Chapter Text
As soon as Arthur was up, Eleanor took his arm to lead him down the road, and Cavall the dog began trotting on his other side right at his heels. Arthur felt a lot like he was being flanked by two very strange, very undersized guards.
“Don’t run off again in case any cars come by,” Eleanor told him sternly, leading them down the side of the road instead of in the middle of it as Arthur would have done had he been left to his own devices. “I don’t want to have to break it to the storyteller that he has to scrape you up off the street.”
“Are you going to explain what a car is or just keep nattering?” Arthur said.
“It's like... A carriage? Without horses,” Eleanor said, frowning. “And it goes really fast and there are loads of them and they could all kill you, okay?”
“A carriage?” Arthur repeated, even more confused.
“Were they not invented yet either?” Eleanor said, then sighed. “How about wagons? Do you know what a wagon is?”
“Of course I know what a wagon is!” Arthur scoffed.
“I don’t know when things were invented, okay?!” Eleanor cried. “Look, a carriage is like a wagon with a roof and seats that’s pulled by horses and carries around people, and then a car is like that without the horses.”
“Then how does it move?” said Arthur.
“With an engine,” said Eleanor. “That’s like, uhhh…” She looked at Arthur and grimaced. “Let’s just say it’s magic, okay? Modern magic.”
“...Right,” said Arthur, not any less confused.
“But what you nearly got hit by was a truck,” Eleanor continued. “That’s like a really big car that's made for carrying cargo or whatever instead of people. A truck’ll squash you flat. And then there are buses, that’s like trucks but the cargo is lots of people. Oh, and trains! But we’re not near any train tracks right now so we should be fine. But people like to come here on their holidays so there’ll probably be some caravans…”
She continued rambling until Arthur gave up trying to keep up with all the nonsense words and instead chose to observe the surroundings. They had just turned right onto a much larger road, paved in the same ugly, grey material, except it seemed to have been painted with strange lines and markings, and it was bordered by extra roads of grey, slightly raised above it. Eleanor led them quite happily along one of these raised pathways, and had loosened her grip on his arm, no longer concerned with keeping to the edge.
Across the street were houses, though they were unlike any houses Arthur had ever seen. They were built like castles, only smaller, with strange red stones, and lay neatly in some kind of grid, each with their own patch of grass and trees contained within. Strange metal creatures guarded the thresholds of most, all in an assortment of colours and branded with odd markings.
“Those are cars,” said Eleanor, seeing him looking. “But they’re parked, so they’re not much danger. Just stay off the road.”
“Aren’t we on the road?”
“This is the pavement,” said Eleanor simply, pulling him to the side to avoid a metal pole as large as a tree. Arthur blinked up at it but saw only bright light beaming down on them.
“Lamp post,” said Eleanor helpfully as though that meant anything.
Arthur was getting a headache.
Thankfully, it wasn’t long before Eleanor pulled them off the ‘pavement’ onto a smaller path and up a slight incline towards a building that looked to be a grand manor house if not a small castle; it even had its own tower, albeit a small one. It was built of thankfully normal-coloured stone and, even more thankfully, there was no car guarding its entrance. Like the other houses they’d passed, it had its own miniature garden, though it was very overgrown, and the front door had been painted a garish red, though dark wood could be seen peeking through where it had peeled off in places.
“Home sweet home,” said Eleanor, rummaging in her pocket before producing a key to unlock the door. “Thank god we didn't bump into anyone. I would not be able to explain why I'm walking around with a soaking wet mediaeval knight.”
As soon as the door was open, Cavall immediately bounded past her into the hallway. Arthur was a little more hesitant to follow.
Inside, Eleanor touched something on the wall that gave a faint click, and the hallway was suddenly flooded with light. Arthur blinked away the sting in his eyes at the sudden brightness, squinting up at the orbs of light that hung suspended from the ceiling, no candle in sight. They illuminated the room, which was lavishly decorated, making Arthur think Eleanor’s family must be obscenely rich. Not even Arthur could afford this much carpet - let alone one so luxurious - nor patterns painted on every wall, which were startlingly smooth. He wondered if there were in fact tapestries hung everywhere to conceal the brickwork. But that couldn’t be right; there were dozens of portraits and paintings hung upon the walls, all frighteningly realistic. They must have been painted by a true master.
There was something off, however; for all the lavish items, the room seemed to be in some state of neglect. There were cobwebs in every corner, and dust lining all the frames and furniture.
“I’ll get you a bath sorted, okay?” said Eleanor as Arthur studied a portrait of what he assumed to be a younger Eleanor, grinning out at him from some sort of wooden crate filled with sand. “And I’ll have a hunt for some clothes that’ll fit you. My mum’s boyfriends probably left a few things behind.”
“Right,” said Arthur, still only processing about ten percent of her words. “I’ll need a servant to help me out of this armour.”
Eleanor barked out a surprised laugh. “I don’t have servants.”
Arthur stared at her in astonishment. “You don’t have servants?” he repeated. “But you’re clearly from a wealthy household.”
Another laugh. “Yeah, right!”
“You have so many fine things.”
Eleanor looked around her, frowning. “Not really. S’all just grandpa’s old stuff.”
“This house is enormous!”
Eleanor shrugged. “Inherited it.”
“Where are your parents?” Arthur tried, wishing very much for some form of adult he could talk to.
“Mum’s at work,” said Eleanor.
Arthur looked at her.
“My mother ,” Eleanor clarified. “She, uh, works late. And leaves early. You probably won’t see her.”
“And your father?”
“Never met him,” Eleanor shrugged.
Arthur gaped at her. “Were they not married?”
“No.”
“So you’re a bastard?”
“Hey!”
“Yet you live in a house like this?”
Eleanor put her hands on her hips and gave him what he supposed was meant to be a stern expression. “It’s modern-day, Arthur! I told you, lots of things have changed. Single mums are pretty normal. And you can't talk! I know how your sister was born.”
Arthur felt his neck flush and decided to pretend he hadn't heard the last part.
“So carpet is suitable for commoners now?”
“Well, yeah.”
“And repeatedly calling your king by his first name is considered appropriate?”
“You’re not my king,” Eleanor told him. “I didn’t vote for you.”
“ What? ” he said. “You don't vote for kings!”
For some reason, Eleanor let out a snort of laughter, then refused to explain why when Arthur pressed.
“Count yourself lucky, alright?” she said instead. “I've heard people call our actual king way worse than just his first name.” She crossed her arms surveying his armour distastefully. “Can't you just take it off yourself?” she sighed. “Can’t be that hard; LARPers do it all the time. I’ll go run your bath, ok? Just don’t touch anything. You’ll probably end up electrocuted or something wearing all that metal.”
With that, she clambered up the creaky staircase and left Arthur abandoned in the hallway, his headache growing steadily worse.
He managed to get his armour off eventually, which wasn't helped by Cavall repeatedly jumping up at him and headbutting his hand, begging for cuddles.
Cavall got what he wanted as soon as Arthur stripped his last layer of chainmail. He stayed crouched, idly scratching behind the dog's ear while he surveyed the discarded pile of armour on the hallway carpet. He got the inclination that he probably shouldn't leave it there if Eleanor was telling the truth about there being no servants around, and all of a sudden, he started missing Merlin again. Not that he'd ever admit it to anyone, but he felt a little lost without his manservant around to boss around and bicker with. And a part of him knew that he wouldn't feel as lost as he did right now if only Merlin were by his side.
Giving Cavall's head one last pat, he stretched to his feet, grimacing a little at the sensation of damp cloth sticking to his skin and, not quite knowing what else to do with it, shuffled his armour into a slightly neater pile by the wall.
He looked down the hallway towards the closed doors, wondering what new-fangled creations lay behind them, then decided against it, lest his headache grow powerful enough to incapacitate him, and headed for the stairs in search of Eleanor.
“Eleanor?” he called as he neared the landing. He was gripping the bannister tightly, not trusting how creaky the wooden steps were beneath his feet.
Close by, he could hear the sound of bubbling water, as though he was near a stream, but that was ridiculous. Surely no one had found a way to put streams inside houses.
“Eleanor?” he called again, voice a little less confident.
“In here!” Eleanor called from one of the rooms.
The door was already cracked open, so Arthur only had to push it lightly to step inside. It was a bedroom, that much was normal enough, though the bed lacked posts and curtains for one so large and grand, and the wardrobe - which was strangely white and smooth - seemed to have been set into the wall.
Eleanor was currently digging through said wardrobe, intermittently tossing strange, colourful garments onto the bed into what had become quite a large pile.
“I think I’ve found some things that’ll fit you,” she said, holding up a bright purple shirt with barely any sleeves and oddly proportioned horses somehow painted on the front. She frowned as she gauged whether or not it would fit. “You’re not too fussed about fashion, right?”
“I thought you were drawing me a bath?” he said instead of answering.
Eleanor seemed to decide the horse shirt was unsuitable and stuck it back in the wardrobe. “I am,” she said, unphased. “It’s running.”
Arthur let his silence speak for him, as he was used to doing with Merlin. Eleanor was a little quicker to the draw than his manservant, thankfully.
“Oh, right!” she said, turning back to him. “Sooo, it’s like, uh…” She paused, thinking. “You had wells, right? And pumps for water?”
“Yes?” said Arthur slowly.
“So it’s like that, except automatic, and inside the house. You just turn the tap, and water comes out!”
Arthur raised his eyebrows. “And are hot coals automatic too, or are you having me bathe in cold water?”
“Yeah, it’s heated before it comes out the tap,” said Eleanor brightly. “There’s a boiler that heats up the water as it passes through. I think. I don’t know really, but there are lots of pipes involved. It’s called plumbing!”
“Right…” said Arthur.
“I’ll show you. C’mon!”
Eleanor led him out of the bedroom and across the hall to another door, behind which the sound of bubbling water could be heard.
“This is the bathroom,” said Eleanor, opening the door.
A whole separate room just for bathing? Arthur peered inside curiously, and was almost blinded by the sheer whiteness of everything inside. He managed to blink away the worst of the stinging while his eyes adjusted, but still wasn’t quite prepared for what faced him.
“What on earth is that ?” he said, staring at the thing that was currently half-full of steaming water.
“That’s the bathtub,” said Eleanor simply.
It certainly looked like no bathtub Arthur had ever used. It wasn’t even round, and seemed far too shallow and slippery. Water was spouting from something that looked almost like a water pump, as Eleanor had described, but that was the only thing vaguely familiar to him. There were colourful bottles balanced on the rim of the rub, like an alchemist’s laboratory, and another metallic contraption was bound to the wall above the ‘taps’.
“That’s the shower,” Eleanor said helpfully. “It's like hot rain. It’s for washing quickly.”
Elsewhere in the room were other white basins, one with water pumps like the bath, the other far too strange for Arthur to comprehend.
“That’s the toilet,” said Eleanor. “You had toilets, right?”
“We had… holes overhanging the castle walls,” Arthur said stiffly.
“Oh, yeah!” Eleanor said, far too cheery for the topic. “I’ve been to castles with them. What if someone was standing under them? Gross!”
“They’d have had to be a moron,” said Arthur shortly.
“Well, this is nicer, anyway,” said Eleanor. “You just pull that handle and all the waste disappears.”
“Just vanishes?”
“Well… goes through more pipes,” Eleanor shrugged. “And then you wash your hands in the sink.” She pointed to the raised, miniature bathtub.
“Why?” said Arthur.
“So you don’t walk around with pee and poop on your hands!” cried Eleanor, sticking her tongue out in disgust. “That’s how you get sick. Dysentery and cholera and stuff. You better not give me any weird mediaeval diseases! Oh my god,” she said, suddenly staring at him in horror, “ you might have smallpox!”
“I do not have smallpox!” Arthur objected.
“You might!” Eleanor insisted. “It might be dormant or something. OH MY GOD!” she wailed abruptly. “YOU’RE NOT VACCINATED!”
“I… what?!” Arthur blustered.
“Oh my god, there’s gonna be a smallpox epidemic ‘cause I brought a diseased mediaeval king home!” Eleanor cried despairingly. “Or you’ll just immediately get measles and die. ‘When Albion’s need is greatest, Arthur will return, only to die immediately of a common cold ‘cause his immune system’s from thousands of years ago.’ AGH! Why’d I have to find you?! There should be programmes in place for this sort of thing!”
“I - It’s not like I had a choice!” Arthur cried, feeling like he needed to defend himself. “And I’m not diseased!”
“I wonder if the doctor will give you all the vaccines,” said Eleanor, not seeming to hear him. “If we tell them your parents were anti-vaxxers or something.” She paused contemplatively. “I bet Uther would be an anti-vaxxer. Okay, okay, we’ll go to the doctors tomorrow. And hopefully, neither of us die in the meantime. Oh crap!”
Dashing for the bath, she shut off the water pump before the tub overflowed, then stuck her hand under the water to pull out a small device. The bath began to drain a little, through more pipes Arthur suspected, until Eleanor deemed it a suitable depth and plugged the object back under the water. She turned to wipe her wet arm off on a cloth hanging by the ‘sink’, before grabbing another, larger cloth from a cabinet by the wall and setting it on a rail by the bath.
“There’s your towel. I’ll grab a change of clothes for you in a sec. Ooh!” Suddenly, her worry over mediaeval diseases seemed to vanish. “Do you want a bath bomb?”
“A what?”
Eleanor, crouched to pull a box from under the cabinet, filled to the brimming with brightly coloured balls. “They make the bath pretty and smell nice,” she said. “Ooh, this one’s supposed to be a dragon egg! That’s perfect.”
Before Arthur could protest, she’d dumped something large, egg-shaped and golden into the tub. It started fizzing as soon as it hit the water, sending swirls of gold throughout the tub and filling the air with a scent that was both sweet and earthy.
“It’s chocolate-scented,” said Eleanor. “Have you ever had chocolate? You’ll love it.”
“Is that… safe?” said Arthur, lip curling as he watched the shimmering gold spread throughout the water.
“Yeah. It’s basically just fancy soap,” Eleanor shrugged.
She jumped up and ran out of the room before returning with a bundle of fabric in her arms.
“Change of clothes!” she announced, dumping the pile on the lid of a large basket. “You can put your current ones in there for the wash,” she said, indicating the basket. “Soap’s on the side of the tub. I think that’s everything? Holler if you need anything, ‘kay?” And with that, she disappeared from the room and shut the door behind her, leaving Arthur alone in this porcelain dystopia with the smell of ‘chocolate’ consuming the air.
Well, a bath was a bath, Arthur thought as he stripped off his damp clothing and hesitantly tipped a toe into the tub. The water was wonderfully hot, even if it was now gold, and still felt like water at least. He stepped in and let himself sink under the surface as far as the shallow space allowed, something easier than he’d realised with how long it was, more catered to his shape than the wooden tubs he was used to.
He supposed he could get used to this, this alien room with its numerous basins and its shiny white walls. It wasn’t so bad, really, just foreign. Quiet, though, without Merlin bustling about with his chores while spouting his usual nonsense.
He sighed, not sure if he’d ever get used to the absence of his manservant. He’d been such a fixed, if irritating, presence in his life that his absence felt like a missing limb.
He supposed Eleanor wasn’t the worst person who could have found him. She was certainly odd, and babbled almost as much as Merlin had with even more nonsense, but she was friendly, and tried her best to guide him. No, she wasn’t the worst. She wasn’t the best, either. But she was all he had right now, and he’d get used to her.
As he reached for the bar of soap at the corner, he stopped, realising his arm was now shimmering with tiny specks of gold.
That , he thought as he picked up the bar of soap, better not stick.