So the fiction set in the future and I fell out, somewhat. I will return to it this weekend and we will attempt to re-negotiate.

In the meantime: did you know that some baby crack alligators escaped into the sewers in New York City in the 1980s, and that, after being left alone there for two and a half decades, they evolved into unholy, giant crack alligators, 7,761 words long?

Title: Three Tasks 1/2 (this part approximately 7800 words)

Pairing: Arthur/Merlin (only just visible, at least in Part 1)

Rating: PG-13

Warnings: Arthur in lilac robes. Direct allusion to 1.1, 1.3, 1.4, 1.10, 1.11.

Summary: Arthur is the Royal Arbiter for Suitable Suitors' Disputes. He (and his trusty companion, the golden-dragon-tasselled hat) alone can determine who is fit to woo royal servants and other assorted courtiers in Uther's court.

(In light of the sentence above, the following may not appear to be a truthful statement, but: not as cracky as that makes it sound. Really.)

This time: Arthur arbitrates a dispute (with heretofore unforeseen wisdom); Merlin observes.

In Part Two: in a Rather Predictable Set of Events, Merlin becomes the object of a Suitable Suitors' Dispute. Arthur attempts to arbitrate. This time, he does not do so well.








Three Tasks, Part One

Say what you like about him putting off hosting the Crown Prince’s Introduction Ball for Camelot’s Young Noblemen for—well, forever, really—but if there was a princely responsibility Arthur really loved, it was being Royal Arbiter for Suitable Suitors’ Disputes.

It was not a role in the capacity of which he often found himself intervening, but the pleasure of his rare acts in office far outweighed the inconvenience of wearing the Arbiter’s robes and hat—robes and hat which were, he would admit, not even half as dignified as the livery of the royal servants of Camelot. And for someone who had spent a childhood dodging green and red feathers in an effort to retain the use of both his eyes, that really was quite an admission.

He privately thought—truly, privately, in oh-so-private musings—that, in time, one became quite taken with the colour. Lilac suited his spring features, he’d been told (by a drunken rather unfortunate looking widow from the next kingdom over, granted, but this did not change the fact that Arthur had been told). The embroidered dragons in gold and silver thread—well, they weren’t as bad as they had seemed on first sight. As for the ostrich-plume hat with the dangling golden dragon tassels at the back: well, it sort of grew on one. Especially if one had the very sort of razor-sharp cheekbones required to pull such a thing off.

Not that Arthur had ever been known to even intimate a lack of sincere hatred for these robes.

He, like his father before him, and like his father before him, and like all Pendragon men going back to Billacius Arturius Pendragon IV, the first inheritor of the Arbiter’s robes, pretended to detest the ensemble—with a passion, even—and to put up with the robes and the hat only for love of the people and duty and not, under any circumstances, because the billowing materials made one look sort of… alluring.

It suited the fabled Pendragon masculinity better to scoff in public and preen in private, or so his father had pointedly not told him when he was 14.

___


“So how does this work again?” Merlin asked, having laughed himself sick already and now adjusting the hat—but Arthur was not fooled by this mockery, not even for one minute, for it was not as if—

“It’s not as if I can’t feel you fondling the dragon tassels at the back with a desire for dragon tassels of your own, you know, Merlin. Laugh you may, but yet I know that what you truly feel at this moment is nothing other than a deep-seated millinery envy.”

“ Yes, sire,” Merlin said obediently—others might have described Merlin’s tone as ‘long-suffering’ or, at best, ‘humouring’, but Arthur had long ago learned to take what he could get, and so ‘obediently’ it was.

“The history of the Royal Arbiter for Suitable Suitors’ Disputes, Merlin,” Arthur began, drawing himself up and reaching inconspicuously to twirl one tiny dragon so that its tail peeked flirtatiously from behind the nape of Arthur’s neck, just so, “is a long and dignified one.”

“Yes, well—I’d certainly picked up dignified from the robes.”

“I don’t intend to tell this story more than once, you know, Merlin, so I would strongly suggest you listen carefully, lest you find yourself to be suddenly in royal disfavour but once more in the warm embrace of the finest of Camelot's rotten produce.”

“I’m listening, I’m listening” Merlin protested, leaning against the bedpost in a manner suggesting that he very much was not. Arthur didn’t know how one leaned with insouciance, but however it was that one did, it was a skill that Merlin possessed.

“It all began with the royal efforts of Billacius Arturius Pendragon III, a man with a forward social vision the likes of which has not really been seen since,” Arthur continued, gazing into a hazy distance in a gesture of pensive respect, as Uther had once done when he had told Arthur this same story.

“The reign of Arturius—or BAP-III, as he was fearsomely known to his enemies—saw a rather unfortunate incident involving a serving girl, two knights, a goat, and a baker’s oven come to pass. The particulars have been lost with the passing of time, I’m afraid, but the gist of it was: one royal servant, two suitors, a fight to the death, one death, a ruined oven, one self-declared hermit fleeing to the mountains with only a goat for companionship and a serving girl disgraced, returned to her parents and compensated by the royal court for the damage done to her name while in royal service.”

“As even a man of your limited intellect no doubt can see, Merlin, it was clear, then as it is now, that repetition of such an incident would not do. For years Camelot had lost good knights to myriad lovers’ pursuits, including but not limited to: i) falls after trellis-climbing, ii) poisoned love-potion provided by a spurned woman from the knight’s not-so-recent past, wearing a bad wig and pretending to be a reputable sorceress, and, of course, iii) broken hearts after a bad match.

While it was clear to BAP that he could not set right every instance of entangled love in the kingdom, he saw that it was within his remit—nay, he saw that it was his very duty—to lower the frequency of such incidents within the castle keep.

He declared that the hand of no royal servant could be vied for by more than one suitor, and that, in cases where more than one suitor existed, it would be up to one man, and one man alone, to decree, through the use of many a canny and intricate test, who the best suited candidate—the most Suitable Suitor, if you like—for such a match might be, and to direct the course of love down such a path that it would not cost Camelot either in knights or in remuneration for innocent weavers’ daughters whose fathers claimed they had been ‘corrupted by the court’, thought it was clear, of course, that they must have been a bit easy of virtue before arrival, for no good daughter would ever involve herself in an incident with a goat.

As I was saying, however, it was for this reason that the post of Royal Arbiter for Suitable Suitors’ Disputes arose, a post that has been passed, along with these dignified ceremonial robes, down many generations of discerning Pendragons, the last of which, is, of course, me.”

Merlin looked a bit nonplussed.

“So what you’re saying is, that if three people in the castle are having a bit of a lover’s tiff, it is your job—nay, your ‘very duty’—to sort it out?”

“Yes, Merlin. That is exactly what I am saying. I would not expect you, who have come from uncomplicated fumbles in the woods with a teenaged sorcerer, for pity’s sake,” Arthur’s spared a moment to think, Oh dear; I did, in fact, say that out loud—he moved swiftly on, however, having found that a dragon-embroidered lilac robe hid many sins—“to understand the import of keeping a castle and its knights scandal- and squabble-free, but I assure you it is as royal a duty as any of the other royal duties whose importance you also seem not to understand.”

“First of all,” Merlin began, “I did not fumble in the woods with Will, Arthur, who was like my brother, for crying out loud”—and Arthur was rather surprised to have something that he had not known was wound tight in his belly give way, but he was careful to keep his face as impassive as a gold-dragon-tasselled man could—“and secondly, I do too understand your royal duties. I understand them perfectly well, in fact, which is why I wear the official ceremonial robes of the servants of Camelot—nice move breaking those out before I saw this official uniform, by the way—and do other things like, oh, wait, I don’t know—drink poisoned wine for you.” Merlin had gathered a bit of momentum as he spoke and seemed set to plough on, but all of a sudden his face gave a grim little twist and he seemed to reconsider:

“Er. That is. Not that you haven’t drunk poisoned water for me. And, uh, also risked your life to make sure I could be un-poisoned. Oh, and come home with me to a village two days' ride away to fight a minor ruffian because my mother got hurt. So, uhm—yes. I guess the official ceremonial robes weren’t really so bad. Or, uh, bad at all, really. So: er, thanks for that. And sorry. Yes.” And then, as if to himself, “God. Clearly I do have some grave mental disease.”

“Clearly,” said Arthur dryly, the corners of his mouth not, in any way, twitching upwards.

“So, uh, once you have, say, established that there is a dispute—wait, how do you know there is a dispute? I mean, does everyone in the castle have to give your father an official annual report giving details of his or her love interests, or something? Oh, god. We don’t, do we? God. But—say there were a dispute, which there clearly is, seeing how you’re, uh, resplendent in lilac as we speak. What do you do then?”

“A dispute is established when a suitor recognises a rival suitor within the royal court, and brings the matter before the king. The Arbiter—that is, of course, myself”—here Arthur gave an almost-imperceptible toss of his beplumed head for effect, a skill acquired only after long practice in front of a mirror—“then holds an audience with the person who is being courted, to establish whether a) there is indeed a problem—that is to say, whether he or she really does enjoy the company of each of the multiple suitors and is therefore endangering the very honour of the court by being an indecisive tart, and b) whether she or he then wishes to enter arbitration—and by ‘wish’ here I mean ‘consent to under threat of banishment’—and submit to the ruling of the Arbiter upon the completion of the Arbiter’s chosen tests.”

“Tests?” Merlin had that look on his face that he sometimes got when he wasn’t sure whether Arthur was having him on for fun, like the time Arthur had served him rat again on the anniversary of the droughts as a sort of ironic but loving brotherly gesture and said, “Isn’t it wonderful to think that we never have to eat rat again?”, before tilting his spoon as if to eat but really trying to incite Merlin to eat first, because it was a double bluff and it was, of course, rat again.

Arthur had felt really bad afterwards, though, because Merlin’s eyes had softened and he had smiled an intimate, small smile at Arthur before tasting the stew and then spitting it back out violently, his face contorting into something else entirely when Arthur had laughed and said, “Really, Merlin, just try not to think about it”. Arthur had felt so bad, in fact, that he had apologised when Merlin had made as if for the door, and when that hadn’t worked, had actually sat down and begun eating through his own bowl of the stuff, to fully communicate his penitence; he’d had to soldier through seven spoonfuls—seven, interminable, spoonfuls—before Merlin relented, but it was worth it because at first Merlin’s mouth had twitched and then he had smiled the soft, sweet, smile again and said to Arthur, “Shall we feed it to Morgana’s dogs? I don’t want to break with tradition, but I can’t really bring myself to feed Morgana rodent twice in a row without her knowledge.”

Now Merlin regarded him for a long while, and Arthur did not continue until a careful trust crept back into Merlin’s eyes and it was clear that he was willing to listen again.

“Yes, Merlin: the tests. The very reason why a man, even a man such as my father, can bring himself to wear these robes without a hint of irony, without even a moment of wavering self-confidence: the tests, decided upon by the Arbiter and the Arbiter alone, completed by each suitor—under pain of banishment, of course—and judged by the Arbiter to determine who the Suitor with the greatest Suitability is. Yes, Merlin—” Arthur smiled gleefully before harrumphing to himself in a very self-satisfied way—“the tests.”


___


Merlin knew better than to goad Arthur into anything. Firstly, because Arthur was so easily goaded that it took most of the fun out of it, and secondly, because goading, when combined with Arthur’s pride, did not always for a felicitous end make.

Most often it was Merlin who suffered the brunt of this—oh, you think you can get back to Camelot more quickly than I can, do you, Merlin? : saddle sores and a day’s worth of riding with his heart in his throat, because Arthur was going to break his neck if he kept pushing the horse like that.

What ever do you mean, Merlin, you knew ‘all along that I would do the right thing’? Does it seem to you as if I am taking state advice from you, now?: half a day in the stocks (to show Merlin 'what sort of difficult decisions kings had to make every day’) at the mercy of the cruellest of the noblemen Merlin had reported to Arthur, who was armed with rotten tomatoes and fresh out of two days in the dungeons after Arthur had punished him and two of his friends (not that he’d listened to Merlin, of course) for terrorising the city’s children and destroying two fishwives’ livelihoods in one market brawl (regarding the hypocrisy of punishing people for market destruction in the name of a bullying brawl, Merlin said not a word).

So when Merlin had said “Tests?”—a little mockingly, he would admit, but certainly not in any sense attempting to goad Arthur—he knew, as soon as Arthur got that glint in his eyes, that there would be repercussions. Merlin was used to repercussions. He was not, however, used to having someone else suffer them for him.

___

Their names were Eveline and Marie. They were 18 and 17 respectively, the daughters of Sir Galathiel and Sir Owain.

It became clear that they had both, unfortunately, taken a fancy to the same young man: a young pageboy named Aglaral who had been looking after Uther’s hunting horse of late, the son of an important nobleman who lived far enough north of Camelot to have his first-born working as little better than a stable hand without really being able to lodge a complaint.

He was pleasing to look at it, Merlin would admit: a little waifish, with ears too large for his face and a smile that was probably just that bit too ready to appear, but okay if you liked that sort of thing. Arthur seemed to take a liking to him immediately, and this, combined with Merlin’s one word—with one stupid, stupidly uttered “tests”—ensured that Eveline and Marie would have to endure what looked, from Merlin’s perspective, like a three-day stint in the Royal Arbiter of Suitable Suitors test circus from hell.

First, Arthur had said, “for bravery,” holding up a bright golden coin in the palm of his hand, where everyone gathered in the castle courtyard could see it, and declaring:

“This coin’s twin lies in the shallowest pool of water in the deepest part of the cave that is hidden in the western part of Camelot’s woods. The first to bring it back—are you ready, Eveline, Marie?—will be declared the winner of the first trial.”

For a moment, Marie had stared at Eveline as if she had half a mind to rip Eveline’s carefully engineered left plait out, and Eveline had looked at Marie’s golden curls with a disinterest that could only be feigned, but a second later they had been tearing through the courtyard, towards the portcullis that led out of the city and into the woods.

“Arthur,” Merlin had said, when dusk began to set in and his worry began, for the first time since the beginning of the entire ridiculous thing, to make its presence evident in the gloaming. “Do you think they’re okay? I mean—I’m sure they’re okay; night’s only just fallen. But—Arthur, they’re really only just girls. Palace girls. Have they ever even been out of the city before?”

“Merlin,” Arthur had said huffily, out of the corner of his mouth. “Please. I sent five knights after them; they were to follow stealthily at a respectable distance, but they won’t allow any harm to come to them. I know they’re only girls.”

Out loud, he had only announced regally, “Shall we retire for the evening’s feast? I’m sure that Eveline and Marie will return from their quest as soon as they are able; we can prepare a suitable welcome for them.”

The court had followed—the court always followed, followed Arthur as Merlin had always followed him, because Arthur was like a tiny, vibrant, star around which other stars gathered closely, like a shroud of light—but there had been a feeling of unease in the air, especially as dusk turned into evening and Aglaral’s face turned first pale, and then green.

The noise in the hall had died down gradually, and the muttering had almost faded into a tense, expectant silence when the doors had burst open and in had stormed Eveline, a golden coin clasped tightly in her hand and an unhappy-looking Marie stomping sulkily in her wake.

“The champions return!” had declared Arthur delightedly, managing somehow to at once laugh at the muddied girls with their flyaway, dirty hair, pins emerging from their heads like thorns, and to make them feel as if they were comrades in arms.

“Eveline,” Arthur had said magnanimously—and how did one look magnanimous, and not ridiculous, in lilac robes? Merlin wondered for the seventeenth time that day—extending his hand and taking the golden coin from her. He matched it with the coin from his pocket, saying, gravely: “Here are two coins from the same mint. The provenance of one half cannot fully be identified without the twin that makes it whole.”

Merlin had glanced sharply at Arthur, but Arthur’s eyes, playful under lazy eyelids, had only settled on him briefly, showing nothing but amusement.

“Eveline, you are the champion of this task. But Marie and Eveline, I commend you both on your bravery. Now we shall have Aglaral serve you both a goblet of mulled wine, and then, away to bed with you in preparation for tomorrow’s task.”

Then Arthur had twisted the two coins between his fingers before passing them to Merlin, his hand clasping over Merlin’s warmly, before saying: “Keep those safe, Merlin—pray do not handle them with the ham-fistedness with which you have been known to treat the vambraces my father gave me for my fifteenth birthday.”

Merlin’s hand had felt absurdly warm where Arthur clasped it, but at the mention of the king’s name, Merlin had been distracted from the touch of Arthur’s palm and had glanced quickly at Uther, who had let his son hold court all day, in lilac, who had let him hold court without interruption, as if Arthur himself were king.

But Uther’s eyes were proud, and Merlin wondered briefly whether this had been a test for Arthur, as well.

___

The next day at noon, Arthur gathered everyone in the courtyard again, and announced:

“The time for the next task is now at hand. This time, I have designed a task to prove your vigour.”

Eveline and Marie waited, expectant, their hair drawn into identical, practical, beaded nets, nothing like the elaborate tonsorial arrays from the day before.

“The river Alyn sprouts in the mountains north of Camelot, and runs along the northern border of the city before curling into the southern woods and emptying into a lake at the centre of a glade. The glade is a day’s ride from here: a knight will accompany each of you, and you will go to this glade, where you will find a white hart resting beside a yew tree, at the place where the river spills into the lake.

When the hart runs at the sight of you, you must both dismount and follow it, no matter how long for, or how far, it flees. You may not ride your horse. The knights will follow at a distance”—here Arthur glanced behind him and widened his eyes significantly at Merlin in that way he had (“The wonder is that he’s such an idiot”—cue the eyes—“There’s no way he’s a sorcerer”), teasing Merlin for yesterday's vain worries one final time—“but they will not help you or allow you to ride with them during your pursuit. I know for a fact that this hart will not outrun you: if you persevere, it will tire and will cease to flee. When it does, you must approach it carefully, and take a small tuft of its fur from the crown at the top of its head: whoever obtains this first and brings this back will be declared the winner of this second task.”

At Arthur’s unseen cue two knights with four horses appeared in the corner of the courtyard, and the girls hugged their fathers goodbye before mounting and setting off, this time considerably more sedately than they had gone the day before.

Arthur gathered the lilac—Merlin would say monstrosity if he weren’t growing to somehow like the thing; it sort of suited Arthur’s spring features, when you really thought about it—he gathered the lilac cloth around him and walked up the courtyard steps and back into the castle, Uther at his shoulder.

“Well this has certainly been a surprise, so far,” Merlin heard Morgana say, her smile bemused as she and Gwen turned to follow. Gwen snorted in that unladylike way she had somehow perfected to be oddly ladylike and nodded.

“What do you mean, ‘a surprise’?” asked Merlin from where he stood behind Gwen.

“Well—you know,” she answered. “The tests. They’ve been awfully… well, test-like. They don’t precisely fit Arthur’s way of going about this in the past.”

“The past?” Merlin asked again, aware that he was parroting her words in that way he had of doing whenever he was around Gwen, who, to be fair, parroted those words back to him again more often than not, usually adding a stuttering twist of her own.

“Yes, Merlin, ‘the past’, ‘the past’ as in every time Arthur has served as Royal Arbiter before now,” said Morgana, insinuating herself back into the conversation in that seamless, royal, way she had.

There were a lot of people who had ways in Camelot, and Merlin found it all very overwhelming sometimes.

“Oh—I'm sorry, Merlin; I forgot,” Morgana said. “Of course, you’ve never been here for an arbitration before.”

“How many have there been?” Merlin asked stupidly, because really, how many love entanglements could there possibly be in a castle this size?

“Oh, tonnes,” answered Gwen cheerfully. “Let’s see: there was Agravain, Ygeme, and Bohort—”

“Brere, Caliborn, and Tristen,” said Morgana,

“Uriens and Morgan, in a dispute over that horrid Acheflow—”

“Ettard, Elaine, and Enide—”

“They were awful,” said Gwen, “what with the giggling, and the dresses, and the assonance, and the slapping about—”

“Slappers in more than one sense, unfortunately” supplied Morgana, with a quick twist of her lips.

“And finally,” concluded Gwen, ever a good handmaiden and choosing to ignore the awful pun, “there was that issue with the baker’s son and Gawain and Alexandre, but I don’t know if that really counts, considering it was hardly a test of true love, but rather it was Gawain and Alexandre trying to decide who had a greater right to—what did they call it?”

“A ‘tumble’,” said Morgana, her voice somehow nonchalant and terrible at once.

“A ‘tumble’,” agreed Gwen, “and Arthur only did it because he thought it would be funny, and the poor baker’s boy caught in the middle of Gawain and Alexandre like two cats pissing on a castle battlement, and thank god Uther put a stop to that, as much as it surprised me to see Uther do something that was right. Er. I mean— That is, what I meant to say was… Well, you see, I was trying to—” Gwen flushed.

“Gwen,” said Morgana lightly, “Really—and I mean really—don’t worry about it. We know what you meant.”

“Yeah,” said Merlin. “We really don’t want you to burst a blood vessel in your eye, like the last time. It made you look slightly demented and really quite frightening. Oh. Uhm. I mean— That is, uh, what I was trying to say, was— Well, I mean… I guess it’s that—”

“Merlin,” Morgana interrupted forcefully. “Gwen. I know a life serving me, and, worse, Arthur, really cannot be good for the nerves, but really, when I say this, I mean it: it’s really not necessary for the two of you to do this verbal flailing about every time you even attempt to converse. Quite frankly, it’s not good for anyone else’s nerves.”

“No—you’re right,” laughed Merlin, half relieved and half in agreement, because really, he’d made an art form of the foot in the mouth, and when he said art form he meant ‘art’ as in the art encapsulated in the singing of that travelling troubadour who had passed through Camelot two months ago, who had rhymed his name—Dagonet—with flagonet in a moment of panic, after Arthur had given him a particularly murderous glance over the rim of his goblet (this was to say: ‘not at all artful’).

“You’re right, of course, my lady,” said Merlin, choosing to change the subject before he was unable to stop himself from telling the very unrelated Dagonet story and laughing before he got to the end again. “So anyway: all of these arbitrations happened before I arrived from Ealdor?”

“Yes,” said Gwen, “and that’s only been since Arthur took over, two and a half years ago. I can’t even tell you how many arbitrations Uther presided over, when I was a child—every other day it was a scullery maid or the gardener’s nephew, and really, you had to wonder if for all of Uther’s grand talk, it wouldn’t have just been better to let these people tumble it out for themselves—I mean, how much disgrace could the cook’s niece’s tailor really have brought to the court?”

“It’s a valued tradition, Guinevere,” said Morgana, sounding just a little bit affronted, as Arthur had been when Merlin had made fun of the robes, “a ritual carried out since the days of Billacius Arturius Pendragon the Third—”

“BAP-III,” supplied Merlin helpfully.

“BAP-III,” confirmed Morgana, shooting him an appreciative smile while Gwen rolled her eyes at him behind Morgana’s back. “As I was saying, it is a wonderful tradition, one of the most cherished rituals that this court has,” continued Morgana. “and, until yesterday, it had been, for two and a half years, continually debased and perverted by Arthur’s infantile humour and irresponsibility.”

“Arthur?” Merlin asked, surprised, because he had to admit that so far, his impression had been that Arthur was doing a very fine job of the whole thing, lilac dress robes and all.

“Arthur.” Gwen confirmed. “He has always thought of this as a huge joke. I mean, he’s never thought the robes were a joke—he has quite an unnatural attachment to the whole ensemble, and I have to say that Uther did, too, for that matter—or had any disrespect for the post itself, really; he’s always fulfilled his duty. But until yesterday, his tests had always been a little on… the frivolous side.”

“Frivolous? Arthur?” said Merlin, meaning more: Tell me more about Arthur being frivolous than You don’t mean to say that Arthur was frivolous?

“Frivolous,” stated Morgana flatly. “A test for endurance, for example—”

Gwen nodded and took over enthusiastically. “Yes. A test for endurance, during which suitors had to eat as much of a whole roast boar as they were able to before being sick—”

“And the test wasn’t the eating, or even the being sick, odd as that would have been, but who looked funniest before finally succumbing to the enormity of the boar at hand and doing the latter,” said Morgana.

“A test for a discerning nature—” continued Gwen,

“—which involved kissing twenty other maidens and knights and ranking the intended’s kisses accurately among them, in terms of skill and passion,” finished Morgana.

“Acheflow cried over that,” said Gwen, “and we almost felt sorry for her.”

“Almost,” qualified Morgana, dryly.

“The point is, Merlin,” said Gwen, “that Arthur has never taken this seriously, not for a day since he was handed that lilac—thing, and now he is in charge of yet another of these ridiculous arbitrations, and here we all were, expecting frivolity and Arthur’s usual torment of his victims, but the whole thing, and his behaviour in particular, is proving to be disturbingly—”

“Kingly,” said a booming voice from behind Morgana, Uther creeping up behind them like a particularly sharp-smiled ghoul, making all three of them jump and obviously coming to collect Morgana for the afternoon meal.

“Kingly,” conceded Morgana, as Gwen blushed at being caught mid-criticism and tried to hide behind Merlin. “It’s come as quite as a surprise.”

“Arthur has been growing steadily into the crown, Morgana,” chastised Uther, his eyes glinting in a rare moment of pride, seemingly forgetting that Gwen and Merlin were standing next to him—or perhaps ignoring them entirely, Merlin thought; Morgana and Arthur, who actually spoke to Merlin and Gwen, if only to call them idiots whose idiocy could not be quantified—okay, only Arthur did that—did appear to be exceptions in the sphere of royalty-servant relationships, which Merlin was only just beginning to explore.

“Uther,” said Morgana, laughing, “until a year ago, Arthur was no more ‘growing steadily into the crown’ than those two poor fools whom he made jump from the roof of the stable onto a horse as part of a test ‘for dexterity’, one of who broke an arm and declared he would never return to Camelot again.”

For a moment Uther’s face looked stormy, set on that edge of the displeasure that he was so well known for, but then he barked a sharp laugh and said,

“I will concede that you are probably right. But something began to happen a year ago—and whatever it was, I am grateful for it—and today Arthur does me proud both as Arbiter and crown prince. I think now that every year that Arthur approaches the kingship, I will think, ‘He has grown into this even more in this year just past’, until one day I will pass the crown to him and think one final time about this moment, when Arthur came into his kingship, and about the fact that whatever began to happen a year ago must have been truly extraordinary, and that it was to mine and Camelot’s benefit.”

“A year ago,” called Arthur from the top of the stairs, having caught only the last of Uther’s words, “the kitchen set out our meal on the table. And a year ago,” continued Arthur, shooting Merlin an amused look from under his eyelashes, “Merlin arrived in Camelot. But I would hardly call that extraordinary, father, unless by extraordinary you mean extraordinarily unfortunate.”

Uther laughed briefly and shifted his neck in that way that somehow communicated royalty, his rare moment of humanity fading into memory, and Morgana wiped discretely at her eyes, before they both looked at Merlin appraisingly.

Merlin, at a loss for what to say, simply looked back at Arthur and said,

“Uh, thank you, sire. I think.”

“You’re welcome, Merlin,” replied Arthur, even more resplendent in lilac in the mid-morning light, though by Merlin’s (admittedly poor) calculations, that should have been an alchemical impossibility. “Now Morgana, father—for the love of all that is holy, please come inside so we can eat.”

___


Eveline and Marie returned four days later.

Merlin had to admit that by that point, even he had begun to speculate about what could be befalling the two girls in their chase after the hart, and Aglaral, whom everyone seemed to think should be slapped heartily on the back twice and congratulated on his good fortune as many times a day as possible, was beginning to look slightly green again from all the jostling.

Both of the girls looked tired, their wrists limp where they held the reins, but Eveline in particular looked wan and pale in the rosy light of dawn.

“The champions return!” declared Arthur heartily from the steps, evidently too attached to that phrase by half.

“Yes, sire,” said Marie. She dismounted, and walked tiredly to Arthur before depositing a gathering of soft white down in his cupped palm.

“Marie, you have done very well,” Arthur said, serious again, as he had been on the day of the first task. “You have shown perseverance and single-mindedness, but alongside that you have shown a willingness to show mercy and restraint, and to take only what is needed, after a long and, at times, fruitless chase. I commend you.”

“Marie,” Arthur continued, “I declare you champion of this task. Eveline—”

“Sire,” she interrupted, “if you please: while we were chasing after the hart, I stumbled, and twisted my ankle, badly enough that I could not go on. Marie… she did not continue, sire. She sat with me and waited until I had had some food and felt well enough to walk again, and then she walked with me at a slower pace until we could both run again, even though we lost the hart while we tarried and had to spend many hours finding it again. She showed me great compassion and kindness.”

Arthur nodded, an oddly paternal smile on his face—the smile of a king, Merlin thought, not for the first time.

“And you, Eveline, show graciousness in recognising that. Well done to you both. Now come inside to break your fast: Aglaral will bring you warm bread, and after you have rested two days, we will meet here again and I will announce the final task.”

The small group of people who had gathered in the courtyard after the girls’ return moved towards the hall, and Merlin moved towards Arthur, hand outstretched.

“Put it in my room, in the pouch with the coins, Merlin,” said Arthur, his hand clasping Merlin’s around the soft ball of fur.

“Yes, sire,” said Merlin; before he moved forward, though, Arthur pressed Merlin’s hand gently in his, Merlin’s fingers curling around the top of Arthur’s before they disentangled and Merlin went on his way.

___

“The final task,” declared Arthur early in the morning two days later, his tassels swaying behind him in the breeze and Aglaral standing nervously behind him, “is a test of loyalty. Marie, Eveline”—the two girls came forward, an ease in their movement that had not been there on the first day—“here is your task.

You must go into the town and find a woman in the market. You must then ask her to invite you to her house, and when you have arrived, you must ask her kindly if you are able to help her in her household tasks. Help her clean the house, and once you are finished, thank her and go back to the market.

When you are there once again, find one of the farmers who has come to sell his cattle or his pigs. Ask him to invite you to his farm, and when you are there, ask him kindly if you can help to clean his stables, or to clear out the pen for his pigs. Help him do so, and when you are done, thank him and go back to the market.

When you are there once again, find a washerwoman, and ask to be invited to her house. Once you are there, ask if you can help her complete a day’s work. Help her do the washing, and then help her to beat the cloth so it will dry well, and when you are done, bring a small strip of cloth from one of the garments you have helped her wash with you and present it to Aglaral.

Whoever comes back dirtiest from cleaning a house, most muddied from mucking for livestock, and wettest from helping the washerwoman with her work, will be declared the winner of this task.”

There was muttering among the courtiers, and from behind him, Merlin heard Morgana say to Gwen in an undertone,

“Ahh—now I remember that to have faith that Arthur will give up his childish ways is to be doomed for disappointment. This is much more familiar.”

Merlin wasn’t sure whether to agree (though if he were honest, Merlin would say that he was very rarely inclined to agree when anyone made a negative judgment of Arthur; that was a right reserved for Merlin alone). These were noble-born girls with noble-born pride, of course, and Arthur had devised a test that could only be won by the girl who returned looking the least presentable at the end of the day, looking worse than all her equals at court and therefore humiliated in the eyes of her peers, not only that day but whenever they chose to remember it. That seemed like fancy. But Arthur had spoken seriously, and Merlin had not ever really known Arthur to speak seriously when he meant to joke, and so he chose to reserve judgment until the task played out and he could see what Arthur wanted from the two girls.

He could see from the set of Gwen’s jaw that she had chosen to do the same.

But Eveline and Marie were already shifting uneasily on their feet, and they looked at each other for a moment before Marie stepped forward and said, “Sire, I will not do this. I cannot.”

Arthur looked at her carefully for a moment, and then said, “Then do not. But if you do not complete the task, you will have failed.”

“Then I will fail, sire,” said Marie, her voice low and respectful. “But this is not a task worthy of noblewomen, and so I will not perform it.”

“So be it,” said Arthur. “Eveline?”

Merlin looked towards the girl: Eveline’s eyes moved from Aglaral’s to Arthur’s, and finally rested on Marie’s bright yellow dress, before she asked, “If I do this, sire, I will be declared champion for this task?”

“You will,” said Arthur.

Eveline threw her shoulders back as if to steel herself, gathered her hair in one hand and tucked it into the back of her green dress, and said, “Then I will do it.”

“Very well,” said Arthur. “I will come with you, and Aglaral and Marie shall come with me, too, and we will supervise as you fulfil this task.”

Eveline looked uncertainly at Arthur, and for a moment Merlin thought she would cry or say she could not do it. It would be doubly humiliating, Merlin knew, to perform all the tasks that Arthur had asked while Aglaral looked on, and worse still to do so while her rival stood by with her noble bearing and her clean dress, and while the prince attended her. But Eveline only nodded, despite her father’s audible protestations from the front of the crowd, and so Arthur nodded back at her and followed her slow walk from the courtyard, Aglaral and Marie with him.

Merlin matched Arthur step for step, keeping a safe distance behind the small group, and walked with them towards the market. At the castle gate, Arthur turned around and said to everyone behind him, the slant of his eyes somehow making it clear that the instruction did not include Merlin, “Stay here. We will return at dusk.”

That was how Merlin found himself following the two girls, the prince, and the sought-after stableboy, and wincing as Eveline asked first a woman in the market—whose eyes were wide and whose look was terrified throughout as she watched a noblewoman cleaning her house—then a pig farmer—who was, Merlin thought, possibly the most disgustingly lecherous man he had ever had the displeasure to meet, and if Arthur didn’t send to have him killed in the night, Merlin would be surprised—and finally a washerwoman, who looked once at Arthur’s Arbiter’s robes before nodding mutely and handing Eveline a gown of heavy brocade, if they needed help.

Eveline completed the tasks with surprising dignity, even finding it in herself to laugh when she fell face-first in the mud and then again when she thrust her arms too vigorously into the washing tub, splashing herself from head to toe. Her easy demeanour was all the more admirable when contrasted with Marie’s, whose unhappy features and downcast eyes told a story of regret without her needing to use words.

By the time they walked back to the castle, Eveline looked worse than a common farmhand and was considerably more disgusting than anyone who wasn’t sot-drunk or possibly dead should allow herself to become, but Aglaral’s sweet, secret glances made her blush prettily, so that she looked as noble as ever when they walked into the hall, a small strip of ribbon clutched in Aglaral’s hand.

There was a shocked silence at their entrance, before Sir Galathiel growled, “Well I never—”

“Sir Galathiel,” said Morgana, smoothly as always. “Allow me. Arthur!”

That she could inject that much venom into a single word was terrifying, Merlin had always thought: better to face a furious Arthur, whose temper lit like dry kindling but faded quickly into laughter or contrition, than Morgana, whose anger was always contained in bright eyes but who would probably hold a grudge for years.

“Morgana,” said Arthur, pleasantly. He looked around the room, his eyes settling on Eveline before saying,

“Eveline, I declare you the champion of this task, and, as Royal Arbiter for Suitable Suitors’ Disputes, I decree that you may court the young nobleman Aglaral, and I wish you both a happy courtship and a lasting fulfilment if the courtship is successful.”

Arthur paused, and from the nervous twitch of his left index finger, Merlin knew that Arthur was nervous, and pausing to think of his next words as much as he was stopping for effect.

“We are all fools for love. And when we love truly, nothing seems too foolish to us, for we are convinced that all foolish things done in the name of love are anything but foolish. Though being too discomfited to allow oneself to be foolish is not a sign that one does not love truly—” and here Arthur glanced at Marie kindly, “And though we may see, with hindsight, that a foolish thing would not have been so terrible to do after all, when we are ready to love fully, we know at once that we will do what is necessary for the people we love, no matter how foolish, not because we can but because we must.

Eveline, you have proved your love to be loyal and true. We raise our glasses to you, and to Aglaral, who reaps the lion’s share of your efforts and your fidelity.”

And when a blushing Aglaral kissed Eveline chastely on the lips, Morgana standing behind them with her mouth frozen into a perfect ‘o’ of surprise, everyone seemed to forget that Eveline’s skirts were dripping pig droppings in the floor.

___


Later, once they and the lilac robes were safely ensconced in Arthur’s rooms, Merlin was forced to admit:

“I take back the teasing about the tests, you know. It was really all very exciting. And nice: nice for an odd nobles’ ritual instituted by a man who called himself BAP-III, anyway. And sort of, uh… well, romantic, I think.”

“Merlin, you—”

“‘Merlin, you girl.’ Yes, I know, I know.” Merlin moved forward to unclasp Arthur’s cloak, and shook it once before hanging it up carefully on the hook by the window.

He took the hat Arthur handed him (well, of course I’m going to change, Merlin; the arbitration is over, and you don’t actually think I like these robes, do you? Why yes, Arthur, as a matter of fact, I happen to think you do, Merlin had thought, but who was he to say a thing?) and put it back into the box from whence it had come, before helping Arthur to slip the lilac robes over his head.

“But you have to admit—” Merlin pressed,

“—that the whole thing was sort of sweet,” said Arthur. “Yes. It was sweet if you were watching, and—oh, that’s right! If you were watching and also happened to be a girl.”

Merlin rolled his eyes, then went to the chest of drawers and brought out the red buttoned jacket, still as fragrant as it had been when he had first seen it, though he had had it washed it four times since—apparently most feasts did end in food fights. As he helped Arthur ease one arm, and then the other, into it, Arthur said:

“You’ll come to the banquet tonight, Merlin. Make sure my cup doesn’t run dry.”

“Yes, Arthur.”

“Oh, and Merlin—”

“Yes, Arthur?”

“Seeing as how I have been in my ceremonial robes all week—“ Merlin could see where this was going already, and he decidedly did not, repeat, did not, approve, “I think tonight might be a fitting occasion for you to honour Camelot by wearing your official ceremonial robes.”

Merlin thought about protesting—really, he did—but by the time he gathered up the energy required, Arthur already had the hat out of the chest and perched jauntily on his left shoulder, the angle of the brim matching the lovely twist of his smirk.

Merlin sighed, saying a quick prayer for patience before reaching one arm for the hat, one arm for the tunic.

Because truly the costume was clearly as ridiculous as any costume could possibly be (and this week the servant’s robes had certainly faced some worthy competition), and evidently it made Merlin look completely, and utterly, foolish—but this was Arthur.

Arthur, who had carried himself like a king and dispensed a fitting and truthful justice to three people who had looked to him for guidance, making Merlin as proud as he always seemed to, in the end, and Arthur, who had saved Merlin’s life more than once, and who had done so happily, and Arthur, who laughed when he thought Merlin wasn’t looking, and really, a little foolishness was a small price to pay to stand behind this man: looking foolish, perhaps, but with the Pendragon crest emblazoned on his chest.




Continued here.