Let That Morning Come
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It was a moonlit summer's night in Narnia. Then why could King Rilian not sleep?
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Disclaimer: The title belongs to the poem "Ginevra Degli Amieri" by Susan Coolidge; Narnia and all characters to CS Lewis. Apart from Aslan, who I presume belongs to Himself.
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It was a summer's night in Narnia. Bright moonlight spilled over the towers and battlements of Cair Paravel, pouring through the great stained glass windows of the Throne room to cast a shifting mosaic of moon colours gem-bright upon the floor. The splashes of red and blue and green made the shadows in the corners of the room even blacker. In the shadows, a man paced. Rilian the Disenchanted, the first of his name, King of Narnia and Emperor of the Lone Islands, son of King Caspian the Seafarer, Knight of the most noble order of the Table, Lord of Cair Paravel, beloved and betrothed of the Princess Royal of Archenland, paced restlessly across the floor.
He was alone. The rest of the Court had retired hours ago. Rilian had firmly dismissed even the most determined members of his entourage, but he could not sleep. Something, something he could not quite place, kept him awake, like a distant voice calling. But what? The king sighed, and turned at the wall to pace back across the dark floor behind the throne. In a way he was weary, and yet not weary. It was a weariness of waiting, waiting for this unknown thing that called him awake out of the moonlit night.
Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen – and he had reached the other wall. Again. How many times had he crossed this floor tonight? For one moment, Rilian paused, and rested his head against the stone of the wall. It was cool, a pleasant contrast to the over warmth of the golden circlet that ringed his head as King of Narnia. He reached up, and slipped the crown off. Perhaps-? No, it was as bad without as with, just as he was slightly too warm with his cloak on, and slightly too cold with his cloak off. With another sigh, Rilian slipped his crown back on, shuffled his shoulders under his cloak and set off to cross the floor again.
One, two, three, four … Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen … One, two, three, four … Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen … What was it?
At first, he had thought he was just restless from lack of exercise, from a day spent amidst ink and parchment without even a moment's break to walk on the terrace. Then he had thought it was the moonlight, which was, after all, of an almost unreal brilliance. But pacing did not help, and the dark did not help. Something still – did it call? The king stopped in the very blackest shadow behind the throne and listened to the silence. Beneath the silver glare, Cair Paravel and all Narnia lay silent. Not even an owl called. The only sound was his own, the step, step, step upon the marble flags. But there was something...
One, two, three, four … Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen … One, two, three, four … Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen … One, two, th– and the king stopped, mid-stride. There was a sound, the faint patter of hoof-steps along the corridors beyond.
It could have been anything, for anyone. But there are moments in life in which one quite suddenly knows that a sound, a summons, is for oneself; moments so automatic it is as though one has lived them before. Rilian put his striding foot down, very precisely, upon the marble pavement, and stood still. The hoof-steps were coming nearer, nearer. They would come to the Throne Room. They would halt outside the door. It would open. A vain beam of rush-light would flicker for one moment against the dark corridor beyond the door before being swamped out in the moonlight, and … there, for the moment, he was not quite sure.
The hoof-steps halted outside the door; the door opened; a vain glimmer of rush-light was swamped out by the moonlight, and a faun trotted uncertainly into the room.
"Y-your M-majesty? Is your Majesty h-here?"
He had not realised it would be Master Lentaus. A cold finger pressed into Rilian's feeling of automation, even as he stepped automatically forward in acknowledgement. Master Lentaus was the Chief Steward of the royal household. Not his the job of carrying messages in the dead of night.
"Your Majesty!" Lentaus bowed his horned head low over Rilian's hand with a reverent whisper, and then peered anxiously upwards. "I-I am a messenger," he faltered. "Th-the Lord Trumpkin d-desires your presence. Wh-whether or not you were awake."
For one second, Rilian felt his mouth curve into a smile, at the mental picture of the anxious steward defending the King's sleep and the insistent dwarf demanding the King's immediate awakening. Then the sick realisation slammed into him. In the dead of night, the Lord Trumpkin had sent for him. Whether or not Rilian was awake. To Trumpkin, loyal as a Badger and valiant as a Mouse, rules were rules, and that of the King not being disturbed unless it was needful was one he had defended to the point of occasional frustration all Rilian's life. There was no reason for this summons.
Unless it was Trumpkin himself. And the cold, sick coiling in his stomach told Rilian it was.
Cold, dragging, frozen: every sensation of the Silver Chair poured back over Rilian as he stood, stiff as he had been in the Silver Chair. The very same choking clasp bore down on his wrists and throat. For Trumpkin was – old. Rilian's mind refused to admit another, different word. Trumpkin was old. He had been old before Rilian's enchantment, even then he had ridden in his donkey cart, often with the young prince trotting beside him and secretly envying the conveyance. He had been older again when Rilian had returned from his enchantment, changed and aged as all Narnia had changed. Yet, like all Narnia that had proved itself unchanged in love and loyalty to its new King, Trumpkin had not changed. None had been brighter, more loyal or more steadfast by his side.
Then last winter, quite suddenly, the dwarf's frame had seemed to fail him. Three months ago, on a bitter spring day of cold rain upon the apple blossom, the court Doctor had been seen to shake his head. But with the coming of summer, Trumpkin had rallied, and Rilian had hoped. Trumpkin was tough – and Trumpkin was all he had left. His mother had died at the hands of the witch. His father, apart from those brief, brief moments on the quayside, had been taken from him by his long enchantment. Lord Drinian of the Dawn Treader had gone 'beyond the bar' two years before. Now, there was only Trumpkin. Only Trumpkin who remembered the past, the only one who remembered his father as a young man, or still treated Rilian as if the enchantment had been a matter of minutes, not years lost from his life. When the weight of a kingdom rests on your shoulders, it is nice to have someone who shouts at you as if you were a small boy, and a very ordinary small boy at that.
Rilian realised suddenly that Lentaus was still standing before him, broad, hairy face looking ever more bothered at the King's silence. "Thank you, Master Lentaus," he got out somehow against the choking in his throat. "I – I will come at once."
Man and faun, King and Steward, hurried along the dark corridors. Rilian knew Lentaus's usual solemn pace. This racing patter, almost at a trot, tightened his sick twisting of anxiety with every step.
Not Trumpkin, O by the Lion, not Trumpkin too.
Finally, a door stood ajar and Lentaus pushed it open with a bow. "Thank you, Lentaus." Rilian stopped. "Don't wait for me." He watched the faun and the flicker of rush-light out of sight before drawing his breath and courage to go into the room. Sometimes, being brave in battle and adversity can be far the easier thing.
After the dark corridors and Lentaus's rush-light, the room was nothing but a band of bright moonlight cutting through darkness. Rilian stood and blinked frantically, eyes straining to see, and a bull-roar of a voice came out of the darkness:
"You've come!"
Rilian drew a shuddering breath of relief. Trumpkin's body might be – old, his eyes be dim, his ears at the point of deafness that rendered even his ear-trumpet ineffective, but there was still nothing wrong with his voice. Rilian could now see the flicker of candle light beside the four-poster bed, and in the bed, struggling movement.
"You've come, you've come!" the bellowing voice repeated. "Your Majesty! And I – I – am hardly in a position to receive royalty! I- I-"
"Trumpkin-!" The king crossed the room in two strides and dropped to his own knees beside the bed. "You don't need to sit up," he urged hastily, proffering his hand. "You don't need to."
"I can sit up if I want to!" Trumpkin retorted rather irritably, flopping back onto the pillows at the same time.
"I'd rather you didn't," Rilian put in quickly to push aside the nagging stream of memory of his father struggling to rise from a bier.
"Humph!" For one moment, Trumpkin sounded as if he was about to pursue the matter further. Then he seemed to give up, seized the proffered hand and kissed it, and gave the king a shrewd look in the candle light. "You weren't in bed, then!"
"No," said Rilian meekly after a brief and unsuccessful mental search for a reasonable explanation in answer. "I- I wasn't."
"Wise! Morning coming!" Trumpkin bellowed back at him. "Not a night to waste sleeping! Couldn't make them see that!" He waved one hand at the empty room. "Silly girls kept yawning, and as for that faun! Sent them all away, in the end, but I needed to see you!"
Rilian waited as Trumpkin paused to gasp after his long outburst. "You needed to see me for what? Lentaus just said you-"
"Insisted I wake you, twas what he said, wasn't it?!" Trumpkin butted in indignantly. "Not what I said! Told him to fetch you! Told him you'd be awake!"
Trumpkin peered somewhat fiercely up into Rilian's face. "Your Majesty," he said with unusual formality, "I desire to go out!"
"To go out?" Rilian echoed.
"To go out!" Trumpkin nodded. "Morning coming! Need to see the stars! Smell the sea! Hear the trees! No time to waste! But not one single courtier in this castle will send for my donkey cart! So I told them, I will ask the King!"
"It – is – very late," the King fumbled out in defence of his justly weary courtiers. "But, I could wake them and get the cart sent up, unless – if you just – want to go out in the moonlight –" he paused, trying to find the right words to put this " – we could just go, you and I. I could carry you."
He could answer the smooth diplomacy of the Calormenes, he could mend a quarrel between courtiers, but it seemed to Rilian that in this case he had been about as clumsy as a Bulgy Bear cub. If not more so. Dwarves, like Talking Mice, never care to be reminded of their shorter stature; rather, Rilian supposed, as a man would not like with a giant. He caught his breath as Trumpkin's face shifted into a frown. There was no way to put it right-
"Tossed by the Lion," Trumpkin muttered thoughtfully in the normal volume voice he used when he thought he was whispering or talking to himself. "Tossed by the Lion … trussed by a Telmarine … could be carried by a King... All right!" he shouted, reverting back to full volume as he looked up at Rilian. "You look like you're up to it!"
Trumpkin himself weighed almost nothing. The Silver Chair feeling inside Rilian tore deeper again as he lifted the bundle of barely more than old skin and bones that was Lord Trumpkin of Beruna, one-time Regent of Narnia. But with the need to accommodate two entangling cloaks, and his efforts to give the dwarf a little dignity, the process was slow. When Trumpkin was finally up, Rilian feeling somewhat like a Marshwiggle, all over-long arms and legs and joints sticking out at odd angles, the hearing trumpet still lay on the bed.
"Don't be silly!" Trumpkin bellowed as Rilian attempted to free a hand to pick it up. "Shan't need it any more!"
Shan't – shan't – ? For one moment Rilian stood with his burden and stared down at the great curling silver trumpet. Then he set his face and carried Trumpkin out of the room.
Down the corridor, left turn, right turn, past the Great Library... Trumpkin seemed to have a very definite idea of where he wanted to go, to judge by the unhesitating directions fired down the King's ear. Rilian had not really thought further than maybe going out into the orchard and wondering how he would wake the guards on the West door without alarming the entire palace. But Trumpkin's directions were heading for the east with unarguable certainty, out into a warren of rooms and passages Rilian was not sure he actually knew, certainly not by heart. Trumpkin had always been like that, as mindful of every last detail of the King's palace as he was of the King's honour and – most nights – his sleep.
It had been Trumpkin, Rilian thought dimly as he took yet another turn down yet another corridor dark by comparison to the bright moonlight outside the windows, who had taught him Cair Paravel. Walking, or in the donkey cart, they had gone up and down, with Trumpkin shouting out the stories and small details you never forgot. "Ivory, pure ivory," he'd say proudly, every time he went through the Throne room, and go on to tell how the Calormenes themselves had sent it as a gesture of respect after the second battle of Beruna. "Never trust a Calormene, though!" he had always broken off suddenly. "They're always after something!"
"Left!" Trumpkin's voice broke into Rilian's memories, and he turned obediently left, went down a small flight of steps and came up against a door.
"Not locked! Or guarded!" Trumpkin shouted. "Lock's broken! For a week! That faun's been going to have it fixed! Just push!"
Despite the dwarf's tones of indignation, as they passed through the door Rilian could see why Master Lentaus had not considered it a security risk worthy of a guard. It let out onto the far side of the little inner courtyard garden his mother had planted. The roses were not in bloom yet, but the scent of stocks and hyacinths and the tiny white flowers all Narnia called 'Dryad's Breath' rose about them in the moonlight. For the first time, Trumpkin shifted in Rilian's arms, twisting to and fro to look about him. But this peaceful haven didn't seem to be where Trumpkin had in mind, for after a minute or two he nodded. "Go on," he said softly.
Rilian hesitated, unsure where 'on' was. Trumpkin reverted to normal volume: "The gate!"
Just how they got through the barred and bolted gate in the outer wall, Rilian was never certain; only that the bar had jammed conveniently into its 'up' position when he'd shoved it awkwardly with one hand, and that somehow, that gate hadn't been locked either. It creaked shut after them, and Trumpkin jerked his head across the narrow band of lawn to the woodland which screened Cair Paravel from the eastern shore. "Keep going! Morning coming!"
Morning might be coming, as it did after every night, but that didn't stop it being dark under the trees. The moonlight came through in dazzling patches along the winding path, rendering all night vision lost as fast as gained. It seemed to Rilian as though the path would never end, as he crept along for fear of tree roots and dropping Trumpkin. But Trumpkin seemed happy, twisting about while the trees whispered in the wind and a cool, damp smell rose from the mossy ground beneath Rilian's feet. "Trees," he kept saying in his loud whispering voice. "Trees. Moonlight. Morning coming."
Finally, the path grew brighter. The trees thinned and hushed and ran out at the very edge of the beach itself. The grass merged with the moon-silvered sands, and Trumpkin wriggled suddenly. "Here!" he bellowed. "Here!"
A gentle grassy slope is not a brilliant place to seat an invalid. By degrees, Rilian shuffled and adjusted and propped, until they were both sitting on the grass, Trumpkin braced hard against the king's arm with the point of his bald head digging rather painfully into the king's shoulder. It did not look like it was much more comfortable for Trumpkin; neither did it seem to bother him. The only thing that seemed to matter, as far as Trumpkin was apparently concerned, was to face towards the sea.
"Morning coming!" he yelled with rather deafening volume at such close proximity, nodding eastwards. "The stars! But morning coming!"
Was it morning already? Rilian doubted they had genuinely spent that long getting here, even allowing for the briefness of summer nights. He peered out at the sea, vast and black beneath the full moonlight. Here and there a wave broke into silver, but mostly the sea seemed as still as the night, stretching away to the horizon. Was it slightly lighter? If he had had both hands free, Rilian would have rubbed his eyes to look again, but in this posture that, and thus a clearer look, was impossible.
Trumpkin seemed unaware of the lack of reply. "The edge of the world!" he continued, this time pointing, with a hand that seemed to Rilian not quite as shaky as it had been indoors. "Where your father went! And then Aslan's country! Where that Mouse went!"
In all the exertion of carrying, Rilian had forgotten it was cold. Suddenly, he was aware of it. Aware of the sharp damp air, and the chill off the grass – and the way Trumpkin's voice had changed for that last statement. His tone would not have been out of place in a hungry man speaking of a vast banquet.
"Yes," said Rilian automatically, as the dwarf's shuffling against his arm seemed to indicate this time, Trumpkin was expecting a reply. That choking clasp against his throat seemed to have followed him even out here. "Aslan's country," he echoed, trying to fight it off. "That – that-" The truth tore itself from his reluctant tongue: "That's where you're going, isn't it?"
"Not because of me!" Trumpkin bellowed back at full and sudden volume. "Eh? What's my scanty grey compared to His shining golden-ness?! Eh?!" Trumpkin twisted partly round, one hand flapping his thin remnant of grey beard. "What did I ever do to go there?!" he shouted. "Nothing! Didn't even believe in lions! It's all Him!" Trumpkin nodded fiercely. "Eh? All Him! Tossed me in the air! Tossed me! In the air! You know that?!"
"Yes," said Rilian again. He did. The tale of how Trumpkin had met the great Lion was one of the earliest Trumpkin had ever yelled down his ear; and even earlier than he had personally been told, he could remember Trumpkin yelling it at his father. It was a tale that seemed to have come into many, many things in the royal household, everything from banquets to Archenland trade agreements – and, apparently, watching for a sunrise.
Trumpkin was nodding again. "Tossed me! All of a rattle in a mail shirt! And then-! Then He said: 'Son of Earth, shall we be friends?' Eh?! Friends! Him!" Trumpkin broke off into a cough, but continued with a determined wheeze a moment later. "Him! And me!"
"That faun!" he added with a sudden veering change of subject. "Young Lentaus! See he fixes that door lock! And keep an eye on him! He used to steal sugar lumps off the tea tray! I know, I saw him! Tell him that from me!"
"Yes," said Rilian desperately, trying and failing to imagine the solemn, middle-aged faun and chief steward of the royal household with his fingers in the sugar bowl.
Trumpkin twisted partly round again. "Eh?! What's the matter with you?!"
That familiar blue gaze was shrewd and piercing – Rilian looked away and shook his head. "Nothing," he said briefly, keeping his face firmly towards the sea.
At that, Trumpkin practically bristled with indignation. "Don't try to hide things!" he bellowed with genuinely deafening volume. "I knew your father when he was younger than you are! Much younger!" He sank down again with a jab of his head for emphasis. "And he was no good at it either! What's the matter?!"
Rilian gave a small, involuntary swallow. "I- I don't want you to go, Trumpkin," he mumbled, horribly conscious of how much it sounded like a little boy and how little like a king. "Not go – and leave me."
"Not alone!" Trumpkin's voice rose to a volume that should surely have frightened the birds out of the trees. "Never alone! Never! Might look like it! But you're not!"
He swivelled hard round, until his face was actually directly towards Rilian, although his back was a horrible corkscrew. "Never alone! Thought I was!" he elaborated. "That time! When your father went off to the utter east with that Mouse! All alone!" Trumpkin nodded. "And then-!" He fixed Rilian with that piercing gaze. "He came! Right there in the castle! Him! So I wasn't alone! He'd come to see how I was getting on! So I told him – and then I asked Him! How was the King getting on! And do you know what he said?!"
That one was pretty clear to guess. "No-one is – is ever told anything but their own story?"
"More or less! But I said to Him, 'Well, the King must be all right! Or you'd be here to tell me what to do about running the place without him!" Trumpkin's bald head jabbed fiercely. "Do you know what He did then? Hey?!"
"No," said Rilian truthfully, because he really couldn't think.
"Laughed!" Trumpkin shouted. "Laughed! Laughed 'til the walls shook and the roses came into a bloom a week early!"
Rilian laughed himself, a careful, courtly laugh that joins in with something another person finds funny. Trumpkin went on chuckling at his memory of the Lion's laughter for a while, broken occasionally by loud mutters of "Morning coming!" Then he twisted round towards the king again. "Eh? You're not laughing. You're sitting there fretting."
"Trumpkin-" Rilian fumbled for a response. "I- I-" But he could not find the words, and held out his hand instead.
Trumpkin seized it and squeezed. "Have you forgotten your shield?" he demanded bluntly.
The words slammed into Rilian. For yes, he had forgotten his shield. Every day, he saw it, cleaned it, used it in drill practice. But he had forgotten what it meant, what it had done. That silver field with the red Lion rampant, which had bloomed across the plain black of the witch. There, in the prison and darkness of the Underworld, he had not been worried or afraid. 'Whether we live or die,' he had said to Puddleglum and the children from beyond the world, 'Aslan will be our good lord.' But here in the safety and moonlight of Narnia-?
"I forgot," he said, not quite sure to whom he said it. "I forgot."
The pressure on his hand increased. "We all do," said Trumpkin gruffly. "Til the morning comes. Men, dwarves, even those bragging badgers do a bit."
Men forget, dwarves forget. The Beasts remember longer; but above all, and it is all that matters, the Lion remembers. Rilian bowed his head. For ever and ever, whether we live or die, Aslan will be our good lord...
He woke to the sudden loss of Trumpkin's weight against his arm. Night was gone. The greyness before dawn was about them, and Trumpkin – Trumpkin for the first time in months was standing, straight, unaided, with one arm pointing eastwards. "Look! Look!" he cried out with shining face and such joyful insistence that Rilian turned to look – and caught the new-risen Narnian sun full in the eyes.
Light; dazzling, blinding light – too late, Rilian flung his arm up. When he could see again, he was not alone. Trumpkin lay peacefully upon the ground, and the golden radiance of the Lion shone all about them.
He should bow the knee, Rilian knew that. The king should bow and kiss the Lion's paw. But after the long night's watching and the sudden awakening, it was too much. He flung himself down like a child and buried his head in the grass at Aslan's feet.
"Weep, Son of Adam," said the Voice that calls all creatures home. "Weep."
When his father had died, Rilian had wept alone; isolated as the new king among the Narnians grown unfamiliar in his absence. Many had been those around him, and he had been alone. On this deserted morning shore, only Aslan stood beside him, yet–
Trumpkin had been right; Trumpkin who lay–
"It is well with him," said Aslan, as Rilian choked back enough tears to look at the still body in the bright sunlight. "He has gone to his reward. Do not sorrow, Son of Adam. All is well."
Somehow, there did not seem to Rilian to be anything more that needed to be said, only to kneel in the sandy grass before the Lion. Then he gathered up Trumpkin for the last time, and the King and the King above all Kings went back along the path through the trees.
On the very edge of the lawn, where the trees still screened them from the castle, Aslan stopped and Rilian knelt again, somewhat awkwardly with the body in his arms. The Lion's kiss, warm and gold, touched on his forehead. "Be of good courage, Son of Adam. Do not forget."
And then, in a swirl of bright sunlight and blue sky and brighter, brighter gold, Aslan was gone – from sight. Only from sight. Rilian stepped forwards with heart and burden lighter than he had thought possible. For it was well with Trumpkin, in some far brighter morning than even this; and he, Rilian, was not alone. Never alone, for the Lion's kiss was upon his forehead, and the Talking Badgers of the guard ran out from the main door to meet him with his burden, and in the castle grounds–
Rilian stopped and stared for a moment. Then he smiled. For in the castle grounds, the roses had come into bloom a week early.
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