He crossed over a small stone bridge and began the ascent up the hill opposite the castle. Once out of the castle keep, he wandered down the path he had walked up with Lance and Percival a fortnight earlier, past twisting rows of wooden houses, each surrounded by grubby children or strings of washing, baskets of unwashed root vegetables or, in one instance, several extremely loud and curious chickens, one of whom decided to follow him a few hundred metres down the path before retreating.īefore long, the houses trickled off and the earth either side of him became greener. The bored looking guards at the gate watched him walk past curiously but didn’t say anything. The next day, he left Arthur’s study just past midday and set off, waving at Tristam and Percival as he passed but not pausing to answer their inquiries as to where he was going. Frustrated with his lack of progress, Merlin resolved to leave the castle one afternoon and have an uninterrupted session with the book. Once the dinner bell had dragged him away before he had gotten very far, and another afternoon Percival had come looking for him mere minutes after Merlin had retreated from the courtyard, insisting that he needed Merlin’s advice for a manoeuvre that, when they reached the training yard, he seemed to have no problem with after all. Twice, however, he had fallen asleep within minutes, head nodding over the pages and had woken up several hours later cold and with a sore neck. Several times, in his room before sleeping, or before dinner, Merlin had taken out the book and read more. No matter how good looking he was or how, despite Merlin’s extremely limited knowledge of early medieval chiefdoms, Arthur seemed quite unusual. However, a distant reception from Arthur, Merlin told himself, should be the least of his problems. One morning, Arthur had been leaving his study as Merlin arrived, and had offered a brief enquiry into his health, but without the warmth or curiosity of Merlin’s first meeting with him. If he caught Merlin’s eye, he nodded in acknowledgement but immediately turned away. Merlin had seen little of Arthur aside from the far-off sight of him at dinner. Rather unhelpfully, Merlin thought, who was left nonplussed but with no easy way to admit that he had no idea what ‘the whole thing’ was. “Not since he came back, before his father- well, before the whole thing,” another of the men added. “Or does he, and he just doesn’t eat here?” “Why doesn’t Arthur have a manservant?” Merlin had asked one night, mouth full of liver pie. Lance had once gestured for Merlin to join them, but he had declined, preferring to stay sat on the edge of a group that consisted of some of the other warriors, the blacksmith and Lance’s manservant. Arthur had been present in the hall at dinner every night except for one, talking quietly with those on the top table. Every afternoon he found himself down in the training yard, often sparring or receiving sword fighting lessons from Lance, although just as frequently stood to the side talking to Tristam or listening to Percival’s daily assessment of nearby threats and sharing a grin with the other men at his paranoia. Nothing he had read gave him any real clue as to precisely when he was living. He continued cataloguing Arthur’s books, reading as much of each as he could – which was not normally more than a couple of words – and studying the illustrations. Over the next two weeks, Merlin found himself surprisingly busy.
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