5. Healing

The sky grew dark with increasing gloom,
As the soldiers rallied to meet their doom.
Isildur took his father's sword.
He did battle with the dreadful Lord,

With the fighting raging all around
And his father dying upon the ground.
If men had let their duty go,
The Dark would have taken Gondor long ago.

(from a lullaby of Gondor)

Battle was over; help had come when hope was lost, just as the City reeled on the edge of disaster, destruction, death.

Beregond sat without moving as Gilwyn stitched his arm. The slash was shallow but long. 'This is the same sleeve I mended before,' she scolded, pointing to the neat stitches in the fabric. 'You must be dropping your guard. This has got to stop!'

'I will do my best to carry out your order, my lady,' he promised, but his face held no humour and his eyes were haunted. At times he would blink hard, as if trying to banish a vision. Or a memory.

She glanced over to the bed where Faramir lay. A healer was wringing out a cloth in a basin of cool water, to replace the one on his burning forehead. Pippin, standing guard by the bed, met her eye with a grim look.

Beregond followed her gaze. 'There is something I must tell you,' he said in a low voice. 'Before you hear it from someone less well informed.' And before the boys return from running messages, his glance told her.

She nodded, turning her eyes back to her stitching. 'I am listening,' she said encouragingly.

He waited for her to complete a stitch and spoke before she could begin the next. Very wise, that.

'The Lord Denethor is dead.' She gasped and her hand shook.

'Who rules the City, then?' she asked.

Her first thought was of her father telling her of a ship that lost its rudder in a storm. It foundered, and only one man reached the shore... her great-grandsire. He had turned his hand from fishing to farming, and that was how her family ended up in Lossarnach...

'Mithrandir, I suppose. Perhaps Imrahil.' He met her eye. 'You may not have known, but they had been directing the battle since Faramir was brought in.'

'I had heard that Denethor sat grieving with his son, but no more than that.' She controlled the trembling in her fingers and began to stitch again.

'There is more.' He sketched the details of the night, of hearing that Faramir had been taken to the Houses of the Dead. The Halfling's frantic plea. His choice. He winced as the needle stabbed deep, mid-stitch, but steadily met the eyes she raised to his.

'You left your post?' she whispered.

He nodded, once, and continued. Slaying the porter at the door, the desperate fight in the Hallows, two more deaths. Mithrandir's appearance. Faramir, still breathing, laid out on a pyre ready for the torch. Denethor's attempt to slay his son with a knife after Faramir was taken from the pyre. Denethor's death, and the rising flames.

He began to cough, and the healer brought him a cup of water. He thanked her and sipped. He had breathed some of the smoke.

'I have been removed from the guard until my case can be judged. The captain of the Tower has detailed me to keep watch over Faramir for the present.'

She nodded and finished her stitching.

Mithrandir entered, going to the bedside. He touched the cloth on Faramir's forehead, already warm and dry, and lifted an eyelid with his thumb. Faramir's breath came faint and fast. The healer took the cloth and replaced it with a fresh one. The wizard turned to the Halfling. 'Pippin, injured Rohirrim are being brought in from the field. The King of Rohan has been taken to a resting place, and his niece Eowyn here to the Houses of Healing. Merry was not with them.'

The hobbit started, then stood firm again. 'I want you to go look for him,' the wizard continued. Pippin glanced down at the bed.

Beregond said, 'I will watch him now.' With a look of relief Pippin left the room.

***

Bergil was running back from the storehouse of herbs when he saw two Periain walking up the street, one dressed in the livery of the Tower and the other in the green of Rohan. Perhaps "walking" was not the right word, for the green-clad hobbit leaned heavily upon the other -- Pippin, of course. As the boy jogged by, Pippin hailed him.

'I am running errands for the Healers. I cannot stay,' Bergil panted.

'Don't! But tell them up there that I have a sick hobbit, a perian mind you, come from the battle-field. I don't think he can walk so far. If Mithrandir is there, he will be glad of the message.' Bergil waved in acknowledgement and ran on.

Mithrandir was glad enough of the message. As soon as Bergil had told him where to find the hobbits, he strode from the room. Bergil glanced hopefully at Faramir -- no change apparent, for better or worse -- gave a brief salute to his father, on guard by the Captain's bed, and turned to deliver the herbs and take up his next errand. On his way back down the hill, he met Mithrandir, carrying the green-clad hobbit, with Pippin trotting along beside.

Bergil was in and out of the Houses of Healing the rest of the day. When he stopped to grab a bite to eat, he listened to the low voiced conversations. Among the dying were named Faramir, the Lady of Rohan, and the hobbit, Pippin's cousin. There seemed no hope. Pippin, chased for the moment from his cousin's side whilst the healers consulted, sat down next to him with bread and meat one of the women had pressed upon him, but he only toyed with the food and did not eat.

Bergil tried to draw him out. 'You were right about those black ships,' he said. 'How did you know they were not Corsairs?'

The hobbit smiled, but only briefly and without humour. 'I made a good guess,' he said.

'Oh,' Bergil replied, and turned his attention to his food.

The hobbit looked at him and made an effort to turn both their thoughts from the dying. 'How is it that you and your father are so tall? I watched the men of Lossarnach march in.'

'And we do not look at all as if we come from Lossarnach?' Bergil smiled.

'Something like that,' Pippin agreed. 'It got my curiosity going. Of course, it does not take much...'

The boy actually laughed, remembering Pippin's unending questions as he'd guided the hobbit about the City.

'My father's people came from Ithilien. When Mordor overran their land, they went to Lossarnach. The people of Lossarnach took them in and gave them land to farm. Eventually they did well enough to buy their own land. And my mother's people were fisher-folk who lived near the Great Sea until they decided to try farming instead.' He finished his food and rose.

Pippin rose with him, leaving his own food untouched.

'Let us go to the door to see what is happening.'

The hobbit agreed.

They found Beregond there. 'Mithrandir went out in haste. He told me to wait here for his return.' It was not a long wait. Soon Gandalf arrived with Imrahil, a Rider of Rohan, and a grey-cloaked man in mail.

Pippin cried aloud in joy and surprise. 'Strider! How splendid! Do you know, I guessed it was you in the black ships. But they were all shouting corsairs and wouldn't listen to me. How did you do it?'

The cloaked man laughed and took Pippin's hand and greeted him warmly. Imrahil made a low-voiced comment to the Rider, and the cloaked man heard, turning with a laugh to answer, but the answer made no sense to Bergil.

He followed them, listening to Mithrandir tell the deeds of Eowyn and Pippin's cousin. Bergil had overheard some snatches as he passed in and out of the rooms with basins of hot or cold water, but now he listened in fascination to the whole story. They visited Faramir, then the Lady Eowyn, and went last to the hobbit. The grey-cloaked man seemed sad and weary, and the Rider urged him to rest, but he answered that time was running out, most swiftly for Faramir.

He called to Ioreth, hovering nearby, and asked after herbs, specifically an herb called kingsfoil. Bergil's great-gran had used that herb to treat headaches, he remembered. The cloaked man sent the healer off in haste to seek the weed.

She beckoned urgently to Bergil. 'Come, boy! I need your swift legs.'

At the porch she started to give him direction on where to look in the storehouse of herbs, and what to look for. 'I know kingsfoil', he answered. 'My gran used to use it for headache.'

'Good,' she answered, and turned him towards the porch steps. Giving him a push she said, 'Then run! Run as if your life depended on it. For surely the life of the Lord Faramir does!'

He needed no encouragement and ran at his swiftest pace. Reaching the storehouse, he sought the pots Ioreth had described. In one, he found six leaves of what he recognized as kingsfoil. He quickly wrapped them in a cloth and flew back to the Houses of Healing.

Running into Faramir's room, he held the cloth out to the man in the grey cloak. 'It is kingsfoil, Sir, but not fresh I fear,' he said. 'It must have been culled two weeks ago at the least. I hope it will serve, Sir?' He looked at Faramir and burst into tears.

Smiling reassurance, the man answered, 'It will serve. The worst is now over. Stay and be comforted.' Bergil watched in awe as he called Faramir back from the threshold of death. He saw Faramir, who had lain unmoving, scarcely breathing, for so long, stir and then open his eyes and speak.

'My lord, you called me. I come. What does the king command?'

King? What did it mean? Bergil's eyes met his father's, but then both were lost in the joy of Faramir's recovery. The grey-cloaked man left the room. Beregond directed his son to pour a cup of water, and he raised Faramir while his son held the cup to the Captain's lips. Faramir drank and sighed. 'That is good. Thank you.' Beregond offered more, but Faramir shook his head. The guardsman laid his Captain back down on the pillow and took up his guard by the bed once again.

Bergil heard excited chatter outside. 'The hands of the king are the hands of a healer.' King?