The moon child

Eowyn

After I lost Hurin, I think I was out of my mind for a while. What I did or said during that time I can scarcely remember. Even Faramir ceased to be quite real to me, and I repelled any comfort he offered even while something at the back of my mind wept and called frantically for him. I am ashamed now to think that I did nothing to comfort him in his grief, was indeed not aware of it, only of my own. I am sure many men so afflicted would have been driven to seek comfort – and much more – elsewhere, and I know that many other women would have been only too pleased to give it. I know, too, that he would never have sought it, or taken it if it was offered. I never thanked him for it; but then he never expected thanks for being what he was.

It seems strange – it seemed strange at the time – that when I realised I had conceived again I felt no fear, only happiness. It was as if the child spoke to me from the beginning, reassuring me. Begotten in grief and storm, she was all serenity and content. I was never sick or weary with her, as I had been with the other two, and as she grew she lay quiet and contented in the womb, only stirring occasionally to show me all was well with her.

It was the same when she was born, on an April night when the moon shone so bright you could almost see colours. She caused me as little pain as a child can, and coming so swiftly and gladly into the world, she was beautiful from the beginning, all black and silver like the true child of Gondor that she was. They laid her warm with life on my breast, and the moon smiled on her and spread his golden cloak over her, as a sign that he took her for his own.

When Faramir came in I held her out to him and he took her fearlessly, knowing by now how to handle a babe. (His expression of mingled triumph and terror when he first held Elboron made me laugh out loud; but perhaps I would never have loved him so dearly if I had not been able, now and again, to laugh at him.) He stood for a long while in the moonlight with his daughter in his arms, looking into her face, and when he turned to me again, I realised that he was not the same man as he had been when he came into the room.

            ‘Are you content?’ I asked him.

            He at beside me and took my hand and kissed it, the baby still held in the crook of his arm. ‘Sweetheart, it is more than that. I have no words to tell you what you have given me tonight. My Fíriel … With her I am…’ he hesitated for a word, something he seldom did for he was a master of words, but I know now that there were no words for what he was trying to say. ‘I am … complete. This is the fulfilment of everything I ever was. There is no more to be done.’ I was puzzled, but pleased that he was pleased; I did not know, then, what a great matter we had begun between us. Seeing my eyelids begin to droop, he said, ‘I must let you sleep now, my love.’ He got up.

            ‘Before you go, my lord,’ I chided him, ‘give me the babe.’

            He started, as if he had forgotten that he held her at all, or rather, forgotten that she was not a part of him; then he returned the child to my arms, and as he did so she gave a whimper of protest.

            ‘I will come soon again,’ he promised, speaking not to me but to the child, and softly went out.

All the time I lay abed, which was not for long for there was no need, Ithilien went wild with rejoicing, and we could hear the bells ringing even in the City. We were showered with gifts and congratulations as we had not been even when Elboron was born, because Gondor had taken our earlier grief to its heart. We had taken Elboron to the City to present him to the King, but for Fíriel the King and Queen came to us, in all their splendour, and took her under their special protection, almost as if she were a child of their own. When Fíriel was three days old Legolas of the elves came to us, appearing unexpectedly in the evening as he always did, and kissed and blessed Fíriel and gave me two gifts to keep for her, a coronet set with gems and a length of fine silken stuff which he said was for her wedding gown. I laughed and said it was a little early to think of my daughter’s wedding day, but Legolas shook his head and said that the time would come before we looked for it. I put the gifts away very carefully, but as the busy years went by I very nearly, but never quite, forgot about them.

Fíriel thrived from the first, but her quietness in the womb proved to have been a little misleading once she had come among us, for there was no doubt she was passionate. If anything displeased her she would roar more heartily than Elboron ever had, though as soon as she had what she wanted she would at once be quiet again. I soon realised that apart from food, which every baby roars for, there was usually only one thing that Fíriel wanted, and that was her father. As soon as he was near her cries would subside, and as soon as he took her up there would be nothing but contented silence. When she learned to smile, she smiled first for him, and thereafter seldom for anyone else. As soon as her eyes had learned to see, they looked always for him.

As for Faramir, he was never without her if by any means he could be with her, and if they were apart, and she was in any kind of distress, he would be uneasy until he could come to her. Of course any father would want to comfort his own child in distress, and for a long time I did not realise the closeness of their communion, or the fact that it worked both ways – not until one morning when Fíriel suddenly woke out of a peaceful sleep and began to howl, and continued to howl hour after hour, refusing all comfort, until Morwen and I were almost frantic with worry. In the mid-afternoon a message came that Faramir had been hurt: his war-horse in training – a great, ugly, evil-tempered brute, a disgrace to Rohan whence it came, to which my husband was inexplicably devoted – had tried to savage a groom, and in rescuing the groom Faramir had caught a glancing blow from one of the beast’s hooves that had broken his collar bone. The hurt was not serious, but it was painful, and when he came home we had to set the bone, and that was painful again.

Fíriel, who had quietened a little when her father arrived home, howled steadily throughout the operation and was only soothed when Faramir took her up, somewhat awkwardly, in his sound arm, upon which she immediately smiled and went to sleep. It was then that I realised why Faramir had said that Fíriel’s birth had made him complete. They were like a single soul in two bodies, and so they always have been and always will be. It is their great bliss and also their great agony. 

This communion was their great secret, and all their lives together they have worked to keep it, so that only I and Elboron and one or two others know anything of it. Have I ever been jealous that my husband should be so part and parcel of another woman, even if she is my own daughter? I can honestly say that I have not. As I said once to Elboron, on one of the rare occasions when he sulked and thought himself passed over, Faramir does not love the rest of us any the less because he loves Fíriel more. It is not by their choice that they are as they are; it is their fate to be so. You might as well chide the Sun for setting in the west, or a river for flowing towards the sea.