As Merry and Pippin made their way to the Houses of Healing, a man called out to them.

“Pippin!”

Pippin turned to see a man striding towards him. “Beregond!” he exclaimed, delighted. He had fought beside the man at the Black Gate, and was by now fast friends with him. “Do you have the day off as well?”

“Yes. Are you doing anything, or would you care to accompany me to the market?”

“I can’t, I’m visiting someone. I could meet you somewhere for lunch, though.”

Beregond smiled. “Where shall we eat? I must warn the poor tavern in question that their pantries are about to be emptied.”

“What about the Star and Stone? I have heard nothing but good things about their ale.”

“You have heard the truth. I will see you at the midday bell!”

The two of them arrived at the Houses shortly thereafter. Merry knew precisely where he had to go in order to meet the Warden, but Pippin had to search a little to find Miriel. After a quarter of an hour’s looking, he finally found her in one of the storerooms, preparing a tray.

“Hullo, Miriel!” he said cheerfully. Miriel jumped in surprise.

“Pippin!” Her face broke out into a wide smile. “I was wondering when you’d come back! I tried to visit you, but I couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Do you know how many people there are out there who are claiming to know one of you four Halflings? Hobbits, I mean,” she corrected herself. “They all want a piece of your glory. I saw you at a distance once in a while, though.”

“Did you ever see Frodo and Sam while they were here?” Pippin asked.

Miriel gave a wry smile. “Of course not. I wasn’t nearly important enough to attend to the Ringbearers, not when the King himself was watching over them!”

“You must meet them, Miriel. I’ll bring them here.”

“That would be wonderful. I can’t stop to talk long, though,” she said as she gestured towards the tray. “I have many patients to see to yet.”

“Can I help you?”

Miriel smiled. “Certainly. I’d be glad of the help.”

Pippin spent his morning helping Miriel attend to the sick and the last of the wounded from the War. He tried his best to make the patients smile, even if they had little to smile about. He usually left them feeling brighter than they had before. By the end of the morning, he was beginning to feel more than a little hungry. Noticing the diminishing supplies, he asked, “Are there many more people to see?”

“Just one. This one’s a special patient,” Miriel said as they approached the door next to the Warden’s office. “Not many people know he’s here, but I trust you. It might do this poor man good to see somebody aside from me and a few others. I should warn you, though: don’t talk to him.”

“Why not?”

“In the war, he was driven mad and lost his voice. He doesn’t like to hear people talking; it upsets him.” Something about Miriel’s tone didn’t sound quite right, as though she was hiding something; but Pippin let it pass.

“What’s his name?”

“We don’t know. He hasn’t spoken since he was brought here during the Siege.” Pippin noted with interest that the door to the room was locked. Miriel fished into her pocket and drew out the key. “Don’t speak to him at all,” she said as she turned the key and pushed the door open.

Pippin was hit by the stale smell of a room long lived in; smoke from the tapers and the small fire in the grate mingled with the unmistakable odor of medical herbs and drinks. The room was small, dark, and windowless with a heavy table and a cot. Sitting on the cot was a man, thin and sickly-looking. His leg was splinted and he cradled his bandage-swathed right hand in his left. He didn’t look up at the sound of the door opening or shutting, nor did he look up when Miriel gave a gasp of horror when she saw blood on the man’s right hand.

“Valar, has he done it again?” she whispered to herself as she rushed to his side and seized his wrist. Pippin, grotesquely intrigued, looked at the ragged gash on the back of the man’s wrist. There were splinters imbedded deep in the skin, which was rubbed raw around the cut.

“What happened?” The man looked up at Pippin’s voice. His face was sallow and his dark hair matted. The man’s eyes frightened Pippin, although he couldn’t say why; the hazel eyes were devoid of all hope. They seemed dull and dead.

Miriel examined the cut carefully. “I think he was rubbing his wrist against the side of the cot.” She checked the frame: there was blood drying on the wood.

“Why would he do a thing like that?” Pippin wasn’t certain, but he thought he saw a look of hesitation cross her face before she answered.

“I have no idea.” She pursed her lips and reached into her satchel, drawing out a pouch with various healing tools inside. Taking a pair of tweezers, she began to draw the splinters out of the man’s skin one by one. The man didn’t react, but kept staring at Pippin without any emotion whatsoever. Pippin couldn’t shake the feeling that the man was staring at him as though he was an inanimate object; only something to look at. Pippin shifted uncomfortably.

“How can I help?”

Miriel gestured towards her satchel. “Could you find new bandages? I need to bind this up.” Pippin rummaged around in the bag as Miriel began to dab the wound with some salve, then he handed her the white cloth.

“Thanks.” Miriel turned the man’s wrist over, trying to hide it from Pippin, but he caught a glimpse of an ugly, barely-healed scar on the underside of the wrist.

“This isn’t the first time he’s cut himself, is it?” Pippin said quietly.

Miriel looked at him. “No, it isn’t. About three weeks ago he stole a scalpel from Girion, my friend, while our backs were turned. When we came in an hour later to give him his meal, there was blood all over the sheets. We had to give him stitches. After that, we took everything sharp out of the room. I’ll have to ask them to sand down the frame of the cot, and the table edges, too.”

“Was he trying to-”

“Kill himself? No, I don’t think so,” Miriel said firmly.

“Then what was he doing?”

“I couldn’t say,” she said almost vaguely. She began to inspect his splinted leg in silence, leaving Pippin to think. How could Miriel know that he wasn’t trying to kill himself? Why was this man in a state to try something like that, anyway?

“Nearly good as new. He should be able to walk any time soon now.” The man looked at Miriel for the first time, his expression full of terror. Miriel gathered up her things and stopped at the door.

“Pippin, I need to find somebody to fix the furniture. If we leave him alone, he will try to hurt himself again. Could you stay here while I find someone? I won’t be long.”

“Don’t worry, I will.”

“I have full confidence in your guarding abilities,” Miriel said as she smiled. “After all, you’d have to be good at that.”

“You mean I’m not a Guard because of my dashing looks?” Pippin tried his best to look put out. Miriel laughed and shut the door behind her.

Pippin glanced at the man on the bed. He was disconcerted to see that the man was trembling like a leaf. His face was fearful. What was wrong? The man’s face grew paler. Pippin feared something was terribly wrong. He decided to throw caution to the winds and talk to the man, even if it might upset him.

“What’s wrong?” he said softly, moving towards the cot. The man stared at him, wide-eyed, and shrank back. Was the man scared of him? He couldn’t understand why. “I’m not going to hurt you. I promise.” The man stopped trembling, but stuck out his right hand towards Pippin as if it was a warning. “I don’t understand.”

The man looked at him as though Pippin was the mad one then pulled back his hand and began to pluck at the bandages. “Don’t do that,” Pippin said, reaching out to stop him, but the man paid him no mind as he began to unwind the bandage from his hand. When he finished, he held out his hand palm-up. Pippin nearly recoiled in disgust; there was a hideously deep burn on the palm in the shape of a T. The skin around the burn was red and still peeling, and the burn itself was the waxy white of deep scar tissue. His fingers didn’t seem to move properly; they were stiff and only twitched when the man made a visible effort to bend them. The man grimaced in pain and withdrew his hand.

Satisfied that Pippin had seen his injury, the man began to wind the bandage about his hand again. Pippin shook his head helplessly. The man truly must be mad if he thought showing a wound would explain his fear. The man tucked in the end of the bandage and looked at Pippin with fear and expectance. “I’m sorry, but I still don’t know why you’re so upset.” The man looked at him wearily and pressed a finger to his lips, signaling silence. Pippin complied, leaning against the far wall as he watched the man.

Miriel returned shortly after that, bringing her friend by the name of Girion with her. “He’ll fix the table,” she said as they left. “He wasn’t any trouble, was he?”

Pippin decided that he didn’t need to tell her that he had talked to him; Miriel had forbidden him to do so. Besides, she had been acting rather strangely about this particular patient, and he was curious. “He was fine. I was wondering, though: what’s wrong with his hand?” It was an innocent enough question; he could see if she was being secretive about this man, or whether it was just his imagination.

“He fell into a fire and burned it,” Miriel said almost automatically. Pippin thought that sounded suspicious. Fire did not burn people like that. Pippin thought about the man cutting his wrist with a scalpel and repressed a shudder. Had he been trying to cut his hand off entirely? The scar was bad, certainly, but why would you want to cut off your own hand?

The midday bells interrupted his thoughts. “Miriel, I promised a friend of mine I would have lunch with him. Would you like to join us?”

“I can’t,” she said, visibly disappointed. “I don’t leave for lunch for another hour yet. Come back and visit me soon, all right?”

“Next time I get a day off. I’ll bring Frodo and Sam to meet you, too. You’ll like them.”

“I’m sure I will. Good bye!”

As Pippin walked off, he thought about the strange man. He’d have to ask someone knowledgeable of Gondorian ways about why he acted like that. Perhaps he could talk to Beregond while the thought was still fresh in his mind.

An hour later, after a most excellent meal, Pippin sat in his too-big chair in the smoky tavern. His hunger satisfied and his mind ready for talking, he broached the subject of the strange man to Beregond.

“Beregond, what happens to people in this city who are disabled?”

Beregond gave that a little thought. “Usually, they live with their family. If they can’t walk, for example, the family will set aside a place in the home for that person to live.”

“What if they have no family?”

“A neighbor will look in on them, or if they’re rich enough they hire a caretaker.”

Pippin took this in. “Supposing it wasn’t a matter of mobility- what if it was a matter of the mind? I mean, what happens to people who have lost their wits?”

Beregond frowned. “That’s a good question. I suppose, if there is no family, they would live in the Houses of Healing, at least until they could find somebody who would take care of them. Why are you so curious about such things all of a sudden?”

“No reason. I was in the Houses today, as you remember, and I met a man who couldn’t speak. He acted very strangely, too. We weren’t supposed to talk to him because it upset him, but I did when there wasn’t anybody in the room and he seemed troubled; all he did was show me a gruesome burn and stare at me. I haven’t come across anyone quite like that before.”

Beregond jerked up in his seat, pale-faced. “He showed you a burn? What did it look like?”

Pippin wondered why Beregond would know that it had a shape. “It looked like the letter T,” he said. “It was on his right palm.”

A strange expression flitted across Beregond’s face, a mixture of joy and grief. “Did he have dark hair?”

“Yes. Why? Do you know him?” But Beregond wasn’t listening to Pippin anymore; he was muttering to himself, unaware of the hobbit’s keen ears.

“It couldn’t be… But nobody else would have a mark like that… I thought he was dead…”

“I could take you to him,” Pippin offered.

“Would you?” Beregond said, a slow smile breaking over his face. “I need to see this man. I believe he is a friend of mine.” He tossed a few coins on the table and got up, waiting for Pippin out of politeness; Pippin could see from the way Beregond was standing that he wanted nothing more than to run all the way to the Houses of Healing.

“Beregond, I don’t know if they’ll let you see him. They have him locked in a room, you see?”

Beregond’s face fell. “Of course they would,” he said bitterly. “Very well. I will have to talk to the Warden to see if he will let me see him. I can only think of one way he’d let me in, however, and it would be an abuse of my job as a soldier.”

Pippin didn’t entirely understand what Beregond was saying. “Why should you have to use your job? Couldn’t you ask about him as a friend?”

“I cannot ask about this man as a friend. His name is Tarannon, and though he has been one of my friends for years, I would be in severe trouble if I asked after him as a friend.” Beregond’s face hardened. “The reason he is locked away is because he was branded as a traitor.”

The two of them were silent as they walked to the sixth circle, each deep in their own thoughts. Pippin wondered what terrible crime Beregond’s friend had done to have been marked as a traitor. Was that what the burn on his hand meant? Pippin’s stomach churned at the thought. He had never heard of branding a person like cattle before. It sounded as though it was a vulgar practice, one he hoped was not common.

But if it was uncommon, then why was Beregond friends with such a man? If he had done something to merit a brand, then surely it was something bad. But why would Beregond be friends with him? Pippin chased these questions about in circles the entire time.

When the arrived at the Houses of Healing, Beregond took him aside. “Pippin,” he said quietly, “were you forbidden to speak of Tarannon?”

Pippin recalled Miriel saying that few people knew of the man, and how she trusted him. He felt his insides squirm with guilt. She shouldn’t have trusted him that much. “Well, not entirely. Miriel said that only a few people knew about him, and that made me think it was a secret. I don’t think I should have mentioned him to you.”

“No, no,” Beregond said urgently. “I looked for Tarannon after the Siege, but his prison had been crushed by a boulder. I thought he was dead. It’s important for me to see him. You did the right thing by telling me, even though you didn’t mean to. But if you don’t want your healer friend to know that you told me, stay out of sight while I talk to the Warden.”

Pippin nodded and followed Beregond inside, keeping his distance from the man and watching for any healers that knew him. Beregond approached the Warden’s office and rapped on the door with authority. Pippin crouched beneath a nearby table in the hall and listened with his keen ears. The of the Warden’s office opened and he heard the Warden speak to someone within: “Excuse me, Master Meriadoc, I will be but a moment.” The Warden closed the door softly.

“Good day,” he said in greeting. “How may I help you?”

“It is a matter of importance that brings me here,” Beregond said with an official tone that Pippin had never heard him use before. “It is my task within the Guard to find prisoners that have escaped during the Siege. I have run a full check of the lists of prisoners and compared them to the lists of the dead: there were a few runaways who have been apprehended and dealt with, but there are still a few missing. I am conducting a search to find the last of the refugees, and I thought some might have been injured in the battle and are taking sanctuary here. One of the notable names on my list is Tarannon, son of Tarcil. He was in the traitors’ prison and escaped during the Siege. Do you know of any man who has taken refuge here? He would have been favoring his right hand, keeping it covered at all times.”

The Warden’s voice, pleasant before, took on a more serious tone. “I think I know who you mean, sir. Have you come to take him away?”

“No: the laws of this city forbid the Guard to take someone who is injured and resting in the Houses unless they have caused trouble within these walls. I merely wish to see him, to confirm that he is indeed here, that we may take custody of him when he is fully healed.”

The Warden nodded solemnly and motioned towards the door of the room where Tarannon was. “He is in there. Here is the key: the healer responsible for him returned it to me when she left for her lunch. I must attend to my guest. Please return it when you are finished.” Beregond took the key and waited for the Warden to return to his office before unlocking the door.

“Come in,” he said. “There’s nobody coming.”

Pippin left his hiding place and entered Tarannon’s room. Tarannon was sleeping. Beregond shut the door behind them and stared at the gaunt, wasted figure on the bed. “Stars,” he breathed. “He looks awful.”

“Go on and wake him up,” Pippin said.

“I can’t. When someone has been branded as a traitor, communication is forbidden. He must not speak to us, and we may not speak to him, as we risk punishment if we do.”

“But I talked to him,” Pippin said, worried. “Does that mean I will be punished?”

Beregond thought about this for a moment. “No,” he said finally. “I believe that he is not permitted to speak to citizens of Gondor. You are not a citizen of Gondor, so you should be safe from those rules.”

“I can talk to him, then. Or if you want to say something, talk as though you were talking to me. He can listen, and that way you won’t be breaking the law by talking to him.”

“Clever,” Beregond said with a trace of sorrow in his voice. “It shouldn’t have come to this, you know. He should still be a soldier with me, living peacefully.”

“He was a soldier?”

“Yes, but that was before-” Beregond stopped as Tarannon began to stir at the sound of their voices. His bloodshot eyes opened slowly, and he drew in a breath sharply when he saw who stood before him. He opened his mouth to speak, but caught himself. Instead, he swung his legs over the bed and stood, wobbling from his attempt to keep the weight off his broken leg. Beregond went over quickly and steadied him, then wrapped Tarannon in a tight embrace. Tarannon wept, giving a harsh, choking sob as he returned the gesture. When they pulled apart, Pippin saw that Beregond had tears in his own eyes. Pippin was astounded by the amount of grief the two men had. What should have by rights been a happy reunion was instead more bitterly sorrowful than a funeral.

“Pippin,” Beregond said, “I thought he was dead. I looked for him, but his prison was destroyed. I thought he was dead.” Pippin knew this already, but he realized that Beregond was saying this for Tarannon’s benefit. Pippin looked at Tarannon and saw pain there, pain at the knowledge that he could not respond and that he had to be discussed as though he weren’t even there. He must feel as though he doesn’t exist, Pippin thought to himself. “I had given up any hope that I would see him again. Bergil misses him, as do I. And I’m so sorry.”

Beregond helped Tarannon sit down on the cot and spotted the bandages on his wrist. “What’s that?”

Pippin answered for Tarannon. “I think he was trying to cut his hand off, weren’t you?” he said directly to Tarannon. When Tarannon said nothing, Pippin told him, “I’m not a citizen of Gondor. You can talk to me.” But Tarannon kept silent.

“He fears reprisals,” Beregond stated. “He has already been branded and banished, though, so I don’t know what else they could do to him.”

“Banished?”

“Didn’t you know? That’s what happens to traitors.” Beregond’s mouth twisted in a grimace. “A just punishment for some, but not for him.”

Pippin became suddenly aware of how long they had been in there. “Beregond, don’t you think the Warden will wonder what’s taking you so long?”

“You’re right. We must leave.” Beregond looked at his friend with mingled emotions. “I do not wish to go, but we should not be here. I will miss him, and I will try to see him again.” Tarannon looked up at his friend with profound regret and grief as the man and the hobbit left.

Beregond returned the key and proceeded outside with Pippin. The two wandered in silence, not paying attention to where they were going, until Beregond spoke abruptly.

“He tried to cut his hand off?”

“That’s what I think. Miriel told me he stole a scalpel and had cut deeply into his wrist, but they caught him and stitched him up. He tried to do it again today, but it didn’t work.”

Beregond digested this information. “He would have been better off dead, you know. Banishment is a hard punishment, and being branded is painful. My poor friend.”

“What did he do? You never told me.”

Beregond scowled. “It wasn’t his fault. In fact, he saved me from the very same fate. I owe him my life, and I can’t even talk to him. I can’t help but wonder if it’s my fault sometimes. I distracted him, you see. Maybe if I hadn’t been there…”

“What happened?” Pippin prompted.

“Do you remember the day the beacon was lit?”

Pippin smiled inwardly. Of course he remembered it- after all, he was the one who had climbed so high to light it. “Yes.”

“Tarannon was on duty, guarding the beacon. I came to visit him. While we were talking, the beacon caught fire. I don’t know how it happened. Tarannon immediately commanded me to leave so I would not be a suspect. He took the full blame himself; Denethor thought he was the one who had lit it, and said he was a traitor for disobeying the Steward in so great a matter. He had him imprisoned within an hour. Pippin?”

Pippin had stopped in the middle of the road. He wore a twisted expression of deep horror and guilt. “Oh no,” he breathed.