The Alibi
Title: The Alibi
Pairings: None.
Characters: Gwen, Gaius
Rating: U/PG
Word Count: 2,395
Author's note 1: This story is from the same 'verse as Line of Dance, but you don't need to have read it to understand this. You just need to know that Arthur is newly king and has promoted Merlin to the post of Chief Counsellor. He has also gone to war, forbidding Merlin from accompanying him. But since when did Merlin listen to Arthur when he gave orders like that? And with a bit of help from his friends, he didn't need to.
Warnings: None, although there are warnings on Line of Dance
Summary: Gaius and Gwen, while the army is away.
Author's note 2: My very great thanks to sparrow2000 for being my best friend, sounding board, plot bunny wrangler and voice of calm common sense. Also, to DJ for (hopefully) catching the last few typos. If you spot any more that we all missed, feel free to let me know in comments.
Disclaimer: I write fan fic. All the characters from the Merlin series are the property of the BBC and Shine, etc. No infringement is intended and no profit is being made from this writing.
Series links - Line of Dance: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
Fall-out - Merlin and Gaius, when Merlin gets back (follows this story.)
Trouble is as trouble does - A back-story snippet (best read after the main story.) Alwin watches Merlin approach. Set some time in season 1.
Just deserts - A back-story snippet. Merlin and Arthur, the morning after the first time.
The Alibi
Gwen
When Gwen opened the door, Gaius was sitting on his padded bench seat, snoozing in the sun that streamed in from the window above him. Unguarded and relaxed, the slack muscles of his face sagged, like a cloak that has been passed down through the family until it can no longer be remodelled.
She paused on the threshold and took a breath. The sharp scents of rosemary, mint and thyme were the strongest, overlaying the pervasive aroma of old ash, burnt syrup, the damp green smell of the leech tank, the mustiness of old paper and the richness of other, unidentified herbs, that had combined and impregnated everything in the room, to become part of its very fabric. As she took her first step forward, a waft of lavender caught her. It was still too early to harvest the flowers, but there were bunches of fresh cut greenery hanging from a hook in the wall to her right
Gently nudging the door with her hip to close it, she crossed the room, leading with her toes to soften her footfalls. She put the tray down on a stool and began to clear a space on the table, by moving the books and loose parchments scattered across it out of the way.
Gaius started awake and blinked a few times, like a badger emerging from its set. "Oh, there you are, my dear," he said. "Is it that time, already? I must have dozed off."
He rolled his shoulders slightly and stretched his back while she spread the two covered bowls and the basket of green leaves in front of him. "You'll join me?" he asked, when she was done.
The plate holding half a fruitcake and almost a quarter of a round of cheese fitted neatly on the edge of the table and she propped the empty tray against one of the table legs. "I would be honoured," she agreed, sinking down onto the stool opposite him. "I can't bear to see such good food go to waste and I can't take it back to the kitchen. No one will notice if I'm absent from dinner in the Hall."
Hauling himself to his feet, Gaius picked up the handful of cutlery she had put down next to the covered bowls. The slight pucker between his brows as he sorted the spoons from the kitchen and the serving ladle, deepened. "You need to show your face," he said, "or they'll start to think you're intimidated by them."
She smiled. "I'll go and drink a cup of wine, before bed, then," she said.
While he lifted the covers off the plates, exposing the small feast beneath, Gaius nodded. "You do that." he said and looked across at her with an eyebrow raised in question.
"I know," she sighed. "But Mistress Eglantine thinks Merlin's too thin."
He gave a huff of laughter and sat down. "And Merlin's an important man, now." He laid the lids on the cushion next to him, for lack of any other clear surface, and picked up the ladle. "Well, I see no reason not to profit from his promotion. Can I help you to some of these?" At her nod, he spooned a generous serving of stewed eels and a portion of mashed parsnip and swede onto a plate, placing it in front of her before doing the same for himself, adding, "We must encourage Merlin to go away more often; I can't remember the last time I ate so well."
She laughed and felt some of the tightness in her shoulders and neck relax. It made her lower back ache and she stretched, relishing the sensation. Gaius smiled at her and his expression was fond, although whether it was for her, or for the absent Merlin, she didn't know. She speared a piece of eel on her knife and put it in her mouth. The taste of the fish and Mistress Eglantine's special ransoms, penny herb and parsley sauce reminded her that she had missed breakfast. "Hmm, it's good," she said.
Gaius poured small beer into two earthen cups and handed one to her, tilting his own in a toast. "Fortune to Camelot," he said and Gwen raised her own cup in reply, touching its rim against his.
"Fortune," she agreed.
She picked up her spoon. "Do think it's over, yet?" she asked. She dipped her spoon into her mash and took a mouthful. Nutty and sweet, laced with butter and cream, it was food fit for the King's table.
Gaius put his cup down and picked up his own spoon. He shook his head. "It's a full two day march," he said. "That's if all goes well." He ate a lump of eel and washed it down with beer. "Yes, very good," he agreed. "No, it will be tomorrow before they get there, at the earliest."
"And then a battle, and then a return," she said.
They ate in silence for a while, both occupied with their own thoughts, until she took a sip of her beer and looked at him across the rim of her cup. "You've undertaken to stay out of sight for more than a few days. Won't you get bored?"
"No, not at all. How could I?" he said. "I have uninterrupted peace to do some proper research, for once. My rounds won't take up much of my time, what with the knights away and not trying to kill themselves and each other on the training field."
He paused and studied her. His eyes seemed to penetrate beyond the unconcerned demeanour she cultivated, outside her chamber door. "They'll be fine, my dear," he said. "Don't worry; your young man will be home soon enough."
Gwen nodded and changed the subject. "What will you say you were doing?" she asked.
His brows drew together and he turned away to reach for something on the shelf to his left. When he turned back, it was to place a small bowl of salt on the table between them. His lips quirked and his expression melted into one that, if he had not been the King's physician, she would have described as mischievous. "I don't know," he said. "What do you think?"
When she had no ready answer, his smile broadened. "I think…" he said, "we might be perfecting a perpetual motion machine. That is a suitably lofty ambition for two philosophers." He sprinkled salt across his food and popped a spoonful of eel into his mouth. "I've always wanted to try," he said, once he'd swallowed. "Ever since I heard about a man called Bramagup, from somewhere beyond the Middle Sea. He spent years attempting to build just such a thing."
Catching his mood, she grinned back at him. "And you will succeed, where he apparently failed?" she asked, but answered her own question. "Of course you will. Two such clever men, how could you not?" While she chased the last of her mash across her plate and into her spoon, she asked, "What would it do? Could it do housework?"
"But then the servants would have no jobs and they'd starve," he said.
With a nod of mock solemnity, she agreed, "Very true. Perhaps best not."
He half stood, reached across the table, picked up the beer jug and refilled each of their cups. "We could be developing my hangover cure, so a man could drink it before he went out and so avoid the pain the next morning?" he suggested.
Laughing, she shook her head. "But if they don't suffer for their excesses, they'll be in the tavern every night."
He tipped his cup to her in salute. "Ah, I hadn't thought of that. A good point. We can't be seen to be encouraging the populace to pour their wages down their necks and their pay into the innkeepers' pockets."
Picking a sprig of watercress out of the basket of greens, she rested her elbow on the table and nibbled on a leaf. "Could you invent a potion to make childbed painless and easy?" she asked, thinking of Mistress Bronwen's recent trials.
"I'm not sure Nurse Gemma would allow any man near a woman in childbed," he said, and pursed his lips in a moue of disapproval, or maybe of thought. "Even me, but..." His gaze dropped his plate. "Some herbal preparation to relax the muscles and dull the pain..." He spooned mash into his mouth, but Gwen doubted that he tasted it. His hand reached out blindly, to unerringly pick up his cup and he took a sip of his beer. "I would need to ask her advice. Find out what she has tried in difficult cases..."
With his descent into serious thought, she felt the loss of his company. She allowed him time to develop his first ideas, but then drew him back to the present by saying, "You can't do that until Merlin returns and you are free to show yourself again. In the meantime, I think the two of you are making a poultice to draw the madness from an afflicted mind."
He looked up and his eyes widened. Looking back down at his plate, he seemed surprised to find it empty. His lips turned up on one side and the smile grew from there, until it occupied his entire face. She thought he was going to apologise for his preoccupation, but instead he asked impishly, "Will it work on old Ned?"
"Of course," she replied. "He'll be back under a roof and picking up his trade again, within a week of treatment."
Sweet cake and sharp cheese proved a perfect complement to Mistress Eglantine's fish and mash and as he cut her a large lump of each, he suggested gallantly. "Or maybe we could request your help, to spin a thread that will allow us to reattach severed limbs?"
She laughed again and shook her head. "I'm no spinster. You need a woman with Janet's skill to spin a thread of such quality. What about a perfume to charm the heart of a lady's true love."
"You don't need that."
"No I don't," she agreed and knew she blushed. Placing both her elbows on the table and resting her chin on the knuckles of her fisted hands, she said, "But Lady Gertrude might."
Gaius
Although he had obviously embarrassed her by mentioning her affections for Lancelot, they spent a pleasant hour together. It was good to see her take her time over the meal. For as long as he had known her, woman and girl, she had always been on the move. Bustling but calm, she had fetched and carried for, and managed, first her father and Morgana, then Uther and, most recently, the whole Castle, on behalf of Arthur.
There had not been time in recent weeks to pause and consider the implications of the succession, to the individuals caught up on the periphery. Arthur had barely taken the throne when he allowed himself to pitch the kingdom into civil war, because of the death of a serving girl and a careless word in court that led to the trial of a baron, because Arthur could not be seen to be wrong-footed in front of the men and women whose consent he relied upon to hold onto his kingdom.
Some good had come of the debacle, however. There was nothing like a war to unite a people and Cenred's helpful interference allowed Arthur to refocus it from rebellion, with all the uncomfortable associations that idea carried, to external threat.
And because of it, Lancelot and Gwaine had returned to Camelot. Which brought his wandering thoughts back to Gwen.
Caught up in the preparations for war, Lancelot had not publically confirmed his intentions and, until he did, she was just a servant with ambitions beyond her station, in the eyes of many members of the court.
He set his mind to diverting her thoughts and she seemed happy to indulge him in his fancy. One detour into serious medicine aside, over stewed eel and mash followed by sharp cheese and sweet cake stuffed with dried apple and preserved cherries, they speculated on what he and Merlin were supposedly doing, locked away in the South Tower, together.
When the meal was done and the empty plates stacked on the tray, he dug out a bottle of his elderflower wine and poured some into their empty cups, which they sat and nursed as their talk turned to practical matters of the castle and town.
She did not dwell on the tasks and challenges she faced in taking up the reins of Chatelaine; rather she directed the conversation to his area of responsibility. There was a kitchen maid she was concerned about and one of the young pages who seemed to sport more bruises and black eyes than could easily be accounted for. It was not until they had discussed those cases and she had enquired after a number of his other patients, that she raised the question of Alice and her two remaining children. "Alice is not likely to last another winter," she said and something in her tone caught at Gaius' ear.
He sighed. "I know, my dear. I've been visiting her for the best part of a year and I've tried everything. I fail to see what more I can do."
"She worries," Gwen said. "Since Mary was murdered. Mary was to care for the boys. Now, Alice is concerned for their future, once she's gone."
A still, slow dread began to form in the pit of Gaius' stomach. "And?" he asked, although he thought he knew what was coming.
"And you need a new assistant," she replied, confirming his fears, "now that Merlin's duties have taken him away."
For such a gentle girl, Gwen was remarkably stubborn. She sat across the table and looked at him, while he concentrated on keeping his hands still, for fear she would mistake any movement for fidgeting.
He demurred, he protested, he argued, but to no avail; she would not be moved.
Sitting back from the table, he gazed at her helplessly. "I don't know how it happened, without me seeing it," he observed, "but you have grown to be a formidable woman."
Her smile reminded him of the young girl she had been, ten years before, when she was as much Morgana's playmate, as her maid.
The End
Note: Ransoms is a folk name for wild garlic and penny herb, or penny hedge, is a relative of the mustard plant.
The man Gaius calls Bramagup, was actually the Indian mathematician and astronomer, called Brahmagupta. I have played with time, a little, because he described a perpetual motion machine in 624, which is after the period in which the Line of Dance 'verse is set. On the other hand, maybe they were not the same person and Bramagup failed where Brahmagupta claimed to have succeeded. *g*
In his Brahmasphutasiddhanta, Brahmagupta describes the device: "Make a wheel of light timber, with uniformly hollow spokes at equal intervals. Fill each spoke up to half with mercury and seal its opening situated in the rim. Set up the wheel so that its axle rests horizontally on two [upright] supports. Then the mercury runs upwards [in some] hollow spaces and downwards [in some others, as a result of which] the wheel rotates automatically forever." (translation: SR Sarma). http://www.hp-gramatke.net/perpetuum/english/page0020.htm
Comments are always greatly appreciated, loved and cherished.
Merlin and Gaius and the Fall-out are this way --
Pairings: None.
Characters: Gwen, Gaius
Rating: U/PG
Word Count: 2,395
Author's note 1: This story is from the same 'verse as Line of Dance, but you don't need to have read it to understand this. You just need to know that Arthur is newly king and has promoted Merlin to the post of Chief Counsellor. He has also gone to war, forbidding Merlin from accompanying him. But since when did Merlin listen to Arthur when he gave orders like that? And with a bit of help from his friends, he didn't need to.
Warnings: None, although there are warnings on Line of Dance
Summary: Gaius and Gwen, while the army is away.
Author's note 2: My very great thanks to sparrow2000 for being my best friend, sounding board, plot bunny wrangler and voice of calm common sense. Also, to DJ for (hopefully) catching the last few typos. If you spot any more that we all missed, feel free to let me know in comments.
Disclaimer: I write fan fic. All the characters from the Merlin series are the property of the BBC and Shine, etc. No infringement is intended and no profit is being made from this writing.
Series links - Line of Dance: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
Fall-out - Merlin and Gaius, when Merlin gets back (follows this story.)
Trouble is as trouble does - A back-story snippet (best read after the main story.) Alwin watches Merlin approach. Set some time in season 1.
Just deserts - A back-story snippet. Merlin and Arthur, the morning after the first time.
The Alibi
Gwen
When Gwen opened the door, Gaius was sitting on his padded bench seat, snoozing in the sun that streamed in from the window above him. Unguarded and relaxed, the slack muscles of his face sagged, like a cloak that has been passed down through the family until it can no longer be remodelled.
She paused on the threshold and took a breath. The sharp scents of rosemary, mint and thyme were the strongest, overlaying the pervasive aroma of old ash, burnt syrup, the damp green smell of the leech tank, the mustiness of old paper and the richness of other, unidentified herbs, that had combined and impregnated everything in the room, to become part of its very fabric. As she took her first step forward, a waft of lavender caught her. It was still too early to harvest the flowers, but there were bunches of fresh cut greenery hanging from a hook in the wall to her right
Gently nudging the door with her hip to close it, she crossed the room, leading with her toes to soften her footfalls. She put the tray down on a stool and began to clear a space on the table, by moving the books and loose parchments scattered across it out of the way.
Gaius started awake and blinked a few times, like a badger emerging from its set. "Oh, there you are, my dear," he said. "Is it that time, already? I must have dozed off."
He rolled his shoulders slightly and stretched his back while she spread the two covered bowls and the basket of green leaves in front of him. "You'll join me?" he asked, when she was done.
The plate holding half a fruitcake and almost a quarter of a round of cheese fitted neatly on the edge of the table and she propped the empty tray against one of the table legs. "I would be honoured," she agreed, sinking down onto the stool opposite him. "I can't bear to see such good food go to waste and I can't take it back to the kitchen. No one will notice if I'm absent from dinner in the Hall."
Hauling himself to his feet, Gaius picked up the handful of cutlery she had put down next to the covered bowls. The slight pucker between his brows as he sorted the spoons from the kitchen and the serving ladle, deepened. "You need to show your face," he said, "or they'll start to think you're intimidated by them."
She smiled. "I'll go and drink a cup of wine, before bed, then," she said.
While he lifted the covers off the plates, exposing the small feast beneath, Gaius nodded. "You do that." he said and looked across at her with an eyebrow raised in question.
"I know," she sighed. "But Mistress Eglantine thinks Merlin's too thin."
He gave a huff of laughter and sat down. "And Merlin's an important man, now." He laid the lids on the cushion next to him, for lack of any other clear surface, and picked up the ladle. "Well, I see no reason not to profit from his promotion. Can I help you to some of these?" At her nod, he spooned a generous serving of stewed eels and a portion of mashed parsnip and swede onto a plate, placing it in front of her before doing the same for himself, adding, "We must encourage Merlin to go away more often; I can't remember the last time I ate so well."
She laughed and felt some of the tightness in her shoulders and neck relax. It made her lower back ache and she stretched, relishing the sensation. Gaius smiled at her and his expression was fond, although whether it was for her, or for the absent Merlin, she didn't know. She speared a piece of eel on her knife and put it in her mouth. The taste of the fish and Mistress Eglantine's special ransoms, penny herb and parsley sauce reminded her that she had missed breakfast. "Hmm, it's good," she said.
Gaius poured small beer into two earthen cups and handed one to her, tilting his own in a toast. "Fortune to Camelot," he said and Gwen raised her own cup in reply, touching its rim against his.
"Fortune," she agreed.
She picked up her spoon. "Do think it's over, yet?" she asked. She dipped her spoon into her mash and took a mouthful. Nutty and sweet, laced with butter and cream, it was food fit for the King's table.
Gaius put his cup down and picked up his own spoon. He shook his head. "It's a full two day march," he said. "That's if all goes well." He ate a lump of eel and washed it down with beer. "Yes, very good," he agreed. "No, it will be tomorrow before they get there, at the earliest."
"And then a battle, and then a return," she said.
They ate in silence for a while, both occupied with their own thoughts, until she took a sip of her beer and looked at him across the rim of her cup. "You've undertaken to stay out of sight for more than a few days. Won't you get bored?"
"No, not at all. How could I?" he said. "I have uninterrupted peace to do some proper research, for once. My rounds won't take up much of my time, what with the knights away and not trying to kill themselves and each other on the training field."
He paused and studied her. His eyes seemed to penetrate beyond the unconcerned demeanour she cultivated, outside her chamber door. "They'll be fine, my dear," he said. "Don't worry; your young man will be home soon enough."
Gwen nodded and changed the subject. "What will you say you were doing?" she asked.
His brows drew together and he turned away to reach for something on the shelf to his left. When he turned back, it was to place a small bowl of salt on the table between them. His lips quirked and his expression melted into one that, if he had not been the King's physician, she would have described as mischievous. "I don't know," he said. "What do you think?"
When she had no ready answer, his smile broadened. "I think…" he said, "we might be perfecting a perpetual motion machine. That is a suitably lofty ambition for two philosophers." He sprinkled salt across his food and popped a spoonful of eel into his mouth. "I've always wanted to try," he said, once he'd swallowed. "Ever since I heard about a man called Bramagup, from somewhere beyond the Middle Sea. He spent years attempting to build just such a thing."
Catching his mood, she grinned back at him. "And you will succeed, where he apparently failed?" she asked, but answered her own question. "Of course you will. Two such clever men, how could you not?" While she chased the last of her mash across her plate and into her spoon, she asked, "What would it do? Could it do housework?"
"But then the servants would have no jobs and they'd starve," he said.
With a nod of mock solemnity, she agreed, "Very true. Perhaps best not."
He half stood, reached across the table, picked up the beer jug and refilled each of their cups. "We could be developing my hangover cure, so a man could drink it before he went out and so avoid the pain the next morning?" he suggested.
Laughing, she shook her head. "But if they don't suffer for their excesses, they'll be in the tavern every night."
He tipped his cup to her in salute. "Ah, I hadn't thought of that. A good point. We can't be seen to be encouraging the populace to pour their wages down their necks and their pay into the innkeepers' pockets."
Picking a sprig of watercress out of the basket of greens, she rested her elbow on the table and nibbled on a leaf. "Could you invent a potion to make childbed painless and easy?" she asked, thinking of Mistress Bronwen's recent trials.
"I'm not sure Nurse Gemma would allow any man near a woman in childbed," he said, and pursed his lips in a moue of disapproval, or maybe of thought. "Even me, but..." His gaze dropped his plate. "Some herbal preparation to relax the muscles and dull the pain..." He spooned mash into his mouth, but Gwen doubted that he tasted it. His hand reached out blindly, to unerringly pick up his cup and he took a sip of his beer. "I would need to ask her advice. Find out what she has tried in difficult cases..."
With his descent into serious thought, she felt the loss of his company. She allowed him time to develop his first ideas, but then drew him back to the present by saying, "You can't do that until Merlin returns and you are free to show yourself again. In the meantime, I think the two of you are making a poultice to draw the madness from an afflicted mind."
He looked up and his eyes widened. Looking back down at his plate, he seemed surprised to find it empty. His lips turned up on one side and the smile grew from there, until it occupied his entire face. She thought he was going to apologise for his preoccupation, but instead he asked impishly, "Will it work on old Ned?"
"Of course," she replied. "He'll be back under a roof and picking up his trade again, within a week of treatment."
Sweet cake and sharp cheese proved a perfect complement to Mistress Eglantine's fish and mash and as he cut her a large lump of each, he suggested gallantly. "Or maybe we could request your help, to spin a thread that will allow us to reattach severed limbs?"
She laughed again and shook her head. "I'm no spinster. You need a woman with Janet's skill to spin a thread of such quality. What about a perfume to charm the heart of a lady's true love."
"You don't need that."
"No I don't," she agreed and knew she blushed. Placing both her elbows on the table and resting her chin on the knuckles of her fisted hands, she said, "But Lady Gertrude might."
Gaius
Although he had obviously embarrassed her by mentioning her affections for Lancelot, they spent a pleasant hour together. It was good to see her take her time over the meal. For as long as he had known her, woman and girl, she had always been on the move. Bustling but calm, she had fetched and carried for, and managed, first her father and Morgana, then Uther and, most recently, the whole Castle, on behalf of Arthur.
There had not been time in recent weeks to pause and consider the implications of the succession, to the individuals caught up on the periphery. Arthur had barely taken the throne when he allowed himself to pitch the kingdom into civil war, because of the death of a serving girl and a careless word in court that led to the trial of a baron, because Arthur could not be seen to be wrong-footed in front of the men and women whose consent he relied upon to hold onto his kingdom.
Some good had come of the debacle, however. There was nothing like a war to unite a people and Cenred's helpful interference allowed Arthur to refocus it from rebellion, with all the uncomfortable associations that idea carried, to external threat.
And because of it, Lancelot and Gwaine had returned to Camelot. Which brought his wandering thoughts back to Gwen.
Caught up in the preparations for war, Lancelot had not publically confirmed his intentions and, until he did, she was just a servant with ambitions beyond her station, in the eyes of many members of the court.
He set his mind to diverting her thoughts and she seemed happy to indulge him in his fancy. One detour into serious medicine aside, over stewed eel and mash followed by sharp cheese and sweet cake stuffed with dried apple and preserved cherries, they speculated on what he and Merlin were supposedly doing, locked away in the South Tower, together.
When the meal was done and the empty plates stacked on the tray, he dug out a bottle of his elderflower wine and poured some into their empty cups, which they sat and nursed as their talk turned to practical matters of the castle and town.
She did not dwell on the tasks and challenges she faced in taking up the reins of Chatelaine; rather she directed the conversation to his area of responsibility. There was a kitchen maid she was concerned about and one of the young pages who seemed to sport more bruises and black eyes than could easily be accounted for. It was not until they had discussed those cases and she had enquired after a number of his other patients, that she raised the question of Alice and her two remaining children. "Alice is not likely to last another winter," she said and something in her tone caught at Gaius' ear.
He sighed. "I know, my dear. I've been visiting her for the best part of a year and I've tried everything. I fail to see what more I can do."
"She worries," Gwen said. "Since Mary was murdered. Mary was to care for the boys. Now, Alice is concerned for their future, once she's gone."
A still, slow dread began to form in the pit of Gaius' stomach. "And?" he asked, although he thought he knew what was coming.
"And you need a new assistant," she replied, confirming his fears, "now that Merlin's duties have taken him away."
For such a gentle girl, Gwen was remarkably stubborn. She sat across the table and looked at him, while he concentrated on keeping his hands still, for fear she would mistake any movement for fidgeting.
He demurred, he protested, he argued, but to no avail; she would not be moved.
Sitting back from the table, he gazed at her helplessly. "I don't know how it happened, without me seeing it," he observed, "but you have grown to be a formidable woman."
Her smile reminded him of the young girl she had been, ten years before, when she was as much Morgana's playmate, as her maid.
The End
Note: Ransoms is a folk name for wild garlic and penny herb, or penny hedge, is a relative of the mustard plant.
The man Gaius calls Bramagup, was actually the Indian mathematician and astronomer, called Brahmagupta. I have played with time, a little, because he described a perpetual motion machine in 624, which is after the period in which the Line of Dance 'verse is set. On the other hand, maybe they were not the same person and Bramagup failed where Brahmagupta claimed to have succeeded. *g*
In his Brahmasphutasiddhanta, Brahmagupta describes the device: "Make a wheel of light timber, with uniformly hollow spokes at equal intervals. Fill each spoke up to half with mercury and seal its opening situated in the rim. Set up the wheel so that its axle rests horizontally on two [upright] supports. Then the mercury runs upwards [in some] hollow spaces and downwards [in some others, as a result of which] the wheel rotates automatically forever." (translation: SR Sarma). http://www.hp-gramatke.net/perpetuum/english/page0020.htm
Comments are always greatly appreciated, loved and cherished.
Merlin and Gaius and the Fall-out are this way --