~ Chapter 14 ~

'They will come on you in the wild, in some dark place where there is no help.  Do you wish them to find you?  They are terrible!'

FOTR: Strider

~oOo~

~ TA 3007, 20^th day of Yavannië: charges – one hood of thick woad-blue wool, worked about its edges with designs of hares, foxes, and vines in cream, onion skin-red, and heather-green wool thread.  Discharges – in return for three fine needles of extruded and filed steel from Mistress Tanril.  

~oOo~

The men stride slowly in from the fields, bent double beneath their load. The soft sun of spring is gone, and we come to days of the harvest.  Bearing sheaves of spring wheat upon their back, a bundle near thrice their size, so heavy is the load the men sweat and grasp tightly to the ropes, forgetting all speech in their effort. But the boys who accompany them are more free of foot and tongue. They skip between their elders, pouncing upon dropped straws and heads of wheat and pile them in each other's arms and into baskets they carry lightly. The sheaves glow warmly in the autumn sun as they sink and rise with the fall of their bearer's feet. We have been gifted with dry weather and a strong breeze, and the folk of the Angle await them on the threshing-floor. 

In the dim light ere dawn, I awoke to the bleating of sheep upon the meadow, their calls echoing among the shallow vales and hills where they graze. The hollow cry of doves came from the thatch above my head and called the dawn. Already the day was warm though the sun not yet truly risen. I had kicked away the sheets in my sleep and lay in a tangle of my shift upon waking and knew then the wheat would be shrunk and brittle to the hand, ready for the winnowing. 

We are well into the day and upon the threshing-floor the men beat upon a thick carpet of stalks. In a line upon the hardened clay, they chant and swing the flails over their head, their hands and arms moving to the beat of the harvest. Soon, with their long winnow-forks they will throw the wheat to the air and the wind shall blow away a great glittering cloud of chaff. 

I stand with the other women of the Angle, we with our flat baskets and the last of the winnowing to do. It is easiest, I think, to toss the mix of fine fiber and seed and catch it with the rhythm of the threshers. Oh, we sing and the sight of golden dust when we toss it to the air and the tickle of wheat berries when we plunge our hands in the basket are things of joy. But the sun beating upon the head, the itch of dust upon sweaty skin, and the closed in breath behind a scarf are most decidedly not. 

I am no stranger to the harvest, and think I shall ever know it, even to the days when I sit with the granddams and pluck dirt and stones from the berries ere sending an infant child to pour them into the granary baskets. Once, I dreaded the task and the days it would take me away from my loom and dye-pots. But the Council has decreed the tilling of a hundred acres more. The blessings of the Valar lie heavy upon us and the fields yield at their fullest measure. The Angle needs all of its hands at work, and I am determined to ask naught of them I am not cheerful to give. 

Up goes the grain with a flick of the wrist and it seems to hang in the air ere rattling back down into the basket, leaving behind fine shreds of stalk and leaf to float to the ground. And again. And yet again. 

Ah! But I itch! I shall be glad when the sun hovers o’er the winding path of the Tithecelon and stains the sky in pinks and greens, for then the women walk to the river to bathe. How many more days of this until we are done, and the midsummer harvest feast can begin? Ai! Shall we have enough days of sun? The Valar have looked upon us kindly thus far, mayhap they shall smile just a little longer, for should it rain all the grain left in the field will be consumed by rot and mold, not by the folk of the Angle. 

"My lady!" 

With a quick movement I catch the grain. There, I see her, Mistress Pelara stands upwind of the winnowers, behind the bent heads of old women sifting through the seed. Upon her hip rests a small mite of a girl, her youngest grandchild, with thin curls and wide eyes so dark a blue they seem as the twilight sky of summer just ere the first star appears. 

With a few tosses more, I am done and am happy to trade a full for empty basket with one of my elders. Pulling the scarf from my face, I wipe at my brow and draw in a deep breath of free air. 

"And who have we here?" I ask, smiling upon the child in Pelara's arms. She lays her head upon her grandmother's cheek and watches me from the shadow of the woman's chin. 

"This, my lady, is Lothel," Mistress Pelara says, "who grows hungry and soon shall be none so pleasant. Best enjoy her now." 

I laugh. "Did you come to show her off while you had the chance, then?"

"No, my lady, I have a thing you must see and hear of your own." 

"Very well," I say, and look about for a spot to set my basket down where it shall not be trampled or misplaced. I shall wish to pick it up again later. 

"Here, my lady, let me take that for you," Mistress Pelara says and dumps Lothel into my arms as were she no more precious than a sack of turnips while she plucks the basket from my hand. There the small arm curls tightly about mine and I bounce her to settle the weight on my hip. 

Mistress Pelara calls to the child's mother and strides off into the mess of falling grain and flying straw. 

The girl plucks at my scarf with sticky fingers, but I mind not. Her weight is warm and heavy in my arms and her brow bumps against my chin. I wish most to kiss her skin, for it is softer than the finest velvet of my lord mother's elven dresses. I cannot. She is not mine to press my affections upon her, but I allow myself the guilty pleasure of breathing deep of her scent. She smells of milk and a mild soap of lavender.

"Come, take your daughter," Mistress Pelara says to the tall, willowy woman who follows her carrying both her own empty basket and mine. The child has her mother's eyes. "The lady and I have an errand to run."

"Shall you be back?" her eldest son's wife asks and then nods her greeting to me. "My lady." 

"Nana!" Lothel cries, her voice rising in newfound distress and her arms outstretched to her mother as she leans out over my hold. 

"Ah, time to leave, then," Mistress Pelara says as I surrender the girl to her mother. "Aye, we shall be back in but a little while, enough to feed the child and get you some rest. Go find you some shade, girl."

"Aye, Naneth," she says and then croons to her daughter, soothing the laughter that teeters upon a needle edge between distress and relief. 

"A good girl, that," Pelara says. "I could have asked for none better for my son." 

"My lady," she says, and I shake myself away from watching her son's wife and child, the woman's hips swaying gently as she carries her daughter away from the crowd. 

"Aye, I am ready, let us go." 

~oOo~

The Elder sits upon a bench by his door with a man of equal age. There together they rest against the white daub wall and bake themselves in its reflected heat with their canes resting upon their knees. With their bald pates and half-lidded eyes, they look like naught less than two lizards sunning themselves and blinking slowly in the late afternoon glare. 

His daughter pins a leery eye upon her father as we approach. But for the nudge his friend gives him, we might have passed by without his notice. The Elder blinks awake.

"Eh, what?" he protests and when the old man beside him nods toward us, he turns his scowl to his daughter and me.

"Oh, greetings Daughter," he says and clears his throat wetly. "I see you have returned."

"Aye, that I have, Father," she says with equal delight. 

"My lady," says his friend and he touches a dry knuckle to his brow, and I nod in response.

"You are come from the threshing floor, my lady?" the Elder asks, sheltering his watery eyes from the glare with his hand.

"Aye, Master Maurus," I say, nodding broadly and pause, though Mistress Pelara stands in the shadow of the doorway as were she eager to enter and be away from her father. 

"It goes well, eh?" he asks but then goes on had he no thought for my answer, “Valar help us, should it last.”  He then scowls at his daughter, whose look has soured. "And when shall my tea be ready then, eh, Daughter?" 

"When it is ready and not a moment sooner, Father," she says. "It is not time for tea, yet. You must suffer through yet a few more hours of this fine sun, should it last so long." 

He grunts discontentedly and then settles back, closing his eyes. 

With a touch to my elbow she pulls me firmly through the door, cutting off her father's voice. And with a shake of the head and a determined look, she advises me to give no thought to her father's grumbling.

My eyes are near blind in the dimness that is the Elder's room, but I soon make out his table and a man I know not sitting beside it.  Mistress Nesta wraps strips of linen about his arm where she has spread a poultice upon torn and deeply bruised flesh. He bolts to his feet at our entrance, tugging at the healer's hand.

"Here, now!" Nesta protests and struggles to keep the cloth from unwinding about him.

His grey eyes flicker between Pelara and I. I know not what he sees in the mistress' eyes, but it must be some confirmation of his thoughts for, of a sudden, he falls prostrate upon the ground afore me, pulling the two young lads who crowded wide-eyed and silent about him down with him. An older woman, her face lined and grim, sits by the door with her granddaughter, a girl of mayhap twenty some years. Rising slowly, the old woman shuffles down to kneel beside them. Her face she hides deep in her thickly-knuckled hands. The girl comes next to her and, clinging to her shoulder and mutely weeps. 

"We beg of you, my lady," the man says, his voice muffled against the floor. “Pray do not turn us away. There is no other place we may go.  Or should you send us hence but give us word and we will leave and not protest it should you let us go free.”  

The healer, giving up on binding her charges' wounds, sits back with a huff and shakes her head sadly at them.

I stand as one stunned, so shocked am I. I know not what to do, but I think I shall be sick should he not rise and stand upon his own feet. I know Mistress Pelara is as surprised, but it is she, after a glance to my own face, who springs into action.

"Up," she says, going down and tugging at the man's shoulder. "Get up, now!" she commands, and he blinks at her and climbs unsteadily to his feet. The two boys cling to the hands that hang heavily from his shoulders. "Are you not a dúnadan of the North? You may owe your fealty to our lord, but not your pride, man. " 

I had not the chance to look fully upon him, but I do so now.  His hair a brown so light ‘tis seldom seen so far north, it marks him a man of the homesteads of the Bavrodhrim.  He is much battered and neglected, with bruises and deep scratches upon his person, and a body so shrunken I could count each rib should I have a mind. 

He looks down, away from my gaze. 

"What is your name?" I ask.

"Sereg, son of Seregil, my lady." 

"What happened to you?" 

"They were attacked by wolves," answers Mistress Nesta. Should her patient not allow her ministrations, she now uses the time to lift a pot from the brazier and pour tea steeped in chamomile and willow bark. 

"Aye, my lady," Sereg says. When his light eyes rise, I see they glitter with what I think must be either pain or fever. "They attacked in the dark as we slept. My two boys, they are safe, but I lost my youngest, my little girl, her mother, too, who battled for her against them ere we could come upon them, and my mother's brother who came upon them first." He pauses, licking at dry lips. "I did what I could for them, my lady, but should you not have pity upon us, I shall lose even these," he says, and his hands come to cover the shaggy heads of his sons and he looks to them with a possessive fear that stabs as a spear to my heart. 

"You and yours are welcome here," I say. "Did you doubt it?"

“There is rumor not, my lady,” comes the answer, but it is from Mistress Pelara, who looks upon the man and his family grimly.  

“What is this?” In my shock, I have raised my voice and Master Sereg clutches his son’s heads to his side as he looks first upon the mistress and then upon me.

"There are stories, my lady, told in the south nigh to Dunland," he says, "that the Angle is closed to any who might think to flee here.  They tell of men and women beaten and set upon by dogs. They say the children are taken and given to - " 

At this, I wish to hear no more.  “Listen not to the lies of our Enemy!  No such thing has happened here!  Nor shall it. You have my word on this.”

“Forgive me, my lady, had I given offense,” he says and drops his eyes again.  

"I cannot promise you safety, but I can promise you my lord would not have you face the Shadow alone." 

I had thought somewhat of hope would light within his eyes, but the man shrinks in upon himself and begins to weep, his hands coming to cover his face.  So great had been the threats they faced, it seems, that he could only feel the terror of it when the danger had passed.  

"Here now!" the Nesta exclaims, rising and stirring honey into a steaming cup. She presses it into the Sereg’s hand and pats him upon the arm when he takes it. He has crumpled upon the floor, with his young sons, his mother, and his wife’s sister about him attempting to comfort him. "They will need the rest, mind you, my lady,” she warns sternly, “under shelter and afore a warm fire at night." She motions the little ones to the table where she returns so she can ply them with chunks of sweetened breads and make more tea.

"Aye, Mistress," I say. "Surely you had not thought I would press them to join us in the harvest unless they were well ready?" 

She sniffs, and I wonder should it be in response, but, mayhap not, as she has raised an apple from the table to her nose. It passes inspection and she sits to cut wedges for the family. 

With that, l am again blinking in the sunlight, for Mistress Pelara has taken me again by the elbow and drawn me from the house, closing the door behind her.

“What think you, my lady?” she asks.

Ai! Wolves! And so near the Angle as his wounds show no sign yet of much healing.  I hardly know what to think.  Aye, my lord had passed warning that we had not the men to protect every homestead and pasture to those who would yet linger upon the distant reaches of what we once held, but to hear it so badly perverted!  

“He has more tales to tell, my lady,” Mistress Pelara continues when it seems I am at a loss to respond without breaking my lord’s confidence. She speaks low and urgently. “They have not seen my lord’s Rangers for nigh unto a year, now, and the men of Dunland grow bolder for it.  They put our folk in the south to the sword and burned their holdings. Sereg and his family had not dared venturing forth ere now but for it. They thought our lord’s Rangers had all retreated here.”

Ai!  And cared so little for them as to leave them to their fate, it must seem to them.  

But few of my lord’s Rangers are about the Angle and most do not guard its folk. They range wide upon the Wilds, going most oft to the west, and I cannot think how to assure those who come here that they are welcome and as safe as can be made in these times.  

"Mistress," I ask, "is my father's house still empty?"

"Aye, 'tis," Pelara says and smiles upon me grimly.  "But it need not be so tonight."

She places her hand about my arm and squeezes her fingers there briefly.  “My thanks to thee, my lady.”  

There we nod, and I may breathe freer for it.

"So, my lady," I hear behind me, "you think to make promises on our lord’s behalf?"

The Elder has turned his sharp-eyed gaze upon me where he sits against the sun-warmed wall. His friend looks on, peering at me with dark eyes bright with curiosity. 

"Aye, my lady, do not turn that look upon me,” he warns, for I am surely frowning and must look about to draw breath and lay words of rebuke upon his head. “Your father’s house is yours to give, so you would wish,” he goes on, stabbing the point of his cane in my direction, “but you are of the House of Isildur, and that gift comes from my lord whether it was your hand that gave it, or no.” 

“What of it?” demands Mistress Pelara.

“Hear me daughter, no good will come of it, should the House give with one hand but not the other. And when it comes to the pinch, they will remember.”

My flash of irritation is short-lived.  True, we give generously to those who flee here, but in equal measure to aught of those who have need. His daughter makes to slap the Elder upon the shoulder with the back of her hand, but, ere the strike might fall, balls her fist and thinks better of it. 

"Old man!" she scolds, letting loose a loud sound of displeasure. "You have abused us since ere you rose from your bed today! Be away now.  Take your overworn forecasts elsewhere and do not darken my door with them until the evening meal." 

"What of my tea?" he demands, glowering at his daughter. 

"I care not!" she says. "Go! Now!"

"Fie!" he exclaims loudly and waves her ire away. Yet he rises stiffly, getting his cane beneath him. "Listen to me or do not, ‘tis no concern of mine.  Come, Curudir, let us go to Esgadil's house. He has a proper daughter." 

Curudir shrugs and joins the Elder, but I do not wait to see what they truly intend, for his daughter has her palm upon my back and gentles me away. 

The mistress scowls darkly, shaking her head at the old man as were he still there. But soon, her look softens, and we walk together through the square back to the threshing-floor. With that, my thoughts turn to the Elder's words. Though it annoys me greatly to admit it, should I look to my own heart with eyes unclouded by sympathetic tears, I know he may have somewhat of truth to say. 

"Offer him your house, did you, my lady?" Mistress Pelara says, startling me from my thoughts, and I find her eyes shine brightly. "I think that news shall not be long in making its rounds about the Angle, should it not travel further. Indeed, I will not be surprised should our lord hear of it upon the boundary of whatever land he finds himself these days ere the night is up." She gestures breezily south and I frown, wondering, of all things, had she some reason to think my lord there. 

And then I understand what she has just said and stop full upon the path and stare at her. "You think this is why I gave it, to make a good name for myself?" 

"Did you not?" she asks, scowling brightly at me.

"No!" 

"Oh," she says and shrugs. "No matter, my lady, it was well done regardless. You'll not hear a protest from me." 

I stare at her some more, and then a laugh bursts from me. Atimes I know not what path to take, for each choice brings with it both censure and praise. I set my feet to walking again and she follows me. 

"So at least you think it a wise move, then?" 

"Aye," she says, and nods. "You will learn, my lady. There will be those who give you their loyalty because of what House you speak for, and simply for that. There will be those who will listen to you only once you have proved yourself. And prove yourself you must, my lady, whether by deliberate choice or by the simple outgrowth of the actions you would take regardless of what other's might think."

"I think I would hope it to proceed naturally from me," I say and give a wry glance to the folk who gather about the baker's ovens as we pass. 

"Och," she grunts lightly. "It would not be wise to mistake liking for loyalty, my lady, nor to work only to please folk. Lady Gilraen knew that and taught me the lesson well. A medicine may be bitter yet be what the body most needs and you must be prepared to administer it. And then there will be those who will never abide you, no matter what you do."

"Like your father?" I ask, my voice grown soft, for I do not wish to offend her.

"Now, my lady, there you are wrong," she says, fixing a fierce eye upon me as she wags her finger. "Ever has my father been loyal to the House of Isildur and his heir, do not doubt it." 

"Now," she says and pats me upon the arm, her face lightening. "Don't you mind his manner, my lady, he means but to warn you. His has been a foul mood since ere he arose this morning and he is as like to take it out on the King Recrowned as he is any lesser fool to cross his path this day." 

"Then I feel pity for Esgadil's daughter," I say and Pelara shakes her head.

"The poor woman, and she has one of her own just as bad, too."

~oOo~