2. Still Life
“I don’t think I shall ever marry,” he told his sister Irien when he was younger. He had seen her courtship, borne it silent witness from afar. Irien was unsentimental, and Denethor felt a kinship other than blood with her, a closeness in the dispassionate way she looked at things.
They should have had little in common, he would think, if thinking of such things had ever occurred to him. He was the Steward’s heir, his path predestined from birth. The knowledge of his own future filled him, had comforted him in grey days of his youth. His sister Meneleth was the eldest, Celebwen the youngest; they had their own peculiar wisdom too, the secret lore of those who begin, and those who end. But Irien was in the middle, neither fish nor fowl, a vessel left adrift with no know destination.
She knew of her own destiny, however. She had told him of it when they were both young and he had kept himself awake to keep her company. She prophesised not as a dreamer, but as a general foreseeing a battle. He shared her seriousness, the way she looked at life with no self-deceit. Their joint harshness made them doubly siblings.
“Oh, but you shall have to,” she said. Outside, smudges of night were falling. “The Steward needs an heir, after all.”
He snapped his book shut. Irien was sitting on the quilt-covered bed, an almost-married woman. He was aware of her body, under the heavy dress. How could he explain to her that it was these pages that mattered to him, that he cared not for the thought of the flesh, warm and naked on the wool?
“It does not have to be an heir of his own body,” he said. “There were those succeeded by their nephews.”
“But why should you not marry?” she asked. She was rubbing her naked ankle now, her white fingers working to and fro. “You are very young still, and there is no lack of suitable ladies in Gondor. Or elsewhere,” she added.
He was silent for a moment. The word suitable was hovering in front of him like a wasp. There were suitable ladies, ladies he met, ladies his father and mother made sure he met. They had the right lineages and qualities, but beneath their impeccable manners, their polished demeanour, he could see the brutal mechanism of lust, leaving him indifferent and cold.
“Yes,” he said, and returned to his book as to a shield. “But in truth, I find it all very pointless.”
“Marriage, you mean?”
He flipped a page over, consumed in the black tendrils of letters. “I can hardly think of anything that I would wish to do in a marriage that I cannot do with a friend, or a sister.”
Her laughter was unkind. “I am certain you can think of something.”
“I can scarcely find any interest in such a thing,” he said calmly, reading throughout his confessional.
He heard the rustle of her dress, the note of surprise in her voice when she spoke. “Truthfully?” He hoped she wasn’t going to be lewd next, resorting to cheerful vulgarity as a refuge from his oddity. She did not. She was the Steward’s daughter, and what was more she was Irien.
“Do you mean to say, then, that you would prefer not to bed women but rather—”
He looked up at her sharply. “No, you mistake my meaning.” His tone was growing querulous, as it always did in those rare occasions when he had to expose some intimacy. It was only the sisterness of her that pushed him forward, the moist bond of blood and memory. Her eyes were dark and attentive. “I certainly have no wish whatsoever to… to lie with a man. It is just that I have little wish to lie with a woman either.”
He fell silent, leaving her to do with his revelation as she wished. She propped her chin on her raised knees before she spoke again, her voice practical. “Healers are discreet, brother. I am certain you can find one that is well-versed in such matters. You can hardly be the first man to suffer from such an ailment. Nor, unfortunately, the last,” she added.
He frowned a little. “What do you mean?” he asked, knowing the answer and dreading it.
She slid her legs back down, her bare feet hunting for her dress slippers like blind dogs. “Well, if your body does not respond…”
She did not blush, but he did, a little. “I have no ailment of the body,” he snapped. “Rest assured that all is perfectly well.”
“How do you know?” she asked, and then cast him a wizened glance. “Oh. I see.”
He blushed more deeply and turned another page of his book, his brow furrowing. He wanted her out of his bedchamber all of a sudden, defensive in the face of her shameful knowledge.
“Then why do you say you have no wish to lie with a woman? Is it that you think no woman is good enough?” He turned his face back to hers; she was smiling grimly. “Or is it the only person worthy of the Steward’s Heir is the Steward’s Heir himself?”
He straightened in his chair. The light was growing too dim for him to read. Soon he’d have to light more candles, and they would fill the still air with the smell of molten beeswax. “Can we not speak of aught else? I hardly wish to flee from the company of most women. I merely have no interest in bedding one. Do you have to question me about it all night?” His voice was rising, defensive.
Irien shrugged her shoulders, her face smoothing. “It was only in jest.” She paused. “I questioned it because I found it odd. I apologise, I should not subject you to an interrogation. Though others most likely will,” she added.
“It is none of their concern,” he said, with the anger of youth, though inwardly he was slightly mollified.
It was their concern, however. It seemed to be everybody’s concern. It was his mother’s concern, as he persisted in frustrating her intentions. Her disappointment, like her orders, was oblique but evident. She did not understand why he shunned the alliances she so diligently crafted. It was his father’s concern, and Ecthelion called him aside discreetly one day and asked him Irien’s shameful question. Denethor answered in the same testy manner and walked away as soon as he was allowed to. He tensed as he pondered what was judged worse, to want to bed another man or to want to bed no-one at all.
Why could they not see how dreadful it all was, he thought, lying on the clean expanses of his bed. Irien had come into his room once, like a silvery ghost, to tell him of the man she had lain with, a confession bursting through her skin. She had whispered it in the dark, to the brother she knew would not betray her. Outside the night had been hung with rain clouds.
It all sounds so pointless, he had wanted to say at the time. He could not think of his sister, his sharp, unsentimental sister, thinking with her flesh alone, her selfhood reduced to sweat and thrusts in exchange for a few ounces of pleasure. What was there in such urges that was so different from those of two dogs in the street obeying the blind wants of their bodies?
What was there to it that seemed to fascinate people so, that they wished to obliterate their selves in its mindless abyss of wants?
“Do you still have no wish to get married?” Irien asked when she came to see him one day, walking with him through the sparse gardens of the Citadel, a weak sun glinting off the silver netting in her hair.
“As much wish as ever,” he said, fallen leaves crackling beneath his boots. There was a mischievous glint to his black eyes. “Which is to say, none at all. Married life suits you, however.”
“Thank you,” she said, light pooling on her sable dress. “We try to keep each other happy. Or at least content.” She adjusted her lacy shawl.
“You were not without justification, however,” he added, looking over her shoulder.
She stood riding crop straight, tall and dry. “How so?” A brown curl was unravelling behind her left ear.
“You were right about the questioning,” he said, and gestured towards a marble bench, its surface slick in the cold Spring air. “Will you sit with me for a moment?”
They settled down, Irien gathering the folds of her dress in a ringed hand. “You cannot blame them for thinking about you. They want normalcy. They want to have at least one certainty, something straightforward. They are certainly not getting any of that from yonder land.” She nodded softly towards the East. “If you had children yourself, would you not wonder if they refused to do what they were expected to? What you expected them to?” She had a little daughter already. She had begun to learn the secret language of parents, its words of anticipation.
“I would not,” he said, certain, almost huffy. “Not if they had good reasons. Besides, Father is certainly not as concerned as you imply.”
She pressed her pale lips together before answering. “Do you think he is indifferent?”
In the tree above them, robins were singing amidst the dewy leaves.
“Hardly,” he said with a bitter dash of humour, one hand resting on his thigh. “It is merely that he mistakes me for what I am not, and therefore he is more inclined to raise others higher in his esteem.” He brushed an invisible piece of lint from his leggings. “Sometime I wonder if these worries about who succeeds to the Stewardship will not prove to be moot after all,” he added matter-of-factly.
“I doubt it,” Irien said in a harsh tone, pale shawl pooling around her arms.
He let out a derisive snort. “It is long since you have seen the Steward of Gondor, his beloved Thorongil and Mithrandir the Grey Puppet-Master, thick as plotters. Or like young children, laughing behind their hands and imagining no one notices.”
His sister sighed. “I see someone is going to have to play the peacemaker.”
“No need to trouble yourself,” he said with a stoic grin. “Let me reach the day in which I have to take the White Rod and swear the Steward’s Oath, and then we shall see who has fealty diminished.”
Irien seemed amused. “In defeat malice, in victory revenge, brother?” she asked, a hand beneath her inquisitive chin.
He gave her a ghost of a smile. “Hardly malice, do you not agree? You asked me about the duty of one’s children. Does it not work the other way around too, with those in command having to answer to those who are subject to it?” He paused for a moment. “You are smirking, sister.” His tone was not wholly unkind.
“Am I?” She was playing, absent-minding, with one of her locks, twirling the hair in her fingers. “Well, how about a plain statement? The man we are discussing is rather well-known and well-liked. Would you think it wise to act openly against him? Would it not turn favour against you?”
“Let them turn if they want to,” he snapped. “I am not for turning like some flimsy weathervane, I am for doing what I know to be right for Gondor.”
Irien’s eyes were sparkling. “Whether Gondor wants to or not.”
He placed his entwined hands on his knees. “Not all people are wise,” he said. “To change the matter entirely, sister, I may not be wholly adverse to the idea of marriage after all.”
“Indeed?” Her eyebrows rose slightly. “And who may have made you change your opinion?”
“Nothing of consequence,” he shrugged. “But I feel Lady Rían may find it advantageous to both.”
“Lady Rían?” She seemed to be considering the possibility, tasting it like wine. “Not unwise, but…”
He blinked heavily. “But ‘you can do better that that’, is that what you wish to say?”
“Possibly,” she answered, curt, with a rustle of her shawl; her hands looked pale, mapped in blue veins.
“I think she is more than adequate, given our situations.” His tone was sharp again.
“Elaborate, brother.”
He suppressed a sigh. “You know about my… inclinations – or should one say lack thereof? As for our good Lady Rían,” he added, his voice now gathering a note of brittle humour, “her own inclinations are of a rather more pressing nature, but alas, they are unhappily directed.”
“That tells me everything and nothing.” She paused. The sun shone stronger now, burnishing her hair. “You know I am discreet.”
He lowered his voice a little, conspiring amidst the marble and the damp leaves. “She is rather a daughter of Haleth, if you take my meaning.” Irien, her face close to his, was unresponding. “One of those women who—”
She drew back a fraction. “I know full well what the term means,” she interrupted, her hands busy again, smoothing down her skirts. “I would ask how do you know, but first I must ask how does this matter.”
“Always political, Irien?”
Her eyes sparkled. “Always.”
“I would have thought it obvious. A simple and important matter of credibility. I can scarcely see how she would refuse this advantage. She could have her… lady-friends, no one asks questions of a married woman, unless she is foolish enough to be obvious. In which case the real crime is her own stupidity.”
A glance passed between them. “Can you keep a secret?” Irien asked, a sheen of hesitation to her face.
Denethor edged closer to her again. “Aye.”
She smiled, the cool diplomat again. “So can I, Denethor.”
They looked at each other, sharing an understanding, a dash of peculiar humour. Irien turned away first. “And the advantages to you?”
“A wife who does not make demands I have little wish to fulfil.” He twisted his face a little, in displeasure.
“Well, I make no claims to understanding that. Nor would I find your idea to be to my liking, were I in your place.”
“But you are not.”
“No. I am not.”
They were silent for a moment, beneath the trills of the birds.
“I doubt Father would find that alliance to be advantageous enough,” Irien said at last.
Denethor shrugged. “The fullness of time will tell us of that,” he said, and knew he would not bring it up to the Steward unless pressed.
That night Denethor lay awake in his bedchamber, thinking of his sister and Lady Rían. He had no real wish to marry her, to marry anyone, to have to endure another body, other smells, little quirks, imposing on his guardedness, the privacy of his nights. Rían, who could not make herself endure the flesh of men, was merely the acceptable option. There would have to be children eventually, he supposed, but mutual sacrifices were always better than one-sided ones.
If he did marry Rían, he hoped she would be grateful instead of prodding, contemplating his oddness like someone staring at a curious insect. He could not see what was so odd about his dislike for the more pointless habits of the flesh, but even Irien, his clever, perceptive Irien, failed to comprehend it. He recalled a moment in his youth, when he had realised for the first time how little other people understood. He lay naked underneath the cool sheets and felt the city, his city, sprawling, breathing around him, a white mist form in the night. How many people were awake in it tonight? How many in the blood and the flesh and the skin, not understanding that the desires they thought they possessed ended up, in reality, possessing them?
He slid a hand between his legs, eyes closed, burrowing deep into the warmth of his bed. Irien was mistaken when she thought he had no desires. He conjured up the shapes of women in his mind, the curve of a breast beneath velvet, the rustle of a pair of silk stockings on two well-toned thighs. He had wants, yes, in the solitude of his room; but the image of flesh was better than its reality, better than the idea of his body grunting and moaning, mindless, like a dying animal. His indifference felt deep, physical, written on his bones.
He brought himself to a silent climax, thinking of poor Lady Rían’s mouth kissing her own mirror image, a phantom’s naked white belly against hers. He caught his seed in his left hand, fastidious, and eased out of bed, standing naked in the darkness and the cool air, his body warm and satisfied and tired. He walked to where he knew the washstand was and dipped his soiled hand to the wrist in the cold water, relishing its icy feel against his skin, almost painful, the texture of it in the dark as he washed his fingers clean.
He went to the window, his hand trailing rivulets of water, and opened the heavy curtains a fraction. This was all he ever wanted, he thought, watching a diffuse moonlight tread into the room. He could give himself all the pleasure he could ever wish for, and he was himself, fully himself, shrewd and capable and holding sway. As he emptied the washbasin into the bucket underneath, he could not see what more was there to wish for.
Tbc...
Footnotes: Denethor’s sisters are mentioned in Volume 12 of The History of Middle-Earth, though their names and personalities are of my own invention.
The Steward succeeded by his nephew was Dior, the Ninth Ruling Steward, succeeded by his nephew Denethor I.
In this series, Denethor is borderline asexual. This is not to be confused with celibacy, which is a choice; rather, asexuality is an intrinsic orientation defined by a lack of libido/interest in sex. Some asexuals do masturbate and/or have sexual fantasies; they just don’t have any interest in having sex with other people. You can find more information about asexuality here.
I see someone is going to have to play the peacemaker — from Hayao Miyazaki’s screenplay for Princess Mononoke, adapted by Neil Gaiman
In defeat malice, in victory revenge — from the TV series Yes, Minister, written by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn
Let them turn if they want to — paraphrased from one of Margaret Thatcher’s most famous lines
The “can you keep a secret/so can I” exchange comes once again from Yes, Minister
Needless to say, none of the material I quoted belongs to me; it is being used for non-profit purposes only and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. If you find anything I forgot to reference, please contact me and I will add the footnote immediately.