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CHAPTER 6

An Ill-Fated Ride

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“I believe Lothíriel is in need of a day of pleasure for herself. Éomer, would not you agree?”

On the following morning, this topic was broached by Faramir, to Éomer’s great annoyance. To be sure, he did not mind Lothíriel’s company, but the subtle tendencies in his friends toward matchmaking were becoming irksome. A glance at Lothíriel upon this statement had told him that she too had observed this tendency, but Éomer could hardly refuse and thus insult Lothíriel.

And so that was why on the next day they found themselves on horseback, riding through the forests of Emyn Arnen. Barely an hour had passed before Éomer began to believe that they had exhausted all civilized discussion between them. The truce from three weeks before was reaching a brittle and perhaps nasty end.

Faramir’s interference was ringing through Éomer’s mind in the icy silence of a warm spring day. Beside him was a woman whose beauty, while great, could not match the sharpness of her tongue, but now she remained strangely silent. Perhaps she too felt how much this outing had been forced, and was also resenting it.

“I suppose we must have some conversation,” she said at last. “Otherwise we would do just as well to ride separately, and not bother with keeping up this pretense.”

A long time passed before Éomer finally replied: “It is a fine day.”

“Yes, it is,” said Lothíriel. “The ground is quite dry.”

“We have not had rain in some time.”

“And it is warm enough that Éowyn does not mind taking the child outside.”

The silence which followed was excruciating, until Éomer, in mild annoyance, asked: “Must you always have the last word, Lady?”

Lothíriel shot a glare at him. “No, my lord, for it is most often you who demands it in our conversation.”

“I?” said he.

“Yes, you.” She raised her chin. “My first night here, in the stables, you would not allow me to defend myself after you said some extraordinarily ungracious things about me.”

“You provoked that!” he cried. “You turned my words into insult.”

“And you would not trust me to touch a silly animal!” Lothíriel could hardly believe how quickly this had disintegrated, though give his previous behavior, it was perhaps not so surprising. “Your behavior disgraces your crown, Éomer King, and with that I am done.”

She spurred her horse to a gallop and turned back to the house. In her disgust she let a stablehand see to her horse when she reached the stable, and she marched back up to the house, not caring who saw her in such a state.

Her father and her cousin were passing through the foyer as she entered. “Child,” said her father, “what is the matter?”

“That Rohirric King!” she spat out, fumbling with the buttons on her long gloves as she hurried toward the stair. “I know not how you befriended him, Father, for he is the most uncouth and crass man I have ever met!”

Her gloves finally removed, she took up her skirts and fled to the upper floor of the house and to her room. She locked the door and leaned against it, tears of fury tracing down her cheeks. Ten days before, when the child had been born, she had learned to think better of him. Now her faith was shaken, and she knew not what to trust.

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Faramir and Imrahil remained in the foyer, bewildered. At last the elder man said: “Perhaps this suggestion of ours was not so wise after all.”

“Perhaps not,” said Faramir, still staring at the stairs. “I wonder at what happened.”

“I wonder how Éomer is taking this.”

On that score the two men were quickly satisfied. Éomer came up to the house almost before the words were out of Imrahil’s mouth, and when he saw the two men in the foyer he almost rolled his eyes. “Am I safe from the Lady?” he asked.

“I believe so,” said Imrahil. “You are not, however, safe from her father. What upset her so?”

“How am I to know?” Éomer asked. “She misused me past the endurance of a block!”

At that point Faramir, near the verge of laughter, had to look over his shoulder to conceal a smile. Meanwhile his brother-in-law continued: “She accused me of being unfair, and then had the audacity to insult my horse!”

Imrahil, in his usual unflappable manner, said only: “And you did nothing to incite this?”

“Nothing which would provoke that!”

Faramir glanced at his uncle, who looked away from Éomer and said: “What say you, Faramir? Whom shall we believe?”

Éomer opened his mouth to speak, but Faramir raised his hand to forestall his comments. “Both, Uncle,” he replied, “and neither. I am certain my brother-in-law said something to provoke.” The Rohirric lord tried to protest this, but was prevented again when Faramir added: “And I am equally certain that my cousin deserved it.”

Clearly unsure of how to react to such a statement, Éomer merely stood in indignant silence for a few moments. At last Faramir clapped his shoulder and said: “Come, brother, our friends arrive in a few hours. Surely you wish to be in better spirits for their arrival.”

“And what would you suggest I do, Faramir?” he asked.

“There is always ale,” the Steward replied. And at least two of the men laughed.

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Lothíriel took her midday meal in her room, not wishing to confront Éomer this soon. This relationship was making less and less sense to her. She knew not how to think of him, and yet her heart ached at the very thought of him. She regretted her words — they were rashly spoken — and yet she could not bring herself to face him now, even to apologize to him. There were too many other things at work which she did not understand. So clearly, there was only one course of action.

She had to apologize to his horse.

This decision was reached as she made her way from her room to the stairs down to the main entrance of the house, the fastest way to reach the stables. But before she reached the first step, she stopped suddenly, seeing Éomer down in the foyer below. He, however, did not see her, being engaged in conversation with others. A step to the side, toward the shadows of the corridor in which she stood allowed Lothíriel to see who was with him. Her father and cousin were there, as were the King, an Elf, and a Dwarf.

“We had hoped to see your daughter here as well,” the Elf was saying. “Is she not here?”

“Yes,” said her father, “but she was feeling unwell earlier and has not been disposed to much company.”

The Elf’s eyes darted up to the second-floor landing, but he merely smiled as Lothíriel backed into the shadows. “I am sorry to hear that,” he said to Imrahil. “I hope she will be well before dinner.”

Aragorn clapped Gimli’s shoulder. “Friends, our brother Éomer is in the gardens. Will you not join him? I fear that I must have a word of conference with these two lords.”

Away they went, and Lothíriel let out a long breath. Quickly she flew down the stairs and out of the house, running toward the stables. In her hand she had a small pouch, filled with sugar taken from the tea tray. Lothíriel held out a hope that while this horse was extraordinary and legendary, he would be tempted in the conventional ways. He was, after all, still a horse.

As she entered the spacious building and approached Fleetfoot’s stall, she felt acutely the ridiculousness of this situation. A Princess of Dol Amroth apologizing to a horse? Yet somehow she also felt she had to do this. She had shown deep disrespect to a noble creature, and she knew that if she ever hoped to have Éomer’s forgiveness, she would have to have his horse’s as well.

Reaching the end of the building, Lothíriel saw that the horse in question had been watching her. “Hello, Fleetfoot,” she said.

In response, the horse sniffed and turned his head away.

Lothíriel sighed and resisted the urge to roll her eyes. This horse was almost as troublesome as his master. It was no wonder that Fleetfoot had allowed Éomer to ride him. They were rather alike in stubbornness.

Still, there was a job to be done, so she walked right up to the door and said: “I came to apologize to you, Fleetfoot.” When the horse did not respond to her words, she simply continued. “I did not mean to call you silly. I was upset at — well, I suppose it does not matter why I was upset. But I am sorry.”

The horse lifted his head then and snorted. “I brought you sugar,” Lothíriel said, smiling. This Fleetfoot liked, and within a few moments he was eating sugar from the palm of her hand.

“I wish people were as easily forgiving as horses, Fleetfoot,” she mused, stroking his mane. “Once children become adults, they lose all sense of reason and forgiveness. I do not know how I shall apologize to Éomer for what I said.”

When Fleetfoot had consumed all the sugar Lothíriel had brought, she patted his neck and slipped away, through a door in the back of the stables. As much as she loved horses, she did not much love their smell, and she hurried up to her chambers, where she hoped to bathe and put on fresher clothing before dinner.

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