Boromir inspected the cut on his brother's arm, probing it and making Faramir wince.
"Yes," he said finally, his face grim, "the wound is deep. We'll have to stop sparring for today, and you, my boy, must go to the houses of healing."
The brothers had been sparring intensely that afternoon. Faramir had surprised Boromir with his adept defense: "You've gotten better!" the elder brother had said mildly, and though he was far from being bested, he had a newfound respect for the skills Faramir had learned while they had been apart. But that defense had fallen for a moment and Boromir's sword had found its way through Faramir's padded arm-guard and into the flesh below, drawing blood.
Now, though, Faramir looked at the cut and protested. "But Boromir, it's only a scratch. I can wash it and bandage it myself."
"Don't play the hardened warrior, my young brother," Boromir said, a mischievous spark in his eye. "That needs to be tended to, and quick."
And so through the bustling sixth circle they went, Faramir still arguing that they needn't go and bother the women of the healing-houses. But he perceived that his brother was unbending on the issue, and by the time they reached the long, low buildings of the sick and wounded, he had given up.
Few were inside the healing-house into which Boromir led him: only three of the twelve beds were occupied, and two of those patients appeared to be stricken with nothing more than a persistent cold. They chatted merrily (if stuffily) with the third: a blacksmith with a broken arm. These three noticed Faramir as he fell lazily onto a bed a little ways off from them, and their talk quieted as they tried not to stare of the son of the Steward of Gondor.
Exhaustion now settled over Faramir; after the sword-play with his brother, he had used what breath was left in him in the argument on the way to the healing-house. Now he closed his eyes and began to doze. He thought he could catch snippets of Boromir's conversation with one of the grey-haired healers, though his tones were, for some reason, hushed.
"… is she in the house today?"
"I know what you're … he's only a boy, no more than …"
"… little you know!"
They murmured more quietly yet more heatedly, and he heard the old woman say: "… such healing comes not cheap!" This confused Faramir, for the houses of healing were maintained from general funds for the general good, and healing services were not paid for individually. Then it seemed the matter between Boromir and the old woman — Ioreth was her name, Faramir remembered — was resolved, and all was quiet.
A moment passed in silence, and suddenly he felt soft, cool fingers on his face, and a gentle, cunning voice was in his ear.
"Wake, Faramir son of Denethor!" it said. He opened his lids and found himself looking into shining grey eyes set into a rosy-cheeked and -lipped face, all framed by curling black hair. It was a woman — and a beautiful one at that.
When his wits were about him again, he said, "Are you my healer-girl? For I think a three-year-old too small to draw water from a well could tend to this cut."
The woman smiled. "And how would she do that, Steward-son? By licking it like a lap-cat?" At this, she ran the tip of her tongue along her lips playfully, and Faramir blushed, confused and hot all of a sudden. She continued, "I think you underestimate the gravity of your need for … healing. Come with me, if you can walk."
He followed her through a heavy curtain, and then a door, and found himself in a small, comfortable room with a fire going in one corner. As they entered, two girls about his own age were laughing and exiting through a rear door; one caught his eye and winked; and then the door was shut and he was alone with the dark healer-woman.
"What is this room?" he asked she she guided him onto a low, soft bed. "I have been to this house many a time on errands and in illness and have never seen it before."
"Then Faramir son of Denethor does not know all there is to know of Minas Tirith!" she laughed, and her laughter was quiet though full and merry, and he liked the sound of it. "Tell me, how old are you? — though I think I know."
"Twenty-one," he said, drawing himself up; but when she raised an eyebrow at him, he added, "— or I will be next month."
"So young!" she marveled, "and already such a soldier, from what I hear. And quite a sturdy lad you must be to be bragging after sustaining such a wound as this." She winked at him, then rose and went to the fire. Faramir watched her skirts sway and her little waist bend as she poured hot water from a teakettle into a bowl, watched her bare white arms as she wrung a cloth in the water, and glimpsed her throat and the tops of her breasts as she returned to the bed's edge and leaned over him. "Now let's take this off," she said, pulling gently at the laces that held his shirt together at the neck, and he felt the blush again creeping over his face. But he complied, and lay back down. The room was quiet but for the occasional crackle of the little fire and the near-silent sound of the wet, warm cloth being dragged across the cut on his arm.
"Are you always this nervous around women?" the healer asked him suddenly.
"Nervous?" he spluttered. "I — I —"
She laughed her pretty laugh again. "Don't think you can fool me! I'm older than you, and have seen a good number of young men like yourself, strong and handsome and sure of your own understanding of things as they are. You can't keep secrets from me."
Though he was a little dizzy from her compliments and the comforting feeling of warm water on his wound, he exclaimed, "I can't imagine why you think you know anything about me! We've never laid eyes upon each other before ten minutes ago, and I assure you I'm not like 'a good number of other young men'!" It was a proud boast, but there was something about the way she looked at him that made him feel small — though the feeling was not altogether unpleasant.
"Have we never seen each other?" she asked, smiling slightly. "And as for your being different, that remains to be seen."
Another moment passed in silence. She retrieved from a shelf near the bed clean bandage-linens and wrapped them around his arm, and if he noticed that her fingers lingered a moment on the fine muscles there, he didn't say. Instead he asked, "What's your name?"
"Ionnan," she said, as if surprised that he had asked. "Can I ask you a question?" When he nodded, she asked, "Have you ever been with a woman?"
Faramir was too shocked to answer. He fumbled for words and she watched him, a smile playing at the corners of her red mouth. "I take that as a 'no,'" she said after a moment, when he was still too flushed and confused to have thought of anything clever to say. "You see," she fairly purred, "I know more than one way to heal a man. Would you like to learn?"
Her hand was on his broad, bare chest, and her face was close to his, her hair falling all around him in a dark and fragrant veil. He reached up and cupped her cheek in one palm. "I don't even know you," he protested feebly, though he was already imagining his lips on her face, her throat, and her white arms.
She leaned down until they could feel each other's breath on their mouths, and she said, "You will."
Faramir and Ionnan lay there for a moment: he too timid to move, and she too patient to force him forward. Finally, she said, "Go ahead, Faramir son of Denethor. I would have you kiss me, if you like."
And he did then, daring to brush his lips against hers for just a second, for he was afraid of being too bold and clumsy; but that one brief kiss sent an unfamilair heat shooting throughout his body and made him forget his fear, and soon he had his arms wrapped tightly around her as his lips covered hers.
Yes, he was young, Ionnan judged, but he had kissed before; perhaps those embraces had been fumbles with servant girls or dares with noble young women, but once his fear was subsumed by passion, experience and bare need took over. Then he was like any young man in her arms, and yet different in some way she did not fully understand. There was almost — a music to his kisses — a rhythm — some deep instinctual pattern driving his lips and his hands, and it seemed for a moment that this virgin boy would make her swoon. But she kept her head, and when he pulled back to catch a breath, she pushed him down on the bed, away from her mouth. He struggled up for a moment, but she shushed him.
"Don't make a fuss," she said, pointing at the door through which they'd come. The thought occurred to him suddenly, as if he'd forgotten, that there were patients out there, and other healers, and —
"Those people!" he whispered desperately. "They know me! What if they hear us … in here … won't you be …?"
She smothered a giggle. "Shut your pretty mouth, boy. No one will hear a thing — if you're quiet. Now help me with my dress."
He sat up and began pulling at the laces that were strung across her back, holding together her plain brown dress. They loosed, and he peeled back the fabric to reveal her smooth, narrow back, which glowed in the firelight. Impulsively, he let his lips fall on her shoulder and traced down her spine with his tongue. "Oh ho," she said quietly, though his touch had thrilled her, "the first time you get a woman's dress off and you're already tasting?"
He barely heard her, for now her clothes were sliding off her hips, leaving her naked in the little room. Faramir struggled for breath, and struggled to control himself: now all he wanted to do was throw her down on the bed and climb on top of her, and … he blushed all the more, for though he was inexperienced, he was not ignorant; no boy with a prideful brother five years his senior could remain so for long.
She stood there before him with her hand on her hip and a gentle smile on her face, and she said, "Are you going to stare at me all afternoon, Faramir son of Denethor, or will you take off your breeches so we can continue?"
"Are you in such a hurry?" he asked. "I thought women like things … slower." This he had heard from Boromir, who was known to speak disparagingly of the impossiblity of satisfying a woman — "though all the ages of Arda be spent between her legs."
But Ionnan was shrewd, and saw how he clung nervously to to the closure of his breeches. "You are afraid," she said soothingly. "Do not be afraid." She climbed atop him and lifted his hands to her breasts. His breeches she opened quickly, and drew him out, and though he gasped and writhed under her touch and thought to beg her to slow down, she straddled him swiftly and then he was inside her.
Their eyes met; she held his gaze as he gripped her breasts perhaps too roughly; no breath was in his throat, and she moved up and down at a pace she knew would have him spent soon. Indeed, soon he let his hands fall to her hips, sinking his fingers into the supple flesh there, and would have cried aloud if not for his fear of making too much noise.
Ionnan lowered her body gently onto Faramir's; they panted together for a moment, their lids heavy and limbs tired, and just before he slipped into sleep, he remembered how bewitching she had looked standing naked in the firelight.