, but that surprised no one much any more. It reflected the relative informality of Arthur’s court. Or so Gwaine had been told. It still felt plenty formal enough to him. Yet courtiers who lived for stupid fucking rules were still pining for the old days, when the king observed all the formalities a king should.
He watched as Gwen, hand gripping Arthur’s tunic-clad arm as they progressed, responded to some whispered remark of his with a smile, first of teasing faux disapproval, then of bright-eyed affection. She murmured in return, and Arthur’s solemnity dissolved into a broad smile of his own.
Gwaine sighed again and wondered grumpily when, if ever, they were going to stop being so pleased with themselves and each other. Though he supposed, he had to acknowledge they had plenty cause.
The king and queen had been married for years now, and though there were no children yet, no one could deny that it had worked brilliantly as a royal union. Guinevere was as majestic and noble and loved a queen as any born to the title, but she had the added mystique of her fairytale rise from nothing to glory, and all because of the twin gifts of courage and true love.
A prince she’d risked her life to help; who’d offered to give up his kingdom and indeed had given away some of his lands, for love of her; a young king who raised a peasant serving girl to become his queen out of that love. And now they ruled a shining kingdom together; a kingdom, rich in enemies as it was, where anything was possible... their future stretching wide and golden and perfect before them. There had been dark times and suffering on the way - the torment of the kingdom for example when the queen had been taken and tormented by her former mistress, the king’s mad half-sister, Morgana - but goodness and justice had won out in the end, and she had been restored to her loving people.
Well, Gwaine acknowledged, even cynics like him could appreciate how pretty the story was … when they weren’t dripping with sweat under a woollen gambeson, with mail on top, being forced to wait for the fairytale couple to finish their mid afternoon shag, or mid afternoon chat, or whatever the hell they got up to.
Though, he thought, with a tiny, private smile, he actually got the whole power of love thing himself now.
He let the pleasure of that thought fill him for a few seconds, then his mind slipped back hazily to the subject at hand.
The thing was … the thing was actually, he mused lazily, that he didn’t believe for a second that it had been a mid afternoon shag. And that - being who he was - Gwaine found harder to identify with.
Of course even before they’d married, passion wasn’t really the word he’d have used to describe what was between Arthur and Gwen. Love, definitely; affection, respect, loyalty, reliance, an almost nurturing old friendship that sometimes smacked to him more of devoted mother and son, or sometimes father and daughter, than lovers crazy with passion for each other. And they had known each other forever.
But in truth it had always seemed to Gwaine, comfortable and sweet and easy and peaceful, rather than driven by love’s delicious madness. Which could be why it already felt so much like ... a partnership now. A royal partnership.
Not Gwaine's own cup of tea at all; he was a man, by contrast, who revelled in the madness - the need and want - with a large appetite for sex. But Arthur was so bloody awkward with women anyway that it was probably just as well he’d ended up married to the only one in existence he seemed able to truly relax around.
Gwen occasionally told Arthur off for his inability to sit on his throne and turn away from an adventure, but they never appeared to squabble or really disagree with each other; had never fought, that he’d seen. Arthur had never been the old Arthur Gwaine had known, when he was with Gwen. Though to be fair, he wasn’t really the old Arthur with anyone any more.
And it wasn’t as if they’d always acted the old married couple. At first, driving passion or not… well... after all that repression... once sex entered the equation, anyone would have shaken off the chains of duty for a bit to finally allow themselves physical pleasure in the relationship as well as comfort. Who, Gwaine thought, after all, could resist lots of regular, uncomplicated sex?
For a while actually, Gwen’s quiet glances at Arthur had suggested to anyone who cared to look, that the Princess might be quite a lot better in bed than Gwaine had ever imagined he would be. And Arthur’s own ineffable, almost comical smugness; greater, impossibly, than ever before; his tendency to grin hugely, unnervingly at the oddest of moments; his unstoppable, cheerful violence every morning at training, had all spoken so eloquently of a man who was getting some every night at last.
There was no doubt in Gwaine’s mind that Arthur had deliberately chosen the first knights of the original Round Table to bear the worst of his initial post-sex euphoria.
But unnerving as it had been, at least that stage hadn’t lasted long at all, before the king and queen seemed to settle into stolid, affectionate matrimonial comfort.
Mind, Gwaine was sure that Arthur was zeroing in on him alone to pick on lately. To everyone else now, he behaved like the perfect king; Gwen appeared to have at last scared off, prattish Prince Arthur. But with Gwaine... he knew there was something there, and more than that, he thought he knew what it was.
He sighed yet again and slunk lower against his pillar, waiting for this latest ordeal to begin, just so that it could be over. Truth be told, he’d lost interest five minutes after he arrived.
Arthur and Gwen sat down on their thrones, and Arthur, abruptly and sternly the king again, nodded toward Leon who was stationed alertly by the door, also clad in his mail and thick, red cloak, poor, poor bastard. Leon nodded in his turn toward someone else - Gwaine rolled his eyes - and the doors were finally, grandly opened. The nodding began again, this time to unseen people in the outer hall, and at last, after a minute or so of still, quiet waiting, a small procession began to make its way into the room and toward the throne.
It was a less than grand group; the three bearded men at the head of it were dressed with little ostentation in dark robes and followed by others equally humbly clad, bearing chests and bundles presumably stuffed full of gifts for the royal couple. They looked in truth more like simple travellers than a group of court diplomats, but then Rheged was a very long distance away and the envoys had travelled for many weary weeks to reach Camelot to greet the king and his queen.
No one remembered such an expedition before, in fact no one remembered direct diplomatic contact before, and given the state of war Camelot and the other kingdoms had come to endure at the hands of the Saxons, and Morgana and Mordred’s perpetual enmity, no potential new ally could be ignored. Especially not one such as this.
Gwaine had travelled far in his years, to more than a few lands, but he’d never even got near Rheged, though he’d heard such tales of it, of it’s quiet wealth and security, all tied to devotion to the Old Religion. Many Druids here may have been driven to hatred of Camelot, in the West country they may have been all but wiped out, but in Rheged… in Rheged, magic was supposed to be as everyday as water and bread, and magic users were treasured, so stories went.
The most powerful sorcerors in Albion and beyond - the most powerful in the known world - lived there, it was said. And now, Rheged had come to Camelot.
Despite himself, Gwaine found his exhausted interest sparked awake again, and for the hundredth time since he’d woken that morning, he wished Merlin were here on time.
The small group stopped in front of the thrones at last, clearly in Gwaine’s vision, and bowed low, as those in the rear moved forward to place caskets and golden bundles at Arthur’s feet.
“Please,” Arthur said graciously and warmly, “Stand and be welcome. Camelot is honoured to greet the envoys of a kingdom of such legendary wealth and prowess. ”
The men straightened gracefully, and seemed to take in Arthur at last.
Gwaine supposed, with a kind of unwelcome pride, that the Princess did look the part; all golden hair and perfect features and broad shoulders, clad in Pendragon red. And the crown topping off the picture of course. He did look, Gwaine acknowledged reluctantly, sort of…godlike. If you didn’t know him.
The man in the centre of the group certainly seemed to think so. He bowed his head and raised it again in quiet acknowledgement, a look of awe - perhaps, Gwaine thought sulkily, diplomatic awe - on his face. He looked thrilled to be there.
At last he spoke, a gush of low, liquid syllables, and the man beside him bowed in his turn. He, like all his fellows, Gwaine thought, looked oddly neither young nor old; his face, above his close-cropped beard, smooth and tanned and unlined, yet somehow, not at all youthful.
‘Your Majesty honours us,” the translator said, voice low, mellow. “We are unforgivably tardy in this matter, my lord, but we beg to present our gifts…humble as they are ... in honour of your great kingship, and your union.”
Arthur smiled and inclined his head. “Again my lords, I’m honoured.”
Another bow, more smiles, and more translated whispers, back and forth. Arthur relaxed, and glanced at Gwen. Her lips twitched in acknowledgement, before she smiled warmly at the delegation, every inch the queen. Yet Gwaine noted that the men’s clever eyes did not waver from Arthur’s face. The translator inclined his head respectfully again.
“My King bid my lord Myrthryn of his court, bring these tokens of his respect and regard, Your Majesty, and his wish to consider friendship between you.” Arthur’s small smile widened and the man hurried on unctuously. “Even in our far distant land of Rheged, we have heard the great tales of Camelot’s golden king and his beautiful and powerful warlock, and we seek to honour you.”
Silence, stretching for a moment, two…. not yet awkward, but still, clearly thrumming with wrongness.
Arthur’s smile fixed and held; the whole room somehow frozen in puzzlement, the delegation waiting with a kind of dignified excitement, and Gwaine… Gwaine was suddenly close to losing it completely to a fit of unmanly giggles.
It was just…Arthur’s face…as if the much-anticipated delegation from Rheged had turned without warning and farted at him.
His noble queen apparently ignored, and Gwaine thought, with a kind of mean, half-ashamed glee, the eternally undervalued Merlin, described to Arthur himself in these terms of awed respect.
Camelot’s beautiful warlock, famed afar as surely as the mighty King Arthur himself.
And Merlin was beautiful, Gwaine thought fiercely - a strange, coltish, fey beauty. And he was brave. And clever. And as sweet and good at heart as a honeycomb melting in the sun of summer. And Gwaine hurt with him.
Because Arthur had never really seen any of that clearly…Merlin’s worth … not even when they’d been relatively, if dysfunctionally, close. Before Merlin’s magic was finally revealed.
Not even when Gwaine’d first met them, an odd couple in a tavern brawl. And the years after, when they were free to be prince and then new king and less than obsequious manservant... not even then, when Merlin had appeared the closest Arthur’d ever had to a true friend, had Arthur seemed able to see Merlin’s matchless worth, or his devotion.
Gwaine had never been able to understand it, even before he knew of Merlin’s magic himself... such wilful blindness to something that seemed obvious to anyone with a brain. He knew, all the knights knew, that Arthur had truly valued Merlin; in some ways, Gwaine had seen from the first, he’d needed him, but he’d seemed utterly incapable of admitting it to himself or showing it to Merlin in any but the most oblique way.
It wasn’t even a royal thing... a class thing; Arthur had proven he was quite capable of seeing past the low birth of servants and peasants; of elevating them and showing them respect, but that had been reserved for Gwen and his peasant knights.
To Arthur it seemed, for all those long years, Merlin could never be more than he was, however wise and loyal. He could never be more than a peasant who could not fight, and therefore, eternally, a servant. A king’s servant, but a servant, treated with Arthur’s weird kind of affectionate, possessive contempt, leavened at the end only by Gwen’s influence.
That, while Merlin was his manservant, had been the mystery of Arthur: he’d relied on Merlin more than any other person in his life, as friend and follower and gadfly and conscience, yet never seemed able to acknowledge it.
Now of course Arthur had no choice but to see Merlin’s true worth, Merlin’s role in his life; his power. And, yes, Merlin had his reward for it. Eventually. When Arthur’d finally pulled his big head out of his own arse.
Merlin sat again at the king’s right hand, as Arthur had placed him the very first time they took their places around the Round Table - but no longer as just a gesture. Now he wasn’t just standing by, serving the others; he was a formal member of Arthur’s council. And any of Uther’s old advisors, or the men vying for position from the courts of the other kingdoms, now seeking Arthur’s ear; anyone who openly questioned Merlin’s elevation to Court Sorceror and advisor to the king, was quickly and mercilessly set right.
Yet, for all that, for all Arthur had grown and finally allowed Merlin to grow, for all that Arthur may have decided to end his father’s war on magic, may be seeking to mend the fences Uther had destroyed; in his heart, his gut, for all he fought against it, conditioned as his father’s son and Morgana’s much betrayed half-brother, Gwaine believed Arthur still feared and mistrusted all magic and magicians. And Mordred hadn’t helped.
So Arthur’s old affectionate bullying of his manservant, his teasing disdain, had been replaced by a kind of uneasy, unnatural, over-formal tolerance… as if Merlin were no longer Merlin, but some unknown and potentially dangerous animal living among them.
Gwaine would never say it to Merlin himself, but he wondered if that was the most he was ever likely to get from his king. Never Arthur’s unstinting, unqualified admiration, never Arthur’s true respect..
Predictably, as the silence stretched too long in the room, Arthur gave the delegation a kind of ‘lets move on’ smile and inclined his head in necessary acknowledgement of the first statement at least.
“A friendship with His Majesty the King of Rheged would be welcome indeed.” His tone was firm and bland, drawing a line, before any more confusing nonsense was spouted. He turned his head pointedly toward Gwen and put his hand on hers, “But I’m remiss. Allow me to introduce to you, my queen, Guinevere of Camelot.”
The expression on the translator’s face didn’t change from benign warmth, and yet somehow his bewilderment was clear. His small smile stretched to politeness though, and he turned to murmur to the man beside him.
Myrthryn, Gwaine thought avidly.
To Part 2