Fic: The Lady and the Blacksmith's Daughter (pt.2 of 3)

[gnimaerd]

Title: The Lady and the Blacksmith's Daughter
Rating: PG
Characters: Gwen, Morgana
Genre: Gen, friendship
Summary: The story of how Gwen became employed as Morgana's maid, and how their relationship progressed into friendship; second part of three.

A/N: Written for the Gwen Battle fic challenge, beta-ed by clanne . Part one is here.
 

The Lady and the Blacksmith's Daughter

Given that Gwen had no one to compare her with, she had no idea what Morgana was like as a mistress. But as a person, she found the girl utterly bemusing.

 

Morgana was so different to anyone else that Gwen knew that she might as well have been an entirely different species.

 

Although – of course – she sort of was a difference species. She was nobility, a people so far removed from those ordinary residents of Camelot as to practically exist in a different realm entirely. And the castle certainly felt like a different realm to the town where she lived. It was cleaner, brighter, infinitely grander in scale – it was full of meek, quiet, briskly scuttling servants who always seemed to have dozens of important places to be at once. And there were official, stony-faced guards in bright chain male and stinging scarlet tunics, as well as the nobles – knights, lords, ladies, courtiers from all over Albion, foreign royalty and Camelot’s own royalty, who were all very, very loud.

 

The stark polarity between the castle and the town was something Gwen was not sure she would ever get used to. She became so conscious of needing to be clean, neat, silent and above all, fast.

 

Everything in the castle needed to be done now, and the pace frightened her. She found herself constantly short of breath, stumbling over her own feet as she staggered along in the wake of those more efficient than she was.

 

Morgana was not helping her adjust.

 

The girl was just so strange.

 

Ever-changing, tempestuous and intelligent but naive. Swinging with unnerving irregularity from joy to despair, rage to contentment. The slightest thing – a misplaced trinket, a slipped seem on a dress, a seemingly innocuous conversation with the king’s son – seemed to be the cause of her greatest tragedies, while the wider events passed her by without any apparent impact.

 

Morgana had such odd ideas about the way the world worked, as well. Like not understanding that the reason Gwen only ever wore two dresses to work was because she only owned two dresses to begin with. Or demanding certain types of food prepared in a certain way and seeming to expect them to just appear because she willed it so – even when it was made apparent to her that there was no smoked pheasant, or venison, or honey bread in the kitchens that day.

 

She had an almost farcical belief in the power of her own will. That she could make things happen simply by willing them that way.

 

Gwen was not sure if she was just frighteningly self confident or very, very spoiled.

She suspected a little of both.

 

But despite her fractiousness and the utterly confusing nature of her mood swings, Gwen found something in her warming to the noblewoman.

 

Beneath all the pretentious bravado and the constant, querulous demands, Morgana was… just a fifteen year old girl. A ridiculously sheltered, rather sweetly innocent one, at that.

 

In many ways, Gwen could not help but see her as a little younger than her physical age.

 

It certainly helped her deal with Morgana’s behaviour. If she stopped thinking of her as a frightening adult who held power over all of Gwen’s future employment opportunities, and began instead to deal with her more as a child of about ten, she found herself remaining calmer – and, in fact, Morgana responded better.

 

This girl, she realised, did not need a maid. She needed a mother.

 

That knowledge both pleased and frustrated Gwen. On the one hand, it made her feel as if she held the key to the most complex of Morgana’s puzzles – that is, why it was that she seemed so very young. This girl had simply never been disciplined properly. Morgana’s mother had died in childbirth; her father had molly-coddled her, her nurses had never disciplined her and now King Uther catered to her every whim in an attempt to negate his guilt over her father’s death. She needed a parent who would both provide the nurturing affection that Morgana so clearly craved and refuse to tolerate her high-strung demands and attempts at emotional manipulation.

 

On the other, Gwen found herself resenting the duty she felt weighing on her shoulders when faced with the knowledge of Morgana’s needs. It should not be her job to parent a girl who was only a year or two younger than herself.

“Then don’t,” her father suggested, gently, as she grumbled to him one evening over dinner, a few weeks into her employment, “you do not need to spend your life fixing people, Guinevere. Do what you’re paid to do – be her servant. There’s no call for you to anything more than what she bids you.”

 

“But she’s so…” Gwen ran a hand distractedly through her hair, “she’s so alone, father. King Uther simply relegates her to nurses and servants and… nunneries, when she becomes too much trouble. Prince Arthur adores her but he’s a man so of course he spends his days being spiteful and goading her into paying him attention. The other servants all despise her because of her temper and her ridiculous demands and the girls her own age in the court only spend time with her because they’re terrified of what she might do to them if they don’t. No one actually cares for this girl, father! She has everything but nobody loves her… and somehow that is much, much worse than having nothing at all.”

 

“So what do you want to do about that?” Her father asked, gently. “Gwen, you cannot be the lady’s mother. You can’t make up for however many years the poor child has spent on her own. You’re a servant. The best you can do is wash her clothes and fold down her bed covers every evening.”

 

Gwen sighed, poking restlessly at her soup. “It just seems so wrong… everyone should have someone who loves them, surely?”

 

“Perhaps so,” Tom agreed, “but the fact that something should be so does not mean that it can be so. That is one of the harsh truths of this world that you must simply learn to accept.”

 

Gwen merely grimaced, and went back to her soup.

 

She did her best, over the following months, to be the person who loved Morgana. She put her every effort into seeing to the young woman’s comfort and emotional well-being, in whatever small ways she could, whilst trying hard, too, to curb Morgana’s natural instinct to demand the impossible.

 

But Morgana was so incredibly difficult to like at times, let alone love. Of course, Gwen was sure, she was a basically decent and kind-hearted person – but she was so frustratingly unaware of herself.

 

Things came to a head the first summer of Gwen’s employment at Morgana’s maid. It was approaching seven months since she had first begun working for her, and a pestilence had taken several of the villages in the north of Camelot. It appeared to be spreading towards the city, and as a precaution, King Uther had ordered all roads and in and out barred. There was enough food in the emergency stores to last the populace a few weeks, until they could be sure that the plague would not get any further. Until then, nothing and no one was to leave or enter for at least a month.

 

Such a situation could not have transpired at a worse time for Gwen’s father.

 

Summer was tournament season – the time at which he took most of his trade, repairing armour, making swords, patching shields – the money from this month alone would keep the rent on their house paid until mid-winter.

 

Without that trade – with all the tournaments cancelled and the visiting knights no longer coming – they were going to struggle in a month or so. Even with Gwen’s wage, she knew how difficult it was going to be keep hold of their house and still eat. She was going to have to take a second job, probably as a chamber maid in one of the local inns (the only kind of work available late enough at night that it would not eat into the hours she already had to work for Morgana). Even then… times were going to be hard until well into the following year.

 

The worry of it was making daily life in the castle hard, not at all eased by the way Morgana complained of how unappetising the rations of food had become. The nobility of the castle were, like everyone else in the immediate area, surviving off watery soup, unleavened bread and porridge. Not at all an unfamiliar diet for the commoners – but one the nobility were far less hardened to.

 

Gwen suspected that this was the first time that Morgana had ever had to eat something she disliked, and the girl was not taking it gracefully.

 

“This is ridiculous,” she grumbled, over a bowl of cold, grey porridge one lunch time, three weeks into the quarantine. “I can’t eat this – it looks like pig swill!”

 

“Then you will starve,” Gwen pointed out, hiding a flare of annoyance beneath her usually sensible tone.

 

“Ugh, I think I’d rather,” Morgana shunted the bowl away, distastefully.

 

Gwen looked at the content, and tried hard not to think of how many people in the town would give up their teeth for such a meal at that moment. The bowl contained more than twice what was allowed per head for the common people – and most of those that she knew would be giving up their own ration to feed their children.

 

“You will only complain of your hunger in an hour or so,” she reasoned, pushing the bowl back to Morgana.

 

Morgana grimaced, folding her arms and turning up her nose. “Then I shall remember what I was offered for my last meal and lose my appetite again.”

 

Gwen hid her hands behind her back so that her mistress would not see her clenched fists. “Very well,” she managed, “what would you have me do with the food?”

 

“Throw it to the pigs – God knows that’s all it’s good for,” Morgana waved a hand and turned away. “Heaven knows why they’re trying to feed me the stuff…”

 

Gwen inhaled, sharply – but the whine of blood in her ears was not going away and suddenly she had had enough.

 

Whether it was the churning of her own empty stomach, or the hollow cheeks of the little girl she’d given her breakfast to that morning resurfacing in her mind, or the oblivious sneer on Morgana’s pinched, pale face – all of a sudden, Gwen found herself slamming her fists down on the table top with enough force to make the cutlery clatter.

 

“That’s all there is!” She hissed, her teeth gritted to stop them chattering with fury, “there is nothing else to eat, my lady – there is no food in the entire of Camelot but this – do you understand? No one in this city has anything else to eat. People are starving – children are starving for want of what you are rejecting as unfit for anything but pigs – so you will sit at this table and you will eat it and you will be grateful that you happened to be born high enough that you have anything to eat at all today!”

 

Morgana, for a moment, looked utterly stunned.

 

Gwen gasped, sucking in quick, harsh breaths – she felt as if she might like to take off her clothes and leap from the nearest window because quite obviously she had gone completely mad.

 

And if she didn’t jump, Morgana would certainly have her flogged.

 

“Children?” Morgana managed, after another moment’s deathly silence. She sounded very small. “Children are – where? Where are they… children?”

And with a horrible sinking feeling Gwen suddenly understood exactly why Morgana looked so utterly confused.

 

“The king doesn’t let you leave the castle,” she realised, closing her eyes as she sank, defeated, into the chair opposite Morgana. “Of course he doesn’t. Of course you have no idea what’s happening.”

 

“What?” Morgana looked at her, wide-eyed. Gwen had not seen her look so lost since she had encountered her that day last year outside her father’s smithy. “Isn’t there enough bread? Uther said…”

 

“Uther is lying to you,” Gwen buried her head in her hands, “everybody lies to you, my lady – they have some misguided need to protect you.”

 

“From what?” Morgana demanded, “what is going on, Gwen?”

 

Gwen exhaled, kneading her tired eyes with the heals of her palms before sitting up, trying to find the words to explain the magnitude of the situation to someone who thought that a ripped dress was akin to a Greek tragedy.

 

“There isn’t any more food, my lady,” she spoke gently, “this – this, in your bowl? It’s what the people in the town have to live on per day – not even per-meal. It has to last them breakfast, lunch and dinner. Less than this. Uther has cut rations so that he can feed the army. And the rest of the courtiers, of course.”

 

Morgana’s face wrinkled up as she tried to comprehend Gwen’s words. “But… but people can’t live on this…”

 

“Exactly,” Gwen replied, her tone steady – deadpan, “I told you. People are starving. Children are starving. And even when the quarantine lifts they will keep starving because there have been no tournaments this year. So there have been no visitors, spending money in the town, so all the businesses that rely on their trade are failing. So even when more food arrives most people won’t be able to afford it.”

 

Morgana blinked. “Why did no one tell me?”

 

Gwen shrugged. “I suppose the king does not believe that you need to know. I don’t expect anyone else thought that you would care.”

 

She regretted the last sentence as soon as it came out of her mouth.

 

Morgana looked so wounded that had she tried any harder she might well have started physically bleeding. Her eyes widened and filled with tears – her expression crumpled.

 

“Do people really think I’m that callous?”

 

“My lady…” Gwen shook her head – but Morgana had already begun to sob, putting her head down on the table and weeping bitterly.

 

Gwen shut her eyes, pushing aside the fact that Morgana was simply managing to make another crisis entirely about her, and reminding herself that she was dealing with a girl who had been made this way through no fault of her own.

 

A girl who needed her eyes opened – nothing more.

 

“Oh…” she sighed, getting up and coming round the table, “hush… oh, don’t cry…”

 

She tugged a handkerchief from her sleeve and pressed it into Morgana’s hand. “It’s not that people think you’re callous – it’s just… just…”

 

“I care!” Morgana sobbed, “I do! I just – ” she hiccupped, “ – how can I be expected to show concern about things I don’t know are happening? People never give me a chance to prove myself! They assume the worst of me because I behaved like a brat when I was ten – my father had just been slaughtered and no one would tell me why – what was I meant to act like?!”

 

“Shh,” Gwen put an arm about her shoulders, gently rubbing her back, “people expect you to act a certain way because that’s how they expect any high born lady to act… it’s not personal…”

 

“But it is!” Morgana howled, her voice carrying a very real edge of desolate bitterness to it – one that Gwen had never heard from her before. “The servants in this castle hate me. The other girls are scared of me. Arthur thinks I’m a waste of time because I’m a girl and the only reason Uther took me in is because my father was his friend and he feels guilty – he doesn’t care about me – none of them do!”

 

Gwen shut her eyes again, crouching to lay her cheek on the back of Morgana’s head.

 

Of course Morgana knew what they thought of her.

 

Of course she did.

 

Morgana was naive – but she wasn’t blind or stupid. She was perfectly perceptive in her own environment. Gwen had to wonder why she had assumed that the girl would be unaware of how she seemed to other people.

 

“Hush,” she said, feeling an odd well of sadness open up inside her for both of them. “It’s alright, my lady.”

 

Morgana hiccupped and choked, apparently trying to get a hold of herself.

 

“You’re the only one, Gwen,” Morgana breathed, her voice damp with trembling tears, “I think you’re the only one in this castle who would actually weep if I dropped dead. And I know there are days when you can barely stand me.”

 

“My lady…”

“It’s true, though,” Morgana insisted, sitting up and pushing Gwen away from her. “I’m unbearable some days, Gwen – you can’t deny it.”

 

“I’m used to you,” Gwen told her, truthfully. “You are confusing and… frustrating and… strange but you are… very lovely in your own way.”

 

Morgana snorted, blotting the last of her tears. “If I’m so very lovely, why am I the one having hysterics over the fact that nobody likes me when there’s a town full of people outside still starving to death?”

 

Gwen smiled, weakly.  “At least now you know.”

 

Morgana looked down, her cheeks flushing.

 

She was ashamed, Gwen realised, with a flutter of something uncertain in her stomach.

 

“My lady,” she began, when the silence became unbearable, “are you going to eat – ?”

 

“No,” Morgana shook her head, abruptly, turning her head away from the food and looking faintly nauseated. “I can’t – I’ll be sick.”

 

“My lady…”

“There’s a girl,” Morgana told her, suddenly, “in the kitchens – a little girl – she works there for scraps – her eyes always look too big for her face and her fingers are like twigs – take it – give it to her, alright? I can’t eat it.”

 

Gwen nodded, silently, and took the food away.

 __________________________________________________

On to part three.