They didn't have a fancy code like the knights and the nobles did. They didn't even have an old forgotten one like the guards.
But there were rules, nonetheless.
When cook caught knights stealing her pastries, she chased them out of the kitchen. When she caught the new scullery maid who was all bones doing the same, she went selectively blind.
(When she caught Merlin at it, she compromised. She swatted him on the head with her ladle, but she made sure he'd already stolen at least two rolls first. Technically, the boy could afford to eat, but Mary'd tasted Gaius's cooking before. Merlin needed all the help he could get.)
When the gardener caught the stable boy and a kitchen girl kissing behind one of his trees, he gave a long whistle that made them blush and run off. When he caught one of the nobles trying to steal a kiss from that same kitchen girl, he walked over to the tree like he didn't even see them, peered at the bark, and then asked the noble if that looked like toxic tree mold to him or if his eyes were just going.
(He'd used that one on the prince once. He let himself fall into full enthusiastic swing with a tall tale about what that poor under gardener's lungs had looked like when Gaius had opened him up and how if only the lad hadn't inhaled the spores . . . Gwen finally got his attention and told him that it was all right, really, and could he please stop, Arthur was looking a bit green. That she'd called the crown prince 'Arthur' was a pretty good hint that it really was all right, so he gave her a wink that said he'd be just over a ways if she changed her mind before he ambled off.)
When one of their own was accused thieving, they said they always knew that one was a bad apple, but they slipped them a few things until they found a new job. When one of their own was accused of witchcraft, they didn't visit them or speak of them, but they scratched another name into the wall of the old storage room no one used anymore, and they pretended they didn't know why the steward "misplaced" a few dozen flowers in there every week.
(When Merlin got arrested for anything, they took bets on how long it would take for him to get out of it, and they ignored the nagging fear that this would be the time he wouldn't.)
When Jared had cuts on his face at the same time that one of the lords had blood on his ring, when a drunken noblewoman threw a goblet at Lizbet's head and it hit her at just the wrong place, when a knight's "bit of fun" meant that Martin was short two teeth and couldn't talk right ever after . . .
When lashes were given but certainly weren't earned, when thrown objects meant worse things than concussions, when "accidental death" really meant that an accident of birth made one person's life worth less than another's, when the brothers of pretty servant girls started wondering if there was a way to make a stabbing look accidental . . .
Word got around.
Whoever said that the law didn't care about servants was right.
Whoever said that this fact made them powerless was wrong.
For the little things, there were burnt meals and cold fires, sand in sheets and holes in clothes.
(Stranger things, too. Beds too hard, clothes too small, floors too slick where there was nothing wet on them.)
For the larger things, there were meals guaranteed to send the eater running for Gaius, holes in rather embarrassing places, and whispers to people who knew people that led to certain knights emerging from practice sessions with more bruises than unblemished skin.
(Really odd things, too. Nightmares or insomnia, boils in uncomfortable places, people who couldn't talk for a week, and knights who tripped over air.)
And for the big things, the really big things, the things they only whispered about . . .
Camelot was attacked rather a lot. In the aftermath, just about anything could be made to look like an accident. Or, at least, enemy action.
So they said, at least.
(They also said that Shane would never walk again, that the scar on Sara's face wouldn't fade, and that Megan would lose her job for sure. The prince's servant said otherwise, and, strangely enough, he was right.)
(The word strange came up a lot around Merlin.)
There weren't limits, strictly speaking. They'd gone so far as to avenge themselves on Uther . . . Not fully, not as boldly as with the others, but if the man wanted to eat hot food that didn't hurt his stomach and stop finding spiders in his boots, maybe he needed to start thinking through his policies a bit more.
It was generally understood, however, that any and all complaints about Arthur were to be given to Merlin, and that whatever Merlin did about it was the end of the matter.
No killing the king, no touching the prince without permission. Talking was fine, as in the case of the gardener, but anything else was out.
(Merlin came to the kitchen for the prince's breakfast one day in his second year there, and he looked . . . strange.
Like he'd been crying, only Merlin never cried.
They poked and they prodded but he wouldn't say what had happened. He didn't have to for them to know it had been bad. He finally started crying, but all he would say was askwhy.
They had a better question. They asked who.
Merlin just said the prince was waiting and he needed to go.
The prince would listen, they tried to tell him. The prince might help.
When Merlin just shook his head, Cook knew. It took the others a minute, but servants didn't survive by being stupid, just by pretending to be.
So they pretended not to know, and they let Merlin go, and they were kind to Merlin in every way they could think of until there was light in his eyes again.
The prince was off limits. That hadn't changed, and they knew, in the back of their minds, that Merlin was not a man to cross when it came to that piece of the code, not even now.
So the steward and the cook and the gardener conspired, and they managed to send someone up to Arthur other than Merlin as often as they could.
Not someone incompetent or harmful.
Someone dull. Someone obsequious. Someone who would make everything around them just slightly wrong and who would "help" in entirely unhelpful ways that it was impossible to outright accuse them over.
Someone who had, according to rumor, been the one to take out the last two nobles who thought they could do what they liked and then count on help when attacks came.
No one who mattered ever suspected George, but the servants all saw what happened when he volunteered to help in the kitchen - specifically, they saw what he could do with knives.)
(Well, Merlin didn't. He was out hunting with the prince.)
They didn't have rules in the traditional sense, and it was never as simple as an eye for an eye.
But if the law didn't consider them worth defending, they would have to defend themselves, and they had gotten very, very, good at it.
