Merlin fic: "the least we have to dread" - PG-13 [Arthur/Gwen]
Ridiculously late for the Arthur/Gwen thingathon! Yes, I know I organised it and I feel really bad about it, but so do the 7000+ words I wrote for the original idea I had which now lie discarded. :(
RECIPIENT: blackmamba_esq
PROMPT: A story based on The More Loving One by W.H. Auden.
TITLE: The Least We Have To Dread
SUMMARY: It's not an easy thing to be Guinevere's husband, lord, and king.
RATING: PG-13
CATEGORY: futurefic, drama, Arthur/Gwen, elements of Gwen/Lancelot
WORD COUNT: ~4000
DISCLAIMER: The characters from Merlin are not mine; they belong to the collective pool of consciousness in which our legends swim, and from which the BBC is making a motza. Lucky them.
NOTES: I'm so very sorry this is late, blackmamba_esq - I had another gameplan and then it refused to play ball at the last minute. And this was my alternative and once again, the characters wouldn't play ball. I hope you enjoy it!
The Least We Have To Dread
Gwen's poring over the maps from Mercia when Arthur comes in from training.
He pauses in the doorway for just a moment, caught yet again by the elegant curve of her throat and jaw, by the way the sun's glow limns her hair with the bright colours of the stained glass, like the angels and saints the glass depicts, by the slight frown on her forehead as she contemplates Bayard's realm.
"Planning to go to war, are we?" He watches her turn towards him, the frown easing back to patient amusement. "Would you at least give me time to change?"
His gesture encompasses the heavy steel of his armour, the sweat still beading across his brow, dampening his hair, and the reek of his exertions this morning out in the training field. Compared to the sun-glowing beauty of his wife, Arthur feels like a pig in wallow.
Or a rutting bull. At this moment, Arthur thinks that he would like to close the great iron-banded oak doors behind him, cross over to Guinevere and take her as is a husband's right. He wonders what she'd think of her knightly husband kneeling before her, pledging fealty to her with his lips between her thighs, leather gloves cupping her buttocks as she squirmed under his tongue...
"How are the new squires?"
Her question draws him from his distraction. He crosses the room to look over her shoulder at the papers she is studying. "They're settling in acceptably. Not the best group we've seen, but Gawain and Kay are taking them through their paces now. Most are your usual nobles' sons - arrogant prats who think the world revolves around them."
Arthur can't quite keep his disgust from his voice. It comes all the harder to him since he was once one of them; young, arrogant, self-absorbed. It took Merlin's arrival in Camelot to challenge his behaviour - and Gwen's belief to show him that he didn't have to be like his father.
"For most of them, it has - until now." Her smile up at him is fond. "They'll learn."
It never ceases to surprise him that she takes the prats' parts, forgiving them their stupidities and insults as she's forgiven his. It never ceases to discomfort him, either - that she remembers who he used to be. He's faced dragons and mythical beasts, witches, sorcerers, and Sidhe without fear; but before Guinevere's memories of the princely prat he once was, Arthur Pendragon finds it hard not to duck his head.
Merlin snorts and says it's just arrogance - Arthur wanting to be a paladin to his wife, who just happens to know otherwise.
"They'll have to or they won't be squires in Camelot very long." Arthur scratches at his scalp and grimaces when his fingers come away damp. He waves his dry hand at the papers spread out over the table. "Should I ask when we're going to war?"
"You already did." Guinevere glances down at the table. "It's what one of the messengers from the borderlands said. That he saw almost no farmers along the Mercia-Camelot borders, but that he saw no armed bandits either."
Arthur shrugs a little, frowning because he doesn't see where this is going. This isn't unusual when talking to his wife, simply because she sees what he doesn't. "There should be people in the fields?"
"It's the planting season, my Lord."
"So?"
"So there should be people out in the fields."
"Right. Of course. And you're looking at the maps because...?"
"Lord Ordel's servants spoke of monsters in the north-east," she says. "And Lancelot took Hendel and four squires into that area."
Arthur certainly remembers the absence of his best knight. "I thought Lancelot went out after a chimaera."
"He did. But the messenger spoke of the rumours monsters as though there were several, not just one. And it's the same region - just different kingdoms." Gwen looks up at him, her hands resting over the maps, the inverted cup of her palms resting right over Camelot, as though protecting it from attack. "They left nearly two weeks ago."
Arthur frowns. "If Lancelot needs help, he knows where to ask."
He doesn't mean to be so terse. But Arthur finds worrying over Lancelot would be easier if he didn't suspect the man was still in love with his wife.
"And if he can't?"
"He has four squires and a junior knight with him, Guinevere. And he's the best knight in Camelot." Not even saving Arthur's presence - a hard truth to accept, even if he is the king.
"I'm not doubting that. However, it might be helpful to look into sending some men out there." Her voice is steady, and so are her eyes. But her hands clasp over the paper, carefullly motionless, as though she holds her fears for the missing knight too tightly within her slim frame.
Arthur's own body tenses at her concern, his chest squeezing as though he's fighting an enemy, not looking down at his greatest ally. "Out to where Lancelot's gone?"
"Yes."
The answer is simple and absolute, with a certainty that stings. "On the possibility that Lancelot might have encountered something he can't deal with?" He can't help the harshness in his voice.
"What? No!"
"Shame him before the other knights, to suggest he needs a nursemaid?"
"No! That's not--"
"Then don't be foolish, Gwen. Yes, sometimes even the best need help, but if Lancelot needs help, I trust he'll send for it. And he probably doesn't. He's Lancelot, after all." Arthur shifts and holds up his hand when she opens her mouth to argue. "Not another word. I'm off to take a bath."
He leaves the hall without waiting for a response from her, without looking back, without feeling guilty for his terseness.
But really, what did she expect with such insistent concern over one of his knights? Especially Lancelot.
Sometimes Arthur thinks dealing with Lancelot would be easier if he didn't suspect his wife was still in love with the man.
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
Cenred helps him out of his armour and draws him a bath as Arthur stretches his sore muscles and doesn't think about Gwen's concern.
It's no surprise that she's concerned about the man. Every woman in the court is half in-love with Lancelot - he's a favourite among many, less for his knightly status and more for his looks and his manners.
No-one in Camelot does courtesy like Lancelot. Arthur's seen him step back to let a scullery maid carry her tray on to the kitchens, seen him rebalance a maidservant's load of linens so she won't drop it in the hallway. He's seen him help a pregnant noblewoman to her feet and escort her out to her carriage when her husband was too busy bellowing for a skin of wine to drink on the journey home.
Lancelot can fight like a demon, and if his speech isn't polished, his politeness is honest to the core, without the artifice of many of the nobly-born knights. Maybe he doesn't have a title to his name, lands to pass on to his children, but he's nobility in the truest sense of the word.
Arthur's the king; but Lancelot's everything that a knight of Camelot should be.
And he's in love with Arthur's queen.
As he climbs into steaming hot water, Arthur grimaces to himself. He can't blame the other man for loving Gwen; the man has impeccable taste.
"Too hot my lord?" Cenred asks.
"No, it's fine." Then, because his servant still looks anxious, he adds, "Thank you, Cenred. You may go. Wait. Bring me a cup of hot wine, then go."
He barely notices when the servant brings him his wine, his thoughts elsewhere.
It wouldn't be surprising that Gwen might be in love with Lancelot, either. There's an essential honesty in him that matches her own unrelenting veracity. If Lancelot is the standard held up to Arthur's knights, Gwen is the standard held up to Arthur's nobles - a common-born knight and a common-born queen, worthy in their own right, but valued by a king.
Arthur takes a deep swig of the wine and ignores the way it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. If he's honest with himself, Lancelot would probably be a better husband to Gwen - more caring, more attentive, more considerate.
And Arthur never forgets that Gwen chose Lancelot back when Arthur was still a princeling struggling to come to terms with his feelings, with his privilege, with the conflict between what his father wanted for him and what he wanted for himself. Only Lancelot's essential nobility gave Arthur a second chance with the woman they both cared about - a chance to better himself and become the man Guinevere agreed to marry.
He shifts and lets the heat leach out the aches in his body, in his bones. Ruling is a hard and lonely task, even with Gwen at his side. There are decisions that must be made by him, that can't be pushed onto others, that come down to the kind of king he is and the kind of kingdom he wants to rule.
Sometimes the decisions he makes cost lives and livelihoods. That's the nature of being a prince - to look out for the kingdom as a whole and not only the individuals.
Hard as it is, this is what he was born to do.
And he has Gwen to see the people he would skim over, to take him to task when he misses the details in the greater picture.
That's why he needs Guinevere, although it's hardly the only reason he loves her.
He knows she loves him - Guinevere wouldn't stay with a man she didn't love, wouldn't live the lie of a noblewoman in a marriage that brings her no pleasure. There's a small comfort in that, even as he wonders if, someday, she'll look from her husband the king to his first knight and realise she chose the wrong man.
"Arthur?"
"Back here."
Her soft steps sound too loud in the quiet as she crosses the room.
Arthur braces himself for this confrontation. He cut her off before, at his arrogant best, and she's come to take him to task for it. It's not something he's looking forward to, but it's necessary. Navigating the delicate ins and outs of a treaty has nothing on navigating the relationship with his wife - her expectations and his failure to meet them, her brutal honesty and his need to hear the unpleasant things she has to say, her gentleness and his hunger for that tenderness in his own life.
She steps around the intricately carved wooden screen and glances around with a wrinkle pushing between the fine lines of her eyebrows.
"Cenred?"
"I sent him away." Arthur glances down into the rich red curves of the cup. "Look, about what I said earlier..."
"You didn't let me finish."
He glances up at the cool bite of her words. "Now who's not letting who finish?"
Her lips firm for a moment, and she looks away - down to the hands now clasped before her.
Arthur frowns. Her pose is familiar - that of a servant expecting a dressing down from her master. Except that she's not a servant anymore, and he's not the arrogant princeling he was. Seeing her stand like this makes him feel as though the long years between then and now have vanished, and the chasm of her position and his status divide them.
The water slides around him in a wave as he sits up and holds out his hand to her. "Guinevere." After a moment's hesitation, she takes it, kneeling beside the bathtub. "I was rude before. I shouldn't have cut you off, and I'm sorry."
One corner of her mouth tilts in wry regret. "I wasn't talking about Lancelot before, you know." The words spill into the silence between them by way of a peace offering. "I was actually referring to the missing farmers."
"What about them?"
"No-one leaves their fields in spring - not if they don't have to. If you don't sow, you don't reap. If you don't reap, you don't have food through the winter." Her eyes skim his face, seeking signs that he understands what she's saying. "The only reason those fields would be left fallow and empty is because there's no-one to tend to them. And the only reason no-one would be around to tend to them--"
"Is because they're either dead or gone." Arthur grimaces to himself as pieces fall into place. "You wanted to send soldiers out to the villages and find out what was wrong."
"Yes. Just to find out what's happened. Maybe Lancelot needs help in whatever he's doing - we've been without word from him for nearly two weeks. But you're right - he knows he can call for help if he needs it. The farmers don't."
He sighs. "And I didn't give you time to say this."
"No. You didn't."
"Try not to rub it in too much," he says, more than a little dry. Her bluntness stings, but the honesty is reassuring. Things are never so bad as when Guinevere tries to lie to him. "All right. I'll have the captain of the city guard send a detachment out to investigate. Help me out of this thing, will you?"
The curve of her mouth is mesmerising. "Not if you still stink the way you did in the hall."
"Stink?" Arthur glowers at her smirk. "That was the sweat of my brow!"
"And your back and your chest and your armpits, my Lord. And whatever it's the sweat of, it still stinks."
Arthur experiences the sudden urge to wipe that smirk off his wife's lips. His eyes narrow at her now-smiling visage. "Oh really?"
And before she can jerk away, he yanks her half into the bathtub with a laugh.
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
They've both cleaned up and are a lot more demure when the Captain of the city guard is called into the hall, looking distinctly uncomfortable in his chain mail and tabard.
Arthur acknolwedges the man with a nod of his head. "Captain, thank you for your time. Do you have a countryside detachment available to ride up to the Mercian border today?"
If the man's startled by the request made of him, he hides it well.
"Well, yes, sire. It will take a little time to assemble them, but... What's this for, sire?"
Aelredd's been Captain of the city guard for the last five years - since the death of Arthur's father. In all that time, Arthur's only ever had one issue with the man - and that's nothing to do with the execution of his job. Under Aelredd's command, the city has held its walls against all manner of attacks - both of the magical and physical variety.
He's a solid man and a good soldier, worth indulging in his curiosity and not just sending him on his way. Arthur glances at Gwen where she's frowning over the maps again. "My lady?"
"One of the borderland messengers mentioned a lack of farmers in the fields." She taps one finger on the relevant part of the map, and after a moment, Captain Aelredd comes up to look over her shoulder. "Along this area."
The captain looks from the map to Gwen. "Didn't a party of knights go out in that direction last week?"
"Yes. They went to deal with a magical creature in that area."
"But it's the missing farmers that concern us." Gwen straightens and regards Aelredd. "We don't expect your men to be heroes, just to visit the farmlands along that area and to bring back reports of what they find."
"What are you expecting to find, my lady?"
Gwen hesitates. "Empty houses, at best. At worst, you'll find the farmers and their families."
"In the--" Captain Aelredd goes a sickly shade. "I'll collect a patrol together immediately."
But even as he walks out, Arthur hears the clatter and clop of horses amidst the shouts of men out in the castle bailey.
They push their way through the castle folk indulging their curiosity, and find Lancelot and three squires in various stages of dismount.
Halfway down the stairs, Lancelot notices them. He hands his reins to one of the stableboys with a quiet word, and crosses the cobbles to meet them at the bottom of the steps, his eyes skimming Gwen's face before meeting Arthur's gaze.
"Sire. My Lady Guinevere."
"Lancelot. What news?"
"The chimaera is defeated." He says it simply, without grandeur or pride. To Lancelot, it was something that needed to be done, and he was simply the one to do it.
Arthur nods, but his eyes skim the courtyard and the four men and horses where six went out. "What was the cost?" The sour taste in his mouth is the beginning of grief - another good knight lost?
But Lancelot shakes his head. "Sir Hendel was merely injured, sire. He rests in Ordelston in the care of the physician there. Squire Harry is seeing to his care. His bravery gave us the opportunity to strike at the heart of the beast."
"He'll have a heroes welcome when he returns," Arthur promises. But Lancelot's eyes have already drifted down to rest on Arthur's wife.
"You should come inside." There's a slight breathlessness to Gwen's voice - barely audible but to a man who knows her well. "Have you ridden far today?"
"Only from Henslowe, my Lady."
"That's still a good half-day's riding." Arthur offers his arm to his wife in courtesy and possessiveness. "We'll get out of the wind, put a cup of wine in you, and you can make your report."
The report is simple enough in the end; Lancelot's not one for embellishment and boastfulness. But as he tells them of the villagers kept prisoner by the beast, their nightmares fuelling its power, his gaze slips from Arthur's to rest on the woman opposite him, whose gaze never falters from his.
"Will they be all right, do you think?" She asks him towards the end.
"They seemed resilient people, my lady. It might be a hard year for them, but they'll survive."
Gwen turns to Arthur. "Could we divert part of the taxes for the year to maintaining the folk in that area if it becomes necessary?"
He shrugs. At present, Camelot is wealthy beyond even his father's standards - peace and prosperity and the rule of law and justice have done more to make the land bountiful than all the witch-hunts his father ever instigated. "I'd have to check with Lord John, but I don't see any reason why not. Can't we do something to avoid having to support them, though?"
"Such as?"
He has no idea, but he makes a stab at it. "New crops? A different harvest?"
From the quirk of her lips, he's said something funny. Knowing Gwen, she's not going to share it now. "They store part of the harvest from the previous year so they have seed. A different harvest would involve finding seed for that harvest."
"Extra help in the fields?"
"Fieldhands need to be paid - which is difficult enough when you're short in the first place. And the only labourers for hire right now are the ones that other farms didn't want to take on."
"Right." Arthur shakes his head, wondering that he ever thought ruling a kingdom would be simple - just a matter of telling people what to do and going to war on occasion. Of course, he'd been eight at the time. "Let's just say that I know nothing of husbandry. Find someone who does and talk to them to see if there's anything we can do to help them and Orden. Lancelot?"
"Sire?"
"Go take a bath. You stink."
Lancelot stares. Gwen dissolves into laughter.
Arthur puts his chin in his hand and grins at the sight of his knight and his wife. "Never mind."
Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.
That night, Arthur finds himself watching Lancelot watch Gwen.
His wife is exquisite in turquoise silk, pearls hanging in her dark hair like stars in the sky. Arthur doesn't know what her maidservant does to her for these events - it's still all a mystery to him, but when she walks into the feasting hall men curse Arthur for seeing her worth first.
Blaming Lancelot for being in love with Guinevere would be asinine, after all, Arthur fell in love with her, too.
For her part, Gwen doesn't watch Lancelot, although her gaze drifts that way a few times. She's more involved in arguing the case for assisting the Ordelston farmers with the Lord Exchequer. The man is sending frantic signals in Arthur's direction, hoping for rescue. Arthur bestows what he thinks of as his lordly smile upon the man and leaves his wife to it.
He's a little less sanguine during the dancing when Lancelot claims Gwen for a turn on the floor.
"You know," Merlin murmurs, "you might want to clear the scowl from your face. Or people might talk."
"Don't you have something better to do?"
"Better than annoying you? Nope." Merlin's grin is as much trouble today as it was the first day Arthur met him.
"Fine. At the least, you could get me a cup of wine."
It comes sailing smoothly over the heads of the crowd, garnering a few stares, although most people are accustomed to Merlin's casual uses of magic now. Over in Lancelot's arms, Gwen turns her head so both Arthur and Merlin can see her roll of the eyes, before she turns back to look up at her slightly-smiling dance partner.
There's a reverence there - an admiration she doesn't bestow on her husband and never has, even when she was a blacksmith's daughter and he was the king's son.
"She loves you."
"I know that, you dolt." Arthur mutters as he takes the cup.
Merlin snorts, unrepentant at his friend's retort. "Well, glare at them much longer and people might start to doubt it."
He's not glaring at them; he's observing.
All things considered, Arthur's not sure he could live with Gwen looking at him the way she looks at Lancelot. Maybe he'd enjoy it - being revered and admired and adored by his wife. But he's not a paladin and he wouldn't want to be - not to Gwen.
Guinevere sees him as he is - a man, flawed like any other, but willing to try to make himself better. And she's willing to walk beside him as he does - not just for an evening or a dance, but for their whole lives.
Arthur drains his cup and hands it off to a servant before striding out onto the floor to claim his wife.
Perhaps it'll never be comfortable, but it's enough.
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total darkness sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.
- fin -
RECIPIENT: blackmamba_esq
PROMPT: A story based on The More Loving One by W.H. Auden.
TITLE: The Least We Have To Dread
SUMMARY: It's not an easy thing to be Guinevere's husband, lord, and king.
RATING: PG-13
CATEGORY: futurefic, drama, Arthur/Gwen, elements of Gwen/Lancelot
WORD COUNT: ~4000
DISCLAIMER: The characters from Merlin are not mine; they belong to the collective pool of consciousness in which our legends swim, and from which the BBC is making a motza. Lucky them.
NOTES: I'm so very sorry this is late, blackmamba_esq - I had another gameplan and then it refused to play ball at the last minute. And this was my alternative and once again, the characters wouldn't play ball. I hope you enjoy it!
The Least We Have To Dread
Gwen's poring over the maps from Mercia when Arthur comes in from training.
He pauses in the doorway for just a moment, caught yet again by the elegant curve of her throat and jaw, by the way the sun's glow limns her hair with the bright colours of the stained glass, like the angels and saints the glass depicts, by the slight frown on her forehead as she contemplates Bayard's realm.
"Planning to go to war, are we?" He watches her turn towards him, the frown easing back to patient amusement. "Would you at least give me time to change?"
His gesture encompasses the heavy steel of his armour, the sweat still beading across his brow, dampening his hair, and the reek of his exertions this morning out in the training field. Compared to the sun-glowing beauty of his wife, Arthur feels like a pig in wallow.
Or a rutting bull. At this moment, Arthur thinks that he would like to close the great iron-banded oak doors behind him, cross over to Guinevere and take her as is a husband's right. He wonders what she'd think of her knightly husband kneeling before her, pledging fealty to her with his lips between her thighs, leather gloves cupping her buttocks as she squirmed under his tongue...
"How are the new squires?"
Her question draws him from his distraction. He crosses the room to look over her shoulder at the papers she is studying. "They're settling in acceptably. Not the best group we've seen, but Gawain and Kay are taking them through their paces now. Most are your usual nobles' sons - arrogant prats who think the world revolves around them."
Arthur can't quite keep his disgust from his voice. It comes all the harder to him since he was once one of them; young, arrogant, self-absorbed. It took Merlin's arrival in Camelot to challenge his behaviour - and Gwen's belief to show him that he didn't have to be like his father.
"For most of them, it has - until now." Her smile up at him is fond. "They'll learn."
It never ceases to surprise him that she takes the prats' parts, forgiving them their stupidities and insults as she's forgiven his. It never ceases to discomfort him, either - that she remembers who he used to be. He's faced dragons and mythical beasts, witches, sorcerers, and Sidhe without fear; but before Guinevere's memories of the princely prat he once was, Arthur Pendragon finds it hard not to duck his head.
Merlin snorts and says it's just arrogance - Arthur wanting to be a paladin to his wife, who just happens to know otherwise.
"They'll have to or they won't be squires in Camelot very long." Arthur scratches at his scalp and grimaces when his fingers come away damp. He waves his dry hand at the papers spread out over the table. "Should I ask when we're going to war?"
"You already did." Guinevere glances down at the table. "It's what one of the messengers from the borderlands said. That he saw almost no farmers along the Mercia-Camelot borders, but that he saw no armed bandits either."
Arthur shrugs a little, frowning because he doesn't see where this is going. This isn't unusual when talking to his wife, simply because she sees what he doesn't. "There should be people in the fields?"
"It's the planting season, my Lord."
"So?"
"So there should be people out in the fields."
"Right. Of course. And you're looking at the maps because...?"
"Lord Ordel's servants spoke of monsters in the north-east," she says. "And Lancelot took Hendel and four squires into that area."
Arthur certainly remembers the absence of his best knight. "I thought Lancelot went out after a chimaera."
"He did. But the messenger spoke of the rumours monsters as though there were several, not just one. And it's the same region - just different kingdoms." Gwen looks up at him, her hands resting over the maps, the inverted cup of her palms resting right over Camelot, as though protecting it from attack. "They left nearly two weeks ago."
Arthur frowns. "If Lancelot needs help, he knows where to ask."
He doesn't mean to be so terse. But Arthur finds worrying over Lancelot would be easier if he didn't suspect the man was still in love with his wife.
"And if he can't?"
"He has four squires and a junior knight with him, Guinevere. And he's the best knight in Camelot." Not even saving Arthur's presence - a hard truth to accept, even if he is the king.
"I'm not doubting that. However, it might be helpful to look into sending some men out there." Her voice is steady, and so are her eyes. But her hands clasp over the paper, carefullly motionless, as though she holds her fears for the missing knight too tightly within her slim frame.
Arthur's own body tenses at her concern, his chest squeezing as though he's fighting an enemy, not looking down at his greatest ally. "Out to where Lancelot's gone?"
"Yes."
The answer is simple and absolute, with a certainty that stings. "On the possibility that Lancelot might have encountered something he can't deal with?" He can't help the harshness in his voice.
"What? No!"
"Shame him before the other knights, to suggest he needs a nursemaid?"
"No! That's not--"
"Then don't be foolish, Gwen. Yes, sometimes even the best need help, but if Lancelot needs help, I trust he'll send for it. And he probably doesn't. He's Lancelot, after all." Arthur shifts and holds up his hand when she opens her mouth to argue. "Not another word. I'm off to take a bath."
He leaves the hall without waiting for a response from her, without looking back, without feeling guilty for his terseness.
But really, what did she expect with such insistent concern over one of his knights? Especially Lancelot.
Sometimes Arthur thinks dealing with Lancelot would be easier if he didn't suspect his wife was still in love with the man.
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
Cenred helps him out of his armour and draws him a bath as Arthur stretches his sore muscles and doesn't think about Gwen's concern.
It's no surprise that she's concerned about the man. Every woman in the court is half in-love with Lancelot - he's a favourite among many, less for his knightly status and more for his looks and his manners.
No-one in Camelot does courtesy like Lancelot. Arthur's seen him step back to let a scullery maid carry her tray on to the kitchens, seen him rebalance a maidservant's load of linens so she won't drop it in the hallway. He's seen him help a pregnant noblewoman to her feet and escort her out to her carriage when her husband was too busy bellowing for a skin of wine to drink on the journey home.
Lancelot can fight like a demon, and if his speech isn't polished, his politeness is honest to the core, without the artifice of many of the nobly-born knights. Maybe he doesn't have a title to his name, lands to pass on to his children, but he's nobility in the truest sense of the word.
Arthur's the king; but Lancelot's everything that a knight of Camelot should be.
And he's in love with Arthur's queen.
As he climbs into steaming hot water, Arthur grimaces to himself. He can't blame the other man for loving Gwen; the man has impeccable taste.
"Too hot my lord?" Cenred asks.
"No, it's fine." Then, because his servant still looks anxious, he adds, "Thank you, Cenred. You may go. Wait. Bring me a cup of hot wine, then go."
He barely notices when the servant brings him his wine, his thoughts elsewhere.
It wouldn't be surprising that Gwen might be in love with Lancelot, either. There's an essential honesty in him that matches her own unrelenting veracity. If Lancelot is the standard held up to Arthur's knights, Gwen is the standard held up to Arthur's nobles - a common-born knight and a common-born queen, worthy in their own right, but valued by a king.
Arthur takes a deep swig of the wine and ignores the way it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. If he's honest with himself, Lancelot would probably be a better husband to Gwen - more caring, more attentive, more considerate.
And Arthur never forgets that Gwen chose Lancelot back when Arthur was still a princeling struggling to come to terms with his feelings, with his privilege, with the conflict between what his father wanted for him and what he wanted for himself. Only Lancelot's essential nobility gave Arthur a second chance with the woman they both cared about - a chance to better himself and become the man Guinevere agreed to marry.
He shifts and lets the heat leach out the aches in his body, in his bones. Ruling is a hard and lonely task, even with Gwen at his side. There are decisions that must be made by him, that can't be pushed onto others, that come down to the kind of king he is and the kind of kingdom he wants to rule.
Sometimes the decisions he makes cost lives and livelihoods. That's the nature of being a prince - to look out for the kingdom as a whole and not only the individuals.
Hard as it is, this is what he was born to do.
And he has Gwen to see the people he would skim over, to take him to task when he misses the details in the greater picture.
That's why he needs Guinevere, although it's hardly the only reason he loves her.
He knows she loves him - Guinevere wouldn't stay with a man she didn't love, wouldn't live the lie of a noblewoman in a marriage that brings her no pleasure. There's a small comfort in that, even as he wonders if, someday, she'll look from her husband the king to his first knight and realise she chose the wrong man.
"Arthur?"
"Back here."
Her soft steps sound too loud in the quiet as she crosses the room.
Arthur braces himself for this confrontation. He cut her off before, at his arrogant best, and she's come to take him to task for it. It's not something he's looking forward to, but it's necessary. Navigating the delicate ins and outs of a treaty has nothing on navigating the relationship with his wife - her expectations and his failure to meet them, her brutal honesty and his need to hear the unpleasant things she has to say, her gentleness and his hunger for that tenderness in his own life.
She steps around the intricately carved wooden screen and glances around with a wrinkle pushing between the fine lines of her eyebrows.
"Cenred?"
"I sent him away." Arthur glances down into the rich red curves of the cup. "Look, about what I said earlier..."
"You didn't let me finish."
He glances up at the cool bite of her words. "Now who's not letting who finish?"
Her lips firm for a moment, and she looks away - down to the hands now clasped before her.
Arthur frowns. Her pose is familiar - that of a servant expecting a dressing down from her master. Except that she's not a servant anymore, and he's not the arrogant princeling he was. Seeing her stand like this makes him feel as though the long years between then and now have vanished, and the chasm of her position and his status divide them.
The water slides around him in a wave as he sits up and holds out his hand to her. "Guinevere." After a moment's hesitation, she takes it, kneeling beside the bathtub. "I was rude before. I shouldn't have cut you off, and I'm sorry."
One corner of her mouth tilts in wry regret. "I wasn't talking about Lancelot before, you know." The words spill into the silence between them by way of a peace offering. "I was actually referring to the missing farmers."
"What about them?"
"No-one leaves their fields in spring - not if they don't have to. If you don't sow, you don't reap. If you don't reap, you don't have food through the winter." Her eyes skim his face, seeking signs that he understands what she's saying. "The only reason those fields would be left fallow and empty is because there's no-one to tend to them. And the only reason no-one would be around to tend to them--"
"Is because they're either dead or gone." Arthur grimaces to himself as pieces fall into place. "You wanted to send soldiers out to the villages and find out what was wrong."
"Yes. Just to find out what's happened. Maybe Lancelot needs help in whatever he's doing - we've been without word from him for nearly two weeks. But you're right - he knows he can call for help if he needs it. The farmers don't."
He sighs. "And I didn't give you time to say this."
"No. You didn't."
"Try not to rub it in too much," he says, more than a little dry. Her bluntness stings, but the honesty is reassuring. Things are never so bad as when Guinevere tries to lie to him. "All right. I'll have the captain of the city guard send a detachment out to investigate. Help me out of this thing, will you?"
The curve of her mouth is mesmerising. "Not if you still stink the way you did in the hall."
"Stink?" Arthur glowers at her smirk. "That was the sweat of my brow!"
"And your back and your chest and your armpits, my Lord. And whatever it's the sweat of, it still stinks."
Arthur experiences the sudden urge to wipe that smirk off his wife's lips. His eyes narrow at her now-smiling visage. "Oh really?"
And before she can jerk away, he yanks her half into the bathtub with a laugh.
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
They've both cleaned up and are a lot more demure when the Captain of the city guard is called into the hall, looking distinctly uncomfortable in his chain mail and tabard.
Arthur acknolwedges the man with a nod of his head. "Captain, thank you for your time. Do you have a countryside detachment available to ride up to the Mercian border today?"
If the man's startled by the request made of him, he hides it well.
"Well, yes, sire. It will take a little time to assemble them, but... What's this for, sire?"
Aelredd's been Captain of the city guard for the last five years - since the death of Arthur's father. In all that time, Arthur's only ever had one issue with the man - and that's nothing to do with the execution of his job. Under Aelredd's command, the city has held its walls against all manner of attacks - both of the magical and physical variety.
He's a solid man and a good soldier, worth indulging in his curiosity and not just sending him on his way. Arthur glances at Gwen where she's frowning over the maps again. "My lady?"
"One of the borderland messengers mentioned a lack of farmers in the fields." She taps one finger on the relevant part of the map, and after a moment, Captain Aelredd comes up to look over her shoulder. "Along this area."
The captain looks from the map to Gwen. "Didn't a party of knights go out in that direction last week?"
"Yes. They went to deal with a magical creature in that area."
"But it's the missing farmers that concern us." Gwen straightens and regards Aelredd. "We don't expect your men to be heroes, just to visit the farmlands along that area and to bring back reports of what they find."
"What are you expecting to find, my lady?"
Gwen hesitates. "Empty houses, at best. At worst, you'll find the farmers and their families."
"In the--" Captain Aelredd goes a sickly shade. "I'll collect a patrol together immediately."
But even as he walks out, Arthur hears the clatter and clop of horses amidst the shouts of men out in the castle bailey.
They push their way through the castle folk indulging their curiosity, and find Lancelot and three squires in various stages of dismount.
Halfway down the stairs, Lancelot notices them. He hands his reins to one of the stableboys with a quiet word, and crosses the cobbles to meet them at the bottom of the steps, his eyes skimming Gwen's face before meeting Arthur's gaze.
"Sire. My Lady Guinevere."
"Lancelot. What news?"
"The chimaera is defeated." He says it simply, without grandeur or pride. To Lancelot, it was something that needed to be done, and he was simply the one to do it.
Arthur nods, but his eyes skim the courtyard and the four men and horses where six went out. "What was the cost?" The sour taste in his mouth is the beginning of grief - another good knight lost?
But Lancelot shakes his head. "Sir Hendel was merely injured, sire. He rests in Ordelston in the care of the physician there. Squire Harry is seeing to his care. His bravery gave us the opportunity to strike at the heart of the beast."
"He'll have a heroes welcome when he returns," Arthur promises. But Lancelot's eyes have already drifted down to rest on Arthur's wife.
"You should come inside." There's a slight breathlessness to Gwen's voice - barely audible but to a man who knows her well. "Have you ridden far today?"
"Only from Henslowe, my Lady."
"That's still a good half-day's riding." Arthur offers his arm to his wife in courtesy and possessiveness. "We'll get out of the wind, put a cup of wine in you, and you can make your report."
The report is simple enough in the end; Lancelot's not one for embellishment and boastfulness. But as he tells them of the villagers kept prisoner by the beast, their nightmares fuelling its power, his gaze slips from Arthur's to rest on the woman opposite him, whose gaze never falters from his.
"Will they be all right, do you think?" She asks him towards the end.
"They seemed resilient people, my lady. It might be a hard year for them, but they'll survive."
Gwen turns to Arthur. "Could we divert part of the taxes for the year to maintaining the folk in that area if it becomes necessary?"
He shrugs. At present, Camelot is wealthy beyond even his father's standards - peace and prosperity and the rule of law and justice have done more to make the land bountiful than all the witch-hunts his father ever instigated. "I'd have to check with Lord John, but I don't see any reason why not. Can't we do something to avoid having to support them, though?"
"Such as?"
He has no idea, but he makes a stab at it. "New crops? A different harvest?"
From the quirk of her lips, he's said something funny. Knowing Gwen, she's not going to share it now. "They store part of the harvest from the previous year so they have seed. A different harvest would involve finding seed for that harvest."
"Extra help in the fields?"
"Fieldhands need to be paid - which is difficult enough when you're short in the first place. And the only labourers for hire right now are the ones that other farms didn't want to take on."
"Right." Arthur shakes his head, wondering that he ever thought ruling a kingdom would be simple - just a matter of telling people what to do and going to war on occasion. Of course, he'd been eight at the time. "Let's just say that I know nothing of husbandry. Find someone who does and talk to them to see if there's anything we can do to help them and Orden. Lancelot?"
"Sire?"
"Go take a bath. You stink."
Lancelot stares. Gwen dissolves into laughter.
Arthur puts his chin in his hand and grins at the sight of his knight and his wife. "Never mind."
Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.
That night, Arthur finds himself watching Lancelot watch Gwen.
His wife is exquisite in turquoise silk, pearls hanging in her dark hair like stars in the sky. Arthur doesn't know what her maidservant does to her for these events - it's still all a mystery to him, but when she walks into the feasting hall men curse Arthur for seeing her worth first.
Blaming Lancelot for being in love with Guinevere would be asinine, after all, Arthur fell in love with her, too.
For her part, Gwen doesn't watch Lancelot, although her gaze drifts that way a few times. She's more involved in arguing the case for assisting the Ordelston farmers with the Lord Exchequer. The man is sending frantic signals in Arthur's direction, hoping for rescue. Arthur bestows what he thinks of as his lordly smile upon the man and leaves his wife to it.
He's a little less sanguine during the dancing when Lancelot claims Gwen for a turn on the floor.
"You know," Merlin murmurs, "you might want to clear the scowl from your face. Or people might talk."
"Don't you have something better to do?"
"Better than annoying you? Nope." Merlin's grin is as much trouble today as it was the first day Arthur met him.
"Fine. At the least, you could get me a cup of wine."
It comes sailing smoothly over the heads of the crowd, garnering a few stares, although most people are accustomed to Merlin's casual uses of magic now. Over in Lancelot's arms, Gwen turns her head so both Arthur and Merlin can see her roll of the eyes, before she turns back to look up at her slightly-smiling dance partner.
There's a reverence there - an admiration she doesn't bestow on her husband and never has, even when she was a blacksmith's daughter and he was the king's son.
"She loves you."
"I know that, you dolt." Arthur mutters as he takes the cup.
Merlin snorts, unrepentant at his friend's retort. "Well, glare at them much longer and people might start to doubt it."
He's not glaring at them; he's observing.
All things considered, Arthur's not sure he could live with Gwen looking at him the way she looks at Lancelot. Maybe he'd enjoy it - being revered and admired and adored by his wife. But he's not a paladin and he wouldn't want to be - not to Gwen.
Guinevere sees him as he is - a man, flawed like any other, but willing to try to make himself better. And she's willing to walk beside him as he does - not just for an evening or a dance, but for their whole lives.
Arthur drains his cup and hands it off to a servant before striding out onto the floor to claim his wife.
Perhaps it'll never be comfortable, but it's enough.
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total darkness sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.
- fin -