Appendix B: The King at the Door

The wall had been mended and the damage to the outbuildings for the most part repaired. There was to be no salvaging of the north byre, but the foundations for a new one had been laid. Scorched trees had been pruned or felled as their condition warranted, and the two toppled hives had been put right. On the day the letter arrived, life in the household of Grimbeorn son of Beorn had resumed much of its normal rhythm.

Only the very fringe of the battles had touched the fertile farmlands. The horde of orcs and mountain goblins had stormed the Old Ford, deeming (correctly) that the Carrock was too heavily fortified. They had marched by way of the Road, and only a few raiding parties had ventured North of it. That was fortunate, for most of the menfolk had ridden some days before to the aid of Brand son of Bain and the folk of Dale and the Lonely Mountain. Only the aged and the small boys had remained: even Urdbeorn and his friends had gone East. But hardy were the women of the Beornings, and they had not fled their homes or abandoned their villages.

In the Town at the Carrock, the womenfolk had held the walls stalwartly against all comers, and with it the river-crossing. On the other bank of Anduin there were fewer fortifications and more harm was done to chattel and property, but still there was little loss of life. Much thanks was owed to the outriders who had brought the call to arms from the mountains, ensuring that all knew the orcs were coming.

Grimbeorn’s lodge had been the chief refuge during the dark days. Old folk and children from the surrounding area had been housed in the house while the able-bodied women had stayed to defend their homes and farmholdings. Freya had seen to the care and feeding of the houseguests, while Clothilde directed the fortification of the low walls with a parapet of sharpened staves. And in the long hall, Una had organized a field infirmary where she and her grandmother had tended the wounded.

For four days the raiding parties had come, greedy for the last of winter’s provender and the well-fed and well-tended livestock of the Beornings. Much of both had already been moved to Grimbeorn’s barns and granaries, for the warnings had been timely. Still more were adequately defended by the women patrolling the countryside. They fought with bows and blades, with fire and farm implements. The small companies of orcs were poorly organized and easily overcome, but when the assaults had ceased all had felt weary relief.

Yet wise was the wife of Grimbeorn. At Eira’s command, vigilance was not relaxed nor the livestock removed from the safety of the walled compound. This was well, for although many days passed without event, it was only five days after the breaking of the seige of the Lonely Mountain that the rout of the Enemy reached them.

Most of the foe had fled East into the empty lands, but some tried to win their way back to the caves and crannies of the Misty Mountains. Orcs and scrawny goblins, wargs and wild men upon half-mad horses had come, most often in twos and threes but sometimes in small bands. It was these last that proved troublesome. They were desperate and they were ill-supplied: they fought with the ferocity of the hungry and of those with nothing left to lose. It was they who had breached the wall and laid waste to the cattle-byre.

The women and the older children drove them off. Harlbeorn with his bow was among those who held the gap, and Torbeorn fulfilled his dearest wish when a great bulbous spider scaled the vineyard rails to fall upon his short little sword. The dogs joined in the defence of their home, and even the bees swarmed forth to fight. They were the surest protection against the wargs, for the mad war-wolves feared them and fled before their concerted buzzing without even the need for stingers. For a day and a night the lodge was besieged but not taken, and the armies of the Free Peoples were close upon the heels of the foe.

Bardings and Beornings, Elves and Dwarves and woodmen: all mustered to cleanse Mirkwood of its filth. Many made straight for Dol Guldur, but others fought in the eaves of the forest or pursued those hoping to despoil the farmlands. Of these, the wounded made their way to Grimbeorn’s home and the extemporaneous house of healing: Men and Elves alike. Most of the Dwarves did not march so far westward, but Eira and Una did tend to two.

Through those days, grandmother and granddaughter had labored tirelessly, staunching wounds, salving burns and setting limbs. Una knew she did both of her teachers proud. She swiftly grew skilled at drawing arrows from ribs and shoulders, and she discovered that she could stitch riven flesh with far more skill than she plied on baby clothes. She had even assisted her grandmother in two amputations of gangrenous limbs, white-lipped but steadfast. By the time the tide abated she could change almost any sort of dressing in less than three minutes, much to the amazement of fourteen-year-old Ufrún, who was the chief waterbearer to the wounded.

The menfolk returned on the ides of April, after most of their folk had already come home to their homes and holdings. They were all blessedly alive, and only Randbeorn had taken any serious hurt – a wound to the thigh that left him limping ungainfully to the left. One of the Elven healers had tended it in the field, and his mother proclaimed the mending to be promising. For Una, the greatest change to be seen among the homecoming heroes was in her youngest uncle. Sigbeorn had gone to war a merry youth, and had returned a sober-eyed man well nigh as grave as his eldest brother.

Though he carried himself with a new confidence, eighteen-year-old Urdbeorn was much his old self. He fell quickly into the routine of wrangling the little ones again, and Una was privately relieved that her good-hearted brother did not seem as wounded in spirit as Sigbeorn. With Grimbeorn once more in the house, the family fell back into their regular rhythms again. This seemed to ease Sigbeorn’s heart, but still he was slow to smile and his laughter was seldom heard.

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He laughed on the day the letter came, however, and the sound brought a joy to Una’s heart that she could never have expected. Sigbeorn had always been more of an older brother than an uncle to her, being but a scant seven years her senior and always playful. When he came around the side of the stable to see the four riders, he threw back his head and laughed for joy: the big bear laugh of their kindred. Breaking into a run that rivaled the careening eagerness of the younger children, he came to catch up the lines of the dappled gelding with the feathered headstall.

‘Welcome home, sister!’ he cried delightedly. He looked like he wished to pluck Heidra down from the saddle, but he never would have dared it. The blood of Beorn flowed in her veins also, and she would have taken exception to such undignified treatment. She reached down instead to tousle his hair, much as Una might have done to Delbeorn.

‘You make it sound as if I’ve been gone for years, little cub!’ Heidra laughed in her turn, looking around at the crowd now gathering.

Most of the children had come running from their play, and now Una’s mother was there, dusting flour from her hands. Her father and Grimbeorn were coming from the direction of the smokehouse, their long measured strides perfectly matched. As Una drew near, Urdbeorn appeared along the same path his herd of followers had taken. He had two-year-old Inga on his shoulders, holding her fast with one hand while the other held Svala’s. She was walking with all the gravity of one soon to be bestowed with the honour of a third birthday, and Urdbeorn was taking tiny mincing steps so as not to outstrip her.

‘It’s been months and months,’ Otkala announced, marching between Heidra’s horse and Kvigir’s so that she could approach the two fat ponies. ‘Come down, Dryffa! I want to show you my new top!’

‘It’s a fine top!’ Delbeorn put in. ‘Harlbeorn made it, and it spins and spins and never stops!’

‘Don’t be silly!’ said Katrín primly. She was the same age as Otkala and Delbeorn, but she always seemed to affect an attitude of what she thought was vastly greater maturity. Una privately thought, and Aunt Clothilde sometimes whispered, that Katrín was just a little spoilt by her father and thus inclined to put on airs. With only two children in the house, it was to be expected. ‘Tops can’t spin forever: they have to stop sometimes.’

‘Otkala’s doesn’t,’ Delbeorn said stubbornly, thrusting out his chin.

‘Now don’t let’s fight already,’ Ufrún said quietly, coming forward to hold the reins so that Dryffa could climb off of her pony’s back. She did so quite capably, though not without a total disregard for the movement of her hems. Her undergown rucked up until it caught on the curve of her little bottom, leaving only her linen shift to cover her sturdy legs. Una suppressed a smile, knowing the despairing sigh Heidra would have offered if she had not had her back to the child.

She, too, was dismounting. At her side, Kvigir was doing the same. Una liked her uncle – the only one she had who was not a blood relation. He was sometimes impatient, and he did spoil Katrín and encourage her timid ways, but he was a good man. He had not ridden off to the aid of Dale, but not from cowardice. All through the days when the Town’s walls had been beset he had provided bread and honey-cakes to sustain the women and the old men defending them. From the evening talk before the great hearth, Una knew that he had done so out of his own stores and without payment. A baker was a prosperous man, but such generosity still represented a sacrifice.

He landed heavily, steady but not graceful. He had not grown up riding horses – had not, in fact, had much by way of comforts let alone luxuries as a child. Considering his poor upbringing, it was a marvel that he was not a miser – this too Clothilde would whisper ‘just between girls’ when neither the menfolk nor the children nor her mother-in-law could hear.

Una went to take his lines, but Sigbeorn beat her to it. He winked as he did so, and she very nearly cheered aloud. If she had known that Aunt Heidra would cure her little brother’s melancholy, Una would have ridden to fetch her weeks ago!

‘How’s Una, then?’ Uncle Kvigir asked, grinning but not drawing her into a squeezing hug as her other uncles would have done. ‘Lovely as ever: you’re all grown up!’

She laughed at this and tossed her dark hair. ‘It’s only been three months since you saw me last! How much could I have grown in such a short time?’

‘Not as much as my Svala-lass!’ Kvigir exclaimed as the toddling child and her gangly escort drew near. He crouched and clapped his hands on his knees before holding them out, and Svala came running with a happy cry. Seizing her and rising in one quick motion, Kvigir tossed her up into the air and caught her deftly. Svala screamed with laughter, kicking her plump little legs in delight. Her uncle swung her onto his hip and ruffled her downy curls. ‘That’s my girl! You’ll be riding a pony of your own in no time!’

‘ ‘Pringtime,’ Svala said, sucking contentedly on her fingers. She was well-spoken but had trouble with her sibilants, which made introducing herself a bit of a challenge.

‘What’s that, poppet?’ asked Kvigir.

‘She can ride a pony in springtime,’ Delbeorn translated with an older brother’s knowing nod. ‘Grandfather said.’

‘Where is Randbeorn?’ Heidra asked, helping Katrín down from her pony and smoothing the child’s headscarf before letting her run to join Halla. The two girls were soon conferring in low giggles.

‘He is here,’ a deep voice proclaimed, dry rather than boastful. Una turned to find her eldest uncle coming up with his new ponderous gait, leaning heavily upon the oaken cane that Sigbeorn had carved for him. ‘Welcome home, sister! Girls.’ He grinned lopsidedly at his brother by marriage. ‘So you’ve brought them ‘round at last! High time, I say.’

‘So do I,’ said Kvigir, returning the broad smile. He and Randbeorn shared a jesting sort of entente that seemed more enjoyable to them than to the rest of the family. No one else was ever certain where they stood with one another. There was some matter between them that had been caught up in Heidra’s courtship, but no one knew quite what it was and the two men had never told anyone. Even Heidra herself, so far as Una could tell, was in the dark. Still they got along in their own strange way, and it was always fascinating (if also at times infuriating) to watch.

‘I heard you’ve spilled your blood for the good of the land,’ Kvigir said. ‘I didn’t expect to see you listing.’

Randbeorn shrugged the shoulder not already taut with his weight upon the cane. ‘I’m told it lends me a certain cockeyed charm. My sister-daughters look well kept, and that’s all I ask of you.’

Kvigir laughed and tickled Svala before setting her down. ‘Run along, poppet!’ he said. ‘I shall help your uncle with the horses.’

‘Thank you,’ said Sigbeorn, with an earnest jerk of the chin. He had none of Randbeorn’s checkered history with the baker, much though he missed Heidra’s presence at the lodge. He was the most frequent visitor to the town for precisely that reason, but the mending of walls and the laying of cornerstones since his return from battle had left little time for calling. He gathered up one pony’s lines, and Kvigir the other. Together they strode off towards the stables with the four mounts clopping patiently behind.

Una’s father and grandfather had reached the assembly at last, even as the children began to disperse back to their play. Grimbeorn shook his head, grinning broadly. ‘Where are my two town kittens?’ he roared. ‘Who’s gone and spirited them away?’

With twin shrieks of merriment, Katrín and Dryffa came charging back. Grimbeorn squatted so that he could catch one in each arm for a great bear hug. Soon he was being showered with kisses and bombarded by tales of the fighting around the town, of the busy bakery, of new hair ribbons and the window-box posies.

Meanwhile Baldbeorn was greeting his sister. He took her hand and kissed her on the cheek, but said nothing. Una’s father was the quietest of the children of Grimbeorn, and he only spoke when he had something worth saying. Consequently when he did speak his words always had great weight to them.

‘Are you going to scold me for keeping away so long?’ asked Heidra with a defiant little toss of the head. When her brother said nothing, she flung her arms about his neck and held him close. ‘I feared you might be slain,’ she whispered. Only Una and Eira were standing near enough to hear, and neither gave any sign that they had. ‘Of all of you, you’re the one who would push on to the last.’

Baldbeorn shook his head slowly, petting her cheek with his thumb as he did his daughters’ when they came to him with their worries. ‘We came nowhere near the last,’ he said quietly. ‘The enemy routed, and we hunted them like mad foxes.’

‘Do you know what happened?’ asked Heidra. ‘All the talk in the Town is garbled and nonsensical: no one really knows just what went on, but there’s those that say that… that…’

She shuddered and hugged her eldest brother nearer. Una saw the fondness in her father’s eyes as he studied her troubled face.

‘That the Shadow in Mordor has been cast down,’ he finished for her. To the Beornings, Mordor was a word out of nightmares and tales of distant horrors. Una had heard all this before, for the men had returned with the tale. They had it second-hand from the folk of the Elven-King, whose southern kindred knew more of these matters than anyone in the North. ‘It is true, and because of it the fortress of horrors has been conquered and its masters are gone.’

‘Gone?’ Heidra breathed, scarcely able to believe it. Una had felt much the same way. The evil of Dol Guldur had always been far more real than the threat of Mordor, for it lay only a few hundred miles away and its influence was far-reaching. It was that hive of hatred that gave strength to the spiders of Mirkwood, and it was from there that the worst of the goblin raiders had always come.

‘Gone,’ Baldbeorn confirmed. ‘I do not understand it, for they were not slain, but they are gone and those wiser than I have promised that they shall never return.’

Heidra let out a heavy sigh, drawing back from her brother and blotting at eyes that had not looked tearful until that very moment. She smiled shakily. ‘And the forest?’ she asked.

‘It will be cleansed. It has already begun, and the Elves mean to make it the green and happy place that it was in the old tales,’ said Baldbeorn. ‘I would not have believed it possible if I had not seen the beginnings with my own eyes.’

Heidra smiled shakily. ‘I don’t know that I do believe it,’ she said. Then she looked and saw the two women, one aged and one only just in her first flower, standing near. ‘Oh, Mother, how foolish of me! Of course you’ll be wanting to talk!’ she said gaily, hurrying to embrace Eira. ‘I’ve missed you so. I’ve missed you all.’

‘There, now, that’s natural in a time of trouble and change,’ Eira soothed in her practical way. ‘Why don’t you come in and wash your face. Then you can sit out of the sun for a while and we can catch up on the children’s doings!’

They started in towards the house, arms about each other’s waists. Una paused a moment or two before following. Her father hung back, and went at last to the bench in the shade of the west wing of the house where Randbeorn was sitting with his lame leg stretched before him. Nothing was said as one brother settled beside the other. Both stared in companionable silence at the brightly painted shutters on the opposite leg of the house.

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With all the excitement of reunions and story-trading, nothing was said of the letter until the family was about to sit down to supper. Then Heidra produced it from her woollen satchel and presented it to Grimbeorn.

‘It came by boat,’ she said. ‘Up the river from Rauros Falls. The boatman said it was brought from Gondor, the great country of men at the river’s mouth.’

The children, chattering happily, neither heard nor would have cared if they had. Una, however, was interested. She could see that Urdbeorn was, too. He was down at the foot of the table, settling Svala with his usual good grace, and he looked up its length in surprise at these words. Gondor was another place out of the old tales, and the very thought of receiving a letter from there was like receiving one from the Moon.

Grimbeorn took the letter from his daughter, turning it thoughtfully in his hands. It was folded into a thick packet held closed by a large black seal. Una’s hands went on laying out spoons, but her eyes were on the letter. She could not quite see what was imprinted in the dark wax, but she could tell that it was very ornate. The writing upon the front of the missive was strange, too. Her grandfather’s name and title stood out boldly in the runes that she knew, but above it in a delicate sweep of arcs and downward strokes there was other writing that she could not read. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask if Grandfather could read them, but the look upon his face stopped her.

His expression was suddenly guarded, but not with fear. Una thought he looked like someone who had come to a sudden wonderful realization, but did not quite dare to believe it was true. Grimbeorn turned the letter again, looking from the seal to the writing, and his fingertips brushed over the words. For having come so far, the letter was in pristine condition. The corners were not crushed, nor the folds twisted. The heavy paper – not vellum or parchment, but costly and impossibly smooth paper – was free from water stains or smudges of dirt. It had been carried very carefully, almost with reverence. Una’s curiosity burned like a brand within her breast, but still she did not speak.

Like one in a trance, Grimbeorn reached to pull his chair back from the head of the table. He sat slowly, eyes still fixed upon the letter. He had turned it again, and was studying the seal. Just then Eira came into the hall with the last platter of food. She laid it out deftly, frowning at her husband.

‘What have you got there? It isn’t going to bite you.’ She motioned to Kvigir that he should sit, taking the place across from Randbeorn. Aunt Heidra was already in her customary seat at her second brother’s side. Some things never changed in the lodge of Grimbeorn, whatever transpired in the wider world. ‘Where did it come from? Dale?’

‘Gondor,’ said Grimbeorn. His voice held the same awed, protective disbelief as his eyes. He wafted a distracted hand. ‘Sit. Sit and eat, my children. Leave me peace to read it.’

It was one of the longest meals Una had ever sat through. The children kept up their usual happy banter, made all the louder and more eager by the addition of two voices. Up at the top of the table, however, an uneasy hush lay over the diners. Some soft words were exchanged, but they had the stilted feeling of conversation made for conversation’s sake. No one neglected their food but Grimbeorn, for all had healthful appetites – some from work, others from play, and others still from a ten-mile ride in the bright spring sunshine. Yet there was a weight of apprehension on the air.

Grimbeorn read the letter through once, and then immediately did so again. Then for a while he sat staring at it with unseeing eyes with his forearm on the chair’s rest. Then he folded up the lower flap to bring the seal back into his sight, and he ran his thumb over the sunken ridges of the imprint. Then again he read the letter, very slowly this time and with eyes that travelled back over certain passages. At last he folded it and set it beside his untouched plate. He took his cup and drank deeply of his mead, a pensive but inscrutable expression upon his lined face. After that he fell to stroking his grey-streaked beard as he stared off into nothingness somewhere just above Torbeorn’s head.

At last Aunt Clothilde made to rise, intending to fetch the rich seed cake that had been prepared as a special treat to celebrate the reuniting of the entire family. Then Grimbeorn’s eyes came back into focus and he raised a staying hand.

‘Peace, daughter,’ he said, his voice deep and solemn and yet somehow joyous. ‘The sweet can wait.’

‘No!’ declared little Inga. She knew several dozen words perfectly well, but that was her very favourite.

‘Yes, little butterfly,’ said Grimbeorn, looking gravely at her and speaking as he might have done to her father. Awed by his tone, Inga’s eyes grew very wide and she popped her fingers into her mouth in imitation of Svala.

‘What is it, Grandfather?’ Una asked at last, unable to restrain herself any longer. She did not know whether to be frightened or elated, and nothing about Grimbeorn’s countenance told her which was right. ‘Is it… what is it?’

‘It is indeed from Gondor,’ said Grimbeorn, grave eyes turning upon his daughter. Heidra’s cheeks were very white, and she was studying him with the same uncertain solemnity that Una felt herself. ‘It is a letter from the King.’

‘There are no kings in Gondor!’ Torbeorn said, rather superciliously. At ten he could not be expected to be attuned to the moods of the adults as children somewhat older or younger were. He spoke as though this were any ordinary conversation to which he might add his ounce of knowledge. ‘The kings are all dead and gone, and the Steward rules instead. The old Steward invited men from everywhere to come and fight for him against the orcs, but that was years and years ago before Father was born.’ He frowned. ‘I wish they still did that. I want to go.’

‘There is a King in Gondor now,’ Grimbeorn said, almost as though the interruption had not happened. He looked down one side of the table and up the other. All eyes were fixed on him now, and even the little ones were silent. Torbeorn caught onto the general hush at last, and shifted uncomfortably on his stool.

‘There is a King in Gondor, and he has sent me his greetings. Emissaries are coming to make a formal bond between our folk and the Men of the South,’ said Grimbeorn; ‘but the King has sent this letter as a friend.’

‘You’re a friend of a King?’ asked Delbeorn eagerly.

‘Of course he is!’ hissed Katrín. ‘King Brand!’

‘No, child: this is another King, far mightier than Brand, may his spirit find rest,’ said Grandfather. He spoke quietly, but his voice resounded through the room. Even the hounds were listening, ears perked. ‘This is the King of the West, of the ancient line of Elendil who was High King over all the land many thousands of years ago.’

It was another name out of legend. The children’s eyes grew wider, and Una felt her heart hammering. At the end of all such stories was the promise that one day Elendil’s Heir would come again and bring a Golden Age, but that was just something they put into tales to spark the imagination – wasn’t it?

‘This King, Elessar he writes that he is named, had a great part in casting down the Shadow,’ Grimbeorn went on. ‘He writes… nay, that is a tale for another time. Children of the Line of Beorn, the King has come again, and he is known to you. He is Aragorn son of Arathorn, whose stories you still beg of Sigbeorn on rainy nights.’

Una’s breath caught in her throat, and she saw her mother’s lips part in silent astonishment. The little ones remembered Lord Aragorn for his tales and for something or other that he had taught them about mending boots, but to the older members of the household he had one great legacy. He was the man who had come to them in rags and gone forth with their humble gifts, only to return and repay their kindness with Freya’s very life.

His visits of two years’ past were hallowed in their memories, and perhaps in Una’s most of all. She remembered how he had cared for her mother, so gentle and so capable and so patient with the ways of the Beornings. Not only had he stemmed the bleeding, but he had allowed Freya her dignity throughout. His quiet ways and his calming voice had been Una’s own model in her care of the wounded during the battles. Aragorn son of Arathorn, Lord of the West, stood strong in her memory. Now he was King?

‘He’s a king?’ asked Halla, puzzled and echoing Una’s own question. ‘But he was all raggedy and patchy, and he didn’t have a crown.’

‘He has a crown now,’ said Grimbeorn. And Eira chided; ‘Clothes make not the man, Halla. Sometimes it is only the great among us who have the courage to venture out in tatters for the sake of duty.’

Halla shook her head. ‘But he was hungry. A King shouldn’t be hungry. And he had that ugly thing, with the great big eyes.’

‘He stank,’ said Delbeorn frankly. Then realizing his words might be misconstrued, added; ‘The ugly thing, not the King.’

Otkala giggled, hiding her mouth with her hands. From below her, Svala piped up; ‘What iff a King?’

‘A great leader of men,’ said Grimbeorn. ‘Greater than I, greater even than Beorn.’

Svala’s eyes were now as round as saucers. No one loomed so large in her imagination as her legendary great-grandsire. ‘Do I know him?’ she asked.

‘He knows you,’ her grandfather assured her, lips curling at last into a small, fond smile. ‘You were just a babe when he came to us, but he held you and he hummed for you.’

‘The ugly thing tried to pinch her!’ Torbeorn remembered, snapping his fingers. ‘Lord Aragorn scooped her up so he couldn’t do it!’

That memory Una had forgotten. Now she was visited with the uneasy certainty she had felt at the time: that the tall, sad-eyed stranger who had lunged on frostnipped feet to catch the baby had feared his peculiar companion would do much, much worse than pinch Svala.

The little girl in question looked anything but aghast. She puffed out her chest importantly. ‘The King ‘cooped me up!’ she said with pride.

‘Just so,’ said Grimbeorn.

Aunt Heidra was frowning, not quite believing all she had just heard. ‘The King of Gondor bided here?’ she asked. ‘Two years past, you said.’

‘Indeed he did,’ said Grandmother. ‘Do you remember that dreadful cold snap we had the month before Inga was born? Right on the brink of spring, days of deep, deadly cold?’

Heidra nodded. ‘We had a blizzard as well, though I’m not sure it crossed the river.’ She smiled down the table at her daughters. ‘The girls were shut up inside for three days, and I thought we’d all go mad!’

‘Well, he came to us in the midst of the cold,’ Eira went on. Her husband had gone back to his pensive silence, but everyone else was listening. Even the children of the house, who had heard the story before, had rapt eyes on their grandmother. It all seemed so much more magical now, knowing what they did. ‘He was indeed raggedy and patchy, as Halla said. Poor man, his clothes were so rent with long wear that it was a wonder he hadn’t frozen long before he reached us. He wasn’t dressed for the weather at all: no cap, no mittens, not even a cloak. He wore a blanket ‘round his shoulders instead. And the thing he had with him…’

She shrugged helplessly, not knowing how to describe the creature. Heidra was obviously more interested in Lord Aragorn than in his strange companion, but to Una’s surprise Uncle Kvigir cut in.

‘What sort of a thing?’ he asked sharply. ‘An animal? A dog?’

‘I thought so too, at first,’ said Randbeorn. ‘But no. It had the body of a man, more or less, but far smaller – smaller even than a dwarf, and not so short in the limbs. Its skin was discoloured, though not from the cold, and it was very thin and wasted.’

‘Even thinner than Lord Aragorn,’ Halla agreed with a frank little nod of the head. Una glanced towards her, remembering eyes hollowed with hunger and arms so lean that the ropes of powerful muscle stood out like cords.

‘Lank hair?’ said Kvigir hoarsely. ‘Long, grasping hands? Nearly naked despite the weather?’

‘And he stank!’ Delbeorn agreed. Again Otkala giggled, joined this time by Dryffa and Svala. Katrín, however, was looking up the table at her father with wide, frightened eyes. Una opened her mouth to speak to her young cousin, but her uncle went on.

‘That man, with the twisted little companion and the blanket on his shoulders. That… that was the King?’ he choked.

His tone brought Una’s eyes back up towards the top of the table. What she saw astonished her. Kvigir’s ordinarily florid face was ashen, and his throat bobbed beneath his bushy beard as if he was swallowing back a lump of sickness. His hands were curled into uneasy fists and he was leaning stiffly back in his chair as if preparing to push back from the table and flee.

‘Yes,’ said Freya, her voice soft with reverence. ‘He returned after Inga’s birth and he saved me.’

‘Have you met him, then?’ asked Randbeorn, frowning at his brother-in-law. ‘You saw him, surely, if you know what the little wretch looked like.’

‘I did…’ said Kvigir. Down the table, Katrín shuddered. ‘I… I saw him in the village on the day after the blizzard passed.’

‘That’s so!’ Sigbeorn exclaimed, a smile of recollection as bright as a jewel on his careworn face. ‘I came across him in the square that day. I didn’t know him then, the more fool me, but he asked after food and I sent him along to you for some bread. He didn’t want to join me at the inn.’

Eira’s gaze turned sharply to her youngest son. ‘You should have insisted!’ she declared. ‘The poor man was near frozen when he came to us, and you left him at the ferry as well!’

‘I couldn’t have known he was coming here,’ said Sigbeorn patiently. He had gone through this lecture before, on the day Lord Aragorn had departed for Mirkwood. ‘He didn’t tell me anything of himself, only said he was hungry and asked where he might find food. On the ferry he say not a word. I certainly couldn’t have guessed he was the Lord of the West. Apart from the rags and the shrivelled little thing, he was dreadfully far from home.’

‘I could not have guessed, either,’ said Kvigir hollowly. Dismay was high in his eyes and his lips moved numbly. ‘I thought he was just… he was so guarded with his name, I thought… I mean, an arrogant beggar’s the worst sort of… and in dark times you can’t ever really know what sort of a man... and that horrid little thing frightened Katrín.’

A little yelp from the far end of the table told Una that Katrín remembered the creature all too well. She pushed back her chair and beckoned to her young cousin, who came running and climbed into Una’s lap. At seven she was an unwieldy load, but Una hugged her close.

‘It tried to pinch Svala?’ Katrín whispered anxiously. Una petted her head and hushed her, once more intent upon her uncle and trying to make sense of his disjointed words.

Heidra had no such difficulty. She was accustomed to Kvigir’s ways, and likely read his face more clearly than his tongue. Her black brows knit together, and she had risen very straight in her chair with the regally squared shoulders of a scion of Beorn the Skin-changer.

‘Do you mean to tell me, husband,’ she said, very clearly and as cold as the wind on that bitter day; ‘that Sigbeorn sent a hungry man to our door for bread, and you turned him away?’

Kvigir’s jaw dropped helplessly as he looked at her. All eyes were on him now, save Inga’s. She had her fingers in the pool of honey left on the platter that had been heaped with cakes, and she was drawing swirling shapes in it.

Now it was Grandmother who spoke, her voice far gentler than her daughter’s but still dismayed. ‘Oh, my lad, you didn’t turn him away?’ she breathed. ‘He was fairly starved when he reached us, and half-frozen.’

‘He came begging,’ Kvigir protested feebly. ‘When I asked his name he refused to speak it, and I thought… even so I could have found a crust to spare if that thing hadn’t frightened Katrín. In dark times a man must care first for his children.’

Una was surprised when it was her mother, not Heidra’s, who spoke to this. Freya planted the palm not occupied in holding Inga on her lap; it came down upon the table with a slap that sent the jars of mead rattling.

‘You cannot tell me that you believed Lord Aragorn might harm your daughter!’ she cried. ‘So gentle a man I have never known, and so patient with children that he offered stories instead of dismissal when he had hardly the strength to stand!’

Kvigir looked at her in astonishment. Freya was ordinarily calm and collected, especially at board. Una often envied her mother’s poise, being herself much bolder and less graceful. The sharpness of her voice now was startling to everyone but Eira, who nodded stoutly in agreement, and Grimbeorn, who was seldom surprised by anything.

‘Not he, not really,’ stammered Kvigir. ‘I mean, he did not look the reputable sort, with those rough clothes and his grim face. He had a great long knife… but no.’ He closed his eyes and jerked his head as if trying to convince himself. ‘No, it was the little thing. It frightened Katrín, and when Dryffa stuck out her tongue at it I thought…’

‘And a great big man like you could not overpower such a shrunken creature?’ Randbeorn said disdainfully. ‘I did not take you for a coward.’

‘I trusted you to feed him!’ Sigbeorn exclaimed indignantly. ‘He asked where he might find a little food, and I told him you were the one he wanted. I thought – you’re always so generous with the poor folk, I was sure you would help him!’

‘To turn any man away on such a day!’ cried Heidra. ‘What was wrong in your head, husband? Such a shameful—’

‘Peace.’ It was Baldbeorn who spoke, and his deep, steady voice comforted Una as nothing else could. He waited until his siblings were still, and looked to each of them in turn before speaking again. ‘We cannot judge Kvigir’s choices by what we know now. Our father recognized Aragorn from the first. If he had not would we have brought him into the hall, or offered shelter in the stables instead? Randbeorn, you did not trust in his worth at first, but took him for a careless traveller instead of a mighty one brought low by misfortune and malice. And you, Sigbeorn. You thought him beneath your notice as well, or you would have offered more than simple courtesy. Why did you not take him with you to the inn, as our mother has said? Why did you not feed him yourself, if you knew he was hungry? As for you, sister, have you never scorned a man for his rags and dirty hands? Not even once?’

Aunt Heidra flushed crimson and her eyes dropped to her lap as if she could bear neither her brother’s gaze nor her husband’s pained expression. At first Una was bewildered, but when Kvigir too cast away his eyes she thought she understood. She was too young to know the particulars of their courtship, but perhaps at first Heidra had spurned him?

‘Precisely,’ said Father, firm and grave. ‘As for Kvigir’s fear that the creature might have hurt Katrín, that is in no way unreasonable. Lord Aragorn himself had like fears. It was those that drove him to leave us so swiftly despite his poor condition: he believed Svala had narrowly escaped grave harm.’

He let this hang upon the air for the span of three breaths – three of Una’s breaths, anyhow. Uncle Kvigir’s chest was heaving as if he had run a hard mile. He still had a hunted look in his eyes. Among the adults, if at nineteen his eldest niece was yet too young to be counted, only Grimbeorn and Clothilde had not spoken to his folly.

‘He might have given them bread and sent them off!’ cried Heidra. ‘To drive any pauper from the door when we have so much is hateful!’

Kvigir’s face fell in agony at his wife’s accusations. ‘My love, I…’

‘You know what it is to be hungry!’ she cried. ‘How often you’ve said to me that we must be giving to those who have nothing… how diligently you provide for Einarr’s grandsons… what could you have been thinking?’

‘He was a stranger, not one of our folk,’ Kvigir protested hopelessly. ‘He was foul-smelling and insolent. And that creature…’ He scowled deeply. ‘I heard him out,’ he said. ‘I offered bread in trade for his tale, and he would not give it. I gave him more courtesy than was given to me in my turn, and with less cause.’

Now Eira sighed and reached across the table and past her elder sons to pat the baker’s clenched fist. ‘At our door you were always welcomed with kindness, my lad. I had hoped it was that you would remember, and not the other.’

Kvigir looked at her, his eyes now plaintive and helpless. ‘I do remember, Mother Eira,’ he said softly. ‘It has troubled me, what I have done – on cold days most of all. He asked my pardon in the end, after I denied him. He left with a blessing on my house, instead of curses. I knew then I had done wrong, but I was not bold enough to mend it.’

Solemnly Grimbeorn nodded. ‘Denied his poor alms, but departing with a blessing: that is the Lord Aragorn’s nature. No one could be a more worthy King.’ He looked at his children: Baldbeorn with his grave face unchanged, Randbeorn torn between irritation and grudging sympathy, Heidra with the colour still high in her cheeks but kinder eyes now for her husband, and Sigbeorn as thoughtful as his sire had been while poring over the letter.

‘It seems he was given disparate treatment by our many hands: disdain from some, from others disinterest, from still others eager fascination, and from others all the care and kindness we have to offer. The first two he forgave, and of the last he had the greatest need. Yet it was the third, I think, that gave him the most joy.’ Grimbeorn looked down the table at his grandchildren and smiled. ‘The wisest of us all are the youngest, for they made him welcome as an honoured guest and it was they who brought from him his smile.’ He picked up the letter and brandished it aloft. ‘He remembers you with love, children, and each by name: from Ufrún and her eggs to tiny Inga, who was but a week born when he saw her.’

At the sound of her name, Inga looked up and smiled so that her little pearl teeth glistened. Then she fell happily to licking her sticky fingers. Grimbeorn planted one foot firmly, and with his strong leg pushed his chair back from the table. He rose. ‘Let us gather by the fire, and I shall read the King’s words. They are for all of us, whom he calls dear friends. When the ambassadors come, they will great me as a lord of my folk. Then I shall send grand words of praise, pledges of fealty, and kingly gifts, and there shall be much ceremony and lofty talk, but this letter is for us. Come, and let us share it as a family.’

He drew his chair near the hearth and sat. Eagerly the children scrambled, the small ones first of all, to gather around his feet. Of the grown folk, Baldbeorn rose first and held his arm out to Freya. She stood, eyes shining with joy and wonder. He who had saved her from death was King, and in her mother’s eyes Una could see that the Golden Age of the old stories had indeed come, though it was only beginning. She let Katrín slide off her lap.

‘Go on and sit by Dryffa,’ she whispered. ‘Afterwards I shall tell you both the tale of how the King came to our door!’

Katrín smiled eagerly, her fear of the creature called Gollum forgotten. She hurried off to join the throng, falling into step next to Urdbeorn and taking his strong hand. The men were drawing up chairs for their wives, so that they too might join the circle before the head of the family: Father for Mother, Randbeorn for Clothilde, and Kvigir for Heidra. Sigbeorn shifted his chair so that he was facing his father, but remained where he was with one arm resting lazily upon the table. He looked more like his old self than he had in all the weeks since his return. At last Una got to her feet, just as her grandmother came down the table to fetch her.

‘Well, child, what do you make of that?’ Eira asked. ‘You have bathed the feet of a King, and learned much of healing from his example. That makes you his handmaid, of sorts. Does the honour please you?’

Una considered. She thought of the wayworn vagabond who had scarcely the strength to lift his head and yet bore patiently the painful tending of his frozen limbs. She remembered how the lines of his face had softened in slumber as he lay bundled upon a pallet by the hearth. She called to mind his delight in the children, and his abashed amusement at her flirtatious teasing on the morning he strode out into the cold again. Clearest of all she saw the competent compassion in his eyes as he pressed upon her mother’s belly to stem the bleeding in her womb. And the clear-eyed resolve with which he had ridden westward in the company of the wizard, on towards whatever great deeds he had done in the casting down of the Shadow.

‘It is not the honour that pleases me. Be he King or wanderer, it is well to serve one who himself so tirelessly serves,’ Una answered, and she moved to take her place at her grandfather’s feet. She did not see her grandmother’s slow, proud smile.

metta