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.

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.

4. Early Moon

The first thing he noticed about Finduilas’s private chamber was its smell. It was a deep, hothouse scent; he guessed her luxuriating in a tub, reading careless on a bed surrounded by wilting lilies. He could barely see the contours of the place in the low light, clusters of flat candles here and there, floating in basins, a harvest moon framed by the open garden doors. After a while, his eyes grew accustomed to the murk and he could see the signs of her presence spread haphazardly: a book left abandoned on a table, a cloak lying careless on the back of a chair. He went around the room, looking at things without touching them, feeling like an intruder in this place full of her and her scent.

In the edge of his senses, he heard her come in, and turned around before she spoke.

“Welcome,” she said. She was still wearing the same white dress, and the candles gave it a yellow sheen, like a ghost’s garment.

“My lady,” he answered, bowing.

“Now, no need for that.” She strode towards a sideboard and took out a glass decanter. “In private I shall be Finduilas, and you shall be Denethor.” She turned back to him. “Drink?”

He raised an inquisitive eyebrow. The decanter was full of a liquid as dark and thick as sorcery. “It depends on what you have to offer.”

She grinned. “Oh, it’s just made of fruit.” She paused. “Well, mostly fruit, anyway.”

“Maybe later.”

“I think you may have been here too long,” she said as she poured herself a cup. He chuckled softly. “See?” she added.

“Not long enough for what I have been sent to do, nonetheless,” he said, serious again.

She walked past him, towards the open doors. He could see the motions of her body, lean and elastic. “Will you come with me into the garden?”

Her profile was silver in the moonlight, her glass flashing in one hand, the other hand extended towards him. He liked this, he realised; he liked the slow warmth he felt when he saw the sheen of her eyes and when he heard her be sharp and smart and serious. He liked, he realised, this self-assuredness of her, the quiet, focused intensity of her wants. Her fire was a tight red blaze.

“If you wish it,” he said, and walked up to her, linking his arm with hers. They stepped out onto a stone path, winding through thick grass and beds of overgrown plants, a melee of flowers and leaves reaching for the sky.

“Let us sit by the pond,” she said, and guided them under green tunnels, across patches of grass where tiny white flowers shimmered like stars. “This is an old garden,” she said, close to him in the near dark. “And it is said some of its flowers are the last scions of Elven blooms planted here by Mithrellas, my foremother.” She turned to look at him. “Do you believe that?”

“I do,” he said, sincere. He doubted any Elven garden could be equally full of this strange, treacherous loveliness. He felt a deep ache of longing for his city, for its white parapets sunned in the mild spring.

“Let us sit there,” she said, and they walked into a clearing where the path spun down in a
spiral into a large round pond, sunk into a low stone basin. Hyacinths grew tall around it and roses faded on dark bushes. Frogs croaked amidst the lily pads, floating on the black water.

“Why did you bring me here?” he asked as she sat down on a wide grassy step raised above the pond, his hand courteously holding hers.

“I told you,” she said as he kneeled down beside her on the soft earth, his arm brushing against her naked one. “To tell you why I wish to marry you.” She took a sip of her drink, the moon glinting off her cup and her silver bracelets.

“Why do you?”

She seemed to consider this for a moment. “Because I want to.” She turned to him. “I think that is the best reason.”

“We all have wants,” he said, and regretted it immediately. “I am sorry,” he added. “I did not mean to—”

“Why should you apologise? Is it not true?” Her face was close to his, and he could feel the scent of her hair.

“It was impolite of me.”

She put down the cup on the grass and slipped her hand close to his. “It does not make it any less true. You are not used to apologising to the people close to you, are you?” Her voice dropped to a probing whisper. “It does not become you much, do you know?”

“Would you rather I be uncouth or discourteous?” Her face was a handbreadth away from his.

“You and I are alike, Denethor. Those close to us have to take us as we are.”

A frog croaked at their feet. “How do I think I am? What make you of me?” he asked.

Her eyes focused on his; in the deepening night they were the colour of mother-of-pearl. “I think you are serious. I think you care about what is important; not all understand that. Am I right so far?”

He nodded. “Carry on.”

“You are careful and fastidious, because someone has to be. And you know when you are right, even when all others think you are wrong. I know, because that is also how I am.”

“Are you like that?”

When she spoke her voice was soft, like the sheen of her dress, a blade wrapped in silk. “I am. I know my own mind.” She paused, their faces close. “Would you know what I mean, were I to ask you if you can see into the future?”

He felt a keen kinship with her, deep and serene like the course of a river. He would take her to Minas Tirith, a stray thought told him, and they would sit together atop the Tower in the dying sun, and they would see how the clouds ran to the end of the world.

“I would,” he said. She reached for her drink again and took another sip, her cup damp in the hot night. “But—”

“But why did you not stop it, if you knew what would happen, is that what they say?”

He hardened. “If they listened, mayhap they would.”

“As in the legend,” she said, “of the man in the Land of Gift with the gift of foretelling.”

“And whose prophecies were all ignored,” he finished, with a dash of grim humour.

She sat with her hands around her raised knees, a smile on her lips. “Who wishes to hear of their own doom, and of the cracks in the wall, and of the feet of clay of their bright statues?”

“Are you that harsh?”

She turned back to him. “Am I not?” In the night she was a ghost moth, alighting by the rose bushes.

“You have seemed to me to be kind and generous in my weeks here.”

She sighed. “We are given but one life, to do with it as we can. So let it be easy. But I want too much for true kindness.” She was resigned, resolute. “That was why I asked you. Because I want you.” There was a quiet, focused intensity to her now, a slender white flame in the dark.

“Why?” he asked, genuinely puzzled. Her words seemed to be somehow foreign, as though she were speaking in some ancient tongue, haltingly translated.

“Because of what I make of you. Because of what you told me of Minas Tirith.”

“What of it?” he asked.

She was close to him again; he could hear the sound of her breath. “I knew you loved something as soon as I met you. Then you spoke of it and I knew it was your city, that you loved it so deeply and so much.”

“Many Men have loved many places, and strangers do not judge them fairer for that. Perhaps you would not like the city if you were to go there.”

He knew her meaning was different, but he said his piece nonetheless. He was enjoying this still, for all the heat and the sticky feel of his clothes against his skin. He liked being here in the rising dark by the water and the flowers, conversing quietly with unseen faces.

“You mistake me. I liked that you loved something so much. I liked that you did it so quietly. And I know that if I were to go into your city, I would be able to feel your love, now that I know of it. I would walk through those streets and squares you spoke of and feel that someone loved them, that someone had a great, eternal longing for that place.”

Something bubbled up inside him like the waters of an old and bitter fountain. “Did you think perhaps that I could love you as I love my city?”

She did not answer and he felt oddly unhappy. “I am sorry,” he said. “This time I truly am.”

There was a note of puzzlement to her voice when she replied. “Why should you be?”

The shifting moon cast a silver sheen on her hair. Some part of him thought, sudden, that he would like to see her comb it. “I feared that I had hurt you. Despite what you implied in your letter, I cannot read you as well as I do others.” He smiled a little. “There, I concede a grudging defeat.”

She let out a chuckle. “I do not know if I should be pleased with my victory, if displeased with what you think of me. Do you judge me so senseless that I would be hurt over so small a thing?”

“So you say you were not hurt then but are hurt now?”

She slid one hand close to his over the dew-slicked grass. She was focused wholly on him again, her languid body and her shiny eyes wrapped around a thorn of will. “Do you care if I am hurt?”

He sighed inwardly. “I do. I did not expect to, but I do.”

She shifted her position, uncurling her long limbs and then sitting like a tailor in front of him. He noticed the glint of an anklet above her left foot. “Let me tell you a story,” she began. “There was this book I read once, when I was a little girl, about a make-believe land where there lived a King’s young son. He went on a great journey, where he saw quite a good deal of things and met quite a good deal of characters, but the point here is that he met a fox in a field, and this fox told him about how friends tame each other.”

“What a peculiar choice of words,” said Denethor.

“‘Tame’? But that was precisely what it was.” Her eyes were wide and knowing. “You see, the fox told him that at first he was just another young boy, indistinguishable from all other young boys, and she was just a fox, indistinguishable from all other foxes, but it they tamed each other, then he would find her unique amongst foxes, and she, find him unique amongst young boys...” She trailed off, her fingers tapping the fabric of her dress.

“Why did you tell me this story?”

Their eyes met and she said, “That was what I wanted, you see. No, I tell a lie, what I wanted when I read the book was for the boy to stay with his friend the fox instead of going off in the quest for his rose.” There was a note of amusement to her voice. “But I wanted to tame someone. To have such a friend, a most special of friends, who would be different from all others and find me different too. You may judge it foolish if you want.”

Relief sprang up inside him. “No. That, I understand.” Friendship was clear to him, devoid of masks, pretences. He had felt a need for it keenly sometimes, an unexplained memory of an absent friend. He recalled a time when he had stalked, sulkily, through the Citadel, after being wounded in a skirmish in Poros and heard his mother’s complaint, a carried whisper, lamenting his discontents.

He opened his mouth, shut it, then spoke again. “Is that what you want? For me to be your friend?”

She looked at him, serene. “You are here.”

“But—”

“Of your own free will.”

He paused. Six stars and a moon were shining on the pond, but where they sat it was now dark, a diffuse blue light peering in through the tangled limbs of overgrown trees. “Yes,” he said. “Of my own free will.” He recalled sitting with her, days ago, telling her of the Tower, bone-white, gleaming in the dusk. “Why marriage, then? Why that kiss in the barge?”

He could not see her mouth clearly in the shadows, but he though she might be smiling.

“The kiss? That was to draw your attention, like one may call and wave to another across a busy street — someone one wishes to see, to talk to, and who is about to slip away...” She grew distant under the din of the cicadas.

“I shall be here for some weeks still. I was unlikely to have jumped into the canal and swam all the way back to Minas Tirith.”

Her hand rose, dropped down. “Oh, I doubt even you could endure a swim back to Minas Tirith,” she joked. “There boredom alone would be quite unbearable. But no more of this foolishness. I wanted to stop you from slipping away, which you were doing, were already doing. You were beginning to endure.”

They were silent for a moment, the only noise the soft susurrations of a midnight garden, the splashes of diving frogs.

“It is seldom that I find myself at such a loss, but I do not know what you mean.”

“I seem to be putting you in those straits quite often, don’t I? I meant to say that you were starting to simply endure your stay here, to get your task done and be gone, uncaring of whatever else might be happening around you if it were no concern of yours. And that was why I kissed you. To make you consider other... possibilities.”

“There, you succeeded, though other means might have been equality effective.”

Starlight glinted off her hair, her jewels, the glass by her side. “Perhaps, or perhaps not. Sometimes you have to make use of a certain boldness.”

“It was nonetheless discourteous, if I may say so.” He felt an unwelcome blush creep into his face. He did not like the words she had spoken, though he was not quite certain why; they reminded him of those golden, uncaring creatures who knew about boldness but not about consequences. He did not like to see her in their company, even if only by association.

“Here, you may say as you please. And it was not my intention to be discourteous. I do not take what I want wily-nily — that is not only discourteous, it is rather vulgar, do you not agree?”

He nodded, fervent. “I do.”

“I did it,” she went on, “not because you looked inviting, close to me on that barge — though I have to say you did — but because I wanted to put us on equal footing. To make you sit on your side of the board, and consider your pieces.”

A hot, sticky breeze careened down the trees, rustling leaves.

“Could you not have been—”

She sounded amused. “Meeker? Milder?”

“More tactful,” he said dryly.

She let out a short chuckle. “Put yourself in my position, faced with someone like yourself. You said something about tact to me, a week or so ago.”

He let his mouth twist into a small grin. “That it is something used by those who do not wish to be honest, or cannot afford to. But—” He paused. “I am ill-suited for marriage, tact or the lack thereof notwithstanding. I should have told you that after your proposal in the ship.” He said it quick and sharp, knowing that one swift cut hurts far less than several shallow ones.

She failed to react, still calm, self-contained like a recumbent cat. “No, I am the one who should have told you the fullness of what you are dealing with.”

His body tensed, alert. “And what would that be?”

“It is your choice. You can leave now. Go back to your chambers and carry on with your work here and eventually you shall go back to your city and we shall never speak of what passed between us again. Or you can find out about what has been happening without your knowledge, and never be able to ignore it again. What is your choice?”

He could feel her watching him, and for a moment her mind was clear to him, the knowledge that he would never be able to resist such a thing, that he had to pick at scabs and read half-opened letters. It did not displease him, somehow, that she had him in such a clever, subtle trap. He had never understood the meaning of conceding a graceful defeat, because he had never seen how a defeat could be graceful, but he did not feel vexed at being bested now.

“You know full well what my choice is,” he said. “You knew it before you even spoke.”

She brushed his words off. “Did I? Let us go back into my chamber then, if my guess is accurate.”

“It is,” he said, and drew himself up, his limbs protesting after lying against the hard ground for so long. She took his proffered hand, snatched the glass with the other and stood up in a fast, fluid motion. He could smell grass on her dress, and in the weak light the whites of her eyes were bluish and liquid.

The walk back to her chamber was swifter that the walk into the gardens, and once they were back in, the doors into the garden wide open into the stifling night air, she offered him a seat at a small round table covered with heavy velvet cloth.

“Let me light a few lamps, so that we may see better,” she said, and he made to get up again.

“I can do that.”

“Without knowing where anything is? I thank you, but I am better suited for it.” She retrieved a tinder box from a cupboard and a long thin piece of kindling, and walked around the room lighting hanging oil-lamps, their coloured glass cases reflected on her face as the oil ignited. On the table, her abandoned drink was smooth and dark.

“Excuse me for a moment,” she said once she was done, and vanished into her bedchamber through the communicating door. He waited for a moment as the scent of burnt wood dissipated, and watched her return, a much-folded paper in her hand.

“Here,” she said, walking up to him and handing him the paper. “I think you will find this to be of great interest.”

He unfolded it, his stomach icy with premonition. His father’s flowing script unravelled under his fingers. He read it in a single, hurried gulp.

Finduilas was still standing next to the table, cool and knowing and composed. “Impressive, for a piece of paper,” she said. “Would you not agree?”

He folded the paper again, his gestures tight, mechanical. When he looked at her his face was unemotional. “I think I may have some of that drink you offered after all.”

Tbc...

Footnotes: mostly fruit — so says Nanny Ogg, referring to a drink of similar contents, in Terry Pratchett’s Witches Abroad

the man in the Land of Gift with the gift of foretelling — the Middle-Earth equivalent to Cassandra, the character from Classical mythology who was given the gift of prophecy and the curse of having no one believe her warnings

We are given but one life, to do with it as we can — in case you’re really interested, this is the scene referenced in my fic The Resolution

let it be easy — from the line Death comes once, let it be easy in Carl Sandburg’s poem Finish

a make-believe land where there lived a King’s young son — and that would make him The Little Prince, no? Just to be mind-numbingly clear, the story Finduilas tells is a Middle-Earth version of one The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint Exupéry

lamenting his discontents — from Ivy’s discontents in Diana Wynne-Jones’s Fire and Hemlock

Impressive, for a piece of paper — from Hayao Miyazaki’s screenplay for Princess Mononoke, adapted by Neil Gaiman

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.