Title: Count the Ways
Fandom: Merlin
Pairing: Gwen/Arthur
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Entire series.
Summary: Forty-four Arthur & Gwen stories inspired by Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese. Missing and expanded scenes, as well as pre-series and future!fic.
Disclaimer: Merlin does not belong to me. Neither do the quotes at the beginning of each piece, which were taken from EBB's Sonnets from the Portuguese, each from the corresponding number. Lots of shout-outs in this one to various parts of the Arthurian legend, grabbed and twisted shamelessly from Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, White's Once and Future King, and Tennyson's Idylls of the King.

XL.

Oh, yes! they love through all this world of ours!
I will not gainsay love, called love forsooth.

Camelot in May is a sight to behold. Flowers in riotous blossom, woven into hair of every shade under the sun. Dresses of radiant beauty, armour polished until it shines, and tournaments of prowess during which men strut and women swoon.

After sixteen years of presiding over the festivities, Queen Guinevere cannot help but be a little cynical. The names may change, but the stories never do. Jealousies, betrayals, illicit passions, secret trysts, love tokens, battle wounds, angry scenes, tender reunions...and all that in a standard day for Sir Gwaine. Or so she's told. (Considering it's Gwaine, she believes it more often than not.)

Leonora and Lynette—two sisters as close as any Gwen has known—are no longer speaking to each other over the affections of Sir Gareth. Enid was no sooner wooed and wedded than her paranoid husband locked her up in a tower. Elyan has a different lady's favours tied around his arm every month. Sir Palomides sickens to death for love of a princess to whom he has never spoken. Lamorak pursues a woman old enough to be his mother. Vivian abuses Pelleas behind his back and to his face, and it only whets his appetite for her.

Guinevere presides.

She sits on a golden throne and observes their folly, keeping her thoughts to herself, only interfering to prevent bloodshed, if possible. It is easier when Arthur is beside her, for a single look between them can communicate frustration or amusement or a thousand messages no other can read. But he is not here now, called away by unrest on the northern borders.

Maybe that is why, when she is told of the deserted girl who killed herself and floated downriver as a message to her faithless lover, Gwen voices the first thought that enters her head. "Ridiculous."

Luckily, only her ladies-in-waiting are there to hear. "It's perfectly true," insists Leonora. "I saw the letter she wrote myself."

"I believe you. I meant it was a ridiculous thing to do."

Leonora gasps. "She died for love, Your Majesty!"

"Rubbish. She died for spite and selfish vanity." One of Gwen's lifelong demons asserts itself. Once she starts speaking her mind, she cannot stop. Even knowing it likely her words will spread the length and breadth of Camelot by day's end cannot hinder her tongue. "If she truly loved this man, she would never have given him this guilt to carry."

Lynette shakes her head, smiling ruefully. "You have forgotten what it is to be young and passionate, my lady."

"Perhaps." The face and figure which greet her in the mirror each morning are not the ones she had on that long-ago day when she became queen. But she is not so old that she cannot remember the awe of looking up into Arthur's face and realizing she was his wife. She doubts she will ever be that old. "But I'm not wrong."

The jousting begins the next day. Gwen takes her place in the royal box, annoyed with her husband for leaving her alone with this task. The irritation swiftly changes to surprise when she catches sight of a vaguely familiar face in the line of competitors presented to her.

"Sir William of Daira," is announced. Gwen chokes back her laughter. Arthur even found the same farmer to act the part. His face is rounder, hair thinner, but he smiles and waves at Gwen with the same enthusiasm—although with fewer teeth.

"Who is that?"

"He must be joking."

"Who let that fool into the lines?"

Guinevere lets the gossip swirl around her without comment. But when Sir William unhorses his first opponent, she calls him to her and ties her hair ribbon to the top of his lance. The whispers intensify at her bizarre gesture. Who is this stranger knight that rides with the favour of the queen? Their virtuous Queen Guinevere, too, who has only ever given her tokens to the king.

Gwen worries that, coupled with "Sir William's" skill with the lance, might make people suspicious. It does, but only of her.

"My lady, are you sure that was wise?"

"Your Majesty surely cannot mean-"

"Sir William won the greatest jousting tournament I have ever seen," the queen answers them boldly. "It was many years ago, and I have never forgot. I have done him this honour in memory of that, and in hopes that he is still a finer warrior than these vain, foolhardy young knights."

Her words silence the Court in her presence, though she has little hope of quelling the rumours. She does not care, so long as they leave her to enjoy the tourney in peace. Gwen's heart is racing, her blood pumping hot and fast. She has not felt so interested in jousting in years...not since the last time Arthur was in the lines.

What made him do it? she wonders. Has he, too, been confronted with accusations of encroaching age? It is a foolish risk; Camelot needs her husband to rule, not gamble his life in a meaningless test of strength.

Gwen tries to be irritated with him and fails. With every opponent vanquished, her pride in him mounts. She is more thrilled with his prowess now than she was as a young girl, watching him wear her favours for the first time. He kissed her for the first time then, as well, and thousands, millions, of kisses shared since have not dimmed the memory of the sun-drenched beauty of that very first one.

"My lady, you are flushed. Do you need some wine?"

Guinevere waves off her maid's concern. She is not thirsty; she hungers. Hungers for Arthur's gentle lips and strong arms. Her ladies are wrong. She has not outlived the age of passion. She merely judges all the love she sees against the steady burning ember she and Arthur share. Everything else is a pale imitation.

Arthur does not win the tourney. He is unhorsed in the final by the enigmatic Sir Galahad. But the king laughs about it later, with more good will than he would have shown when he was young.

"At least you're the only one who knows how your king was disgraced," he chuckles in the privacy of their bedchamber.

"You were not disgraced, Arthur." Gwen runs her hands along the muscles in his shoulders and chest, softened with age, but still the body of a warrior. "You fought bravely and well and unseated men half your age."

Arthur winces. "Don't remind me. I'm getting old, Guinevere."

"Never." She brushes his tousled, blonde hair back from his brow. "You will be Camelot's beloved boy king until you're an hundred, at least."

"Only if you remain at my side." He rolls her underneath him and smiles mischievously down at her. "And don't go running off with this Sir William the Court tells me you're mad for."

"He is the finest knight in Camelot, my lord."

"He has another advantage, which you have failed to mention."

"Indeed. And what is that?"

"The favours of the finest lady."

Arthur ends further conversation with a kiss. Gwen feels bathed in sunlight.