 Mordred wandered along the corridor exchanging nods with the guards stationed outside stairwells and exchanging smiles with the ladies floating past in their coloured gowns. He carried a wooden box under his right arm. Its lid was flat and unhinged but the sides had been wood-burned with swirling celtic knots.
"Afternoon m'lord," said a man with a welsh accent wearing a brown flat cap as Mordred stepped out onto the staircase. Glancing at the man the young lord nodded by way of greeting.
"Afternoon, Gethin," he replied, "busy day?" The welshman nodded as he whipped his hat from his head. He began to pat at his brown with it.
"Carpets," Gethin muttered with a scowl, "people keep finding carpets with holes in them." The king's brother smothered a smirk. He couldn't possibly imagine why.
"Moths?" he suggested innocently.
"Damn big moths, m'lord." Reaching out Mordred patted the man on the shoulder with a long fingered hand.
"I'll keep an eye out."
The staircase spiralled back on itself as it plunged downwards at steep angle. The steps themselves were narrow forcing Mordred to take them on tip toe, but it was the quickest way to get from the finery of the upper floors to the rusticity of the lower levels. It got darker the further he descended and he kept a tight grip on his box as he took the narrow turns. The castle's bottom floors were always louder than the lords' quarters, perhaps rivalled only by the volume of the Great Hall at meal times. Mordred emerged outside the kitchens, but he paid little heed to the hum of activity to his left and strode straight past. He was not as easily distracted by the pretty smile of a kitchen girl as his nephew was; more interesting things brought him down into the heated basement hallways.
He made a point of knowing where people spent their time, especially those who were of particular interest to him. Mordred knew exactly where the boy would be in the middle of the afternoon when the other teenagers were charging around upstairs. Thoth's laboratory was hidden away in an relatively unused quarter of the castle, surrounded by cobweb covered walls and the faint lingering smell of damp and mould. Its location was a well-kept secret...although Mordred supposed the term was relative when you lived at court; very little remained secret from the many wagging tongues that crawled beneath the richly painted ceilings. All save one.
Under no illusions that his intrusion would be welcome Mordred stopped outside the wooden door and rapped lightly on the wood. He waited, listening hard for signs of movement within the chamber beyond. He could hear a steady humming sound but no one was making any move to open the door. The young lord tried again and knocked a little louder before leaning casually against the doorway.
"Thoth," he called after a long drawn-out pause wondering if the boy either couldn't hear him or was wary that he was one of the boys from court. "It's Mordred..." he explained, "I've got something I'd like to show you."
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