Flesh of my flesh

Faramir

Fíriel’s beginning was darkness, the greatest darkness Eowyn and I ever knew together. Perhaps all the greatest joys are rooted in darkness.

She came to us because we lost Húrin. For my wife that loss was too much to bear; if one of them had to die, she wanted it to have been herself. With all her heart she wanted what she could not have, his life and her death. 

They gave her the child to hold because I commanded it. They were all against it, but I thought she had the right. But she clasped him fiercely, and bared her teeth like a she-wolf when the hunters come for her cubs, and when we tore him out of her arms, she gave a shriek that haunts me yet.

We wrapped him in the shawl that had been prepared for him, though he had no need of its warmth, and I carried him away. I gave him his name because it was all I had to give him.

Outside her chamber, one of the doctors touched my arm and said, ‘My lord, there is something you should know – that the Lady Eowyn your wife is not hurt – that is, she may bear again some day.’

I turned on him. ‘Do you think that would comfort her now?’

‘No, lord,’ he answered steadily, ’but I thought it might comfort you.’

It did not, not then.

* * *

We buried Húrin in the corner of the orchard and laid green turf over the grave. As soon as Eowyn was able to walk we took her to the spot, and she watched while Elboron and I planted the roots of simbelmynë that Lothíriel had sent us, wrapped in a damp cloth to keep them fresh. She watched, but said nothing, and her eyes were dry.

It was not long before she recovered, in body at least, for she was a strong woman. Life recovered something of its old course, and I was glad that the King summoned me seldom to the City, for I hated to leave her even when she had not a glance for me.  It was not till long afterwards that I realised why the summons so seldom came, and remembered to be grateful.

There came a night when I thought I should return to her, since neither of us was likely to find any great comfort elsewhere. She put her arms round me, but without eagerness, and when I kissed her she closed her eyes, but not before I had seen the gleam of terror in them. She felt tense in my arms, and with horror I realised that she was submitting.  I drew back at once, and as she neither spoke nor moved, I said, ‘Perhaps you would sleep better if I were not with you.’ She nodded without opening her eyes, and I saw that her hands were clenched at her sides so that the knuckles showed bone-pale in the moonlight.

I went back to my own chamber and lay sleepless for the rest of the night, listening. She did not weep, but from time to time I heard a ragged breath, a sound that might have been made by one determined to keep silence under torture. When I went out in the morning, she was still lying there, as if she had not moved a muscle.

So it remained. I dare say all Ithilien, if not all Gondor, knew how it was between us. Women gossip, and men scarcely less, but no hint was ever breathed in our presence.  All of us in Emyn Arnen were actors in the pretence, because a pretence was all we had. Eowyn spent her days walking round the house, swiftly and without a pause, but without seeming to notice anything that passed; servants fled from her as if they had seen a ghost. When she was too tired to walk any more, she would sit at the window of her bower, which looked towards the orchard, and stare out from a face that seemed turned to stone, like a statue’s. If she was not to be found in the house, she would be in the orchard, sitting by the grave, hugging her knees and staring into emptiness, unmoving, not weeping. Elboron began to avoid her; she did not repulse him exactly, but looked at him as if she did not know who he was. But she did know, because when she saw us together – he spent as much time as he could with me – a look of anger would come over her, like someone who sees a thief disporting himself in stolen finery.

It clouded Elboron’s blessed sunny nature. Sometimes he would forget, and begin to laugh at some play, and then pull himself up abruptly. One day, some months after Hurin’s death  - a very long time to a child of five - he said to me, ‘Father, why is Mother so sad? Is it still because of little brother who died?’

            ‘Yes, it is still because of that.’

            ‘I’m sorry too,’ he said, ‘but it’s getting harder and harder. Soon I think I shan’t be sorry any more. Will you be angry when I’m not sorry any more?’

            ‘No, senya.’

            ‘Will Mother?’

            ‘Perhaps,’ I answered. ‘It is harder for her. Little brother was part of her, you see, so losing him hurts her more.’   

            ‘Will she stop being sorry, in the end?’

            ‘Not stop being sorry, but learn to be happy again in spite of it. It will be hard for her We must be very, very patient, you and I.’

            He sighed. ‘I don’t think I’m a very patient person, Father. Can we go somewhere that Mother can’t see or hear us, and play catch?’

            So we did, and for a little while he forgot to be sorry, and I let him laugh, and mocked myself inwardly for my brave words.

* * *

Time dragged on, and the spring that had been frozen for us turned into summer, one of the hottest we could remember. Grass burned brown and streams dried up, and many crops failed so that we were glad of the stores we had laid by for such times. In the orchard the leaves of the fruit trees began to curl and fall, and the little fruits withered and dropped instead of swelling to ripeness. Only on Húrin’s grave did the grass still grow green, after the white cloak of the simbelmynë had faded. Elboron and I watered it with water from our deepest well, and Eowyn perhaps with her tears, though I never saw her weep there.

Towards the middle of August the heat became unbearable, the sticky heat that precedes a storm, but no storm came and the skies remained bitter blue. There seemed no freshness anywhere, day or night. Even Elboron began to look listless and feverish, and Morwen felt his brow a dozen times a day, and dosed him with bitter medicines till he wailed loudly in protest; but Eowyn seemed not to hear.

At last came a night so suffocating that I felt I would go mad. I lay on my solitary bed  exhausted but restless, in that state when reality blurs into waking dream. The moon shone through my window so brightly that it hurt my eyes, so that I got up and went to close the shutters, despite the heat. As I looked out the light was suddenly dimmed, and I saw that the stars had been blotted out from half the sky; and at the same moment I heard a growl of thunder, and the trees outside bent under a slap of wind. The weather was breaking at last.  

As the distant thunder died I realised that all other sounds were hushed; the night-creatures had taken refuge from the coming storm. Behind me, also, was a silence that shouted. Without looking in her room, I knew that Eowyn was not there. And if she was not, there was only one place where she could be.

I flung on a gown and hurried out, waving the sentries aside. Cold breaths of wind pawed me as I crossed the garden, and in the orchard the dead leaves rustled. She was there, bent over the grave, a white ghost, rocking to and fro and murmuring, ‘Forgive me! Forgive me!’ over and over again.

I did not go to her. I spoke from the gate. ‘Eowyn, it was not your fault. It was not your fault. Now come away out of the storm.’

She seemed not to hear me. She went on rocking.  Then the skies split over our heads and spilled blue lightning, and at last it began to rain, sharp angry rain that splattered in the dust.

‘Eowyn, come away!’

Still she took no notice. There was nothing else for it; I went and dragged her to her feet and pinioned her arms as her hands came up to claw me. She struggled wildly and I put forth my strength against her as I would never have thought to do against any woman.

The thunder crashed and I shouted over it, ‘Let Húrin go! Eowyn, let him go! Let him go!’ and began to drag her away. As we left the orchard the rain came down in a sudden savage flood, soaking us in an instant, and she ceased to struggle and fell against me. I lifted her - grief-wasted as she was, she was no great weight – and carried her towards the house, and though I could hear nothing but the roar of rain and thunder, I could feel her whole body shuddering with violent sobs.

I took her back to her room and would have left her on the bed while I called for a woman to help her off with her wet clothes, but she clung to me when I would have drawn back, and her lips fastened on mine; and then we tore off our wet things, and needed no others.

When I awoke in the morning, the air was cool and the sun was bright, and all the birds that had been silenced by the drought were shouting in celebration; and over their music was another one, because my wife was sitting at her window, combing her hair in the sunlight, and as she combed she sang, and when she felt my gaze upon her, she looked up and smiled.

* * *

It was some weeks later that she told me she had conceived again, though I think I already knew it. I studied her face for signs of fear, but there were none. We smiled at one another and kissed, and knew beyond any doubt that this time, it would be all right.

* * *

A few days after that I came upon Elboron in the corridor. He was wandering along, clutching the side of his head and making an extraordinary humming noise, like a swarm of warrior bees.

            ‘What’s the matter, senya?’

            He looked up at me with a gap-toothed grin.

            ‘Mother boxed my ear,’ he said, in a joyful tone which, a year earlier, would have puzzled me exceedingly. ‘She found me stealing sugar-drops – at least she said it was stealing – and boxed my ear, and said that if she found me so again, she’d chase me up the highest tree in Emyn Arnen.’ He seized my hand and swung on it ecstatically. ‘She did! She really did! She said it like herself, and then she laughed and told me to be off, and she let me keep one sugar-drop!’ He opened his small pink mouth to show me the fast-diminishing evidence. ‘Is everything going to be as it was before, now?’

            ‘Yes, my son, I really think it is,’ I said, and snatched him up and danced with him down the corridor and out into the garden, amidst the brightness of the new grass.