Wilderness

3. Wilderness

The day after Finduilas kissed him, Denethor saw the ship. They went as a company, with Adrahil at the head, Finduilas and Imrahil closing ranks behind him, Denethor as the wealthy supplicant. Finduilas was keeping her gaze beneath the shadow of a parasol.

“It is ships such as this your father wants,” Adrahil said as they climbed aboard. His face held an open invitation, a challenge to the unconvinced. It was not possible, it said, to look at this sleek wooden beast, looming by the dock, and not feel amazement, the pull of foam and waves.

“Impressive,” Denethor said, unmoved. He had never cared for the sea.

The princely party settled beneath an open pavilion on deck after the ship’s captain took Adrahil and Denethor through the briefest of tours. Denethor made some mental calculations as the ship slid away from the harbour, thinking quickly about crews and money. A canopy of silk rustled above him, over peacock-tail fans and dainty morsels on silver platters. A sense of uncaring dripping from frosted glasses like dew. This place was not his own, he thought. It was a foreign country; they did things differently here.

“Would you like to try these?” Adrahil offered after they had sat down, extending a small tray towards Denethor. It was full of crafty little parcels made of dough and carved vegetables. “Smothered fish parcels.”

Adrahil continued talking while Denethor tried to grab hold of one of the parcels with an ineffectively small fork. “We only make them for special occasions, of course. The times being what they are, we can hardly be preoccupied with such trifles.”

“Of course,” Denethor said, forcing a knowing smile. He had just discovered that raw fish, even if skilfully prepared, was not something he appreciated at all.

“Marvellous, are they not?” Adrahil asked. Denethor nodded politely. “Care for another?” the Prince asked, bringing up the ghastly tray again and Denethor suppressed a sigh and made himself eat another parcel. He hoped Adrahil wasn’t going to carry on at this game for much longer; vomiting over his host would hardly be of much help in his mission.

“If I may ask,” Denethor said after a decent interval, the obnoxious fish concoction mercifully going into his stomach without much protest, “how long does it take to make a ship such as this one?”

Adrahil shifted his position. All around them there was the low chatter of their companions and the noises of the crew as the vessel glided deeper into open sea, seesawing on the low waves. The smell of the waters was overpowering.

“Well, that evidently depends on the number of workers and their expertise, and where you want to build it. Of course, this is the place to make them.”

“You mean, here in Dol Amroth?”

Adrahil ate another of the revolting morsels before answering. “Naturally. We have the shipyards and the expertise. And the sea.” There was a wink to his voice.

Denethor glanced for a moment at the man’s eyes. They were the colour of fine flint, like his daughter’s, a sheen of amusement to them. His mind felt like the viscera of a clock, all whirring metal and blades. Denethor liked figures and he usually did not like people, because when you peeled the last layer off a figure, you never found yourself wishing you had not done so.

He spoke coolly. “Shall I bring up the unpleasant subject of money, or shall you, my lord?” In the corner of his eye he could see Finduilas and Imrahil in their genteel eavesdropping.

Adrahil leaned back in his seat, crossed left calf over right knee. “Please, refrain from that.”

Denethor opened his mouth to reply but Adrahil ploughed on. “You had — have — been doing so well. Don’t spoil it.”

“I—”

Adrahil cut in again, this time raising his voice a little. “I think you might enjoy a walk through the deck. Have a look at the ship. You will appreciate the view.”

“I am certain of it,” Denethor said, sour, “but—”

“But me no buts,” Adrahil said, and leaned back, an arm propped on the side of his seat. “Do you like money?” His voice dropped to a polished whisper.

Denethor crossed his arms. The scent of the sea was a buzzing swarm underneath the smells of flower petals and extravagant food. “I work with it,” he answered in a clipped tone.

Adrahil nodded almost imperceptibly. “Money has a singular property.” He placed his left hand on his right knee. The buttons of his jerkin gleamed in the sun. “It is, you see, the most utterly unmagical thing in the world. It possesses neither fealty, nor love, nor flaw. It is not even a symbol or a shadow of aught else. There are few things in life as utterly blank as a coin.”

Denethor crossed his arms. “I see your meaning.”

Adrahil raised a vague hand. “My meaning is... Enjoy our hospitality. The sight of the sun on sea, and the taste of our spices. Conversations flow better over a glass of wine.”

Denethor felt his hands balling in frustration. “I see,” he repeated, laconically, and hated the fact that he was at a loss for words, vanquished by this man and his musty, sweltering city where they drank and ate and were merry, money and time and foresight dripping off their fingers with each wave of their fans. They could at least be pliant, let themselves be led by those who worked and thought in sobriety and diligence... Even here the harshness of the sun was hurting his eyes.

He stood up in an abrupt motion. “I think I shall follow your advice, my lord,” he said.

Adrahil gave him the smallest of nods. Denethor wondered if his host knew that he was only following his advice to avoid upturning a table in frustrated rage. Well, of course the man knew, Denethor thought as he made his aimless way through the deck, feeling a peculiar uselessness in this world of thick ropes and sails, and a crew rushing about in their incomprehensible tasks, annoyed at this blundering and ignorant intruder. He tried to walk in as dignified a manner as he could in a swaying vessel. He wished he had the White Rod already, or that he was dressed in the livery of the White Tree — some visible symbol of his authority, one he could cling to with some measure of fervour.

He reached the edge of the deck and stood by the side — though he supposed it really had some idiotic nautical name he cared not about — steaming silently. The wood was crackling with heat when he placed his hands upon it, the sea a burning sheet of green gold. Who did Adrahil think he was, anyway, to play with the Steward’s son like a cat tormenting a vole? What did he hope to accomplish — to have Denethor give up, or give in, in whatever manner? To gain some peculiar ascendancy over the future Steward of Gondor? He chose the wrong way to go about it, then; Denethor was nobody’s pawn, and least of all the pawn of someone who hid his intentions like a trickster keeping a trump card up his sleeve.

He clutched the wood again, knuckles white with fury, not caring that the ship’s side was painfully hot. He could hear the splash of water being poured on the deck behind him. He wondered what would happen if the sailors didn’t do that. Was it just to scrub the boards clean, or was it because of the heat? Would the wood become so dry it cracked? Would it curl into splinters and spontaneously catch fire? He imagined the ship turning into lit kindling, a sign of fire above the waves.

Ships burned, he supposed, in naval battles and the like. Now there was a fate, to be caught between the flames and the sea. He dislike the sea, alien and inhospitable, stretching in all directions. When he had first seen it up close, he had felt oddly fearful, as though it were about to rise and crush him. No, he did not want to look down, into the moving foam, where he could see the green abyss stretching down into the fathoms and fathoms of darkness... But he looked, nevertheless, in morbid fascination. Suddenly, fish — little silver dashes — started flying out of the waves, throwing themselves at the ship’s sides like birds hitting a window-pane.

“What the—” he muttered aloud.

“Flying fish,” said a voice beside him. He did not have to turn to know it was Finduilas’s. He just wondered how he had not noticed her approaching him. His reflexes were well-honed, after all. Maybe the sea was rusting them.

“What would those be?” He could hear the sound of the fish when they hit the boat, a wet, dense splat. “Some sort of very scaly seagull?”

She leaned her forearms on the side, seemingly unaffected by the ship’s speed or by its motion as it cut through the waters. “A sort of winged fish, rather,” she said. “They have exceptionally wide fins and they use them to glide. It is really quite remarkable...”

She turned towards him, her lip-paint glistening in the sunlight. “Do you think this is beautiful?” The scent of the sea was maddening, salt and kelp and heavy water.

“Nay,” he said after a moment’s hesitation. “I apologise if I cause offence, but no.”

She grinned, and tucked a stray lock behind her ear. He liked how her hair looked in the clean light, full of bluish, silvery currents. “You should not find it beautiful. It is dangerous. It is pitiless. Those fish, do you know why they behave like that?”

He shook his head.

“They are scared,” she said. “Like sheep sniffing a wolf. They are terrified because there is something on their trail, a larger fish, one that is hunting them. They do it out of sheer terror; so much terror that they are willing to jump clean off the water and throw themselves against a ship.”

“Nobody ever said fish were any clever.” He was being silly and he knew it.

Her grin deepened. “You can see it, can’t you? Listen to that sound...”

“What sound?”

She put her hand casually on his arm. “Over there,” she pointed with her free hand towards the West, where the horizon was a thread of golden water. “Can you see them? You can see their jets in the light.”

He squinted. If he strained he could see shapes in the distance, like islets, spikes of steam rising off them. And a sound, like a faint, low cry.

“I think I do see them...”

“They are whales,” she said. “They are calling out to each other because something is pursuing their young.”

He turned to her, an eyebrow raised in disbelief. “How can you possibly tell?”

She shrugged her shoulders, hands back together on the side. “Because something usually is. Because that is the way of things here; because everything here lives thanks to something else’s death.”

He looked at her; her skin was golden in the light. “Why are you telling me this?”

Their eyes met. “We are alike, have you noticed that? We see things for what they are. My father does not quite understand that. He does not understand you.”

“And I suppose you do?” he said derisively, and immediately regretted his harshness.

“Why did you not like it when I kissed you in the barge?” she asked, indifferent to his own question.

He hesitated, unable or unwilling, he did not quite know which, to break eye contact. “It made me uncomfortable. It is not something I appreciate.”

She was looking at the ocean again. “I am afraid I am very likely going to make you even more uncomfortable in the near future.”

“What do you mean?”

“Marry me.”

He felt the blood drain slowly off his face. “Do not mock me,” he said, not caring for politeness. He had difficulties in understanding other people’s jibes and jests. He could not see how one could deal with the world so casually, and knew that his lack of humour made some people judge him fair game for their mockery, even if only behind his back. But she was not mocking him, he could tell. This was no jibe, this gambit of hers, or perhaps her father’s, uncovering his trap.

“I am not mocking you,” she said, motionless. She turned to him again, her face set. “Do take me seriously. I should think that you of all people would take things seriously.”

“I do,” he said.

“I am not expecting an answer now.” She reached out for his hand. “Does this make you feel uncomfortable?” she asked, entwining her fingers in his. Her skin felt dry; he could sense her heartbeat in her pulse.

“Nay, it does not.” He was being truthful, finding himself enjoying this, this clean touch of hers. There was something different there, a restfulness unlike the usual blunderings of unwanted intimacy.

“Why should you wish to marry me?” he asked, almost in a whisper.

She did not step closer to him to answer him, and he thanked her silently for it, for being merely at his side, talking to him in solemn, polite tones while her thumb moved slowly, unobtrusive, over his calloused fingers. “My mother will be returning tomorrow. And we shall dine and wine, and then we shall talk. The two of us, in a serious fashion.” She looked him in the eye again. “Does that sound acceptable?”

“It sounds better than your father’s games.”

“There will be no games,” she said. He could felt her scent, a subtle musk. Her eyes were wide and heavy. She withdrew her hand from his in a quick gesture. “We will talk,” she repeated, and slipped away like smoke.

The following day the Princess returned from her sojourn in the Lebennin, a flurry of activity surrounding her while she remained composed in its epicentre. Denethor met her in the Prince’s private chamber before they dined in the open terrace. He took in her forceful face, the large, astute eyes. She reminded him of some bird of prey, down to the hand offered him, dry and bony, the other clutching a cane.

She had a slight limp, and Denethor wondered about it for a moment, if it were some ancient scar or some more recent accident or the more prosaic explanation, an illness of the joint. Such things held a gruesome fascination for him; he found himself stealing more than his share of glances at scars, deformed limbs, twisted lips. He knew that his attentions were humiliating, and he made a conscious effort to restrain himself, but sometimes he wondered about those people who could keep their blemishes hidden and yet made a point of displaying them, it seemed, like someone flying a banner. He found that incomprehensible, his own scars hidden beneath his clothing, as they ought to be.

“It is such a great honour to receive the future Steward of the realm,” Lady Mírieth was saying, her eyes boring into him. She had separated him from the rest of her family, and swept him up in her trail through the room. A small pack of dogs surrounded them both like a guard of honour, the smaller ones scurrying around her skirts, the larger ones looking on with vacant yes, their tongues lolling. Denethor had never quite understood what was it dogs possessed that made people want to keep them around. He supposed they were good for hunting, if you had the time and chance to avail yourself of that kind of thing, but he found them to be piles of salivating hair, bouncing about in a jolly, careless, and above all destructive, way. He much preferred the cats he sometimes saw sunning themselves in the roofs and streets of Minas Tirith, neat and self-possessed.

“The honour is all mine, my lady,” Denethor said, striding alongside the Princess as she walked aimlessly through the room, the dogs following her, her cane beating an exacting pace. “It is a honour to be chosen for matters that will greatly benefit our country.”

“Oh, I have heard all about it,” she said with a sweeping hand gesture. She had a rose past its prime on her hair and another on a buttonhole in the front of her dress, and smelt of dog fur and hyacinths. “You have come here so that Gondor can have a fleet. Because of course Gondor must have a fleet, we cannot afford more incursions from the Corsairs. Especially not at the same time as harassment from the East. I trust am not mistaken when I say that the last time Gondor was in such a vise, with armies coming from the South and the East, we lost a royal dynasty.”

“Your knowledge does not fail you, my lady, though we have no armies battering at our gates. At least not yet,” he added. “And hopefully—”

“And hopefully never?” she interrupted. Her face was still while her voice rose and fell. “Neither of us is a fool, my lord, we know very well what comes our way.”

She was taking them traipsing down the length of the room now, past the low couch where Finduilas sat, conversing with a woman Denethor believed was some sort of cousin of the Princess’s. Mother and daughter looked at each other for a moment, Mírieth nodding slightly; then Finduilas looked at him over her mother’s shoulder, her fair face a solemn mask. They held their gaze together for a moment before Denethor broke it off. He had a disciplined mind. He could make himself not think about Finduilas’s proposal when he had more pressing concerns on his attention. He could make himself not think of her at all.

“Nonetheless, it is always a risky game, trying to unfog the future,” he said. Yet, he wondered about what she wanted, the woman with the raven hair and the smoke-coloured eyes. What secret knowledge ebbed behind her perpetual half-smile and why did her voice make him think of fog and half-remembered dreams? No, this was foolish, he would think of her no more until their talk, whatever she wanted or meant by that.

“Not when you can see the tide coming in,” Mírieth said. “Still, no flood lasts forever. And no ship was ever risen by despair. It is not wise to speak of it.” She halted, and her dogs immediately gathered around Denethor in a cloud of fur and wet noses.

“Some hopes, however, are as bad as despair,” she went on, and looked him back in the eye. “Do you think a King will ever return to Gondor?”

“Ah,” Denethor said, looking cool and collected. Above him the ceiling was painted in the blue tones of a large maritime landscape, and the heat and the damp had wrinkled its edges, spotted it here and there with mould. “Do you wish—”

“For the diplomatic answer or the frank answer?” She tapped her cane on the flank of a dog who was straining to sniff Denethor’s knees, and the animal drew back. “The latter, I suppose. Tell me what you really think, my lord.”

Denethor probed a little into the woman’s mind, tasting copper. She was loud, direct, abrasive, a verbal brawler. But she did not like to pick fights unless she was on the winning side, that was plain for anyone with sense. Another one full of the conspiratorial cleverness of this wet, sighing land. Denethor shifted his posture a little, became every inch the Steward-in-Waiting, powerful, and learned, and with the blood of Númenor still coursing through his veins.

“I cannot conceive of a King ever returning to Gondor to claim his throne, but what is of importance is not my opinion on the matter, nor divinations upon conjectures, but rather the real tasks of the present. We take care of Gondor; for its own sake.”

“I see,” she said, and her eyes were haughty as the bells chimed for supper.

During the summer, intimate suppers with the Prince of Dol Amroth and his family took place in a wide open terrace outside the private chambers, with the sound of cicadas in the distance and the rustle of net curtains in the warm dusk. Denethor had been paired with Finduilas as they trickled, two by two, into the terrace, and she had merely glided along by his side, seemingly indifferent. Outside there was a swarm of paper lanterns hanging from brass hooks, and her white dress shimmered like a firefly in the light. A scent burner lay on the table between Denethor and her, and her face shifted behind the rising smoke.

At his left side, the Princess talked amiably, the wheels of diplomacy oiled by frequent sips of wine. It was a glittering place, this, full of the shine of a dying sun and an oily moon on the crystal goblets, cutlery, trays, bright eyes. Beyond the terrace tall trees hung with moss dripped in like the early scouts of an invading army.

“It has been a good year for fishing,” Mírieth was saying, a solitary canine specimen sniffing around her chair, as a servant placed a tray of colourfully arrayed fish on their section of the table. “Though that will perhaps not last.”

“Poor shoals?” Denethor asked.

“Crowded seas,” the Princess replied.

“An army marching on someone else’s stomach,” Imrahil muttered at his right side, making it sound as though he were addressing no-one in particular.

“Perhaps they will not be crowded for much longer,” Denethor said, and their talk drifted on, touching in veiled tones on the purse of Gondor and the needs of Dol Amroth and of Minas Tirith.

A small troupe came to entertain them when they were done with the main courses, plates and trays taken away to make way for puddings and sweetmeats.

Lady Mírieth swept up the small golden dog onto her lap, much to Denethor’s discomfiture, and started feeding it morsels she had put aside on a plate. “I do enjoy these jugglers and singers. Such a pity it is not something we can indulge in very often.”

“I understand,” Denethor said, and found himself looking across the table at Finduilas, who looked on with mild interest as a skinny youth of indeterminate sex started juggling some colourful balls.

“I am relieved you do,” she said. At her side Denethor could see her husband’s eyes, the same translucent grey as his daughter’s. “In fact, I am glad.” A servant materialised by Denethor’s side to clear away his plate, and Mírieth drank some more wine, white throat tilted back as a musician played a few chords in his hurdy-gurdy. “I think our country would benefit greatly from understanding. As a general concern. We in Gondor seem to be so fond of going each down his own path, even when standing together above our own petty concerns is necessary instead.”

“When hand-in-hand, the end is at hand,” Imrahil joked, sprawled in his chair like a cat.

“Any merriment in a storm, my lord?” Denethor asked, trying to err just this side of sardonic.

Imrahil shrugged. He went down to a whisper as a song began. “Better to laugh over spilt milk than to cry over it.”

Denethor took refuge in the silence required by music. He would have very much liked to deliver some vicious barb, but politeness and bewilderment restrained him. People like Imrahil vexed him in their flippancy, their refusal to take the world seriously. He always felt somehow exposed in their presence, a target for their languid mockery. Not that there were any foolish enough to do so, but he could feel their thoughts, like a palpable aura.

There was some rustling by the terrace doors and a man clad in the livery of Dol Amroth stepped up to the Prince, his voice drowned out by the lively tune.

The Princess, sitting between Denethor and her husband, turned to her guest. “A message for you, my lord.”

The messenger stepped back behind her chair and handed a neatly folded parchment to Denethor. It bore the seal of Minas Tirith on a great stain of red wax. A message from home, then, or from one of his number here.

“My thanks,” Denethor muttered, and waited until the man had stepped back before he carefully pushed the chair back, as away from prying glances as courtesy allowed, and opened the letter. Inside there was another folded letter, like those egg-shaped boxes that fitted inside one another until they reached the size of a thimble. He wondered as he broke this second, unknown seal, if he was simply going to continue opening smaller and smaller letters until he found a little scrap of paper informing him of an idiotic prank.

The second parchment, however, unravelled in a precise script.

My dear friend, — it said —

(Hoping the familiarity does not offend.) You will of course remember our
 little exchange yesterday in the ship. You did promise we would talk tonight
 and as I always keep my own oaths, I expect others to do likewise. But there
 is no need to presume; you always keep your oaths yourself, do you not?

I have asked a member of your escort to have this letter delivered through
one of our retainers during tonight’s supper. It will give you all the necessary pretexts to accompany the messenger back to your quarters. My maid-servant
will then come for you and take you to my own quarters, though I may have to
keep you biding a while before I join you.

 You may think this whole charade unnecessary, and ordinarily it would be. But
 we are already involved in quite a charade ourselves, are we not, so more of it
 can do little harm. Consider it the price for being able to speak freely later.

 I do not know if you like to listen to music players and the like — so many things I
 have yet to find out! — and therefore I will try to arrange for this message to
 arrive in the middle of tonight’s inevitable performance. I find music to be a thing
 too sublime to be played by sweaty hands; if only we could have things as it is
 said the Ancients had in the Land of the Gift, devices that played music through
 the ether only, where it belongs.

 But I get ahead of myself. We shall have time to talk of many things tonight. And I
 think you have been considering my proposal, though that is really your realm, is
 it not? That of intuition, and of perceiving thoughts and feelings.

 What do you read in me, I wonder? But maybe I shall learn of that tonight.

 Until then, I remain your dedicated host,

  F

When he finished, he folded the parchment back into a neat square, his eyes drifting discreetly towards Finduilas. She was still sitting in her chair like a Queen in a throne, listening to the music, or at least pretending to do so, her face a picture of regal unconcern. Yes, what did he read in her? Her mind was curiously inviolate; whenever he put out a gentle tendril, trying to feel it, he was left with an impression not of a wall but of a haze, the shimmer of a spinning constellation.

“You will have to excuse me,” he said as he leaned forward, in the sort of whisper that spread across a crowded room like ink in a glass of water.

“Leaving us so soon?” Mírieth whispered back. A shoal of eyes was turning towards him; only Finduilas remained aloof, behind the last few rivulets of smoke. Beyond her the sky was a vast bowl of night, and the trees loomed like the remains of ancient beasts, swaying in the warm breeze.

“A message which demands my attention, I fear,” he said, raising the folded parchments slightly, in a token of honesty. The most important lesson he had ever learnt was that there was a vast space between telling a lie and telling the whole truth. You just had to be economic with the latter; it was a precious commodity, after all.

Adrahil turned to him. “Your duty takes precedence,” he began, splashes of music drowning out the rest of his words.

Denethor eased out of his chair. “Good night, my ladies, my lords,” he said, bowed respectfully and stepped to the back of the terrace along with the messenger. “You are to take me back to the sender of the message, am I correct?”

The man nodded. His face was half-hidden in the shadows and the Silver Swan unfurled on his surcoat. Denethor no longer wondered how these people could withstand the heat under those many layers of clothing. “If you would follow me, my lord,” the messenger said.

Dol Amroth and its Palace never really slept. At most they slumbered, like a beehive in winter, lulled by the inner buzzing of activity. As they made their way through the halls and corridors, the messenger made some small talk. Denethor was used to that sort of thing; he encouraged it, even, as he had learned much that way, dropping a word or two, then springing a silence. People tended to speak then, to fill the void. He often detected a nervous edge to their words, an eagerness to please.

Tonight he learned about Princess Mírieth’s frequent travels, and how she was well-liked in the Southern parts of Gondor where she had been born.

“Whoever asked you to carry the message to me...” he began, and trailed off.

The messenger sprung helpfully into the breach. “Aeglor, my lord,” he said.

“Aye, Aeglor. Did he tell you aught else?” He wouldn’t have, Denethor knew. Aeglor was a ledger-keeper. He worked with numbers and he cared for numbers, and whatever happened around those numbers was not his concern.

“No, my lord. He asked only to have a message delivered to your lordship, and that you would come to him after reading it.”

“He was right,” Denethor said, and then fell silent until they reached their destination.

He was doing all of this for her. The realisation hit Denethor as he entered the quarters the Prince of Dol Amroth had assigned him and his escort. It was a thing both sudden and inescapable, like one of those pictures where you strained to see to see the face in the thicket or the fish in the vase, and then once you found them, they dominated the whole drawing.

He was doing all of this for her; going along with her game like an obedient little lamb, for no other reason than she had asked him to. And as he greeted the guard, as he settled down on a chair in the antechamber to wait, he thought how remarkable this was, considered it dispassionately, as though he were being asked to comment on the actions of a character in some dusty tome.

He did not take well to orders. The commands of those he owed allegiance to, he followed, a fact as unremarkable and as devoid of malice as an apprentice obeying the instructions of his master; even then he disobeyed sometimes, when faithfulness to his higher allegiance — that to Gondor — demanded it. But the thought of that great dark abyss of emotion some people seemed to embrace willingly nauseated him. He had encountered a few people of that sort, who seemed to be happy to walk through live coals for the sake of an indifferent loved one. The very idea made him shudder; was their professed love, he wondered, some other word for a disease of the mind, one that made them act beyond reason, humiliate themselves for a pat on the head, the dubious pleasure of some quick tryst?

When he heard steps approaching the room, he let himself turn into just another silent shape in the background. It was as easy as making himself noticed, and worked precisely the other way around.

“Good night, Aeglor,” Denethor said when the ledger-keeper came in. Aeglor was not well suited for furtiveness; he was the kind of man who was prone to forget his reading spectacles on his nose. He was clever, however, and that was what was required of him.

“Oh,” Aeglor said, startled, and bowed clumsily. “Good night, my lord.” His blinking watery eyes made him look a little like a friendly sheep.

“How fortunate that you should come by. I believe someone asked you to send me a message.”

“Aye, my lord.” He started to finger the shirt laces peering from his collar like snakes. Denethor did not rebuke him; he wondered how it was possible to keep any semblance of authority or propriety in this heat. “The Prince’s daughter — the Lady Finduilas, I mean — came here and asked me to have a message delivered to your lordship. She had very precise instructions.”

Denethor placed his hands on the arms of his chair. “Did she? And what do you make of it, Aeglor?”

The ledger-keeper’s fingers dropped the linen strings as though he’d been burnt. “It is not for me to make anything of it, my lord.”

Denethor slipped off his chair and strode across the room, brushing past Aeglor. There was a flagon of Dol Amroth’s perennial mint tea on a side table and some glasses covered with a blindingly white napkin.

“Tea?” Denethor offered to Aeglor, who remained rooted in his spot and managed to splutter a “No, thank you.”

“Very well,” Denethor said, and poured himself two fingers of the amber-green liquid. “What are you here for, then?” he asked, turning away from the table. “Was it to see me? I trust the Lady Finduilas did not also ask you to bring her a report of my comings and goings?”

“Neither, my lord, I...”

Denethor took a sip of tea, the dim candlelight gilding his glass. “Do carry on.” He sounded encouraging, a prophet forgiving a repentant follower. It was a voice that told its listeners that it knew they had done wrong, and that it was willing to understand. It was a voice that had served Denethor well, because everybody had something to confess, either a deed they had done or one they wanted to do.

Aeglor lowered his eyes a little. “I was hoping to go into the city if I could, my lord.”

“You come and go with my leave, is it not so?”

Aeglor did not try to contest this. “Yes, my lord.”

“Then you should have asked for it. It is trifling, I know, but those who are with us in the small are also with us in the great.” He drank the rest of the tea. “You may go, however, if our hosts permit.”

“Thank you, my lord. I forgot myself.”

“Then try to remember yourself in the future.”

“I will, my lord.”

Denethor put the glass back on the table. “Take care,” he said. “Where do you intend to go, anyway?”

Aeglor shrugged slightly. He was somewhat scruffy in dress, but had an aura of neatness about him, his mind a dapper thing with polished drawers and organised ledgers. “No particular place, my lord.” He bowed again. “With your leave, my lord.”

Denethor nodded him away and motioned to pour himself another glass of tea. It made him constantly thirsty, this heat, even for a drink as sticky as this one.

“My lord?” Aeglor called out, standing in the threshold. In the shadow there was a dash of cunningness to his eyes.

“Yes, Aeglor?” Denethor asked, turning around with deliberate slowness.

Aeglor spoke with his numbers voice, the tone of a man appraising a transaction. “Whatever it is the Lady Finduilas is offering... it is not my place to do so, but I suggest you take it.”

Denethor drank the tea unhurried. When he spoke again, his tone was low and brittle with meaning. “What offer would that be?”

“I...” Confusion moved through Aeglor’s face like lightning and then was gone. “I see, my lord.”

“I am glad. Good night, Aeglor.”

“Good night, my lord,” the ledger-keeper said, and scurried away.

Half an hour trickled by before Finduilas’s envoy appeared in the chamber. During this time, Denethor sat, or stood, or paced, sipping tea occasionally and wondering about what he was doing. Was he turning into one of those fools he so despised, waiting until the cold ashes for some unfulfilled promise? But there was something different about Finduilas, he considered as he examined an ornate clock, a thin layer of dust in the nooks and crannies of its carved figurines. There was this reasonableness about her, the certainty that she would never ask him the impossible.

It was not true that she was wholly unreadable; he could see that she was wilful, like him, not with the shrillness of a capricious child, but with the quiet seriousness of one who knows exactly what she wants. He was pleased by that. Together at the table, her mother had been the probing one, but it had been Finduilas who had been the more intense, tight and controlled underneath her serene façade, her eyes glinting in the light. Of course she would never ask anyone to walk through lit coals for her sake. She would do it herself for the sake of what she wanted.

He heard the woman come in, not through the main guarded entrance, but through a side door. She treaded silently, like all good servants and himself. But then again, he was a servant too, wasn’t he? Arandur, the King’s Servant. The thought was full of a gaunt humour.

“Good night, mistress,” he said, and turned towards her.

“Good night, my lord,” she said, curtseying hurriedly. She was rake-thin, with a mop of dull, bushy hair. When she bent her arms, her elbows looked sharp like spear points.

“My lady Finduilas has given me some instructions,” she went on, in a flat tone. “If you would follow me, my lord.” She curtsied again, and turned away.

He stood motionless. “Where are we going?” He knew his final destination already, but wanted to see what else might fall off her tongue.

She turned back to look at him with round, colourless eyes. “Private corridors, my lord. My lady gave me strict orders.”

He put down his half-consumed glass of tea, turned to follow her, a pair of steps behind. He could see nothing more could be extracted from the woman regarding the orders she had received; she was simply in the habit of following them, and cared little about whether they seemed strange, or complicated, or remarkable. He approved of Finduilas’s taste in personal retainers. He too appreciated those who could address a task with equanimity.

They exited the room into the corridor that ran through the private apartments appointed to Denethor and his company. Oil burned in wall sconces, and hangings fluttered softly above the air slits placed at discreet intervals.

“This way, my lord,” the maidservant said, a bundle of keys chattering in her hand, and turned right.

Why are we here? Denethor thought, We are going further in, and then the woman lifted a curtain aside and uncovered a door, a servants’ entrance. It swung back silent on well-oiled hinges.

“After you, my lord,” she said, standing on the threshold.

He went a few steps in as the woman locked the door behind them both. This second corridor was narrower, shabbier, broken here and there by the drippings of candles and small round windows. It smelt of melted beeswax and he could see wisps of cloud in the night sky.

“If you would follow me again, my lord,” she said, walking past him, an efficient, self-effacing mouse.

He could hear faint noises as they walked on, diluted sound dripping in through the walls. A tinny sound of distant music, the buzz of conversation, running water. A memory of his childhood floated into his mind, physical like the salty scent of clear Summer dusk. There had been, he was quite certain, music, and he had this picture of himself as a quiet little boy, watching things, uninterested, with black, solemn eyes.

Was that last image a dream he had had? It was nonsensical to think of himself that way: no one had memories in which they saw themselves through someone else’s eyes. Yet he seemed to remember something of the kind, he considered as he followed his guide into a turn of the corridor, up some steps. Being inside himself, a listless, bored child, and then somehow stepping out, leaving a shell behind and drifting through a foggier world, a place with fewer edges and where the sun was a haze and the Mindolluin a stairway of shimmering lines. After a while he had felt something creeping in, a toothed, covetous presence circling the place of his body like a cloud of flies, looking for a way in, and he had raced it, had hurried back just in time...

That had been a dream, doubtless, but what had preceded it had certainly been real, music playing as he sat and half-listened. The sounds of the genteel, polite entertainment of a better, more civilised time. A time before, and he recalled another dream, this time one he was certain of, for he had had it many times since. The dream in which he was standing on an island, an islet, a tiny mound of ash and scorched pebbles, and a black tide was rising under the cries of gaunt gulls. He had no trouble knowing where this one came from, or what it meant.

“Here we are, my lord,” said the maid, cutting into his thoughts. They stood in a small cubicle with another door on its end, and a curtained area to the left.

She spoke again. “This door gives to my lady’s antechamber. It is open. Should you have need of me, there is a summoning bell.” With that, she curtsied again and scurried behind the curtain into her little alcove.

He was certain he could retrace his steps if he had to; the journey had been short, a matter of minutes. He looked at the door again, and then his hand was on the doorknob, and he stepped quietly into Finduilas’s chamber.

Tbc...

Footnotes: It was a foreign country; they did things differently here — probably the most useless annotation ever, but this comes from LP Hartley’s The Go-Between

the last time Gondor was in such a vise, with armies coming from the South and the East, we lost a royal dynasty — the Princess is referring to the political crisis following the loss of King Ondoher and both his sons at the hands of the Wainriders, allied with Harad and Khand, in 1944 TA

The idea of stepping out of your body in spirit form was already old by the time people were cutting anatomically amusing figures in chalk, but this particular version of it was partly inspired by a similar concept in Terry Pratchett's A Hat Full of Sky. Which is rather interesting, since I don't care all that much for the Tiffany Aching books (compared to the other Discworld books, that is). And if you can't tell who the presence is, oh deary deary me. Assuming that is, that is wasn't a dream, an assessment I prefer to leave entirely up to you.

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.