How to Survive Promotion in the Middle Ages (8/11)
Please see Masterpost for fic headers and author's notes.
Back to Part Seven
The beds at the inn were lovely and warm and soft, which only served to drive home how very hard and scratchy and cold the stables were to sleep in.
The innkeeper had been very pleasant and welcoming when Merlin asked for a bed for one of the King's privy councillors, but less than impressed when Merlin turned out to be that councillor, rather than his servant. Apparently there were reasons that went beyond Arthur's private amusement for Merlin to be seen in showy, expensive robes. Merlin had thought that a day or two away from court would be the perfect opportunity to return to his old, comfortable clothing, but this meant that, as far as the innkeeper was concerned, Merlin was only fit to sleep with the horses.
Merlin did consider introducing his horse as the king's advisor and demanding it be given the comfortable bed - if a Roman emperor could do it, why shouldn't the court of Camelot? But on reflection he decided that Arthur wouldn't much like hearing rumours that he was following in the footsteps of Caligula. It was the sort of thing that tended to put a damper on public opinion for a young king.
Merlin hadn't realized how readily he'd adapted to his fine new bed at Camelot until he tried sleeping on a pile of feed sacks. When he climbed back on horseback the next morning, his joints positively creaked from the awkward position he'd slept in. He was sure he was going to find some interesting bruises later. And what was with that straw? He was sure straw hadn't been that prickly when he was a servant.
The horse, who had slept standing up, listened to Merlin's litany of complaints about the bed without a great deal of sympathy.
If Merlin had worried at all about finding his way to Castle Corbin, he needn't have done. Although he left the inn at the break of dawn, there were already people on the road, first the odd carter, then a steady stream of passersby flowing towards the castle. From them, Merlin learned that there was a tournament being held at Carbonek, one that had already begun. Some of the peasants on the road had not attended or meant to attend the tournament at all, but yesterday there had been rumours of a new knight in the contest, someone who had defeated one of the king's sons, and it had piqued their interest.
The tale seemed to have grown in the telling. Merlin thought it unlikely that the strange knight had an extra arm, the sword of a giant, and the speed of a pixie. He did think it likely, however, that Lancelot might have been drawn to a contest of arms, and so he followed his fellow travellers towards the action.
There was no space left on the tournament grounds for Merlin to tie up his horse, so he led it to a deserted spot a little off the forest path and tied the reins to a tree. Then he muttered a few words under his breath and watched it fade from sight. The horse made a slight noise of protest when it noticed that its feet had disappeared. It was probably giving him a reproachful look as well, but Merlin couldn't see it. Merlin patted its now invisible nose consolingly.
"You'll be all right," he said. "Better than having a run-in with bandits or horse thieves. No one'll bother you this way."
The horse didn't find being invisible a particularly comforting experience even by those standards and expressed this to her best ability.
"Ow," said Merlin, holding his ear and gingerly feeling for teeth marks. "I'll be back before nightfall, so just you - graze, or think horsey thoughts, or whatever it is you do in your spare time."
The horse gave a final whinny of protest, but Merlin took no notice, plunging back into the trees and leaving the horse to contemplate how it was she kept finding herself in these situations. She had the distinct idea that the other horses in the royal stables didn't have to go through this kind of thing.
While the crowd milled around awaiting the main event, Merlin found a stall selling the kind of gingerbread his mother used to make: crumbs of every type glued together by honey so that the whole confection stuck to the back of your throat and could even stop you breathing if you weren't careful to keep it moving around.
The gingerbread they served at Camelot just wasn't the same. It was made, for one thing, from good bread crumbs, not the kind that had sat around in the crevices of a kitchen table, acquiring character and refinement until they were dug out by the frugally minded baker and assembled into a thick and gooey delicacy.
Merlin dislodged a large, sticky crumb from his molars with a grin. The mix of sweetness and glottal blockage brought back a wave of homesickness, and he let himself be buoyed along by the happy excitement and chatter of the people around him as if he had stepped back into the market fairs of his childhood.
There was a gradual general movement toward the stands as anyone who hadn't yet found a seat or a square foot of standing room made their way into the last available inches of space. Merlin dodged and wove his way between spectators, stepping over and sometimes on top of other people's feet, leaving a chorus of shouts and complaints to rise up behind him. Before the injured feet could do anything about it, though, Merlin was standing up in the very front row, leaning casually against the fence, as calmly as if he had been there all along. One of his new neighbours raised an eyebrow at him, but by then most of the people whose feet he had stepped on were distracted by the arrival of the contestants, so Merlin escaped retribution.
He settled in to watch just in time to see none other than Lancelot take the field. Merlin did not recognize his opponent, but he could credibly have been related to the demi-giant that rumour had described along the road. The man was "well-built," that was the term, meaning that whoever had assembled him had done so with a maximum of muscle and sinew, and not very much else. He was only a little larger in frame than Arthur, but gave the impression of having compromised on sheer volume in exchange for pure force. He put Merlin in mind of a tightly drawn bow, containing the potential for far greater motion and violence than could be contained within its dimensions alone.
And he was fast, Merlin discovered when the fighters began to move. He almost had to blink himself into an altered magical state to follow what was happening. It wasn't that the moves themselves were unfamiliar: Arthur had made Merlin run through so many endless routines of block, parry, counter-attack that he could recognize all the individual elements. It was just that, when it came to actual combat, the whole process sped up so there was no time to think about individual attacks and counter-attacks. All you could do was try to keep the sharp, pointy bits of the other person's weapon away from the soft, squishy bits of yourself. At least, that was combat as Merlin understood it. The contest he was watching seemed to be occurring on a whole new level of finesse.
He watched Lancelot shift a mere eighth of an inch to the left to avoid the deadly arc of his opponent's blade. Barely an instant later, Lancelot was bringing his own sword up on the other side to catch the knight's briefly exposed flank.
A cheer broke from Merlin's lips involuntarily as Lancelot's opponent stumbled and lost his poise while he tried to protect his side from further danger. He held onto his ribs almost as though they were bleeding, which Merlin couldn't understand. Surely so slight a blow couldn't have cut through his chainmail already?
The knight extended a hand towards Lancelot as if asking for a moment to recover. Lancelot backed off warily at the gesture - not a moment too soon, as the knight used the movement of one arm as a cover for the other to strike an under-handed blow.
"You bastard!" Merlin exclaimed, then coughed to cover it, though he needn't have bothered. Plenty of the other people watching were murmuring their discontent over the move, and a low cheer broke out as Lancelot danced safely out of range.
They traded more feints than blows, the knight wearing Lancelot down until he blocked an attack that did not come, and the real one that followed knocked him off his feet. A collective gasp went up from the crow, but Merlin found himself grinning: he'd seen this move before.
The knight sauntered over, his grip on his sword relaxed, to crow over his success. Lancelot waited until the other man was almost directly above him, and then he sprang. He knocked the knight off his feet, broke his grip completely, disarmed him, and reversed their positions in an instant, this time with his sword at his opponent's throat.
The knight held up his hands in surrender, and Lancelot allowed him up.
Now see, thought Merlin, if you were a knight of Camelot, you'd have seen that move coming, because Arthur has been pulling that trick on every recruit he's trained since Lancelot.
Out loud he cheered and even attempted a two-handed whistle, which came out as more of a squawk. Then he was climbing over the fence and racing to catch up with Lancelot as he quitted the field.
"Merlin!" Lancelot exclaimed when he spotted him, a pleased smile on his face. "I thought I heard your voice in the crowd, but I couldn't be sure."
"You, my friend, are brilliant," said Merlin, as they made their way through a crowd of curious courtiers and toward the castle gates. "That thing you did with your sword, when you sort of - swoosh! - you have to show some of the other knights how to do that, they'll love it."
"How are things at Camelot?" Lancelot asked. "Is everyone well? Arthur, and Guinevere, and yourself?"
"Er..." said Merlin, the reasons for his journey pushing themselves back to the forefront of his mind, "Actually, that's a bit complicated. No, no, don't worry, everyone's fine, only... could we have a word in private?"
Lancelot excused himself and led Merlin through the winding corridors of the keep to a small, spartan room in one of the turrets.
"This is where you've been staying, then?" asked Merlin, looking around at the bare stone walls. That must get a bit chilly in the winter. The bed in its simplicity reminded him of his old one in Gaius' rooms, although here there was none of the mess he had been used to. "It's... nice. Cosy."
"What couldn't you tell me before?" Lancelot asked. "Is everyone well? Is - are the King and Queen well?"
"No, everyone's fine," said Merlin, "There's been a problem with politics, that's all. Nothing to worry about, really, only someone's sort of... accused you and Gwen of adultery."
Lancelot went white then red with astonishing rapidity.
"Who says - how could anyone-" Lancelot spluttered. Merlin wasn't sure if he was angry or embarrassed or both.
"Nobody important," Merlin assured him. "It's just some knight from Northumbria who no one's ever heard of, only he's trying to cause trouble, so it seems worse than it is. I thought - well, Gwen and I both thought, really - that if you came back and explained..." Merlin trailed off at the increasingly stormy cast of Lancelot's brows.
"Let him face me in honourable combat and I will make him regret the day he ever profaned her name," Lancelot said.
"Funny you should mention that..." said Merlin. "Because if you don't, Arthur will, and we were thinking... it's just a slight possibility..." He tried to think of a way to phrase it that wouldn't sound disloyal, but gave up: "We think there's a chance Arthur might get himself killed being a brave idiot."
Lancelot laughed. "There's always a chance of that happening in any case. There's only one problem, though. I've given my word to King Pelles that I will fight another day in this tournament. There is a matter of honour at stake here, as well."
Merlin frowned. "Hang on, how many ladies could you possibly have besmirched in the last week?"
Lancelot went in detail into the story of how he had come to be at Corbin.
"I don't know how it happened," Lancelot said, sitting heavily on the bed. "All I wanted was to help. The next thing I knew, her father had me kidnapped - or no, that was her brothers - but now he's talking about marrying us off and having grandchildren. I don't think I'm ready for grandchildren yet, Merlin." He waved his sword in a gesture of helplessness, which Merlin felt very uncomfortable about happening so close to his kidneys.
Merlin took the sword away before it could do any irreparable damage and set it aside on the next convenient surface. Then he sat down beside Lancelot and patted him consolingly on the back.
"You're a handsome man," Merlin said, "I'm sure that sort of thing could happen to anyone."
"Her brothers keep threatening to kill me, too," said Lancelot in bewilderment. "Except her youngest brother, who seems really pleased that I've beaten him. Her oldest brother told me after today's contest that he was expecting my run of good luck to end tomorrow before something else did. I don't even know what that means. There's something wrong with this family."
"All the more reason to come back to Camelot with me," Merlin urged him. "Then you'll only have to worry about facing one person who might try to kill you, and I can promise you with reasonable certainty that no one will try to make you get married."
Unless, of course, a woman came along who just happened to be perfect for him, and if Gwen and Lancelot could agree that old feelings were best let go. Merlin believed in looking to the future. It was probably the result of one too many conversations with the Great Dragon.
"I can't just leave like that," Lancelot said, "not now I've agreed to go through with this. It wouldn't be right."
"How much longer were you planning to stay, exactly?" Merlin asked a little nervously. "Only, the trial by combat is, well, not to put too fine a point on it, tomorrow..."
Lancelot looked alarmed. "How long has this been going on?"
"Er, it's a relatively recent development. Only, Arthur got a bit zealous about seeing justice done personally once Gwen was involved. You know." Merlin shrugged. "So we have about... a day, give or take, to get you back to Camelot, or Arthur will go charging in on his own. I can speed things up a little along the road, you know -" He waved his hand around a bit to indicate "magical, wooOOooOOoo..." "- but it still takes time to travel, we should really leave, well, now, if you want to get there in time."
Merlin stood abruptly, doing his best to look eager rather than impatient.
Lancelot sat still, looking pole-axed. "I don't know, Merlin. I can't just leave. These people - well, Lady Elaine, needs my help. I'm not sure if she wants it or even if it's the right kind of help. But I don't think I could leave her here now anymore than I could have ridden past in the forest."
"Right," said Merlin, fighting back disappointment. "Of course, if these people are that important to you - I'll just have to go back on my own and find some other way of making sure Arthur doesn't get himself killed. Don't worry, I'm good at that bit, I'm sure I'll think of something."
Lancelot's expression was agonized. He stood, waveringly."Yet if Guinevere and Arthur need my help, I cannot refuse," he said slowly.
Merlin took a deep breath. "Have you thought about, maybe, asking the Lady Elaine about it? You said she didn't seem to want your help in the first place, maybe she wouldn't mind if you left."
"Are you sure it's any of my business?" asked a faint but distinctly peevish voice on the other side of the door. "You wouldn't want to complicate things by asking someone with no personal stake in the matter, would you?"
Lancelot's head whipped around at the voice and Merlin thought he caught a moment of terror in his eyes.
"Lady Elaine, is that you?" Lancelot asked. "Have you been there long?"
The door opened.
"If you mean long enough to know you're a fool, then yes, but I hardly needed to listen at doors to find that out. I was coming to see you about this whole tournament thing anyway. There's one option I think you've overlooked."
Merlin stared at the person in the door, looked back at Lancelot, and then back at the figure in the door. "Er..." he said. "You don't always look like that, do you?"
"Of course not," said Elaine sharply.
"She doesn't," Lancelot said. "I would have mentioned that."
Dame Brusen had not been told, when she accepted responsibility for the youngest of Pelles' children, that it would take a miracle, or maybe a strong dose of magic, to keep the girl under any kind of control. It was therefore fortunate for all concerned that Dame Brusen happened to possess magical talents in abundance, and that these were the least of her gifts.
She had raised a brood of ten and seen them all, remarkably, grow to adulthood despite the normal sort of events that threated the survival of children born within Camelot's bounds. They had suffered the usual illnesses, accidents, and of course rampages by tyrants determined to wipe out anyone of any age with magical abilities, but she had kept them safe somehow through it all. She had birthed them, nursed them, protected them, guided them, smuggled them out of hostile territories, and finally washed her hands of them when they started having children of their own, declaring that she had done quite enough of that for one lifetime, thank you very much.
A few weeks after she effected a quiet retirement to a neighbouring kingdom, Dame Brusen's friend Helena, in whose household Brusen had meant to live out the rest of her life in peace and relative solitude, had died, leaving a baby daughter in desperate need of a nursemaid.
The little girl had been discontented with the world from the start, kicking and screaming when she was picked up or put down, wailing when she was left on her own, and shrieking when she was cossetted. Her father was sunk in his own grief; her brothers, confused and upset without understanding, were left to run rampant while he recovered; and little Elaine was left to Dame Brusen's care because she was the only one with enough tenderness left over after grief to care for the girl.
It could have been the passage of time obscuring her memories, but Dame Brusen would have sworn that little Elaine gave her more trouble than all of her own children had done, put together.
Elaine decided to walk before she had got the hang of crawling, but her determination and stubbornness kept her levering herself up, clutching onto the furniture and making forays against the opposite side of the room. More than once Dame Brusen returned to her charge's side to find that the girl had clambered out of her crib, across the floor, and was making the acquaintance of the window ledge or tottering toward the top of a staircase, though Brusen could have sworn she'd shut the door behind her when she left. It reached the point where Dame Brusen started tying magical charms to Elaine's crib, and later to the girl's clothes, to alert her to any sudden bids for freedom.
It only got worse when Elaine learned to walk properly and subsequently discovered the existence of her brothers. They hadn't taken a great deal of interest in their baby sister at first, not once they had visited the strange wrinkly creature and discovered it wasn't good for much beyond blowing spit-bubbles and kicking its chubby little legs furiously. As entertainment went, there were better, more mobile sources to be found in the servants and the livestock around the castle, and so the boys ran after them instead. Elaine, possibly remembering and resenting this in some far-off part of her infant brain, seized upon every chance she could find to hunt them down, as soon as she worked out how to use her legs. If her brothers were bewildered at first by the small red ball of screaming, flailing limbs that appeared with no warning to chase them around the castle, they soon learned to be wary of it.
Some of the girl's menace had since been restrained through long and weary hours of tutelage in the behaviour befitting a lady. Her blossoming figure as she grew older, the adornments of her station, and the veneer of respect for the bounds of propriety, which Brusen finally managed to instill, concealed much of that discontented child from the common view. There was never any doubt, however, in Dame Brusen's mind, that the same wailing, shrieking bundle of rage was still there, just waiting for the opportunity to escape.
Brusen had not been at all surprised when she learned of Elaine's flight. It seemed the natural and inevitable result of the girl's never-ending bid to defy all control.
Dame Brusen had tried to tell herself that whatever Elaine encountered roaming around the woods would probably have better reason to fear her than she could have to fear it. Brusen still had an instinct, though, born of too many frights about second-storey windows, that would not let her wash her hands of her feckless charge.
When Elaine was a very young child, just beginning to get into places where she ought not to be, Brusen had sewn tiny labels of enchanted cloth into the seams of all her clothes, the better to track her down before the screaming started. After that it had simply been easier to continue the habit as the girl grew out of each successive garment.
Elaine had thought Dame Brusen had the gift of the third eye that allowed her to find Elaine instantly wherever she went. Brusen had never troubled to correct her.
And so when Elaine vanished one night from Castle Corbin, it was Dame Brusen who knew which road the girl had taken, and after one agonizing night and morning of waiting for her to return, told the King where to search for his missing daughter.
She did not regret the decision now, however much Elaine might chafe with silent resentment over her interference. It was better than waking up again in the middle of the night to find her missing. So Brusen sat with her, and watched her, and gave her extra lessons to learn to give her something to fret about, and waited for the next eruption.
It came after the second match of the tournament, when Elaine returned to her chambers in a fury.
"-is so fond of Lancelot, he should just adopt him!" she was saying, paying Brusen no mind as she stormed around. "Anyone could have seen what William was doing, they don't need to form a parade in his honour, I don't see why he should be allowed to get away with it. Just - just some nobody of a swordsman, he could be anyone under there, it's not like anyone even knows him, I don't see why-"
Elaine stopped short in the middle of her rant and came to stare at Dame Brusen. There was a particular gleam in her eye that Elaine had always used to get as a child when she was planning mischief. She had that look again now.
"Father told me once you used to dabble in the magical arts," Elaine said. "Is that true? Can you - can you conjure things and... make things change shape, and other sorts of enchantments?"
Elaine's hands were gripping each other so tightly as she asked that the individual knuckles stood out sharp and white beneath her skin. Dame Brusen sighed.
"I have a little art," she said. "What sort of enchantments did you have in mind?"
Gregory was not worried, not exactly. Just because Lancelot had pulled out a few unexpected moves against his brothers, that was no reason to believe that he would do the same against Gregory. Everything was still going according to plan, he told himself firmly, and put his helmet on backwards. He cursed, removed it, squashing his nose painfully in the process, and went down to the tournament grounds.
There was no reason why Gregory shouldn't win today, he told himself as he took the field. He was a better swordsman than his brothers, everyone knew that. He would take back his grandfather's sword from this interloper; his father would forget all this silly business about marrying Elaine off; and Gregory would once again be the unquestioned champion of Carbonek.
It was a good plan. It had nice, clear steps, and a happy ending for Gregory. All he had to do was follow the plan and not let anything unexpected interfere... like that unorthodox move Lancelot had pulled out against William yesterday.
It wasn't as if the man looked all that intimidating, Gregory thought, as Lancelot joined him on the field. He wasn't even walking confidently. His gait was awkward and he kept re-adjusting his armour as though it didn't fit quite right. On every other step he shook out his arms to resettle the hauberk and then rolled his shoulders back and forth to loosen them. He looked like he might trip over his own feet given half a chance. This was the man who had beaten his brothers? Ha!
Lancelot returned Gregory's salute and then shoved his helmet on hurriedly. Then he backed off as far as he could from Gregory without actually leaving the field, extended his sword, and stood at the ready. Gregory thought the sword was trembling slightly.
Gregory felt his confidence puff up despite his best intentions. Even after his previous victories, Lancelot must recognize him, Gregory, as the most daunting challenge. Gregory grinned under the cover of his helmet. Oh, this was going to be fun.
Lancelot tripped almost immediately as they began circling each other, losing his footing and making an ungainly recovery. Gregory, refusing to be lured in too far by any such obviously false opening, tested Lancelot's reactions with a series of cuts and thrusts that left the other man stumbling back unsteadily.
Gregory pressed the advantage as much as he dared, putting Lancelot on the defensive and looking for an opening, but Lancelot practically hid behind his shield, giving Gregory nothing to work with. When Gregory tired of raining blows on an unresponsive opponent, he dropped his own guard a little, deliberately, expecting Lancelot to seize on the temporary hole in his defense, but still the man made no attempt to counter-attack.
Frustrated and annoyed, Gregory aimed a less than skillful blow at Lancelot's head, but it almost got through. Lancelot only got his own sword up at the last second to block it.
Their swords clanged noisily, to great applause from the crowd, but it was more a show of brute force than skill. Gregory was bewildered. What was Lancelot playing at?
"Would you prefer to surrender now and save us both the trouble?" Gregory asked. "Or are you at least going to pretend you know how to use that thing?"
Lancelot didn't reply, but his grip tightened on the hilt of his sword and he moved back into position, couched to strike. Then he sprang forward at last in attack.
There was no time now to think; Gregory was parrying blows and counter-blows at every turn. Lancelot landed a final crashing strike against his sword and then, as he stepped back briefly, Gregory could at last hear the sounds of his own panting breaths over the clash of arms.
There was, however, something familiar about the technique, Gregory thought during another round of fast, furious hits. The sequence was almost formal in its correctness, none of the instinctual, free-flowing movement Lancelot had shown in the previous fights. It was as if he were moving - yes, almost as if he were moving through exercises, but so quickly that the individual parts blended and blurred together.
It was like being back in swordsmanship lessons, Gregory thought resentfully, the next time he had a moment to think. What was the point of it? If Lancelot were simply trying to wear him down, he could at least have done it in a less tedious way.
Gregory took a chance and charged, hoping to break up the pattern, but Lancelot simply danced aside and carried on with the same sequence of moves. This was ridiculous.
"Haven't you got any ideas of your own left?" he asked after he had caught another methodical round of alternating high and low blows on his shield. "At this rate we might as well go to my father's library and read about sword fighting."
"Getting bored, are you?" Lancelot replied. "Want something new to think about?"
"If it wouldn't be too much of a bother for you," Gregory said haughtily. "I wouldn't want you to strain your intellect."
"Oh, it isn't me who'll feel the strain," Lancelot said, and then he was darting forward with a clumsy blow that Gregory diverted with ease.
As he parried Lancelot's blade, however, Lancelot stepped in even closer, defying all logic of self-preservation by getting so close to Gregory's own sword, and slammed his elbow into the underside of Gregory's chin. Gregory's head snapped back painfully and he swung out recklessly, only to find Lancelot gone. His own momentum left him unsteady, stumbling, and Lancelot, who had somehow got around to his back, jammed the hilt of his sword between Gregory's shoulders.
Gregory stumbled and cursed angrily. He tried to come about to face Lancelot again, but again the man was not where he expected him. Lancelot had ducked around to his left side and, as Gregory found his bearings again, slammed a heavy boot down on top of Gregory's foot.
"Gah!" Gregory shouted. "What the -"
Then there was a hand twisting his sword arm - no, two hands. Lancelot had apparently dropped his own sword to get a grip on Gregory's right arm and then actually punched his elbow to weaken his grip. Gregory didn't know what to think anymore. His arm went numb and he could feel his fingers loosening around the hilt of his sword no matter how sternly he commanded them to hold on.
Lancelot knocked his sword out of his hand at last, but instead of going in for the kill or knocking him down, he grabbed Gregory's hand and twisted it up and around to his back, forcing Gregory to his knees.
"What do you say?" Lancelot growled. His voice sounded strange, although that could just have been the distortion from his helmet. It was funny what wrapping your head in metal could do to sounds.
"Er... I yield?" Gregory tried. This was not going at all to plan. He was pretty sure that when you were defeated in knightly combat you were still supposed to end up in a more dignified position. His shoulder was beginning to cramp and there were uncomfortable tingles running up and down the length of his forearm.
"Wrong. Try again," Lancelot said. He twisted a little harder. Gregory's arm was protected by his pauldron from being wrenched at too extreme an angle, but it still chafed and stung like anything.
"I surrender?" Gregory flailed around looking for other combinations of the words. "I acknowledge your superior combat skills? You can keep the sword?"
Lancelot leaned in close to his ear so their helmets actually bumped into each other.
"I believe the word you're looking for," Lancelot whispered, "is 'Uncle'."
"Uncle?" said Gregory, and then at another insistent tug on his arm, repeated it more loudly, "Uncle! Uncle!"
The pressure on his arm was finally released and he staggered to his feet, rubbing at his shoulder tenderly to make sure nothing was damaged. Lancelot was standing nonchalantly with both of their swords in hand.
"How was that? Not too boring, I hope?" Lancelot sneered.
"All right, all right, you've made your point. Well fought," Gregory acknowledged bitterly. He wondered if the court physician was going to have to put his arm in a sling after the wrenching it had got. If the physician didn't, Gregory might choose to anyway.
Gregory removed his helmet awkwardly with his one good arm and stuck it under the other so he could offer Lancelot his hand to shake. Lancelot just stared down at the outstretched hand, making no move to take off his own helmet.
"If you're not going to leave me any dignity on the field you could at least observe the proper forms," Gregory hissed at him.
"Erm," said Lancelot. "I don't think I should."
"Why not?" Gregory demanded. "Don't want to cheapen your reputation showing a bit of courtesy at the end of a fight? I thought you liked fancy speeches and grand gestures."
"It's not that," Lancelot said and, yes, there was definitely something off about his voice. It kept cracking and going higher than it ought. "I think it's worn off."
"What's worn off?" asked Gregory suspiciously. "Here, are you going to shake my hand or not?"
"Oh, right," said Lancelot in a very high-pitched voice. He grabbed Gregory's hand, gave it a perfunctory shake, and dashed off the field, giving the King an equally brief salute as he passed the stands.
The crowd murmured with some confusion, craning their necks after the departing champion. Gregory took advantage of the general distraction to salute his father as best he could without a sword, and get away quietly while he could. It was all very well to stick around and bask in the attention after a victory; there was no rule that said he had to wait around in case the crowd decided to start booing or throwing rotten produce.
Elaine waited until she was out of sight of the tournament grounds to break into a run. She had felt the shift beginning to happen partway through the match, which had been very distracting. There was nothing quite like the feel of your skin shifting around and rearranging itself to take your mind off the person swinging a sword at you.
Still, Dame Brusen's magic had done everything she had asked; no one had suspected a difference in "Lancelot" when he appeared for the third day of combat. One or two people might think the hurried way he had left was odd, and there would no doubt be some questions when no one could find him for the celebrations, but it had been worth it. The feel of competing out there, the crowds, the heady rush of excitement when she realized that Gregory wouldn't be holding back this time because she was a girl, it was like nothing she'd felt before and like everything she'd wanted.
There was no way that she was staying now, not now that she knew she'd been right. Let them assume she'd run away with Lancelot the minute the fight was over. Let Gregory try to drag her back her again, after the beating she had given him today. Let Dame Brusen pitch a fit if she liked. If she wanted to be useful she could come along, otherwise Elaine would just make do on her own.
"Come on," she said to Dame Brusen as she reached her own rooms. If the woman was alarmed by a fully armoured figure bursting in upon her, she didn't show it. "We've got some packing to do," said Elaine, "unless you'd rather stay here, but you'd better not tell my father where I'm going if you do, or we'll just have to go through this all over again."
"Am I to understand that the spell was successful?" Dame Brusen asked. She put down her sewing calmly and folded her hands in her lap.
"What? Oh, that, yes," said Elaine, pulling off the helmet so she could see what she was doing a little better. Taking off the gauntlets helped too. It was hard to sort through flimsy regal clothing when your hands were covered in metal. Someone should invent a sensible halfway point between the two. Clothes that stopped you handling anything smaller than, say, a mace, were hardly any more practical than ones that fell apart at the suggestion of anything more menacing than embroidery.
"And the tournament?" Dame Brusen prompted. Why she harped on at obvious points, Elaine could never understand.
"I think I made Greg cry," she said, looking around for the saddle bag she had packed for her last flight. She knew they'd taken away its contents, but surely they wouldn't have hidden the bag itself?
Ah, there it was under the bed. Goodness knew how it had got there. Elaine scrambled down and fished it out with the tip of her sword, her arm being too short to reach.
"He'll go off to lick his wounds - or more likely have someone else lick them for him - wait, no, euch, what a thought," Elaine said with a shudder. "And then in about an hour, someone is going to come fetch me for dinner and try to announce my engagement to Lancelot, which is going to be tricky, since he left hours ago. Are you coming or not?" she demanded, gripping a saddle-bag stuffed with whatever she had managed to shove in. A shawl and a stray shoe tumbled out as she did up the fastenings.
Dame Brusen still hadn't moved. "I suppose you are planning to follow this man to Camelot, then?"
"Er..." said Elaine. "Right, of course, that's where I'm going. We're going, if you come too. Because I'm... desperately in love with Lancelot and I have to follow him. And my father or anyone else has no business stopping me, because he's already approved of the match. Sort of. If I can catch up with him. Are you coming, then?" she repeated, hopping on one foot at the door, trying to sling the saddle bag over her shoulder.
Dame Brusen took a long look at her charge, still fully dressed in armour, with a helmet and a sword dangling from one hand and a saddle bag from another, and an anxious, hopeful look on her face that she probably didn't even realize was there, and thought, well, why not? If the girl was that determined to pick a fight with the world, wouldn't it be a good idea if she at least had someone along who could watch her back? None of Brusen's own children had ever given her this much trouble, it was true, but perhaps that was simply because none of them had ever needed quite as much help.
Brusen sighed. It would have been nice to be in charge of her own life for a while, just once, but some things were not to be.
"You're not going like that," she said and, before Elaine could open her mouth to protest, she pointed emphatically at a chair. "Change out of those ridiculous things, put on a proper travelling cloak and something I won't be ashamed to have you seen in. If anyone comes looking for you, I'll tell them you've got a headache and are having a lie-down. We'll leave at dusk after a proper meal, and you're going to pack your things so they don't leave a trail of breadcrumbs for your brothers to follow all the way to Camelot.
"And then," she added sternly, "you are going to write your father a decent letter about where you have gone with this Lancelot fellow, so he doesn't worry, and you are going to promise to write him every other week from now on, and you are going to do it, too. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a few preparations to attend to, so just you sit tight and let me handle things."
Dame Brusen sailed out of the room, leaving Elaine sitting quietly and with a minimal amount of fidgeting in her room. She locked the door behind her with a whisper of magic just for good measure.
"Goodness, running off without any consideration," she muttered to herself as she headed for the castle kitchens to fetch provisions for the journey. "If she doesn't starve to death or run herself through with that silly sword, it'll be a miracle."
The next morning, King Pelles found a short note waiting for him with his breakfast:
"Dear Father - Gone to Camelot after Lancelot. You can keep the grail, give it to William if you like, I'm taking the sword. love, Elaine. P.S. Will write on arrival."
He chuckled quietly to himself and said to Chrétien, who was scribbling away in a corner while Pelles ate, "And so Elaine goes to follow her destiny at Camelot. Well, if they accept commoners as knights there, perhaps a king's daughter won't be so much of a surprise. What do you think of that, eh?"
Chrétien, struggling over a metaphor for the way bold Sir Lancelot's sword had flashed as he forced his enemy to his knees, barely took notice of the comment more than to say, "Yes, sire" and consider that it might be quite good if, after the noble knight had returned home in victory, there were a bit of a love story to round things out.
The story would be complicated by Sir Lancelot's devotion to the Queen, of course, but what was a romance without some conflict, after all? Or perhaps the Queen was his lady love, parted from him by the cruel dictates of custom. Yes, a love triangle. That would do quite nicely. He wrote away happily while Pelles finished his breakfast.
Merlin was absolutely certain about where he had left the horse. He had counted the number of trees and noted the bend in the road and even left a mark on the tree the horse was tied up to. None of which explained why he couldn't find it.
"You're sure it was here?" Lancelot called out from the edge of the road. Merlin had sworn he didn't need any help finding his horse.
"It's got to be here somewhere!" Merlin called back. "I know where I left her, it's just that she was a bit... uh, invisible at the time."
"Ah," said Lancelot. "I don't suppose there's a counter - a way to reverse it, is there?" he asked hopefully.
"Quite possibly so. In fact, almost definitely, I'd say," said Merlin, emerging somewhat dishevelled and still horseless from the undergrowth. "Unfortunately, I have no idea what it is."
Lancelot frowned. "Couldn't you guess?" he asked.
"Not as such, no," said Merlin. "Not unless you want to risk other accidental results, like half the forest disappearing, or a herd of befuddled horses from an alternate dimension appearing along the way. Best not to try."
"What about a spell for finding things, then?" Lancelot asked him.
"I've tried that," Merlin said, feeling aggrieved. After all, he was the sorcerer here. That was the sort of thing he would, obviously, have thought of doing first. "On the other hand, maybe I'll try doing it from a little higher up, er, see if that helps get things into... focus."
At the very least, it might help him remember where he'd left the darn thing.
The horse in question, who had just settled down for a nice afternoon nap after a constructive morning of nibbling on plants around the base of tree, heard their voices and pricked up her ears. They were nowhere nearby, but it wasn't as if she could tell them that. Besides, she hadn't quite made up her mind about whether to alert them to her presence at all.
It had begun to dawn on her that there were some distinct advantages to being an invisible horse. It had confused the wolf that had stalked past earlier that day, so close that it made her quiver with terror at the thought of being unable to escape from its jaws. The wolf had sniffed her out, coming so close to her hooves that she might have kicked back and fetched it a blow squarely on the nose Instead she had stood perfectly still, and the predator, confused by the strong scent with no apparent source, had eventually moved on, leaving her trembling in its wake.
She had started chewing on the rope that tied her to the tree, after that. It wasn't the sort of experience one wanted to stand around waiting for a repeat of. If she could get loose, though, this whole not-being-there-to-see thing could work out to her benefit. It might get a little awkward, running into other horses, but that was something to work out later. And, of course, no one could try to ride you if they couldn't find you in the first place.
She was still trying to decide her views on humans who had you ride around all day, traipsing through strange, glowy things, and then left you tied up at the mercy of wolves who might not be particular about biting things they couldn't see, when there was a loud crash and her human came tumbling out of some low-hanging branches.
"Oof," said Merlin, hanging suspended in mid-air a few feet off the ground. "Found it!" he hollered.
Then again, thought the horse, life had never been fair, and if you forgot that you were likely to have heavy humans land on you from above with no warning. She snorted and shook out her mane. Halfway through the motion, it became visible. It was a comforting sight, along with her reappearing hooves and, if she turned her head just far enough, the old, familiar flick of her tail.
"Right then," said the human, clambering up on her back. "Time to go home."
There probably wouldn't have been much point in asking whether they were going the normal, sensible way, or if any shimmering, sparkly patches of air were going to be involved.
"Does Arthur know that you're travelling by magic?" Lancelot asked, after they emerged a little unsteadily from another glowing portal. This time Merlin was still on horseback, but Ambulatrix had chosen to stay behind and left Lancelot rather literally in the lurch.
"Erm," said Merlin.
"So that's a no, then?" Lancelot asked. "What will they think of my arriving so quickly?"
"That you were already on your way and I met you in the road?" Merlin tried. "Honestly, everyone will just be so glad to see you, I don't think they'll care how you got there."
"And what will they think of me when they learn that I snuck out of Castle Corbin and allowed a lady I was meant to be defending take my place?" he asked a little bitterly.
Merlin laid a comforting hand on his arm. "If they'd met Elaine, they'd understand. Let's see if we can go get your horse back."
Lancelot gave a desultory nod and Merlin headed back through the temporary rift in space-time to convince another horse of the exciting possibilities of supernatural means of travel.
Part Nine
Crossposted from http://themadlurker.dreamwidth.org/63839.html at Dreamwidth.
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The beds at the inn were lovely and warm and soft, which only served to drive home how very hard and scratchy and cold the stables were to sleep in.
The innkeeper had been very pleasant and welcoming when Merlin asked for a bed for one of the King's privy councillors, but less than impressed when Merlin turned out to be that councillor, rather than his servant. Apparently there were reasons that went beyond Arthur's private amusement for Merlin to be seen in showy, expensive robes. Merlin had thought that a day or two away from court would be the perfect opportunity to return to his old, comfortable clothing, but this meant that, as far as the innkeeper was concerned, Merlin was only fit to sleep with the horses.
Merlin did consider introducing his horse as the king's advisor and demanding it be given the comfortable bed - if a Roman emperor could do it, why shouldn't the court of Camelot? But on reflection he decided that Arthur wouldn't much like hearing rumours that he was following in the footsteps of Caligula. It was the sort of thing that tended to put a damper on public opinion for a young king.
Merlin hadn't realized how readily he'd adapted to his fine new bed at Camelot until he tried sleeping on a pile of feed sacks. When he climbed back on horseback the next morning, his joints positively creaked from the awkward position he'd slept in. He was sure he was going to find some interesting bruises later. And what was with that straw? He was sure straw hadn't been that prickly when he was a servant.
The horse, who had slept standing up, listened to Merlin's litany of complaints about the bed without a great deal of sympathy.
If Merlin had worried at all about finding his way to Castle Corbin, he needn't have done. Although he left the inn at the break of dawn, there were already people on the road, first the odd carter, then a steady stream of passersby flowing towards the castle. From them, Merlin learned that there was a tournament being held at Carbonek, one that had already begun. Some of the peasants on the road had not attended or meant to attend the tournament at all, but yesterday there had been rumours of a new knight in the contest, someone who had defeated one of the king's sons, and it had piqued their interest.
The tale seemed to have grown in the telling. Merlin thought it unlikely that the strange knight had an extra arm, the sword of a giant, and the speed of a pixie. He did think it likely, however, that Lancelot might have been drawn to a contest of arms, and so he followed his fellow travellers towards the action.
There was no space left on the tournament grounds for Merlin to tie up his horse, so he led it to a deserted spot a little off the forest path and tied the reins to a tree. Then he muttered a few words under his breath and watched it fade from sight. The horse made a slight noise of protest when it noticed that its feet had disappeared. It was probably giving him a reproachful look as well, but Merlin couldn't see it. Merlin patted its now invisible nose consolingly.
"You'll be all right," he said. "Better than having a run-in with bandits or horse thieves. No one'll bother you this way."
The horse didn't find being invisible a particularly comforting experience even by those standards and expressed this to her best ability.
"Ow," said Merlin, holding his ear and gingerly feeling for teeth marks. "I'll be back before nightfall, so just you - graze, or think horsey thoughts, or whatever it is you do in your spare time."
The horse gave a final whinny of protest, but Merlin took no notice, plunging back into the trees and leaving the horse to contemplate how it was she kept finding herself in these situations. She had the distinct idea that the other horses in the royal stables didn't have to go through this kind of thing.
While the crowd milled around awaiting the main event, Merlin found a stall selling the kind of gingerbread his mother used to make: crumbs of every type glued together by honey so that the whole confection stuck to the back of your throat and could even stop you breathing if you weren't careful to keep it moving around.
The gingerbread they served at Camelot just wasn't the same. It was made, for one thing, from good bread crumbs, not the kind that had sat around in the crevices of a kitchen table, acquiring character and refinement until they were dug out by the frugally minded baker and assembled into a thick and gooey delicacy.
Merlin dislodged a large, sticky crumb from his molars with a grin. The mix of sweetness and glottal blockage brought back a wave of homesickness, and he let himself be buoyed along by the happy excitement and chatter of the people around him as if he had stepped back into the market fairs of his childhood.
There was a gradual general movement toward the stands as anyone who hadn't yet found a seat or a square foot of standing room made their way into the last available inches of space. Merlin dodged and wove his way between spectators, stepping over and sometimes on top of other people's feet, leaving a chorus of shouts and complaints to rise up behind him. Before the injured feet could do anything about it, though, Merlin was standing up in the very front row, leaning casually against the fence, as calmly as if he had been there all along. One of his new neighbours raised an eyebrow at him, but by then most of the people whose feet he had stepped on were distracted by the arrival of the contestants, so Merlin escaped retribution.
He settled in to watch just in time to see none other than Lancelot take the field. Merlin did not recognize his opponent, but he could credibly have been related to the demi-giant that rumour had described along the road. The man was "well-built," that was the term, meaning that whoever had assembled him had done so with a maximum of muscle and sinew, and not very much else. He was only a little larger in frame than Arthur, but gave the impression of having compromised on sheer volume in exchange for pure force. He put Merlin in mind of a tightly drawn bow, containing the potential for far greater motion and violence than could be contained within its dimensions alone.
And he was fast, Merlin discovered when the fighters began to move. He almost had to blink himself into an altered magical state to follow what was happening. It wasn't that the moves themselves were unfamiliar: Arthur had made Merlin run through so many endless routines of block, parry, counter-attack that he could recognize all the individual elements. It was just that, when it came to actual combat, the whole process sped up so there was no time to think about individual attacks and counter-attacks. All you could do was try to keep the sharp, pointy bits of the other person's weapon away from the soft, squishy bits of yourself. At least, that was combat as Merlin understood it. The contest he was watching seemed to be occurring on a whole new level of finesse.
He watched Lancelot shift a mere eighth of an inch to the left to avoid the deadly arc of his opponent's blade. Barely an instant later, Lancelot was bringing his own sword up on the other side to catch the knight's briefly exposed flank.
A cheer broke from Merlin's lips involuntarily as Lancelot's opponent stumbled and lost his poise while he tried to protect his side from further danger. He held onto his ribs almost as though they were bleeding, which Merlin couldn't understand. Surely so slight a blow couldn't have cut through his chainmail already?
The knight extended a hand towards Lancelot as if asking for a moment to recover. Lancelot backed off warily at the gesture - not a moment too soon, as the knight used the movement of one arm as a cover for the other to strike an under-handed blow.
"You bastard!" Merlin exclaimed, then coughed to cover it, though he needn't have bothered. Plenty of the other people watching were murmuring their discontent over the move, and a low cheer broke out as Lancelot danced safely out of range.
They traded more feints than blows, the knight wearing Lancelot down until he blocked an attack that did not come, and the real one that followed knocked him off his feet. A collective gasp went up from the crow, but Merlin found himself grinning: he'd seen this move before.
The knight sauntered over, his grip on his sword relaxed, to crow over his success. Lancelot waited until the other man was almost directly above him, and then he sprang. He knocked the knight off his feet, broke his grip completely, disarmed him, and reversed their positions in an instant, this time with his sword at his opponent's throat.
The knight held up his hands in surrender, and Lancelot allowed him up.
Now see, thought Merlin, if you were a knight of Camelot, you'd have seen that move coming, because Arthur has been pulling that trick on every recruit he's trained since Lancelot.
Out loud he cheered and even attempted a two-handed whistle, which came out as more of a squawk. Then he was climbing over the fence and racing to catch up with Lancelot as he quitted the field.
"Merlin!" Lancelot exclaimed when he spotted him, a pleased smile on his face. "I thought I heard your voice in the crowd, but I couldn't be sure."
"You, my friend, are brilliant," said Merlin, as they made their way through a crowd of curious courtiers and toward the castle gates. "That thing you did with your sword, when you sort of - swoosh! - you have to show some of the other knights how to do that, they'll love it."
"How are things at Camelot?" Lancelot asked. "Is everyone well? Arthur, and Guinevere, and yourself?"
"Er..." said Merlin, the reasons for his journey pushing themselves back to the forefront of his mind, "Actually, that's a bit complicated. No, no, don't worry, everyone's fine, only... could we have a word in private?"
Lancelot excused himself and led Merlin through the winding corridors of the keep to a small, spartan room in one of the turrets.
"This is where you've been staying, then?" asked Merlin, looking around at the bare stone walls. That must get a bit chilly in the winter. The bed in its simplicity reminded him of his old one in Gaius' rooms, although here there was none of the mess he had been used to. "It's... nice. Cosy."
"What couldn't you tell me before?" Lancelot asked. "Is everyone well? Is - are the King and Queen well?"
"No, everyone's fine," said Merlin, "There's been a problem with politics, that's all. Nothing to worry about, really, only someone's sort of... accused you and Gwen of adultery."
Lancelot went white then red with astonishing rapidity.
"Who says - how could anyone-" Lancelot spluttered. Merlin wasn't sure if he was angry or embarrassed or both.
"Nobody important," Merlin assured him. "It's just some knight from Northumbria who no one's ever heard of, only he's trying to cause trouble, so it seems worse than it is. I thought - well, Gwen and I both thought, really - that if you came back and explained..." Merlin trailed off at the increasingly stormy cast of Lancelot's brows.
"Let him face me in honourable combat and I will make him regret the day he ever profaned her name," Lancelot said.
"Funny you should mention that..." said Merlin. "Because if you don't, Arthur will, and we were thinking... it's just a slight possibility..." He tried to think of a way to phrase it that wouldn't sound disloyal, but gave up: "We think there's a chance Arthur might get himself killed being a brave idiot."
Lancelot laughed. "There's always a chance of that happening in any case. There's only one problem, though. I've given my word to King Pelles that I will fight another day in this tournament. There is a matter of honour at stake here, as well."
Merlin frowned. "Hang on, how many ladies could you possibly have besmirched in the last week?"
Lancelot went in detail into the story of how he had come to be at Corbin.
"I don't know how it happened," Lancelot said, sitting heavily on the bed. "All I wanted was to help. The next thing I knew, her father had me kidnapped - or no, that was her brothers - but now he's talking about marrying us off and having grandchildren. I don't think I'm ready for grandchildren yet, Merlin." He waved his sword in a gesture of helplessness, which Merlin felt very uncomfortable about happening so close to his kidneys.
Merlin took the sword away before it could do any irreparable damage and set it aside on the next convenient surface. Then he sat down beside Lancelot and patted him consolingly on the back.
"You're a handsome man," Merlin said, "I'm sure that sort of thing could happen to anyone."
"Her brothers keep threatening to kill me, too," said Lancelot in bewilderment. "Except her youngest brother, who seems really pleased that I've beaten him. Her oldest brother told me after today's contest that he was expecting my run of good luck to end tomorrow before something else did. I don't even know what that means. There's something wrong with this family."
"All the more reason to come back to Camelot with me," Merlin urged him. "Then you'll only have to worry about facing one person who might try to kill you, and I can promise you with reasonable certainty that no one will try to make you get married."
Unless, of course, a woman came along who just happened to be perfect for him, and if Gwen and Lancelot could agree that old feelings were best let go. Merlin believed in looking to the future. It was probably the result of one too many conversations with the Great Dragon.
"I can't just leave like that," Lancelot said, "not now I've agreed to go through with this. It wouldn't be right."
"How much longer were you planning to stay, exactly?" Merlin asked a little nervously. "Only, the trial by combat is, well, not to put too fine a point on it, tomorrow..."
Lancelot looked alarmed. "How long has this been going on?"
"Er, it's a relatively recent development. Only, Arthur got a bit zealous about seeing justice done personally once Gwen was involved. You know." Merlin shrugged. "So we have about... a day, give or take, to get you back to Camelot, or Arthur will go charging in on his own. I can speed things up a little along the road, you know -" He waved his hand around a bit to indicate "magical, wooOOooOOoo..." "- but it still takes time to travel, we should really leave, well, now, if you want to get there in time."
Merlin stood abruptly, doing his best to look eager rather than impatient.
Lancelot sat still, looking pole-axed. "I don't know, Merlin. I can't just leave. These people - well, Lady Elaine, needs my help. I'm not sure if she wants it or even if it's the right kind of help. But I don't think I could leave her here now anymore than I could have ridden past in the forest."
"Right," said Merlin, fighting back disappointment. "Of course, if these people are that important to you - I'll just have to go back on my own and find some other way of making sure Arthur doesn't get himself killed. Don't worry, I'm good at that bit, I'm sure I'll think of something."
Lancelot's expression was agonized. He stood, waveringly."Yet if Guinevere and Arthur need my help, I cannot refuse," he said slowly.
Merlin took a deep breath. "Have you thought about, maybe, asking the Lady Elaine about it? You said she didn't seem to want your help in the first place, maybe she wouldn't mind if you left."
"Are you sure it's any of my business?" asked a faint but distinctly peevish voice on the other side of the door. "You wouldn't want to complicate things by asking someone with no personal stake in the matter, would you?"
Lancelot's head whipped around at the voice and Merlin thought he caught a moment of terror in his eyes.
"Lady Elaine, is that you?" Lancelot asked. "Have you been there long?"
The door opened.
"If you mean long enough to know you're a fool, then yes, but I hardly needed to listen at doors to find that out. I was coming to see you about this whole tournament thing anyway. There's one option I think you've overlooked."
Merlin stared at the person in the door, looked back at Lancelot, and then back at the figure in the door. "Er..." he said. "You don't always look like that, do you?"
"Of course not," said Elaine sharply.
"She doesn't," Lancelot said. "I would have mentioned that."
Dame Brusen had not been told, when she accepted responsibility for the youngest of Pelles' children, that it would take a miracle, or maybe a strong dose of magic, to keep the girl under any kind of control. It was therefore fortunate for all concerned that Dame Brusen happened to possess magical talents in abundance, and that these were the least of her gifts.
She had raised a brood of ten and seen them all, remarkably, grow to adulthood despite the normal sort of events that threated the survival of children born within Camelot's bounds. They had suffered the usual illnesses, accidents, and of course rampages by tyrants determined to wipe out anyone of any age with magical abilities, but she had kept them safe somehow through it all. She had birthed them, nursed them, protected them, guided them, smuggled them out of hostile territories, and finally washed her hands of them when they started having children of their own, declaring that she had done quite enough of that for one lifetime, thank you very much.
A few weeks after she effected a quiet retirement to a neighbouring kingdom, Dame Brusen's friend Helena, in whose household Brusen had meant to live out the rest of her life in peace and relative solitude, had died, leaving a baby daughter in desperate need of a nursemaid.
The little girl had been discontented with the world from the start, kicking and screaming when she was picked up or put down, wailing when she was left on her own, and shrieking when she was cossetted. Her father was sunk in his own grief; her brothers, confused and upset without understanding, were left to run rampant while he recovered; and little Elaine was left to Dame Brusen's care because she was the only one with enough tenderness left over after grief to care for the girl.
It could have been the passage of time obscuring her memories, but Dame Brusen would have sworn that little Elaine gave her more trouble than all of her own children had done, put together.
Elaine decided to walk before she had got the hang of crawling, but her determination and stubbornness kept her levering herself up, clutching onto the furniture and making forays against the opposite side of the room. More than once Dame Brusen returned to her charge's side to find that the girl had clambered out of her crib, across the floor, and was making the acquaintance of the window ledge or tottering toward the top of a staircase, though Brusen could have sworn she'd shut the door behind her when she left. It reached the point where Dame Brusen started tying magical charms to Elaine's crib, and later to the girl's clothes, to alert her to any sudden bids for freedom.
It only got worse when Elaine learned to walk properly and subsequently discovered the existence of her brothers. They hadn't taken a great deal of interest in their baby sister at first, not once they had visited the strange wrinkly creature and discovered it wasn't good for much beyond blowing spit-bubbles and kicking its chubby little legs furiously. As entertainment went, there were better, more mobile sources to be found in the servants and the livestock around the castle, and so the boys ran after them instead. Elaine, possibly remembering and resenting this in some far-off part of her infant brain, seized upon every chance she could find to hunt them down, as soon as she worked out how to use her legs. If her brothers were bewildered at first by the small red ball of screaming, flailing limbs that appeared with no warning to chase them around the castle, they soon learned to be wary of it.
Some of the girl's menace had since been restrained through long and weary hours of tutelage in the behaviour befitting a lady. Her blossoming figure as she grew older, the adornments of her station, and the veneer of respect for the bounds of propriety, which Brusen finally managed to instill, concealed much of that discontented child from the common view. There was never any doubt, however, in Dame Brusen's mind, that the same wailing, shrieking bundle of rage was still there, just waiting for the opportunity to escape.
Brusen had not been at all surprised when she learned of Elaine's flight. It seemed the natural and inevitable result of the girl's never-ending bid to defy all control.
Dame Brusen had tried to tell herself that whatever Elaine encountered roaming around the woods would probably have better reason to fear her than she could have to fear it. Brusen still had an instinct, though, born of too many frights about second-storey windows, that would not let her wash her hands of her feckless charge.
When Elaine was a very young child, just beginning to get into places where she ought not to be, Brusen had sewn tiny labels of enchanted cloth into the seams of all her clothes, the better to track her down before the screaming started. After that it had simply been easier to continue the habit as the girl grew out of each successive garment.
Elaine had thought Dame Brusen had the gift of the third eye that allowed her to find Elaine instantly wherever she went. Brusen had never troubled to correct her.
And so when Elaine vanished one night from Castle Corbin, it was Dame Brusen who knew which road the girl had taken, and after one agonizing night and morning of waiting for her to return, told the King where to search for his missing daughter.
She did not regret the decision now, however much Elaine might chafe with silent resentment over her interference. It was better than waking up again in the middle of the night to find her missing. So Brusen sat with her, and watched her, and gave her extra lessons to learn to give her something to fret about, and waited for the next eruption.
It came after the second match of the tournament, when Elaine returned to her chambers in a fury.
"-is so fond of Lancelot, he should just adopt him!" she was saying, paying Brusen no mind as she stormed around. "Anyone could have seen what William was doing, they don't need to form a parade in his honour, I don't see why he should be allowed to get away with it. Just - just some nobody of a swordsman, he could be anyone under there, it's not like anyone even knows him, I don't see why-"
Elaine stopped short in the middle of her rant and came to stare at Dame Brusen. There was a particular gleam in her eye that Elaine had always used to get as a child when she was planning mischief. She had that look again now.
"Father told me once you used to dabble in the magical arts," Elaine said. "Is that true? Can you - can you conjure things and... make things change shape, and other sorts of enchantments?"
Elaine's hands were gripping each other so tightly as she asked that the individual knuckles stood out sharp and white beneath her skin. Dame Brusen sighed.
"I have a little art," she said. "What sort of enchantments did you have in mind?"
Gregory was not worried, not exactly. Just because Lancelot had pulled out a few unexpected moves against his brothers, that was no reason to believe that he would do the same against Gregory. Everything was still going according to plan, he told himself firmly, and put his helmet on backwards. He cursed, removed it, squashing his nose painfully in the process, and went down to the tournament grounds.
There was no reason why Gregory shouldn't win today, he told himself as he took the field. He was a better swordsman than his brothers, everyone knew that. He would take back his grandfather's sword from this interloper; his father would forget all this silly business about marrying Elaine off; and Gregory would once again be the unquestioned champion of Carbonek.
It was a good plan. It had nice, clear steps, and a happy ending for Gregory. All he had to do was follow the plan and not let anything unexpected interfere... like that unorthodox move Lancelot had pulled out against William yesterday.
It wasn't as if the man looked all that intimidating, Gregory thought, as Lancelot joined him on the field. He wasn't even walking confidently. His gait was awkward and he kept re-adjusting his armour as though it didn't fit quite right. On every other step he shook out his arms to resettle the hauberk and then rolled his shoulders back and forth to loosen them. He looked like he might trip over his own feet given half a chance. This was the man who had beaten his brothers? Ha!
Lancelot returned Gregory's salute and then shoved his helmet on hurriedly. Then he backed off as far as he could from Gregory without actually leaving the field, extended his sword, and stood at the ready. Gregory thought the sword was trembling slightly.
Gregory felt his confidence puff up despite his best intentions. Even after his previous victories, Lancelot must recognize him, Gregory, as the most daunting challenge. Gregory grinned under the cover of his helmet. Oh, this was going to be fun.
Lancelot tripped almost immediately as they began circling each other, losing his footing and making an ungainly recovery. Gregory, refusing to be lured in too far by any such obviously false opening, tested Lancelot's reactions with a series of cuts and thrusts that left the other man stumbling back unsteadily.
Gregory pressed the advantage as much as he dared, putting Lancelot on the defensive and looking for an opening, but Lancelot practically hid behind his shield, giving Gregory nothing to work with. When Gregory tired of raining blows on an unresponsive opponent, he dropped his own guard a little, deliberately, expecting Lancelot to seize on the temporary hole in his defense, but still the man made no attempt to counter-attack.
Frustrated and annoyed, Gregory aimed a less than skillful blow at Lancelot's head, but it almost got through. Lancelot only got his own sword up at the last second to block it.
Their swords clanged noisily, to great applause from the crowd, but it was more a show of brute force than skill. Gregory was bewildered. What was Lancelot playing at?
"Would you prefer to surrender now and save us both the trouble?" Gregory asked. "Or are you at least going to pretend you know how to use that thing?"
Lancelot didn't reply, but his grip tightened on the hilt of his sword and he moved back into position, couched to strike. Then he sprang forward at last in attack.
There was no time now to think; Gregory was parrying blows and counter-blows at every turn. Lancelot landed a final crashing strike against his sword and then, as he stepped back briefly, Gregory could at last hear the sounds of his own panting breaths over the clash of arms.
There was, however, something familiar about the technique, Gregory thought during another round of fast, furious hits. The sequence was almost formal in its correctness, none of the instinctual, free-flowing movement Lancelot had shown in the previous fights. It was as if he were moving - yes, almost as if he were moving through exercises, but so quickly that the individual parts blended and blurred together.
It was like being back in swordsmanship lessons, Gregory thought resentfully, the next time he had a moment to think. What was the point of it? If Lancelot were simply trying to wear him down, he could at least have done it in a less tedious way.
Gregory took a chance and charged, hoping to break up the pattern, but Lancelot simply danced aside and carried on with the same sequence of moves. This was ridiculous.
"Haven't you got any ideas of your own left?" he asked after he had caught another methodical round of alternating high and low blows on his shield. "At this rate we might as well go to my father's library and read about sword fighting."
"Getting bored, are you?" Lancelot replied. "Want something new to think about?"
"If it wouldn't be too much of a bother for you," Gregory said haughtily. "I wouldn't want you to strain your intellect."
"Oh, it isn't me who'll feel the strain," Lancelot said, and then he was darting forward with a clumsy blow that Gregory diverted with ease.
As he parried Lancelot's blade, however, Lancelot stepped in even closer, defying all logic of self-preservation by getting so close to Gregory's own sword, and slammed his elbow into the underside of Gregory's chin. Gregory's head snapped back painfully and he swung out recklessly, only to find Lancelot gone. His own momentum left him unsteady, stumbling, and Lancelot, who had somehow got around to his back, jammed the hilt of his sword between Gregory's shoulders.
Gregory stumbled and cursed angrily. He tried to come about to face Lancelot again, but again the man was not where he expected him. Lancelot had ducked around to his left side and, as Gregory found his bearings again, slammed a heavy boot down on top of Gregory's foot.
"Gah!" Gregory shouted. "What the -"
Then there was a hand twisting his sword arm - no, two hands. Lancelot had apparently dropped his own sword to get a grip on Gregory's right arm and then actually punched his elbow to weaken his grip. Gregory didn't know what to think anymore. His arm went numb and he could feel his fingers loosening around the hilt of his sword no matter how sternly he commanded them to hold on.
Lancelot knocked his sword out of his hand at last, but instead of going in for the kill or knocking him down, he grabbed Gregory's hand and twisted it up and around to his back, forcing Gregory to his knees.
"What do you say?" Lancelot growled. His voice sounded strange, although that could just have been the distortion from his helmet. It was funny what wrapping your head in metal could do to sounds.
"Er... I yield?" Gregory tried. This was not going at all to plan. He was pretty sure that when you were defeated in knightly combat you were still supposed to end up in a more dignified position. His shoulder was beginning to cramp and there were uncomfortable tingles running up and down the length of his forearm.
"Wrong. Try again," Lancelot said. He twisted a little harder. Gregory's arm was protected by his pauldron from being wrenched at too extreme an angle, but it still chafed and stung like anything.
"I surrender?" Gregory flailed around looking for other combinations of the words. "I acknowledge your superior combat skills? You can keep the sword?"
Lancelot leaned in close to his ear so their helmets actually bumped into each other.
"I believe the word you're looking for," Lancelot whispered, "is 'Uncle'."
"Uncle?" said Gregory, and then at another insistent tug on his arm, repeated it more loudly, "Uncle! Uncle!"
The pressure on his arm was finally released and he staggered to his feet, rubbing at his shoulder tenderly to make sure nothing was damaged. Lancelot was standing nonchalantly with both of their swords in hand.
"How was that? Not too boring, I hope?" Lancelot sneered.
"All right, all right, you've made your point. Well fought," Gregory acknowledged bitterly. He wondered if the court physician was going to have to put his arm in a sling after the wrenching it had got. If the physician didn't, Gregory might choose to anyway.
Gregory removed his helmet awkwardly with his one good arm and stuck it under the other so he could offer Lancelot his hand to shake. Lancelot just stared down at the outstretched hand, making no move to take off his own helmet.
"If you're not going to leave me any dignity on the field you could at least observe the proper forms," Gregory hissed at him.
"Erm," said Lancelot. "I don't think I should."
"Why not?" Gregory demanded. "Don't want to cheapen your reputation showing a bit of courtesy at the end of a fight? I thought you liked fancy speeches and grand gestures."
"It's not that," Lancelot said and, yes, there was definitely something off about his voice. It kept cracking and going higher than it ought. "I think it's worn off."
"What's worn off?" asked Gregory suspiciously. "Here, are you going to shake my hand or not?"
"Oh, right," said Lancelot in a very high-pitched voice. He grabbed Gregory's hand, gave it a perfunctory shake, and dashed off the field, giving the King an equally brief salute as he passed the stands.
The crowd murmured with some confusion, craning their necks after the departing champion. Gregory took advantage of the general distraction to salute his father as best he could without a sword, and get away quietly while he could. It was all very well to stick around and bask in the attention after a victory; there was no rule that said he had to wait around in case the crowd decided to start booing or throwing rotten produce.
Elaine waited until she was out of sight of the tournament grounds to break into a run. She had felt the shift beginning to happen partway through the match, which had been very distracting. There was nothing quite like the feel of your skin shifting around and rearranging itself to take your mind off the person swinging a sword at you.
Still, Dame Brusen's magic had done everything she had asked; no one had suspected a difference in "Lancelot" when he appeared for the third day of combat. One or two people might think the hurried way he had left was odd, and there would no doubt be some questions when no one could find him for the celebrations, but it had been worth it. The feel of competing out there, the crowds, the heady rush of excitement when she realized that Gregory wouldn't be holding back this time because she was a girl, it was like nothing she'd felt before and like everything she'd wanted.
There was no way that she was staying now, not now that she knew she'd been right. Let them assume she'd run away with Lancelot the minute the fight was over. Let Gregory try to drag her back her again, after the beating she had given him today. Let Dame Brusen pitch a fit if she liked. If she wanted to be useful she could come along, otherwise Elaine would just make do on her own.
"Come on," she said to Dame Brusen as she reached her own rooms. If the woman was alarmed by a fully armoured figure bursting in upon her, she didn't show it. "We've got some packing to do," said Elaine, "unless you'd rather stay here, but you'd better not tell my father where I'm going if you do, or we'll just have to go through this all over again."
"Am I to understand that the spell was successful?" Dame Brusen asked. She put down her sewing calmly and folded her hands in her lap.
"What? Oh, that, yes," said Elaine, pulling off the helmet so she could see what she was doing a little better. Taking off the gauntlets helped too. It was hard to sort through flimsy regal clothing when your hands were covered in metal. Someone should invent a sensible halfway point between the two. Clothes that stopped you handling anything smaller than, say, a mace, were hardly any more practical than ones that fell apart at the suggestion of anything more menacing than embroidery.
"And the tournament?" Dame Brusen prompted. Why she harped on at obvious points, Elaine could never understand.
"I think I made Greg cry," she said, looking around for the saddle bag she had packed for her last flight. She knew they'd taken away its contents, but surely they wouldn't have hidden the bag itself?
Ah, there it was under the bed. Goodness knew how it had got there. Elaine scrambled down and fished it out with the tip of her sword, her arm being too short to reach.
"He'll go off to lick his wounds - or more likely have someone else lick them for him - wait, no, euch, what a thought," Elaine said with a shudder. "And then in about an hour, someone is going to come fetch me for dinner and try to announce my engagement to Lancelot, which is going to be tricky, since he left hours ago. Are you coming or not?" she demanded, gripping a saddle-bag stuffed with whatever she had managed to shove in. A shawl and a stray shoe tumbled out as she did up the fastenings.
Dame Brusen still hadn't moved. "I suppose you are planning to follow this man to Camelot, then?"
"Er..." said Elaine. "Right, of course, that's where I'm going. We're going, if you come too. Because I'm... desperately in love with Lancelot and I have to follow him. And my father or anyone else has no business stopping me, because he's already approved of the match. Sort of. If I can catch up with him. Are you coming, then?" she repeated, hopping on one foot at the door, trying to sling the saddle bag over her shoulder.
Dame Brusen took a long look at her charge, still fully dressed in armour, with a helmet and a sword dangling from one hand and a saddle bag from another, and an anxious, hopeful look on her face that she probably didn't even realize was there, and thought, well, why not? If the girl was that determined to pick a fight with the world, wouldn't it be a good idea if she at least had someone along who could watch her back? None of Brusen's own children had ever given her this much trouble, it was true, but perhaps that was simply because none of them had ever needed quite as much help.
Brusen sighed. It would have been nice to be in charge of her own life for a while, just once, but some things were not to be.
"You're not going like that," she said and, before Elaine could open her mouth to protest, she pointed emphatically at a chair. "Change out of those ridiculous things, put on a proper travelling cloak and something I won't be ashamed to have you seen in. If anyone comes looking for you, I'll tell them you've got a headache and are having a lie-down. We'll leave at dusk after a proper meal, and you're going to pack your things so they don't leave a trail of breadcrumbs for your brothers to follow all the way to Camelot.
"And then," she added sternly, "you are going to write your father a decent letter about where you have gone with this Lancelot fellow, so he doesn't worry, and you are going to promise to write him every other week from now on, and you are going to do it, too. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a few preparations to attend to, so just you sit tight and let me handle things."
Dame Brusen sailed out of the room, leaving Elaine sitting quietly and with a minimal amount of fidgeting in her room. She locked the door behind her with a whisper of magic just for good measure.
"Goodness, running off without any consideration," she muttered to herself as she headed for the castle kitchens to fetch provisions for the journey. "If she doesn't starve to death or run herself through with that silly sword, it'll be a miracle."
The next morning, King Pelles found a short note waiting for him with his breakfast:
"Dear Father - Gone to Camelot after Lancelot. You can keep the grail, give it to William if you like, I'm taking the sword. love, Elaine. P.S. Will write on arrival."
He chuckled quietly to himself and said to Chrétien, who was scribbling away in a corner while Pelles ate, "And so Elaine goes to follow her destiny at Camelot. Well, if they accept commoners as knights there, perhaps a king's daughter won't be so much of a surprise. What do you think of that, eh?"
Chrétien, struggling over a metaphor for the way bold Sir Lancelot's sword had flashed as he forced his enemy to his knees, barely took notice of the comment more than to say, "Yes, sire" and consider that it might be quite good if, after the noble knight had returned home in victory, there were a bit of a love story to round things out.
The story would be complicated by Sir Lancelot's devotion to the Queen, of course, but what was a romance without some conflict, after all? Or perhaps the Queen was his lady love, parted from him by the cruel dictates of custom. Yes, a love triangle. That would do quite nicely. He wrote away happily while Pelles finished his breakfast.
Merlin was absolutely certain about where he had left the horse. He had counted the number of trees and noted the bend in the road and even left a mark on the tree the horse was tied up to. None of which explained why he couldn't find it.
"You're sure it was here?" Lancelot called out from the edge of the road. Merlin had sworn he didn't need any help finding his horse.
"It's got to be here somewhere!" Merlin called back. "I know where I left her, it's just that she was a bit... uh, invisible at the time."
"Ah," said Lancelot. "I don't suppose there's a counter - a way to reverse it, is there?" he asked hopefully.
"Quite possibly so. In fact, almost definitely, I'd say," said Merlin, emerging somewhat dishevelled and still horseless from the undergrowth. "Unfortunately, I have no idea what it is."
Lancelot frowned. "Couldn't you guess?" he asked.
"Not as such, no," said Merlin. "Not unless you want to risk other accidental results, like half the forest disappearing, or a herd of befuddled horses from an alternate dimension appearing along the way. Best not to try."
"What about a spell for finding things, then?" Lancelot asked him.
"I've tried that," Merlin said, feeling aggrieved. After all, he was the sorcerer here. That was the sort of thing he would, obviously, have thought of doing first. "On the other hand, maybe I'll try doing it from a little higher up, er, see if that helps get things into... focus."
At the very least, it might help him remember where he'd left the darn thing.
The horse in question, who had just settled down for a nice afternoon nap after a constructive morning of nibbling on plants around the base of tree, heard their voices and pricked up her ears. They were nowhere nearby, but it wasn't as if she could tell them that. Besides, she hadn't quite made up her mind about whether to alert them to her presence at all.
It had begun to dawn on her that there were some distinct advantages to being an invisible horse. It had confused the wolf that had stalked past earlier that day, so close that it made her quiver with terror at the thought of being unable to escape from its jaws. The wolf had sniffed her out, coming so close to her hooves that she might have kicked back and fetched it a blow squarely on the nose Instead she had stood perfectly still, and the predator, confused by the strong scent with no apparent source, had eventually moved on, leaving her trembling in its wake.
She had started chewing on the rope that tied her to the tree, after that. It wasn't the sort of experience one wanted to stand around waiting for a repeat of. If she could get loose, though, this whole not-being-there-to-see thing could work out to her benefit. It might get a little awkward, running into other horses, but that was something to work out later. And, of course, no one could try to ride you if they couldn't find you in the first place.
She was still trying to decide her views on humans who had you ride around all day, traipsing through strange, glowy things, and then left you tied up at the mercy of wolves who might not be particular about biting things they couldn't see, when there was a loud crash and her human came tumbling out of some low-hanging branches.
"Oof," said Merlin, hanging suspended in mid-air a few feet off the ground. "Found it!" he hollered.
Then again, thought the horse, life had never been fair, and if you forgot that you were likely to have heavy humans land on you from above with no warning. She snorted and shook out her mane. Halfway through the motion, it became visible. It was a comforting sight, along with her reappearing hooves and, if she turned her head just far enough, the old, familiar flick of her tail.
"Right then," said the human, clambering up on her back. "Time to go home."
There probably wouldn't have been much point in asking whether they were going the normal, sensible way, or if any shimmering, sparkly patches of air were going to be involved.
"Does Arthur know that you're travelling by magic?" Lancelot asked, after they emerged a little unsteadily from another glowing portal. This time Merlin was still on horseback, but Ambulatrix had chosen to stay behind and left Lancelot rather literally in the lurch.
"Erm," said Merlin.
"So that's a no, then?" Lancelot asked. "What will they think of my arriving so quickly?"
"That you were already on your way and I met you in the road?" Merlin tried. "Honestly, everyone will just be so glad to see you, I don't think they'll care how you got there."
"And what will they think of me when they learn that I snuck out of Castle Corbin and allowed a lady I was meant to be defending take my place?" he asked a little bitterly.
Merlin laid a comforting hand on his arm. "If they'd met Elaine, they'd understand. Let's see if we can go get your horse back."
Lancelot gave a desultory nod and Merlin headed back through the temporary rift in space-time to convince another horse of the exciting possibilities of supernatural means of travel.
Part Nine
Crossposted from http://themadlurker.dreamwidth.org/63839.html at Dreamwidth.
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