Disclaimer: I don’t own them and I’ll put them back when I’m done!

Author’s Note: How do I even express how sorry I am that it has taken me so long to update? Life has been incredibly insane for both me and Pip Brandygin, my beta, and will likely get even mores so with the holidays coming up. I plan on finishing this story, though. I just hope I still have readers who want this fic!

Chapter Seventeen: Finduilas

The only thing to do, Eowyn decided, was to go to Faramir. Doubtless he would not know much, but Finduilas was his mother, and he had known her at least a little, and been around at the time of her death. He had to know something.

She found him in his office, a different one from the traditional steward’s office, and very near to Aragorn’s own. Both men had decided to fly in the face of tradition and locate their studies in rooms they actually liked. Eowyn approved; she could not see Faramir being happy in the room where his father must have verbally abused him over the years. When he answered her knock, Eowyn opened the door and slipped inside.

Faramir looked up from his ledgers and smiled at her. Eowyn grinned back, feeling her anxiety lift a little in the presence of her betrothed. He was so adorable, with his dark hair mussed from where his hand gripped it, and smudges of ink all over his fingers.

“Hullo,” he said. “What is it, love?”

Eowyn perched on the edge of his desk, and picked up a paperweight to toss from hand to hand. “Faramir, do you remember your mother?”

Faramir paused, looking at her curiously. “Yes. Why?”

“I’m curious,” Eowyn replied truthfully. “I don’t know what a lady steward is supposed to do. And I am curious to know what she was like. Tell me about her, Faramir.”

Faramir turned his pen around in his hands, examining it absently. The ink left faded marks on his fingers. There was a small smile on his lips, as though he were remembering a short happy time in the midst of the darkness of his life.

“I was very young when she died, perhaps five years old. I remember that she was very beautiful, and generally very happy. She had dark hair and grey eyes, and she always dressed in colorful clothing. Her eyes were full of laughter, until one day she changed,” he said, and stood, walking to his window and looking out at the darkening City.

“She did not love Minas Tirith. Her heart was in Dol Amroth, where she grew up in the castle by the sea. She came here to marry my father because she loved him, and I know that she was happy for a time, even if it wasn’t a very long one. My father gifted her with her own little room in the Steward’s apartments, and she decorated it with tapestries that showed the seaside, and lots of her own pencil sketches. I remember that she had a big bowl full of tiny colorful fish that someone had brought her from Dol Amroth. Boromir and I loved being in that room: nothing bad could come in. Even my father was happy when he was in it. I actually remember him smiling.”

Faramir looked up and gave her a sad smile. Eowyn smiled back at him, her heart aching. She could tell how difficult it was for him to speak of his family, to think of the past. Once he was finished, she would do her best not to ask him again.

“It was a fever that finished Finduilas. I was too young to comprehend that she had slowly sunk into depression, although I did know that something was definitely wrong with her,” Faramir continued. “For several months before her passing, she became quiet and withdrawn, as though something weighed heavily on her spirits. I know now that she died of depression. The Shadow in the East filled her with horror, and this stone city was not for her. It was a cage, like the one you fear.”

Faramir paused again, his brow knit thoughtfully. Eowyn waited; in her experience you could not rush a man when he was thinking. Faramir was silent for a few moments, hands clasped and head down, as though he was in pain. As he probably was, she reflected,.

“I remember the day she changed,” he said at last. “I had spent the morning learning my letters with my nurse, and mother was in her room when I returned to show her what I had learned. I remember being frightened by the change in her, in her eyes especially. All of the laughter was gone. She was sitting hunched over in her chair with her face in her hands. She was very pale when she looked up, and there were tears in her eyes.

“After that, she was grim all of the time. Her eyes stopped laughing, and she died of a fever that swept through the city a short time later,” Faramir finished. “I still wish I knew where she went that day. I have no doubt that it aided in the killing of her.”

Eowyn bit her lip and went to hug him. She desperately wondered what it was Finduilas had seen that day. Aragorn had said that she visited Alatarial’s room long before Faramir was born, so she must have found something else out, besides the murder.

“Faramir,” Eowyn said at last. “Will you show me your mother’s room?”

*****

Finduilas’ room was unlike anything Eowyn had ever seen before. It was a light airy room, or would have been if the curtains at the tall windows were open. Faramir pulled them open for her, and the early evening starlight flooded the room. They went around together, lighting candles until the room glowed almost cheerfully. Eowyn looked around it with interest.

Tapestries were hung at intervals along the polished walls, each depicting a scene of life by the sea: fishermen with nets on ships, children playing in the waves, a small but lovely castle standing on a cliff overlooking the water. Interspersed were small sketches done in charcoal on expensive vellum, also showing coastal life. There was a shelf of books between two windows, and on the opposite wall stood a tall glass-fronted cabinet filled with miniature ivory mumakil and seashells.

Eowyn was drawn to the mumakil. These little carvings looked far different from the monstrous beasts she had seen at the Battle of the Pelennor. Some of them were almost comical. There was one with a tiny painted tower on its back, and there were two tiny figures inside. Eowyn bent to look at it closer.

“A Haradric wedding,” Faramir said from behind her. “The bride and groom ride on a painted mumakil at their wedding party.”

Eowyn looked up at him with a grin. “Aren’t they terribly big?”

“I suppose that there are smaller ones as well,” Faramir replied. He reached past her and pulled the cabinet open. “Which one do you like best?”

Eowyn pointed at a small, elegant oliphaunt that stood with its trunk raised and its ears flared. Faramir took it in his hand, than gave it to her.

“Keep it. Maybe you can start your own collection,” he said.

Eowyn took the carving and smiled up at him.

“Thank you, dearest.”

Faramir just grinned at her. “Look at the books. Maybe you will find something of interest to read. My mother liked novels, not just gloomy lays and tiresome histories.”

Eowyn nodded and went to the bookshelf. She was not much of a reader, preferring action, but perhaps these books would give her something to do in the coming winter months, once they were married and there was nothing to do in the City, as she doubted that their home in Ithilien would even be begun. There were many books there, some more worn than others, and she pulled one or two that looked interesting from the shelves. Each had a title engraved on the spines, fascinating things like The Midnight Embrace and The Mermaid. As she pulled the latter book down, a small, black bound book caught her eye. It had no title, so Eowyn opened it and looked inside a moment before snapping it shut and turning to Faramir. He gave her a curious look.

“I think I’ll take these ones, if you do not mind,” she told him, giving him a smile to still his curiosity. “They look interesting. May I come back when I am done with them?”

“Yes, of course. You are welcome to any of the rooms in the Steward’s apartments, and may come here any time you like. Just don’t change anything.”

Eowyn laughed and hugged him again. Besides being simply wonderful in his own right, Faramir had just unwittingly given her the right to snoop and explore, and search out the mystery behind Finduilas and Alatarial.

TBC