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“Let the squires pack for themselves. Any important things they forget like water skins or sharpening rocks, pack them with your items. But don’t tell them, they need to learn,” Leon instructed Sir Archibald as they walked through the castle halls.
The festival week had ended, all the guests departed, and now Leon was left to manage the castle’s affairs while fighting off the general malaise and vague sadness he always had whenever Lynette left.
And to top it all off, the squires currently had a burst of energy. They were practically bouncing off the walls, playing pranks on unsuspecting servants and smuggling weapons out of the armory to spar in the hallways. Leon blamed the excitement of the festival and the lack of training in the past week for their rowdy behavior.
Whatever it was, he needed them out of the castle before he ripped all his hair out. And it looked better for him to arrange a camping trip as a ‘practice exercise’ instead of chasing them all out of the castle with a broom.
“Certainly,” Sir Archibald’s even tone drew Leon back to the present. He seemed blissfully unaware of the First Knight’s inner turmoil; torn between mopey misery and pure rage.
He just had to push through the both of the feelings, and maybe plan to move up his trip to Grance.
To help with the harvest, of course.
“And just to be clear… all of the squires are to go?”
“Yes. All of the them.” Leon was adamant. “The Knights would do well to clean their own armor and take care of their own horses for once.” The Knights of Camelot would not be getting lazy and spoiled on his watch.
Sir Archibald was about to say something else when he was interrupted.
“Leon!” Turning around, Leon saw Merlin racing towards him.
“Hello, Merlin. How may I be of service?” Leon was rather confused to see the boy. Arthur normally occupied all his time, and if he wasn’t doing something for Arthur, he was doing something for Gaius.
“Arthur is asking for you in the meeting room.” Having finally caught up to the knight, Merlin bent down to rest his hands on his knees and catch his breath.
Leon blinked. “I was not aware there was a meeting this morning?”
“Last minute arrangement. You know how His Royal Pratness can get.” Merlin straightened out and flashed a smirk at the pair of knights. “Forgets the rest of us all have things to do.”
Sir Archibald raised an eyebrow at Leon, as if he were wondering what Leon was going to do about Merlin’s insubordination.
The eyebrow was misplaced however, because Leon was going to do nothing. He had been around Merlin to know that this is just how he talked and no matter how many times Arthur sent him to the stocks, he wasn’t going to change.
And he happened to agree with the servant this time. Leon had many important matters to take care of at the moment.
He was reminded of his most pressing matter — getting the squires out of the castle — when two of the older ones rushed past him.
“Give me that!” Leon yelled, snatching a dagger out of one of their hands. It was in fact, one of the ones from the armory. The armory the squires were not supposed to have free reign in.
At least the boy paled when he saw the First Knight had caught him. The second went to flee, but Leon grabbed him by the scruff of his tunic. “No, you don’t.”
The boys began to talk over each other explaining their actions, but didn’t know two very important things. One, Leon simply did not care and two, Merlin was looking at him impatiently. Surely if they took any longer, Arthur would give Merlin another horrible chore.
Leon sighed. Maybe he would return to Grance tomorrow. With the way Lynette ran the fief, it would be much calmer and less infuriating there.
“Sir Archibald, I’m putting you in charge of their punishment. Make sure the other squires know what will happen if I catch them messing around in the armory again. And begin preparations for their excursions.” Leon didn’t wait to hear any of the squires’ complaints and stomped down the hall after Merlin.
Today was already a headache, and it didn’t get any better.
The meeting? A hoax.
It was not important at all and just left Leon wanting to throttle half the Round Table.
“Let me get this straight,” he said slowly, leaning back in his chair and resisting the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. He would never hear the end of the jokes about him being a mother if he did so. “You called me here, disrupting my very busy agenda, to tell me my closest friends and top knights did not know I had a wife. Something that is very public knowledge and that I have made no effort to hide?”
“For the last time,” Gwaine protested, “it was not common knowledge!” He slouched down in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest under Leon’s glare.
Arthur looked annoyingly smug. If he were not king, Leon might have thrown him from the room. This was nothing to be smug over!
Percival, at least, had the decency to look ashamed. And from Arthur’s grand retelling of the past week, he had the least to do with this fiasco. He had been happy to just leave the matter alone, even though he hadn’t known about Leon’s wife.
Merlin had tucked himself in the corner, standing behind Arthur like a proper servant would. Except Leon knew Merlin was rarely ever a ‘proper’ servant and was trying to avoid his wrath. It didn’t work; Leon did not forget the role Merlin played in all of this. He just didn’t have the energy to focus on him yet.
However, Elyan wasn’t even looking at him.
“You!” Leon started all over again, rage boiling just beneath his skin. He pointed an accusatory finger at Elyan. “I grew up with you! You lived in my manor! How did you of all people not know my surname!”
“I forgot!” Elyan yelled back.
Gwaine started cackling, either unable or unwilling to stop as Arthur leaned across the table to swat at him. Leon bit back a scream. “You forgot the name of the place where you were raised?” Without realizing it, he had jumped to his feet and slammed his hands down on the table. He then decided to excuse his outburst, he was going through some trying times.
“I figured I either remembered it wrong or heard her name wrong or I don’t know!” Elyan flung his hands around wildly as he spoke. “Maybe if you weren’t such a secretive prude it wouldn’t have seemed so absurd to think you had a courtship!”
“Secretive?” Leon was grateful the table was so large, if it were any smaller or perhaps any less important, he would’ve flipped it over. His nails dug into the wood as he balled his fists. “I have been anything but secretive!”
Arthur finally decided to be useful. “Elyan, he had a proper wedding. Blessed by my father, notices sent throughout the kingdom. Lady Grance regularly attended my father’s banquets with Leon. There was nothing secretive about it.”
Leon collapsed back into his chair with a “hmph” and crossed his arms. All the anger had been drained out of him and now he just felt tired.
By Uther’s dented crown, they thought he had a secret courtship. He glowered at the table.
“Hey, Leon,” Percival asked quietly. When Leon looked up, he saw Gwaine elbowing him, clearly goading him into asking something.
“Yes, Percival?” Leon now felt like a tired mother. A tired mother whose kids were trying to ask for dinner after she had yelled at them, if the way Percival had almost folded himself in half in his chair, shoulders scrunching in, meant anything.
Gwaine quickly leaned back away from Percival as he asked, “Uhm… not to pry, but what is that you are fiddling with?”
Leon looked down, not having realized he was fiddling with anything. “Oh,” he said wearily, “it is my wedding ring.”
He was startled by a sudden ‘thump’. Gwaine had banged his head against the table. “You have a wedding ring?” his voice was so muffled by the wood that Leon had to concentrate to understand the younger knight.
“Gwaine!” Arthur snapped. “What did you think that was? This isn’t the first time he’s pulled it out!”
It wasn’t? Leon had always worn his ring under his shirt to avoid losing or damaging it. It must have turned into a nervous habit to pull it out and play with it.
“I thought it was his family signet or something!” Gwaine whined, having yet to lift his face off the table. “I wasted all that time spying and he was openly wearing a wedding ring!”
“It is my family signet. The family heir gets it when he weds.” Leon tucked the ring back under his armor.
“That’s what you get for spying, Gwaine,” Elyan said dully.
“Sire?” Leon asked. He had half a mind to ask for a vacation, or at least permission to go home. But no. He was a noble and proud knight of Camelot with strength and courage aplenty. He would stay in this disaster of a castle and wrestle the flaming mess of knights into shape. “Have any of your most trusted knights been to the Hall of the Lords?”
“The what?” Gwaine answered for Arthur. Leon noticed that Merlin leaned forward, interested once more in the topic. Clearly Arthur hadn’t gone there in awhile either, if Merlin hadn’t been.
“It is a wing in the Castle dedicated to all the Lords in the kingdom. There are portraits of them and their families. A portrait of me and my wife hangs at the front.”
Percival, Elyan, and Gwaine all looked lost. Leon resisted the urge to bury his face in his hands. Camelot was doomed if these were her protectors.
“I thought all of Camelot had heard news of my wedding,” he said, more to himself than anyone else. That was why his father had insisted it be such a grand affair, so all of Camelot would know. Neither him nor Lynette wanted that large of a wedding with that many guests, and apparently their sacrifice had all been for nothing.
“I heard of your wedding,” Arthur said, patting his back consolingly.
“I would hope so, sire.” If Leon had been a little bit stronger of a man, he would have been able to bite back such a dry response to his king. “You were the guest of honor.”
Arthur was a strong man to ignore Leon’s comment. “To make it up to you, old friend, I have organized a rather nice training session for them all. You can oversee it, if you would like.”
“I would love to, Sire.”
Gwaine let out a wail as Elyan cuffed the back of his head and Percival looked like he’d rather not know the lot of them. Merlin still hid behind Arthur, fighting back a laugh.
“Oh, I’m so glad Lynette has already left,” Leon mumbled under his breath. “She’d never let me hear the end of this.”