For the Ones We Love (Merlin Fan Fiction)

Chapter Seven

When I was out of view of William, I started jogging. Moving as quickly as I could in the dress I was wearing, I thought about an excuse to quit working at the tavern. I would have to resign in the morning. I couldn’t put it off any longer.

When I reached Gwen’s, she wasn’t home. This didn’t surprise me, though. I had started to become accustomed to her odd working hours.

In the morning, I woke early and headed to the Tavern before Gwen was awake. I explained quickly to Fredrick that I would no longer be working there, I smiled politely, and I left without looking back. It was not difficult. I’d left people and places many times. Very few of them had I looked back on.

Because it was still early, I took my time getting to the castle. I went the long way through the city, enjoying the clean, fresh morning air. When I finally reached the castle, the town had begun to stir.

I asked a guard where to find the person in charge of employment and followed his directions.

By noon, I had found myself in the kitchen cleaning used pots and pans.

After a time of mindless scrubbing, I was drawn out of my thoughts.

“You missed a spot,” said a voice to my right.

I looked to see who had spoken. To my surprise, I found a young boy with tan skin and dark hair. He couldn’t have been older than twelve.

I looked down at the kettle I had just finished washing. “No I didn’t.” I turned it around to make sure I was correct.

“Yes you did.” He reached out with a hand that had been hidden behind his back and tapped the silver kettle. “Right there.” I looked from him to the kettle and realized that there was a muddy finger print where he had touched the kettle. I looked down at his hands to see that they were covered in mud. He smiled.

I laughed, dunking the kettle back into the soapy water. “It wasn’t there until you put it there,” I said. I took my wrinkled hand out of the water bucket and splashed the boy with a few droplets of water. “What are you doing in the kitchen with hands so dirty?”

The boy wiped the water off his face with his shirt sleeve before answering, “I like to annoy the cooks,” he explained. I found his truthfulness endearing.

“Well, the cooks seem easily annoyed.” I bit my lip. “Especially Audrey.” The head chef had not been completely happy to have a new face in her kitchen. She seemed a woman of routine and organization. I was not part of her routine.

The boy laughed and held out his mud-covered hand. “My name is Gracian,” he told me. “It means ‘beloved’.”

I wrapped my hand lightly around his wrist, avoiding the dirt on his hands, and shook it. “I’m Cleo. It means ‘to praise’.” I had never been sure why my parents had given me the name. Maybe they had just liked the sound of it.

Gracian smiled. “Did you start working here today?” he asked.

I nodded, setting the kettle aside and moving on to the next dish. Though I had been working for almost an hour, the pile of dirty dishes had not gotten smaller.

“I thought so, since I hadn’t seen you before.”

“What about you? How long have you been here?”

“Most of my life. My mother’s a maidservant, so I usually hang around the castle,” he explained.

“Do you know it well? The castle, I mean.” I’m sure it sounded like a strange question, but his young mind would suspect nothing.