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Vairë Was a Weaver, or, Real Men Wear Corsets  by Celeritas

Having set the wheels of his scheme in motion, Faramir proceeded to attend to the duties set before him during the noontide meal.  He let out a sigh of relief when he saw that, as often was the case in these new days of the King, they would require a trip to the Archives.

He supposed that it would have been far more efficient if he simply put his requests to one of the many assistants who located manuscripts, codices, and scrolls, and let them bring them to him.  But Faramir knew these stacks intimately, and there was something in the dusty air that cleared his mind, surrounded by the testimony of the ancients.  So it was that he found himself wandering among stack after stack of parchment, hunting down the elusive records in the most beloved forest of his youth.

After locating and pulling out the material that was easiest to find: old treaties, settlements of disputes, court minutes—he looked over the King’s injunction on the small list once more, at the case that he personally found the most fascinating:

Also, if you have the time for it, take a look through the edicts from the time of the Kings and see if there is anything on the topic of women and begging.  A merchant from this morning’s hearings claimed that it was illegal for women or girls to beg in the White City (which claim I rather disbelieve), and although such a law had not been enforced for many years, it was still in effect.  Why he would want such a law to be enforced now I can only guess, but I should still like it if you could find out whether his claim is true or the mere wishful thinking of the Merchant’s Guild.

Right, thought Faramir, who could also only guess the reasoning behind the merchant’s mention of the rumored law.  The war had brought many orphans to the City.  Faramir had heard of it a number of times, of course, always from Merchants, but because the law had fallen into such disuse, no one thought there was sufficient precedent for bringing it back.  Now that the King had returned, however…

He sighed.  The sheer self-centered idiocy of some people made him worry for the fate of Middle-earth, at the end of days.  Then he shook his head.  If this was the largest of Gondor’s worries now, it was a sign for better times ahead.

In the months after the war had ended, the Chief Archivist had suggested a renovation of the Archives, with the intention of putting all of Gondor’s long history within easy reach and not just those portions which were useful in maintaining the day-to-day business of a realm at war.  That renovation had not yet begun, however, so Faramir had to make his way through a back door into an old dusty room that contained Gondor’s earliest records.

The afternoon sun streamed in from a skylight, lighting a pathway to the heavens on the dust stirred by his opening the door.  Faramir could not help but sneeze.

A law prohibiting women’s begging… he thought through his history and tried to imagine a King who would pass such a law.  Atanatar Alcarin, under whose reign Gondor’s wealth merely covered the stench of decay and corruption, might have thought it a euphemistic way to ban—or at least cover—some of the more common crimes of decadence.  And he would be a one to pass it without regard to the penury that caused some women to turn to such a road, or to the possible abuses of the law.

Of course, during Alcarin’s reign the King’s House was still in Osgiliath, but Tarondor had made sure when moving to the White City that almost all laws and edicts concerning Osgiliath would henceforth apply to Minas Anor.

He located the stacks of surviving records from Osgiliath.  The dust was thicker here and he sneezed again.  Of course, no one had yet had the time to put these in any sort of order, so this might take time.  All the better; the more time he could spend in private, without prying eyes peering in at him the happier he would be this day.  He could dedicate at least an hour to hunting down this elusive record—if indeed it did exist.

One of the stacks seemed to have a preponderance of records dating Alcarin’s reign.  He began to leaf through them.  Unfortunately, the limited space meant that he had no place to set those records he had read, except atop another pile.  Placing an edict concerning grain taxes on an already unwieldy pile, he looked on in horror as it leaned first one way, then the other, and finally toppled over in a heap of dust in spite of his attempts to steady it.  He sneezed again, once, twice, then…

Came to surrounded by a flurry of parchment.  He thanked the Valar that the recordkeepers of these times had used material that would not decay easily, even after rough handling.  As sheepishly as the time that his father had caught him here at the tender age of eleven, he gathered the documents together and loosely returned them to the stacks, taking care not to make any pile excessively tall.

As he did so, his eye landed on the parchment on the top of the stack that had fallen.  The tengwar on it were faded, but the words were unmistakeable.

Resolved on this day of 26 Nárië 1178

 

That any woman or girl found to be begging or otherwise soliciting the attention of men with the intention of gaining money, except in exchange for legitimate services, shall be publicly whipped and fined a sum no greater than 2 tharni  for the first offence, no greater than one castar  for the second, and gaoled upon the third.

 

The wax of the seal had long worn off, but the scribe who had originally written it—for this was a copy, someone’s thankless task during the long years of Gondor’s history—was in service during Alcarin’s reign.  Taking up the parchment, Faramir blessed his intuition and cursed the instrument of torture that restricted his breathing so.  If he ever had daughters he would see to it that the fashion of corsetry never entered the fair land of Ithilien!





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