Brotherhood, Chapter Sixteen.
21 Jul 2009 08:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
curiouswombatAt last I have chapter sixteen of Brotherhood finished. Off-line life has been so busy over the past three weeks - 12 out of 21 days have been spent in York, or travelling between York and the island! This chapter was written, in part, long-hand in a notebook during the 18 hours or so of that time spent on the boat.
So - previous chapters are Here.
Chapter Sixteen.
Rating 15
4,000words.
Beta'd, as usual, by S2C.
Chapter Sixteen
Tindómë was pouting. She knew she was pouting, and she knew it was not a very adult thing to do, but she pouted nonetheless. She was pretty sure that any minute now Rumil would call her ‘little one’, which he only did when he felt that she hadn’t quite understood – such as when Fritha spent the night with the ellyn – or if he thought she was behaving like an elfling rather than a proper adult.
When they had spent the post-war period in the King’s House, at Gandalf’s instigation, Dawn, as she then was, had been ‘hidden away’ in a bedroom far away from the main areas of the palace. As far as she knew, either no-one had thought to allocate a room to Rumil and Orophin, or they had officially been quartered with the Rohirrim. It hadn’t mattered as, from the day Rumil had carried her from the House of Healing to the King’s House, he and Orophin had moved what few possessions they had into her room; and had taken what little sleep they needed in an armchair there, or on the floor.
This time however, as honoured guests of the Royal couple, the brothers had a suite similar to that allocated to the twins.
“Shiny!” Orophin had said in Sindarin, with a sideways glance at Tindómë, when a servant had shown it to them.
‘M’kay…’ Tindómë had thought, ‘They say you can take the girl out of SoCal, but you can’t take SoCal out of the girl… well, it looks like you can also put it into the elf!’
There had not been time to say anything as a servant had quickly steered Tindómë out of the ellyn’s room and shown her to her own. This was beautiful, like a larger and more luxuriant version of the room she had slept in three years previously, and also within the royal wing, but about as far as it was possible to get from Rumil and Orophin’s suite.
She had commented to Rumil that one or the other of them would have to sneak along a lot of corridors to sleep in the same bed; only for him to tell her that they had slept in separate beds in Edoras and they should do so here.
Now they had finished dinner, visited Arwen again (with a plate of food declared by the twins to be suitable to properly nourish her and, therefore, the Princess Gilraen), and Rumil had walked Tindómë to her bedroom door, where he formally wished her “Goodnight” with a small bow and not even a kiss.
Tindómë waited. She pouted.
“Meleth, little one,” he began.
There! Little one! She had just known!
“This is not the place for long conversations,” he continued.
“Then come into my room and talk for as long as you want!” she challenged him.
“No. That would be like twisting my fingers in your hair before you came of age.”
She recognised the analogy; he had told her that he had spent three years resisting the urge to wind her wavy hair around his fingers because he would have found it difficult to stop the physical contact going further.
“But… but I want…” A terrible thought came to her; “Don’t you want? Any more? With me?” Something must have happened so that he didn’t desire her any longer.
Rumil didn’t answer. At least not in words. He placed a finger under her chin, so that they were in contact, and then tipped her face towards him until they were also in eye contact.
She was hit by such a wave of desire from him that she wondered if, once fully bound, he might be able to make her ‘fly’ with only this level of contact.
Then the sensation receded as if he was gently pulling it back to himself leaving her with just the merest touch.
She felt herself blush. She needn’t, then, worry about any lack of desire…
He stepped back to break contact just before she heard the approaching footsteps.
“We will find a time and place to talk properly tomorrow, meleth, I promise,” he said quietly in Sindarin.
He switched to the Common tongue and finished with “Good night, my lady”, just as a middle aged woman came into view, and bowed formally.
‘M’kay,’ Tindómë thought, ‘we’re back to the Ren Fayre, I guess.’
“Good night, my lord,” she answered, with a curtsey.
As he turned, to walk back to his own room, the woman stopped beside Tindómë and spoke.
“I will attend to your needs and prepare you for bed.”
‘How did she know to arrive just then?’ Tindómë wondered, ‘And just how much preparing does she think I need?’
……………………………………………………………………….
The answer to the second question was, Tindómë decided, ‘a lot.’
The woman was, apparently, a lady-in-waiting and she seemed determined to treat Tindómë as some sort of Barbie doll. She was, probably, a very good lady-in-waiting, and a perfectly pleasant woman, but there was something in the way that she seemed to assess, and mentally catalogue, Tindómë’s dress, underwear and body that gave the impression that everything would be discussed later, at length, with a whole bunch of other middle-aged ladies.
As the woman picked up Tindómë’s hairbrush, surreptitiously taking in every detail of the intricately carved handle, Tindómë decided that she wanted to keep her ‘not quite an elf’ ears to herself – something, at least, to remain private and not discussed by a coven of ladies-in-waiting.
“I will brush my own hair, thank you,” she said.
“Oh, but my lady, it will need to be properly brushed and fastened before you retire to bed,” the woman replied.
Tindómë pulled herself up to her full height, towering over the Gondorian noblewoman, and looked down her nose at the woman.
“I am capable of brushing my own hair and prefer you not to touch it,” she insisted; recognising, in the tone, the Lady Galadriel at her most imperious. ‘Go me!’ she thought.
It was effective. The woman put the brush down and curtseyed; Tindómë thought that, in the gossip stakes, this could well become a major winner.
On a roll, she dismissed the lady-in-waiting, saying that she could get into bed unaided, and breathed a sigh of relief as she finally had the room to herself.
When the same lady-in-waiting arrived next morning “to help your ladyship out of bed and assist with your bath”, Tindómë wanted to just say “Go away”, but realised that may not be very polite. Although she was totally at home with the Elven habit of communal bathing, this was rather different, and not something with which she was comfortable.
This woman hadn’t even introduced herself and, somehow, managed to give the impression that she actually found waiting on a young elleth to be beneath her, yet she wanted to know as much as possible about Tindómë, her relationship to the Queen, and so on.
In the end Tindómë informed her that she could bathe unaided – the woman could return to help lace her dress later.
By the time she was ready for breakfast Tindómë had reached a number of conclusions. Life in the Citadel was much more formal now than it had been in the post-war period; wearing her hair loose was somewhat ‘improper’; her beautiful dresses were a source of fascination but also not quite ‘proper’; and the lady-in-waiting did nothing practical – there were maids for that.
Finally the woman was clearly surprised, but interested, when Elladan arrived to accompany his ‘cousin’ to breakfast.
“That woman is going to drive me crazy and I certainly can’t see you being able to bed her like you could Fritha,” Tindómë muttered to him, in Sindarin, as they made their way along a number of passages and through a few rooms.
“Can we just go back to Helm’s Deep or Edoras? Please El? At least Fritha and the maid at Edoras treated me as a person, not a doll who might be a source of useful information!
“Also,” she went on, “if you are all going to be so formal, and stay out of my bedroom, my hair is going to have to stay loose all the time because I am so not going to ask her to help me braid it!”
“We can do your hair later, if you want,” Elladan answered. “Perhaps if she is going to ‘drive you crazy’ we could add removing her from your service to the list of other changes we are going to try to persuade our brother and sister to make…”
“Oooh – you think you can? I might even be persuaded to stay, then!”
Breakfast was taken in private and, as Tindómë sat down, Arwen joined them.
“I have left Gilraen with the nurse, which pleases her, but Lady Geoghel is most displeased that I have left my room and she worries that I will overtire myself,” the Queen announced.
She took bread, butter, honey, and a bowl piled high with fresh fruit, from the sideboard and sat beside her husband with a smile.
“I plan to spend a little time out in my garden, before the sun gets too hot, as well,” she continued, “which will doubtless distress the lady even more. I am sure, however, as long as I do not ‘go into a decline’ following these outrages she will be won around eventually!”
“Perhaps a rest on the bed for the afternoon, my love?” Aragorn suggested.
“Yes, I will happily do that. Perhaps you could join me for an hour, and we can spend time with just the three of us?”
Across the table the Queen’s brothers both nodded approval.
“Yes… yes, I think I can manage that,” Aragorn said, slowly smiling.
………………………………………………………..
Arwen’s garden was at the side of the Citadel where a little of the natural rock remained. It was small, but fairly secluded, and it overlooked the garden of the House of Healing in the circle below. The sound of running water could be traced to a waterfall, with a pool at its base, that made Tindómë itch to kick off her shoes and dangle her toes in it at the very least.
Stripping and cooling off under the waterfall would probably shock anyone in the rooms that overlooked it. Although, when you looked carefully, it seemed that the pool was hardly overlooked at all –trees and bushes seemed to grow in just the right way to shelter it, and the waterfall was in just the right part of the garden, at just the right angle to the building…
“The plants have taken very well,” Elladan commented, looking around, “and Legolas was right about where to site the waterfall and pool.”
“The waterfall isn’t natural?” Tindómë asked.
“No,” Arwen explained, “Legolas and I chose the position and Gimli brought some of his masons to form a channel from the system that brings the water down from the mountains. From this pool the water fills a pool in the Healing Garden, then on down to irrigate a number of gardens on the lower levels, and finally out to the orchards below the walls. It does not re-enter the drinking water system, but neither does it go to waste. Legolas then brought most of the trees and plants and we planted them together.”
“If the formality of court becomes too much for we simple elves,” Elrohir said with a smile, “we can, any of us,” he waved his hand around to include Orophin, Rumil and Tindómë, “come and bathe in it, under the stars, without shocking anyone.”
“Although,” Elladan added, “traditional starlight bathing may not be a good idea, in case someone accidentally catches a glimpse of us out of a window. Sudden shock can cause death in mortals if their heart is weak…”
As Arwen settled herself into a carved wooden seat, and Elladan spread a blanket on the ground, Aragorn arrived accompanied by the nurse carrying the baby princess. Well, it was probably the baby princess – it was a bundle of multiple blankets and shawls.
The nurse walked slowly to the Queen and, with a worried look, passed the bundle over.
“Thank you,” Arwen said with a smile, “I will return her before the sun gets too hot.”
“Oh, my lady, your majesty! You mustn’t try to carry her!” The nurse looked flustered at the very idea. “Send a servant for me and I will carry her!”
Any non-elf (apart from herself and Aragorn, Tindómë thought) would have missed the series of glances and facial expressions that followed that statement.
“I am sure the King and I will manage, or one of our brothers,” Arwen said, adding gently, “Should we have any doubts we will send for you.”
The nurse left, reluctantly, and Arwen carefully unwrapped the bundle until the princess could be seen in a long gown, mittens, a lace cap and a shawl.
“In a week or two, perhaps,” Elladan said, “we might lay her unclothed on the grass without causing too great an outcry. But we will settle for her simply being with you, in the fresh air, for today.”
Aragorn sat beside his wife; she rested her head on his shoulder and held the babe in her arms. Rumil looked at them, paused for a moment as if considering, and then took Tindómë’s hand in his.
“Come, meleth-nín, let us explore this garden together,” he said, “and then I will come back to sketch this first outing.”
Beside the waterfall Rumil stopped and, looking to see that they were not overlooked, turned towards Tindómë and took both her hands in his.
“Meleth,” he began, “now we can talk, where there are no women waiting around corners to watch us even if it is unlikely that they will understand us.”
“She was waiting around the corner?”
“I heard her breathing. After she escorted you into your room I looked – there is a seat there. There are others in the corridors; they will allow courtiers to always be available to the King and his family, just as there are always ellyth and guards within hearing of our Lord and Lady.”
“I guess inside the Citadel is the place where people are most likely to understand Sindarin, too,” Tindómë said, thoughtfully. The nobility of Gondor learnt Sindarin in much the same way that private schools in her old dimension taught Latin and Ancient Greek.
Rumil moved even closer to her, leant forward to touch foreheads, and then simply stood for a time, letting love and desire wrap itself around her, before he finally spoke.
“Never think,” he said, sounding more solemn than she had ever heard him before, “that I do not desire you. I cannot imagine, even after a yén of yéni, that there will be a time when I do not desire you. But you and I have until the end of time. A little while without indulging those desires is nothing to us but it may mean a lot to those our Lord and Lady hold dear.”
“Uh?” Tindómë realised this was not the most elegant response, but it was heartfelt!
“Let us sit and talk a little,” Rumil said, nodding toward a seat carved into the rock.
“Tindómë,” he began, and she realised this was a serious, and non-romantic, talk.
“You have been taught a lot of our history in a very short time, and I know Lord Celeborn is not only a good teacher but a fair one. He does not avoid the parts that are painful – I too had history lessons from him.
“You know that elves, like men, are not all one single people. Just as there are men of Gondor, Arnor, Rohan, Harad and so forth; so we are Sylvan, Sindar, Noldor and more. You know that there were Sylvan, wood elves, in Lorien before our Lord and Lady came to the woods?”
“Yes. Yes, Lord Celeborn did explain that,” she answered, wondering where this was going.
“Even before that, Sindarin elves had arrived and the two groups had to try to adjust to one another. Then our Lord and Lady came, with more of the displaced Sindar, whilst our Lady was not even Sindar, but a princess of the Noldor. All this was, of course, a long time before my birth, but there are many who remember.
“The ways of the incomers, her Ladyship’s in particular, were not the ways of the Sylvan elves that had lived happily in the woods for many years before she came. All had to adjust. When our Lady sails West, back to the family of her birth, it is likely that her ways and theirs will no longer be the same.
“This is what is happening now in Gondor, to these people here in Minas Tirith.”
The comparison had not occurred to Tindómë – sometimes just how deep-thinking Rumil was surprised her – Aragorn as Celeborn, similar yet different; Arwen as Galadriel, much more different.
Rumil continued, “Orophin and I have only some small understanding of how the ordinary society of this place worked in a time just after a war, but Elladan and Elrohir know not only the society of men from their years riding with the Dúnedain, but also from time spent, briefly, here in the court of their brother and sister.
“You and I should behave as if there is no desire; not only because we, as elves, do not make our emotions public to those we know not but, also, because the people of the court believe that there should be no sign of desire amongst the unbound. If we broke these rules it would reflect badly on Arwen and Aragorn.”
He tipped her face again so that she was looking straight at him.
“We are the unknown, the strangers, and anything that we do, that does not fit in with their expectations of propriety, will remind them that they are now ruled by a Numenorian who was raised by Elves, and an elleth.
“If this means that sitting side by side in this garden is as close as we get for our whole time in Gondor it is not important. We have until the end of the world to ‘indulge in the desires of the body’. We do not have to live at the pace of mortals, my most beloved Key.”
Tindómë nodded slowly, thinking over what he had just said.
Before she could say anything, Rumil continued. “But we also learned, from the twins, that the mortal married couples are not bound to each other as Elves are. They are so careful to maintain the young woman’s gweneth until marriage because they may get with child so easily, unlike Elves, but, once the ceremony is over and the gweneth no longer unbroken, not only do the noblemen often indulge with women other than their wives, but the noblewomen will even indulge with other men! It seems very strange behaviour to us – just as ours must to them.”
A wide grin suddenly lit up his, previously solemn, face.
“This means that liaisons in the heat of the afternoon are not unusual in the court circles. I think it unlikely that you and I would not also find ways to indulge at times during our stay!”
He stood up, offered his arm to Tindómë, and they made their way back to the others.
Rumil took out his drawing materials and was soon concentrating on the scene of domesticity before him. Tindómë sat and mulled over what he had said.
She hoped that he was right and they could find time and place sometimes to make out – it was still such a new pleasure for her. But, if not, then it would probably help her to adjust to the pace of life as an immortal.
Into her mind came a picture of the only immortal she had really known before she came to Middle Earth. Spike didn’t usually live his life at a slow and measured pace… and yet Tindómë could see that there was sense in what Rumil said, now that she realised that he had not stopped wanting her. Perhaps in a year or two she might learn to pace herself like an Elf, not a punk vampire.
……………………………………………………………….
By three days after that first visit to Arwen’s garden Tindómë was feeling much happier. Each evening the Elves and the royal couple continued to dine in private; Aragorn had presided over a formal, court, celebratory meal for the birth of Princess Gilraen the night before their arrival and had simply announced that he would dine with his wife and brothers until the midsummer festivities and the formal naming ceremony for the babe.
This arrangement did prevent the twins and Orophin having much chance to determine whether any of the ladies of court found them too exotic to resist. There would be plenty of chances during, and after, the celebrations Orophin had said, with a shrug, when Tindómë teased him about it.
Each evening, after dinner, Rumil would walk with her to spend some time alone in Arwen’s garden although they maintained a dignified distance between themselves at all other times. There they walked with his arm around her, her head on his shoulder, stopping for the occasional kiss, as they had during the first weeks after her coming-of-age. She hoped they could indulge in a little ‘afternoon delight’ soon, even if the other ellyn didn’t have the chance yet, but the ensuing degree of frustration had a certain sweetness of its own.
Elladan, as good as his word, had mentioned to Arwen that the lady-in-waiting was too attentive for Tindómë’s comfort, and, after a chat with the Queen followed by the Queen having a discussion with a senior housekeeper, Nessy had arrived in Tindómë’s room in the morning.
Nessiel (“but everyone calls me Nessy”) was the maid who had looked after Dawn back in the days when she was confined to bed with her broken leg, ribs, and arms. Still a chamber maid, the call to act as lady’s maid to a visiting cousin of the King and Queen had come as a shock, but it didn’t take long for her to recognise ‘her young lady’. Seeing Nessy, instead of the lady-in-waiting, was such a relief that Tindómë felt as if she could easily abandon her Elven dignity and hug the girl; but she settled for smiles and a heartfelt welcome.
Accompanied by Rumil and Orophin she had spent some time looking at shops and around a couple of markets. That was a bit like being on exhibition – people stopped to look at them as they walked by, some openly, some more surreptitiously. Orophin said he thought this was happening more now than it had in the post-war period.
He thought it might be because there had been so many strangers, then, that a couple of Elves simply went un-noticed. Tindómë thought it was also because they, all three, were dressed much more formally, as guests of the King and Queen, than they had been three years before, and were more noticeable as ‘visiting dignitaries’.
It occurred to Tindómë that despite her height, if she dressed like a local and wore her hair up, she would probably attract less attention than did the ellyn. She discussed the idea with Arwen, who was more approachable than Tindómë had expected a Queen to be – which was silly, she told herself, as she found the Queen’s brothers and husband quite approachable – even her grandparents, in their own way! They decided that, with Nessy to accompany her, Tindómë should be safe to wander around the merchants’ quarter at her leisure.
Aragorn had been more than happy to allow her free reign in the Citadel library when she asked and Legolas was due to arrive sometime in the next couple of days, with Prince Faramir and Princess Éowyn, to attend the naming ceremony. Things were, all in all, looking up.
Which is why what she overheard, as she was sitting quietly reading in the Royal Library, came as a total shock.
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Odd bits of Sindarin;
yén - 144
yéni - plural of yén.
gweneth - virginity, also hymen.
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The BtVS characters do not belong to me, but are used for amusement only. All rights remain the property of Mutant Enemy, Joss Whedon, and the original TV companies. The same is true of the LotR characters for whom all rights remain the property of the estate of JRR Tolkien and the companies responsible for the production of the films.
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We are home for about a month now, and so I should get the next chapter or two done much faster.
So - previous chapters are Here.
Chapter Sixteen.
Rating 15
4,000words.
Beta'd, as usual, by S2C.
Tindómë was pouting. She knew she was pouting, and she knew it was not a very adult thing to do, but she pouted nonetheless. She was pretty sure that any minute now Rumil would call her ‘little one’, which he only did when he felt that she hadn’t quite understood – such as when Fritha spent the night with the ellyn – or if he thought she was behaving like an elfling rather than a proper adult.
When they had spent the post-war period in the King’s House, at Gandalf’s instigation, Dawn, as she then was, had been ‘hidden away’ in a bedroom far away from the main areas of the palace. As far as she knew, either no-one had thought to allocate a room to Rumil and Orophin, or they had officially been quartered with the Rohirrim. It hadn’t mattered as, from the day Rumil had carried her from the House of Healing to the King’s House, he and Orophin had moved what few possessions they had into her room; and had taken what little sleep they needed in an armchair there, or on the floor.
This time however, as honoured guests of the Royal couple, the brothers had a suite similar to that allocated to the twins.
“Shiny!” Orophin had said in Sindarin, with a sideways glance at Tindómë, when a servant had shown it to them.
‘M’kay…’ Tindómë had thought, ‘They say you can take the girl out of SoCal, but you can’t take SoCal out of the girl… well, it looks like you can also put it into the elf!’
There had not been time to say anything as a servant had quickly steered Tindómë out of the ellyn’s room and shown her to her own. This was beautiful, like a larger and more luxuriant version of the room she had slept in three years previously, and also within the royal wing, but about as far as it was possible to get from Rumil and Orophin’s suite.
She had commented to Rumil that one or the other of them would have to sneak along a lot of corridors to sleep in the same bed; only for him to tell her that they had slept in separate beds in Edoras and they should do so here.
Now they had finished dinner, visited Arwen again (with a plate of food declared by the twins to be suitable to properly nourish her and, therefore, the Princess Gilraen), and Rumil had walked Tindómë to her bedroom door, where he formally wished her “Goodnight” with a small bow and not even a kiss.
Tindómë waited. She pouted.
“Meleth, little one,” he began.
There! Little one! She had just known!
“This is not the place for long conversations,” he continued.
“Then come into my room and talk for as long as you want!” she challenged him.
“No. That would be like twisting my fingers in your hair before you came of age.”
She recognised the analogy; he had told her that he had spent three years resisting the urge to wind her wavy hair around his fingers because he would have found it difficult to stop the physical contact going further.
“But… but I want…” A terrible thought came to her; “Don’t you want? Any more? With me?” Something must have happened so that he didn’t desire her any longer.
Rumil didn’t answer. At least not in words. He placed a finger under her chin, so that they were in contact, and then tipped her face towards him until they were also in eye contact.
She was hit by such a wave of desire from him that she wondered if, once fully bound, he might be able to make her ‘fly’ with only this level of contact.
Then the sensation receded as if he was gently pulling it back to himself leaving her with just the merest touch.
She felt herself blush. She needn’t, then, worry about any lack of desire…
He stepped back to break contact just before she heard the approaching footsteps.
“We will find a time and place to talk properly tomorrow, meleth, I promise,” he said quietly in Sindarin.
He switched to the Common tongue and finished with “Good night, my lady”, just as a middle aged woman came into view, and bowed formally.
‘M’kay,’ Tindómë thought, ‘we’re back to the Ren Fayre, I guess.’
“Good night, my lord,” she answered, with a curtsey.
As he turned, to walk back to his own room, the woman stopped beside Tindómë and spoke.
“I will attend to your needs and prepare you for bed.”
‘How did she know to arrive just then?’ Tindómë wondered, ‘And just how much preparing does she think I need?’
……………………………………………………………………….
The answer to the second question was, Tindómë decided, ‘a lot.’
The woman was, apparently, a lady-in-waiting and she seemed determined to treat Tindómë as some sort of Barbie doll. She was, probably, a very good lady-in-waiting, and a perfectly pleasant woman, but there was something in the way that she seemed to assess, and mentally catalogue, Tindómë’s dress, underwear and body that gave the impression that everything would be discussed later, at length, with a whole bunch of other middle-aged ladies.
As the woman picked up Tindómë’s hairbrush, surreptitiously taking in every detail of the intricately carved handle, Tindómë decided that she wanted to keep her ‘not quite an elf’ ears to herself – something, at least, to remain private and not discussed by a coven of ladies-in-waiting.
“I will brush my own hair, thank you,” she said.
“Oh, but my lady, it will need to be properly brushed and fastened before you retire to bed,” the woman replied.
Tindómë pulled herself up to her full height, towering over the Gondorian noblewoman, and looked down her nose at the woman.
“I am capable of brushing my own hair and prefer you not to touch it,” she insisted; recognising, in the tone, the Lady Galadriel at her most imperious. ‘Go me!’ she thought.
It was effective. The woman put the brush down and curtseyed; Tindómë thought that, in the gossip stakes, this could well become a major winner.
On a roll, she dismissed the lady-in-waiting, saying that she could get into bed unaided, and breathed a sigh of relief as she finally had the room to herself.
When the same lady-in-waiting arrived next morning “to help your ladyship out of bed and assist with your bath”, Tindómë wanted to just say “Go away”, but realised that may not be very polite. Although she was totally at home with the Elven habit of communal bathing, this was rather different, and not something with which she was comfortable.
This woman hadn’t even introduced herself and, somehow, managed to give the impression that she actually found waiting on a young elleth to be beneath her, yet she wanted to know as much as possible about Tindómë, her relationship to the Queen, and so on.
In the end Tindómë informed her that she could bathe unaided – the woman could return to help lace her dress later.
By the time she was ready for breakfast Tindómë had reached a number of conclusions. Life in the Citadel was much more formal now than it had been in the post-war period; wearing her hair loose was somewhat ‘improper’; her beautiful dresses were a source of fascination but also not quite ‘proper’; and the lady-in-waiting did nothing practical – there were maids for that.
Finally the woman was clearly surprised, but interested, when Elladan arrived to accompany his ‘cousin’ to breakfast.
“That woman is going to drive me crazy and I certainly can’t see you being able to bed her like you could Fritha,” Tindómë muttered to him, in Sindarin, as they made their way along a number of passages and through a few rooms.
“Can we just go back to Helm’s Deep or Edoras? Please El? At least Fritha and the maid at Edoras treated me as a person, not a doll who might be a source of useful information!
“Also,” she went on, “if you are all going to be so formal, and stay out of my bedroom, my hair is going to have to stay loose all the time because I am so not going to ask her to help me braid it!”
“We can do your hair later, if you want,” Elladan answered. “Perhaps if she is going to ‘drive you crazy’ we could add removing her from your service to the list of other changes we are going to try to persuade our brother and sister to make…”
“Oooh – you think you can? I might even be persuaded to stay, then!”
Breakfast was taken in private and, as Tindómë sat down, Arwen joined them.
“I have left Gilraen with the nurse, which pleases her, but Lady Geoghel is most displeased that I have left my room and she worries that I will overtire myself,” the Queen announced.
She took bread, butter, honey, and a bowl piled high with fresh fruit, from the sideboard and sat beside her husband with a smile.
“I plan to spend a little time out in my garden, before the sun gets too hot, as well,” she continued, “which will doubtless distress the lady even more. I am sure, however, as long as I do not ‘go into a decline’ following these outrages she will be won around eventually!”
“Perhaps a rest on the bed for the afternoon, my love?” Aragorn suggested.
“Yes, I will happily do that. Perhaps you could join me for an hour, and we can spend time with just the three of us?”
Across the table the Queen’s brothers both nodded approval.
“Yes… yes, I think I can manage that,” Aragorn said, slowly smiling.
………………………………………………………..
Arwen’s garden was at the side of the Citadel where a little of the natural rock remained. It was small, but fairly secluded, and it overlooked the garden of the House of Healing in the circle below. The sound of running water could be traced to a waterfall, with a pool at its base, that made Tindómë itch to kick off her shoes and dangle her toes in it at the very least.
Stripping and cooling off under the waterfall would probably shock anyone in the rooms that overlooked it. Although, when you looked carefully, it seemed that the pool was hardly overlooked at all –trees and bushes seemed to grow in just the right way to shelter it, and the waterfall was in just the right part of the garden, at just the right angle to the building…
“The plants have taken very well,” Elladan commented, looking around, “and Legolas was right about where to site the waterfall and pool.”
“The waterfall isn’t natural?” Tindómë asked.
“No,” Arwen explained, “Legolas and I chose the position and Gimli brought some of his masons to form a channel from the system that brings the water down from the mountains. From this pool the water fills a pool in the Healing Garden, then on down to irrigate a number of gardens on the lower levels, and finally out to the orchards below the walls. It does not re-enter the drinking water system, but neither does it go to waste. Legolas then brought most of the trees and plants and we planted them together.”
“If the formality of court becomes too much for we simple elves,” Elrohir said with a smile, “we can, any of us,” he waved his hand around to include Orophin, Rumil and Tindómë, “come and bathe in it, under the stars, without shocking anyone.”
“Although,” Elladan added, “traditional starlight bathing may not be a good idea, in case someone accidentally catches a glimpse of us out of a window. Sudden shock can cause death in mortals if their heart is weak…”
As Arwen settled herself into a carved wooden seat, and Elladan spread a blanket on the ground, Aragorn arrived accompanied by the nurse carrying the baby princess. Well, it was probably the baby princess – it was a bundle of multiple blankets and shawls.
The nurse walked slowly to the Queen and, with a worried look, passed the bundle over.
“Thank you,” Arwen said with a smile, “I will return her before the sun gets too hot.”
“Oh, my lady, your majesty! You mustn’t try to carry her!” The nurse looked flustered at the very idea. “Send a servant for me and I will carry her!”
Any non-elf (apart from herself and Aragorn, Tindómë thought) would have missed the series of glances and facial expressions that followed that statement.
“I am sure the King and I will manage, or one of our brothers,” Arwen said, adding gently, “Should we have any doubts we will send for you.”
The nurse left, reluctantly, and Arwen carefully unwrapped the bundle until the princess could be seen in a long gown, mittens, a lace cap and a shawl.
“In a week or two, perhaps,” Elladan said, “we might lay her unclothed on the grass without causing too great an outcry. But we will settle for her simply being with you, in the fresh air, for today.”
Aragorn sat beside his wife; she rested her head on his shoulder and held the babe in her arms. Rumil looked at them, paused for a moment as if considering, and then took Tindómë’s hand in his.
“Come, meleth-nín, let us explore this garden together,” he said, “and then I will come back to sketch this first outing.”
Beside the waterfall Rumil stopped and, looking to see that they were not overlooked, turned towards Tindómë and took both her hands in his.
“Meleth,” he began, “now we can talk, where there are no women waiting around corners to watch us even if it is unlikely that they will understand us.”
“She was waiting around the corner?”
“I heard her breathing. After she escorted you into your room I looked – there is a seat there. There are others in the corridors; they will allow courtiers to always be available to the King and his family, just as there are always ellyth and guards within hearing of our Lord and Lady.”
“I guess inside the Citadel is the place where people are most likely to understand Sindarin, too,” Tindómë said, thoughtfully. The nobility of Gondor learnt Sindarin in much the same way that private schools in her old dimension taught Latin and Ancient Greek.
Rumil moved even closer to her, leant forward to touch foreheads, and then simply stood for a time, letting love and desire wrap itself around her, before he finally spoke.
“Never think,” he said, sounding more solemn than she had ever heard him before, “that I do not desire you. I cannot imagine, even after a yén of yéni, that there will be a time when I do not desire you. But you and I have until the end of time. A little while without indulging those desires is nothing to us but it may mean a lot to those our Lord and Lady hold dear.”
“Uh?” Tindómë realised this was not the most elegant response, but it was heartfelt!
“Let us sit and talk a little,” Rumil said, nodding toward a seat carved into the rock.
“Tindómë,” he began, and she realised this was a serious, and non-romantic, talk.
“You have been taught a lot of our history in a very short time, and I know Lord Celeborn is not only a good teacher but a fair one. He does not avoid the parts that are painful – I too had history lessons from him.
“You know that elves, like men, are not all one single people. Just as there are men of Gondor, Arnor, Rohan, Harad and so forth; so we are Sylvan, Sindar, Noldor and more. You know that there were Sylvan, wood elves, in Lorien before our Lord and Lady came to the woods?”
“Yes. Yes, Lord Celeborn did explain that,” she answered, wondering where this was going.
“Even before that, Sindarin elves had arrived and the two groups had to try to adjust to one another. Then our Lord and Lady came, with more of the displaced Sindar, whilst our Lady was not even Sindar, but a princess of the Noldor. All this was, of course, a long time before my birth, but there are many who remember.
“The ways of the incomers, her Ladyship’s in particular, were not the ways of the Sylvan elves that had lived happily in the woods for many years before she came. All had to adjust. When our Lady sails West, back to the family of her birth, it is likely that her ways and theirs will no longer be the same.
“This is what is happening now in Gondor, to these people here in Minas Tirith.”
The comparison had not occurred to Tindómë – sometimes just how deep-thinking Rumil was surprised her – Aragorn as Celeborn, similar yet different; Arwen as Galadriel, much more different.
Rumil continued, “Orophin and I have only some small understanding of how the ordinary society of this place worked in a time just after a war, but Elladan and Elrohir know not only the society of men from their years riding with the Dúnedain, but also from time spent, briefly, here in the court of their brother and sister.
“You and I should behave as if there is no desire; not only because we, as elves, do not make our emotions public to those we know not but, also, because the people of the court believe that there should be no sign of desire amongst the unbound. If we broke these rules it would reflect badly on Arwen and Aragorn.”
He tipped her face again so that she was looking straight at him.
“We are the unknown, the strangers, and anything that we do, that does not fit in with their expectations of propriety, will remind them that they are now ruled by a Numenorian who was raised by Elves, and an elleth.
“If this means that sitting side by side in this garden is as close as we get for our whole time in Gondor it is not important. We have until the end of the world to ‘indulge in the desires of the body’. We do not have to live at the pace of mortals, my most beloved Key.”
Tindómë nodded slowly, thinking over what he had just said.
Before she could say anything, Rumil continued. “But we also learned, from the twins, that the mortal married couples are not bound to each other as Elves are. They are so careful to maintain the young woman’s gweneth until marriage because they may get with child so easily, unlike Elves, but, once the ceremony is over and the gweneth no longer unbroken, not only do the noblemen often indulge with women other than their wives, but the noblewomen will even indulge with other men! It seems very strange behaviour to us – just as ours must to them.”
A wide grin suddenly lit up his, previously solemn, face.
“This means that liaisons in the heat of the afternoon are not unusual in the court circles. I think it unlikely that you and I would not also find ways to indulge at times during our stay!”
He stood up, offered his arm to Tindómë, and they made their way back to the others.
Rumil took out his drawing materials and was soon concentrating on the scene of domesticity before him. Tindómë sat and mulled over what he had said.
She hoped that he was right and they could find time and place sometimes to make out – it was still such a new pleasure for her. But, if not, then it would probably help her to adjust to the pace of life as an immortal.
Into her mind came a picture of the only immortal she had really known before she came to Middle Earth. Spike didn’t usually live his life at a slow and measured pace… and yet Tindómë could see that there was sense in what Rumil said, now that she realised that he had not stopped wanting her. Perhaps in a year or two she might learn to pace herself like an Elf, not a punk vampire.
……………………………………………………………….
By three days after that first visit to Arwen’s garden Tindómë was feeling much happier. Each evening the Elves and the royal couple continued to dine in private; Aragorn had presided over a formal, court, celebratory meal for the birth of Princess Gilraen the night before their arrival and had simply announced that he would dine with his wife and brothers until the midsummer festivities and the formal naming ceremony for the babe.
This arrangement did prevent the twins and Orophin having much chance to determine whether any of the ladies of court found them too exotic to resist. There would be plenty of chances during, and after, the celebrations Orophin had said, with a shrug, when Tindómë teased him about it.
Each evening, after dinner, Rumil would walk with her to spend some time alone in Arwen’s garden although they maintained a dignified distance between themselves at all other times. There they walked with his arm around her, her head on his shoulder, stopping for the occasional kiss, as they had during the first weeks after her coming-of-age. She hoped they could indulge in a little ‘afternoon delight’ soon, even if the other ellyn didn’t have the chance yet, but the ensuing degree of frustration had a certain sweetness of its own.
Elladan, as good as his word, had mentioned to Arwen that the lady-in-waiting was too attentive for Tindómë’s comfort, and, after a chat with the Queen followed by the Queen having a discussion with a senior housekeeper, Nessy had arrived in Tindómë’s room in the morning.
Nessiel (“but everyone calls me Nessy”) was the maid who had looked after Dawn back in the days when she was confined to bed with her broken leg, ribs, and arms. Still a chamber maid, the call to act as lady’s maid to a visiting cousin of the King and Queen had come as a shock, but it didn’t take long for her to recognise ‘her young lady’. Seeing Nessy, instead of the lady-in-waiting, was such a relief that Tindómë felt as if she could easily abandon her Elven dignity and hug the girl; but she settled for smiles and a heartfelt welcome.
Accompanied by Rumil and Orophin she had spent some time looking at shops and around a couple of markets. That was a bit like being on exhibition – people stopped to look at them as they walked by, some openly, some more surreptitiously. Orophin said he thought this was happening more now than it had in the post-war period.
He thought it might be because there had been so many strangers, then, that a couple of Elves simply went un-noticed. Tindómë thought it was also because they, all three, were dressed much more formally, as guests of the King and Queen, than they had been three years before, and were more noticeable as ‘visiting dignitaries’.
It occurred to Tindómë that despite her height, if she dressed like a local and wore her hair up, she would probably attract less attention than did the ellyn. She discussed the idea with Arwen, who was more approachable than Tindómë had expected a Queen to be – which was silly, she told herself, as she found the Queen’s brothers and husband quite approachable – even her grandparents, in their own way! They decided that, with Nessy to accompany her, Tindómë should be safe to wander around the merchants’ quarter at her leisure.
Aragorn had been more than happy to allow her free reign in the Citadel library when she asked and Legolas was due to arrive sometime in the next couple of days, with Prince Faramir and Princess Éowyn, to attend the naming ceremony. Things were, all in all, looking up.
Which is why what she overheard, as she was sitting quietly reading in the Royal Library, came as a total shock.
.....................................................................
Odd bits of Sindarin;
yén - 144
yéni - plural of yén.
gweneth - virginity, also hymen.
.....................................................................
The BtVS characters do not belong to me, but are used for amusement only. All rights remain the property of Mutant Enemy, Joss Whedon, and the original TV companies. The same is true of the LotR characters for whom all rights remain the property of the estate of JRR Tolkien and the companies responsible for the production of the films.
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We are home for about a month now, and so I should get the next chapter or two done much faster.
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Date: 21/07/2009 08:27 pm (UTC)(And that's a really mean way to finish the chapter - now we have to wait to find out!)
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Date: 21/07/2009 08:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 21/07/2009 09:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 21/07/2009 08:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 21/07/2009 09:06 pm (UTC)No - it isn't Dawn who has the rope or the candlestick...
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Date: 21/07/2009 10:35 pm (UTC)Yes, slow and careful has never been the Spike motto.
Which is why what she overheard, as she was sitting quietly reading in the Royal Library, came as a total shock.
An even bigger shock than the pesky ladies in waiting?
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Date: 21/07/2009 10:43 pm (UTC)Oh yes...
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Date: 22/07/2009 07:17 am (UTC)Also, cliffhanger!!!!
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Date: 22/07/2009 07:51 am (UTC)No visitors to the queen until her post-partum blood loss would be over, no breast-feeding as it might over-tax her strength - and it would allow her to get on with producing the next heir more quickly; no possibility of the baby being in close contact with anyone to infect them, and so wrapped up if they do go out that insect bites etc would be almost impossible...
They were often doing sensible things, but for all the wrong reasons, and had no idea why some of their rituals worked! Or, in many cases, failed to work and actually did harm...
Infection resistant Elves, with a much higher emphasis on spiritual development, would have had very different rituals - certainly a major point for culture clash, I reckoned!
Arwen's life, I think, would have been happy in the private moments, but generally not as happy as it would have been had she stayed amongst her own people. Sometimes I wonder if this ever crossed JRRT's mind at all; whether he thought he was giving her something wonderful (him being a man!), or whether he actually was 'punishing' her for standing up to her father and making her own choice of partner even though it was outside her own culture...
I thought of what effect this heritage would have on their children when I wrote Many Happy Returns (http://community.livejournal.com/tolkien_weekly/539704.html) - not all shiny and bright!
And if we think Prince Charles is having a long wait to get to the throne... chances are that, if Eldarion married when he would have been expected to, his wife would have died of old age before he became king.
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Date: 22/07/2009 04:57 pm (UTC)I often wondered what exactly lay behind the appalling end he wrote for Arwen. 'Despair' to a Catholic and a medievalist being the one sin for which there can be no forgiveness and really being synonymous with suicide. The only other suicide we see in LoTR is Denethor. Is that really his parallel? Or is this part and parcel of the 'unredeemed earth' bit and the problem of being warriors for good before the coming of Christ gave mankind any hope in the afterlife? Love is an astonishingly powerful force in Tolkien's work but it does not conquer all, in fact with the greater joy tends to invariably come greater pain. The pain is not however all that there is. The whole thing is fascinating and if I ever put my academic ahat on again, probably one of the first papers i will write.
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Date: 22/07/2009 07:52 pm (UTC)You should - you should!
I, too, think his ending for Arwen is cruel - and it would have taken so little change for her ending to be happier - to simply allow her to chose to 'stop' just as Aragorn was able to would have been a fitting end. To cause her to suffer and despair seems so sad, and really has no bearing on the main story at all.
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Date: 22/07/2009 10:02 am (UTC)AND
Legolas was due to arrive sometime in the next couple of days, with Prince Faramir and Princess Éowyn
Fun, fun, fun! (Well, I can hope).
Lots of lovely visual detail in this chapter, too.
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Date: 22/07/2009 12:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 31/07/2009 06:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 01/08/2009 07:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 25/09/2009 02:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 25/09/2009 06:19 am (UTC)