Ithilien under shadow

It was a quiet place, and inviolate. Many paths led to it, and all were well-trodden, but the grave itself was inviolate. It was a green mound, unmarked. There was no need to mark it.

Those who came, came silently, stood for a time in reverence and in thought, left perhaps a few flowers, and went away. The grass was always smooth and green, and the flowers were always fresh. Nobody had ever been told off to tend them. There was no need. The task was all Ithilien’s, and it was never neglected.

Cirion sat on the grave. No one else ever dared to do this, but Cirion was not afraid. He had the right. The grave was his shelter, his consolation, his home. He was safe there. Safe in body, for if ever a King’s man set foot on the grave, he would die. If he were not blasted into nothingness by the hands of the Valar, someone from Ithilien would kill him. The people of Ithilien were afraid and submissive, but they would never endure the violation of the grave.

Cirion was safe in spirit as well as in body. Here was the only person in the world whom he trusted, to whom he could speak freely. The one person who understood.

Elsewhere in Gondor, when they told stories about the golden age that was long past and gone, they generally began with ‘In the days of King Elessar’, but not in Ithilien. In Ithilien they always began with ‘In the old Prince’s time’. It was true that the first Prince had lived to a great age, but Cirion had never thought of him as old, only as being exactly the age that Cirion needed him to be. Sometimes he was like a father, sometimes like an elder brother, and often like a twin. There were no portraits of the old Prince; the King’s men had taken them all away long ago, and presumably destroyed them. Cirion liked to think that the old Prince had looked like himself. They were of one blood, after all, and it was Cirion who had the dark hair, whereas his father and brother had the golden hair that had come into the family with the old Prince’s wife, the Lady Éowyn. There were no portraits of the Lady Éowyn either, but there were many songs in praise of her beauty and her courage. Some said the old Prince had written them. You weren’t supposed to sing them, of course, but everybody knew them nevertheless.

This evening, Cirion had come to tell the old Prince about Andil the harper. Telling the Prince about the awful things that kept happening somehow made the things more bearable. When Cirion thought about what had happened to Andil he felt like shrieking and sobbing and stabbing the air, but being with the old Prince always calmed him and he told the story in a quiet voice.

‘Andil never meant any harm,’ he explained to the old Prince. ‘He’s a man of peace, and not very brave, but he loves the old songs and he loves to weave them together to make new patterns. Yesterday, at suppertime, he was singing about how King Eärnur rode away to war and how the good Steward ruled in his stead, and he added a new bit about how wisely the good Steward ruled and how Gondor prospered in his time, just as it did in your time, and everybody in the hall smiled and some clapped, but there must have been a King’s spy in the hall, and today the King’s men came and took Andil away, and I know we’ll never see him again. He was a good man, and tried to teach me the harp, only I was too impatient, and now I shall never have another chance to learn, or to thank him.’

He paused and choked back a sob, then went on, ‘Would you have stood by and let the King’s men take Andil away? If you had been there, I know they wouldn’t have dared lay a finger on him.’ Cirion shook his head violently, but couldn’t dispel the memory of his father sitting, ashen-faced and still, in his high carven chair, saying nothing as Andil was bound and bundled from the hall. Doing nothing to defend Andil, who was his own faithful servant and one of his people. The old Prince would never have acted like that.

But if the old Prince’s elder son had been in the City, the ‘honoured guest’ of the King? What would the old Prince have done then?

The old Prince had served his king loyally all the days of his life, but that king had been worth the serving. King Elessar had been glorious and wise and just, but there were stories – stories which were never told, but which everyone in Ithilien knew – of how from time to time the old Prince had stood before King Elessar and looked him in the eyes and said him nay, and the King had hearkened to him. Cirion had no proof, but he was perfectly convinced that if King Elessar had threatened to have the old Prince’s head cut off next minute if the old Prince defied him, the old Prince would still have done it.

But if it was his son’s head?

He would still have done what was right. Sitting on the grave, close to the old Prince, Cirion knew that for certain. Knew, also, that if he had been that son, he would have wanted the Prince to defy the King even if he himself were to be killed next minute. He would have understood that the Prince was acting out of love, a terrible kind of love, but the right kind. Better to be dead than to skulk in a world where people let wrong things happen all the time, out of fear.  The old Prince’s face would never have worn that terrible look of helplessness that Cirion’s father’s face had worn yesterday. The old Prince would have come down and placed himself between Andil and the King’s men and told them to let him go, and they would have. Andil, huddled on the grave, could see the scene in every detail, and the Prince’s face was his own face, only older, stronger, and completely fearless.  

The Stewards had always been faithful to the old line of the Kings, but for most of their time, the Kings hadn’t been there. The Stewards had ruled in their place, and if their rule had often been stern, even harsh, it had always been just. In those days there had often been fear, because of the Enemy, but the fear had come from outside, and the Stewards had kept it at bay. The men of Gondor had not feared one another. They had not looked sideways at their neighbours, fearing betrayal, nor had they guarded their tongues from minute to minute, for fear of arrest. They had been disciplined, but they had been free. The old Prince had renounced the rule of Gondor, but only because he knew that his King would honour what the Stewards had achieved. If he had known what his King’s descendants were to become, would he still have made that renunciation?

The people knew that the Stewards had kept them free: that they had defended Gondor against the terror of the Enemy, but had never themselves sought to rule by terror. The people still honoured the house of the Stewards because of this, although Cirion’s father was weak though kind-hearted, and his elder brother was a pleasure-loving fool who said ‘Yeah’ to every word of the King’s. The people still looked to the Stewards as their defenders; they still clung to that rag of hope. It was never said, of course, but Cirion could feel it.

The people of Ithilien were afraid, but under the fear there was anger, smouldering like peat on a smoored fire. If that anger could be kindled to a full blaze, by one who bore the old Prince’s blood in his veins, the people would rise. Cirion, huddled on the grave, was sure of that, too.

What if they did rise? Would the rest of Gondor rise with them, with every lord’s heir a hostage in the City and all the soldiery in the King’s pay? And what of Rohan, whose so-called king was the King of Gondor’s lapdog, full-fed on empty flattery? What of Dol Amroth, to whom blind loyalty to the King was the mainspring of life? What of Arnor, where the King seldom went and where, they said, his hand did not lie so heavily? And if Ithilien did rise, and other provinces joined it, what of Gondor’s enemies, waiting and watching for a chance to fall upon it and devour it the moment it showed a sign of weakness? 

The future might be worse than the present, and he, Cirion, might be the cause.

Tell me what to do, dear Prince, he begged silently, his cheek against the cool grass. Faramir, tell me what you would have done. Make me understand.