A Rose Among the Briars: Chapter Seven


Rise and put on your foliage, and be seen
To come forth, like the spring-time, fresh and green,
And sweet as Flora. Take no care
For jewels for your gown or hair :
Fear not ; the leaves will strew
Gems in abundance upon you :
Besides, the childhood of the day has kept,
Against you come, some orient pearls unwept ;
Come and receive them while the light
Hangs on the dew-locks of the night :
And Titan on the eastern hill
Retires himself, or else stands still
Till you come forth. Wash, dress, be brief in praying :
Few beads are best when once we go a-Maying.

--Corinna's Going A-Maying, Robert Herrick


The month of Ivanneth passed both slowly and quickly for Rhoswen, quick when she was in the Houses or in her own garden patch and slowly when she was asked to take dinner with the Steward. Dinners with Denethor now seemed to take an eternity, for no amount of careful meal planning or favorite foods or pleasant conversation could erase the black mark that her invasion of Finduilas' garden had set on her score with the Steward. She knew Boromir was trying his hardest with every chance he came by (she saw him trying at every visit home) to cajole his father out of his black mood against her and slowly, very, very slowly, the mountain of resentment was wearing down.

It was strange, Rhoswen thought, to resent someone one day and the next be able to love them entirely, but Boromir's frequent absences were making their dramatic reversal a little easier to bear. Their talk in the garden that afternoon had helped, and with every return home it was a chance to talk more and become used to each other's company. And she loved him even more for it.

Rain looked possible for Iavor and the Harvest Day festivities, but the clouds had graciously condescended to pass over the Pelennor without depositing any rain and the open-roofed wagons taking the noble ladies out to the Fields left on time at the leisurely hour of nine in the morning.

Evidently the other women did not think nine so leisurely an hour as Rhoswen did."Oh, the harvesters have been up since the dawn was bright enough to see by, finishing the last of the harvesting," one of the young women was saying. "Though I do not see why we should have to be up this early. Only one stroke, and then we may be in, out of this wretched sun."

Clearly I was raised in a different place, Rhoswen said to herself, trying not to smile at the thought that nine was too early an hour. She looked around the wagon, seeing that the others, while they were wearing plain clothes, were not dressed for heavy work as she was. Her dress was rough homespun in a tawny color, the kind she always wore while gardening, easily cleaned and easily mended. But while the color was similar to what everyone else was wearing, her homespun stood out by a long mile against the more common shades of silk and taffeta. She glanced down at her work shoes and tried to hide their scuffled leather toes under her skirts. But she did not have to hide for long -- the women's attentions were quickly diverted by a troop of the city's young men riding past, lead by Boromir, a wide smile filling his face.

"You look like a peasant," Boromir cried from beside the wagon, laughing as Rhoswen rolled her eyes.

"Today I am one, my lord," she shouted back. There were whispers behind her, some of the girls having apparently just noticed what she was wearing, but Rhoswen did not care what they said anymore – Boromir's smile was enough to compensate for whatever they might think of her.

It was Boromir's turn to roll his eyes, smiling, and he shook his head. "Have joy in it, then, my lady, whatever you are today."

The riders pulled ahead of the wagon, overtaking them on the ride to the fields, and Rhoswen settled back into her seat, listening to the wind instead of the mindless gossip of the girls settled around her.

The field they were taken into had a large swath cut into it already, the figures of hunched over workers just visible against the tall golden grain. The ladies stumbled off the wagon, unused to such inelegant transport, trying to pick themselves up with as much dignity as they could muster while, Rhoswen noticed, still avoiding the help of the farmhands who were clearly in awe of their stylish, pretty visitors.

A group of the women who had been working in the fields were now grouped near the field's edge where the wheat had not been cut, waiting for their festival help to arrive. Rhoswen, who had been in the front of the wagon, was now at the back of the group, one of the last to leave their conveyance, and now watched the proceedings with a careful eye, taking everything in so that when her turn came she might be ready.

The other ladies were quick to take the proffered sickles, slicing inelegantly into the waiting wheat and carrying the awkward bundles away to the sheaves. But Rhoswen's eyes were not watching the noblewomen now, but the farmer's daughters who were standing, off to the side, whispering amongst themselves. Clearly they were as unimpressed by the efforts of the city's nobles as the nobles were with the amount of work it would take to make the wheat they had so carelessly gathered into edible bread.

When Rhoswen was handed her sickle, she turned to the girl who had given it and handed it back. "Show me again," she asked, watching as the girl smiled a little, confused by the lady's request, and gathered a handful of the grain, expertly slicing towards herself in an even plane. "So, it is like this," Rhoswen said, bending deep into the wheat, as the girl had done, and slicing towards herself with an imaginary tool.

"I think my lady has it," The girl said, handing back the blade.

"What is your name?" Rhoswen asked, taking the sickle and noting the keen edge on the blade. Best not to bring that too close to the skin.

"Olnith, my lady," the girl said, a little intimidated that one of the great ladies should ask for her name.

"Then, Olnith, you shall watch me until I get it right," Rhoswen announced, bending over the grain and taking a bold handful with her left hand, swinging the heavy sickle into the grain and feeling the blade cut through the stalks, letting the bunch come off into her hand.

The sun rose, and as the trestle tables were prepared for the harvest feast Boromir was having a hard time finding his intended. She was not with the other ladies under a marquee avoiding the noonday sun, though Boromir had not really expected her to be there. Nor was she with the cooks preparing the feast, a possibility Faramir had suggested after the marquee had not yielded his brother's intended.

"Where is Rhoswen?" Boromir wondered aloud, holding a hand to his eyes to peer out over the fields. "The other ladies have come back long ago."

"Is Rhoswen the lady with the dark hair and the golden dress?" one of the farmers standing nearby asked. Boromir nodded, for a moment expecting to hear that something terrible had happened. "I think she's still out with the reapers, my lord!" the farmer said with a laugh.

Boromir frowned, and he strode out to the field, still holding his to shield his eyes from the sun as he searched the fields for Rhoswen's tawny brown dress and dark hair.

A figure stood up farther back in the field and waved to him, shouting something he could not hear. He walked quickly over the stubbled ground and the broken stems until he could hear her better as she cupped her hands over her lips and shouted. It was Rhoswen. "Come and join me, my lord! Show your people Boromir is as good with a sickle as he is with a sword!"

"A challenge, mischievous creature?" Boromir asked, shouting back and smiling at the sight of Rhoswen in the field, her skirt tucked into her girdle, revealing lithe white legs and elegantly leathershod feet. This sunshine has made her bold again. Someone had found a scarf to tie around her neck and shield it from the sun, and a kerchief was netted around her head, tying her long black hair back. Her dress was speckled with wayward stems and as he walked closer he thought he saw some in her hair, wild, once-growing spangles of gold against the black. Her smile was wide and joyful, and something in Boromir's heart leapt to see her so happy. I do not think I have seen her smile like that since she has come here to the City, he thought to himself. She is a creature for the open sky, certainly.

"Your lady has done well in her own way," The farmmaid nearest to her shouted. "She has been out nearly two hours!"

"And I have not done half of Olnith's work!" Rhoswen shouted. "But she has been very patient with me!"

"Come in and have something to drink! The day grows hot and you are not used to such work," Boromir said, pointing to a nearby tree where several hot farmhands, as well as several large pottery jugs, lay reposing in the shade.

"Not until you have tried your hand at this!" Rhoswen shouted back. The other girls in the field let up a cry of surprise, laughing amongst themselves at the thought of what Rhoswen was proposing. "Or do you not have talent for mere women's work?" she added, causing the girls to laugh even louder.

"Oh, now you will be answered, my sweet girl," Boromir said, stripping off his tunic and rolling the sleeves of his shirt to the elbows, striding out into the field where the girls were working and tossing the tunic in a pile near some discarded kerchiefs and a water jug. "Now show me how it is done," He said, looking at the one Rhoswen had called Olnith.

"My lady can show you herself, she's quite good now," the young peasant said, nodding to Rhoswen, who gave Boromir the sickle and showed him with her own body how to bend into the wheat and grasp it. "No, like this," she said, placing her hand on his back and bending him more. "Then move your arm," she said, covering his hand with her own and guiding it, "and cut."

It was the closest Boromir had ever been to Rhoswen, and the feeling was strange – her smaller body, hot with the morning's exertions, cushioned next to his own, her arm running down and joining with his, like a vine clinging to a larger tree branch, hoping to catch some of its fervor. He was no stranger to a woman's body, but the paid company of a courtesan did not have the same feeling of stability or …unintentional closeness. As she guided his hand down to make another cut, he realized that it was not a bad feeling, only a reassuring one – a feeling full of love, and hope. It was a naïve pose, he knew. And he wanted more of it.

"My lord, have you been listening?" Rhoswen asked, drawing him out of his reverie.

"My lady is distracting me," he said huskily, and, realizing what she was doing, she drew back as though she had been burned, causing a few of the other girls to laugh again.

"Now, that's a fine figure of a man, and no mistake," one of the other girls said as Rhoswen drew back to watch with the others.

"No shame in distracting him, Lady," Olnith whispered privately, obviously having heard the Captain-Heir's comment. "And there's distractions of one kind and distractions of another, if you follow me."

Rhoswen blushed, and Olnith laughed again, not sharing the source of her merriment with the other girls when they asked. After several swipes, Boromir found himself defeated. "Ladies, you have me," he announced, smiling through the sweat beading on his brow. "I beg you to be released."

"Oh, let him go and have the Lady take him his wine. She's earned it," one of the farmmaids said with a wide grin.

"Thank you for teaching me," Rhoswen said to Olnith, giving back the scarf the girl had lent to her to wind around her neck. "And at least you have had some laughter at my expense."

"Thank you for learning, my lady," Olnith said. "And we did not laugh at you – only at the others who mocked you and could not do it themselves."

"Have you a young man here?" Rhoswen asked, inelegantly wiping her brow with the back of her hand. Olnith nodded, smiling and pointing to the group of young men in the next field over, loading the high carts with the sheaves. At her pointed finger, one of the men stood up and waved his hat, blowing a kiss towards the two women, eliciting a giggle from Olnith. "Cuhon is his name," the farmer's daughter said, turning away so she would distract him no longer.

"Then let us go and draw off wine for both of them," she said, leading Olnith away from the field and back towards the tables. "It is nearly time for the noon-tide meal at any rate."

The wine had been brought from the mountainside vineyards of Lossarnach in casks that could have been drunk from by giants, each one having a cart to itself, drawn by a pair of heavily harnessed oxen. Olnith excused herself to go back to her own home for something, and Rhoswen lingered by the cart, waiting.

"Lady Rhoswen!" someone called, and she turned, seeing Faramir coming up behind her with a package in his arms.

"I take it my brother found you," the Captain of the Rangers said with a smile, picking a stem off of Rhoswen's head and casting it to the ground.

"Yes, he did," Rhoswen said, looking cross-eyed up at her hair to try and see if there were any more obvious stems she should cast off. "And I had some fun at his expense because of it, but I think he will survive it."

"I was bidden to give you this," Faramir said, holding out a carefully wrapped package for Rhoswen to take. "I think you will have need of it shortly."

Inside the package was a goblet, worked cunningly in silver and chased, around the bowl, with a relief of leaves. Rhoswen held the goblet up to the light to see that it was not just leaves circling the bowl, but also a delicate garland of roses, holding up a seal with two elvish letters on it. "What does it say?" Rhoswen asked, pointing the letters out to Faramir.

"This one is a B, and the other an R," Faramir explained, pointing them out to Rhoswen. "Before you thank me I should say that it is from my father, and not me," he admitted in the silence that followed while Rhoswen inspected the cup. "He is too proud to give it to you himself—I think he fears if you see you are forgiven in any small way you will not be so careful as you have been these past weeks. It is the custom for the goblet that the wine is served in here be used for the wedding feast. Such things are great heirlooms, and this one has been a task to the silversmiths for at least a month now."

"It is beautiful, Lord Faramir," Rhoswen said sincerely. "And I know I shall treasure it, whoever it is from."

"Fill it first, and treasure it afterwards," Faramir advised. "They will be looking for you soon at the tables!"

Rhoswen nodded, going to the vintners and holding the cup as it was filled from one of the wagon-held tuns, carefully bearing the cup to the high table set apart from the others where Denethor and his sons were seated, Faramir just slipping into his seat as the file of women processed in, each one bearing a cup of wine.

Boromir stood as she approached the table, and she handed him the cup silently, bowing a little as she did so. His face was bright with sweat, and his hands, too, were warm from his lesson in reaping. "Taken in blessing, and given as thanks," he said, pouring out some of the wine on the soil at his feet before he took a deep draught from the cup. He held it out to her and she took it haltingly, taking only a small sip before handing it back to him. It was not overly rich, being only a year in the cask, but it was strong and strange to Rhoswen's tongue, and she struggled not to make a face at the taste.

"Did you not enjoy it?" Boromir asked, taking the cup from her hands and setting it on the table between them. "Let me clean your lips," he whispered, leaning across the table to lightly touch her lips with his own. A raucous call went up from the other tables, and Rhoswen turned away from his kiss to look at the farmers and their families, hooting and cheering for their Captain-Heir's show.

When she looked back, she found his eyes were full of mischief. "Your lips are sweet. Shall you take another drink?" he asked, his voice low in his whisper and deep.

She leaned in and kissed him again, longer and harder this time, tasting every ounce of the wine on his lips. Behind her the calls grew louder.

"That was not what I meant, you wicked little creature," Boromir whispered when she pulled away, his face heavy with a pleased grin.

"Forgive –" Rhoswen began apologizing, her face coloring crimson underneath her sunburnt skin.

"Save me your apologies and give me your sin again," Boromir ordered, cutting her off. "And let us not have this table between us, either."

As she sat down, it seemed Boromir had started a new tradition – after drinking from their own cups, many of the young men were taking the opportunity to kiss their future brides, even with disapproving fathers and mothers looking on. Denethor was certainly among this number, though whether he was casting his disapproval on his son for kissing his betrothed in such a wanton manner or on Rhoswen for putting up with it none could tell. "Lady Rhoswen, you are brown as a Southron," he said disapprovingly as she sat down. "Your skin has burned terribly."

"I have a salve for that, my lord, it will not hurt so much in a few days," Rhoswen offered, losing a little bit of her merriment as Denethor frowned at her. "And it will soon fade, with the right care."

"I do not think it was wise of you to stay out so long. It is undignified," the Steward said severely.

"It was honest work," Rhoswen said, looking a little unsure of her own defense.

"See how the people love her now, Father?" Boromir asked. "She has gained their trust today. That is what all good rulers should have, you taught me that."

Denethor gave one last frown and said nothing more on the matter for the rest of the meal, a strong contrast to the rest of the party-goers, all of whom seemed to be enjoying themselves. When the meal was over the Steward and the rest of the court got up to leave; the farmers would be feasting and dancing far into the night, but genteel palates and tongues felt they had little place at such celebrations.

"Rhoswen, are you not coming home?" Boromir asked, keeping one eye on his father, mounting up to ride home to the city, and Rhoswen, still looking as though she wanted to converse more with her new friends the reapers from that morning.

Rhoswen left her seat to come and talk to him, glancing back at Olnith and the others. "I would rather stay a little while, and converse with Olnith and her family," she said. "Or would your father find it terribly improper?"

"Why do you wish to stay?" Boromir asked.

"Perhaps you will find something you can change when you become steward in your father's place," Rhoswen suggested. "Or perhaps it will only be a pleasant conversation passed with friends. You will show them you care for their troubles, at any rate, and a trusted sovereign is better than an untrusted one."

"You sound like you've been into Faramir's library," Boromir accused, secretly seeing that what she said made sense.

"You told me you liked my boldness, my lord," Rhoswen accused back, and Boromir sighed.

"You have me there, my lady. I will make our excuses to Father."

Denethor was not pleased by this, but he left his son to stay in the village, riding back with the train of carriages and wagons full of fat and full noble-borns waiting to get back to their golden plates and upholstered chairs.

"It is a sad day when even traditions cannot rouse smiles in Gondor," Boromir said ruefully, watching the wagons go. "Once we loved to remember the old days here. But now I think our present concerns outweigh honoring the old ones."

"In the old days they would have stayed out all night for the feasting," Faramir added. He had stayed behind, too, not wishing to be the only one riding back with his father. "And there would have been music, and dancing, and much more merriment. You will still find that here tonight among the common folk."

"Where are you off to, my lord Faramir?" Rhoswen asked as Faramir turned to leave them.

"I go to find songs, my lady," he said, bowing his head slightly. "We do not sing enough in the city any longer for my tastes. And night watches are long in Ithilien."

Rhoswen nodded, taking Boromir's hand and walking out to the edge of the grainfields where the fallow began, the grass short near the edge but rising as tall as a man as it went farther out. There was already a small crowd of young people, sitting out in the short grass with skins of ale and leftovers from the feast, exchanging jokes and laughing. The laughter quieted a little as Rhoswen and Boromir approached, and Olnith stood up, brushing off her skirt as if she were going to welcome them to her hall.

"May we join you?" Rhoswen asked, her hand close in Boromir's. The Captain-Heir felt old again – though Rhoswen was still of an age to be with these folk, he certainly was not. Nine and thirty years he had, and the eldest here was perhaps eight and twenty.

"Don't see how we could refuse," One of the young men said, his disapproving voice a stark change from the laughing, merry sounds Boromir and Rhoswen had heard on the way out.

"Rhoswen, this is Cuhon," Olnith said, twining her hand into his and smiling against his frowns, trying to break the silence. "Cuhon son of Culin."

"You are a lucky man, Cuhon son of Culin," Rhoswen offered, the silence making her uneasy. "Olnith is the best of women."

"Now, how come when you tell her that she smiles, and when I tell her she frowns?" Cuhon asked, glancing at his love suspiciously. Olnith looked mysteriously superior for a moment, keeping her reason silent.

"Probably 'cause when you say it you want something for it," one of the other men said ribaldly, making the rest of the company laugh and Rhoswen color, giggling nervously along with the rest. Her hand clenched Boromir's tighter, and he held it against his side, trying to say that he was there without the words. The laughter loosened everyone, and soon the skins were passed in their direction, a sign that they were now welcome.

"Festivities might be cut short this year," Cuhon was saying, wrapping his arm around Olnith as she sat back down and drawing her closer to him "Used to be we'd stay out all night, maybe sleep under the stars. You'd probably remember better than me, my lord. Not the time for that anymore."

"The shadow?" Boromir asked.

"Smaller things to worry about than that," the other young man said, sneering. "The outer wall, it's been in disrepair these past years, and getting worse. Wolves creepin' in now, and other foul sorts. Not safe to be out of your house after dark. If the steward cared a flea's ear for his people, he'd fix the wall 'stead of sendin' his troops elsewhere and studyin' up there in his tower." Cuhon fixed a blaming gaze on the son of the man he so openly scorned and dared him to say differently. He'd been drinking, Boromir knew that much; they'd all been drinking! But Boromir wasn't in the mood today for rising to petty slights, and he merely nodded his head in acknowledgement.

"Repairing the wall would be a wise thing to do, both for the people and for the army," Boromir said evenly. "I will see if I can persuade the Steward to see that."

Cuhon nodded, still suspicious of Boromir, but he kept his objections to himself this time, and the talk moved to other topics. Finally one of the women rose up, smiling, and planted her hands on her hips. "I'm bored with sitting. Let's play a game!"

"We're too old for games, Elweth! Sit down and let Joren tickle you, if you've a mind for playing."

"Too old for Larking?" Elweth shot back, her smile saying that she knew the answer already.

"Never too old for Larking!" someone on the other side of the group exclaimed, rising up ready to play whatever this game was.

"What is...Larking?" Rhoswen asked Olnith as the group separated, the men to one side and the women to the other, one of the older girls directing the proceedings.

"It is a game we played as children – though the rules are different now we're older. The men are the Larks and we women the Leaves. If a lark catches a leaf, he is entitled to eat it -- or …take… something," Olnith explained.

"Take something?"

"Some Leaves give more than others, and some Larks take more from certain Leaves. Meleth will give anything to any Lark who asks," Olnith said, pointing to a vaguely pretty girl with heavy breasts and a conniving smile. Rhoswen remembered her from this morning, the one who had said Boromir was a fine figure of a man. "And some will ask a lot of her. Brin's got his eye on her for marriage, after the harvest is counted and the grain sold. Just like Cuhon has his eyes on me," she said proudly. "Though I don't know if she's eyeing him back."

"Do you have to give anything you don't want to give?"

"They won't ask anything terrible of you, my lady, they're too afraid of what the Captain will do. But it's a good time to try for a little tumble, since the fathers aren't watching too close," the peasant said, glancing at Cuhon with a thoughtful look. "Wouldn't mind it, either," she said pragmatically, turning away as Cuhon caught her eye. "Going to be married after the harvest is in anyway."

"Leaves away, the wind has brought thee!" someone cried.

"And now we run!" Olnith shrieked, taking off into the high grass that grew in the fallow land at the field's edge as another shout went up --"Larks fly free, no cages caught thee!"

It brought her back to her childhood, hiding in the high grass. Olnith had run in one direction, Rhoswen another, parting the grass and stumbling through, laughing as they ran. The man named Brin found her first, his face falling rapidly when he saw she was not Meleth. He took nothing, bounding back into the grass, but the next finder was a farmer Rhoswen didn't recognize, although he could have been Cuhon's brother. He smiled and said, without pause, "From you I'll take a kiss, Lady, and nothing less."

"Take your kiss then," Rhoswen said, the laughter and the ale she'd drunk from the skins making her bolder. His kisses were not like Boromir's, the beard on his face coarse and unkempt and his lips insistent, as if trying to take more than a kiss from her mouth. His hands were too heavy, and when he disappeared back into the grass, smirking, Rhoswen was glad to see him go. She ran into the tall grass looking over her shoulder, and fairly collided with a wall of flesh. She would have fallen to the ground had not the human mountain caught her, holding her up while she found her footing again. It was Boromir.

"If I catch you, can I keep you?" He asked, and Rhoswen laughed.

"I do not know, my lord," Rhoswen admitted, suddenly very conscious of his body near hers. His hands were hot and his face flushed with exertion and laughter.

"That Meleth is begging to be found. She's trampling around like a wild boar."

"And did you take something from her?" Rhoswen asked, flushing with jealousy for a moment when she thought of buxom Meleth in this field with her intended, her Boromir.

"A kiss. In the spirit of the game, and on the cheek. She seemed rather disappointed."

"What do you want from me, my lord?"

"I want to sit and stop this running around like a goose kissing other girls and kiss you, White Rose." His kiss washed the memory of the farmhand's kiss away, and her heart thrilled, He loves me! He loves me! It was a long kiss, slow and sweet. Her burnt skin cried out in pain as it touched his, but she didn't care – the pain would leave soon enough when it was over. The kiss deepened, and his hands tightened around her waist. Some tiny beacon of alarm went off in her head as she felt his hands, so close to her legs and her skirts and her woman's places. Watch that he does not go too far! But then his grip slackened, and he pulled his head away. "Mmm… I've had too much wine," he said, smiling so that his eyes crinkled at their corners, half-open as they were. "Your kisses make me drowsy, White Rose."

"Why do you call me that? You and your father, you both call me White Rose. I had no such nickname in Anfalas."

"White Rose? I don't know. It suits you."

"It doesn't suit me today," Rhoswen said ruefully. "Today I'm a sunburnt Rose." She touched gingerly at the skin of her cheeks, rosy red in the sun and hot to the touch.

"But still my rose. Fairer than all these leaves fluttering about. " Boromir said, ducking down lower into the grass as another Leaf ran by, saying in a voice begging to be found, "I'm a leaf, fair and free!"

Rhoswen giggled. "Meleth?" she asked quietly. Boromir nodded silently, listening to Meleth go. "I forgot to ask Olnith how the game ends," she said remorsefully, listening to the sounds die away in the grass.

"Probably when all the leaves have been found by the larks that wanted to find them," Boromir said, lying back on the ground and gazing up at her in study. "How is it so easy for you?" he asked, resting back on one elbow to hear her answer and turning a blade of grass over in his fingers as he waited.

"How is what so easy?" Rhoswen asked, turning to look at him.

"This," Boromir said, gesturing to the fields and the laughter in the grass beyond. "Being…one of them. With Olnith and Cuhon you are so…free with yourself, while I find I can barely speak."

"I was raised in a smaller place," Rhoswen said, half of her voice explaining and the other half reflecting on the matter at hand. "I was not raised high enough to think such work below me, nor proud enough that I would refuse to do it. You say you are no courtier, and true enough sometimes– " Boromir playfully batted her arm for that, and Rhoswen snatched it away, giving her own playful swat in return, "But you have always been raised by a man who knows his place, and knows that it is far above other men. When my mother died, I was given to a nurse who thought I should play with more children my own age until eleven, when I was taken away and shown more of my duties as a lady. I struggle with your high-born ladies, but when among the farm-hands I am at home. They play no games with words, have no…agendas. I know them. Thiers is honest work."

"You play enough games of your own. And I do not think you could be dishonest in anything you did."

"I lie to your father," Rhoswen said. "Your father saw only a lady who would bear his son children. He did not see the simpleton beneath."

See, she knows of Father's reasons, too."Call yourself a simpleton again and I'll have to kiss you to make you stop," Boromir threatened, ready at any excuse to make good on his threat.

"Simple in other ways, I mean. Would I not be simple if the only thing I wished to do when you came home from Osgiliath is drag you to the kitchens and feed you while you tell me what has passed since we last spoke?"

Boromir shrugged, admitting she was right if only in part of her thinking. "What would you feed me?" He asked, half in genuine interest and half to make conversation.

"White bread and roast chicken and carrots in honey. Lemongrass soup and mincemeat pies and boiled apple pudding."

"And that's all?" Boromir asked with mock disgust. "I don't think I could love you if that was the whole meal."

"Men!" Rhoswen cried, looking up at the heavens with her own mocking displeasure. "Do you always think and judge with your stomachs?"

Occasionally we think with other things below our stomachs, Boromir said to himself, his blood stirring as his ears picked up other sounds in the grass than just the wind and the crickets. A ways off someone was giggling and struggling not to make their voice heard. There was a strange ringing in his head, as if someone were mumbling beside his ear, very, very softly. And it was getting darker, too – was a cloud rolling over the sun? He looked up. The clouds were a ways off. He heard himself speaking, but found he could not choose the words.

"The fields are wide. I do not think anyone would hear us here."

"My lord?"

"And a baby begot now would be born in…Lothron, perhaps, or by Midyear at latest. It would be inside the betrothal, and there are some who regard such things legitimate." Had he really been thinking that? Yes, he had, when Meleth kissed him and pressed her body into his, hitching her skirt up to her thighs, he had thought about it. And he had been sorely tempted.

"You do not know of what you speak…" Rhoswen warned, backing away from him, her skirt catching on a tangle of grass, revealing her calves and her small, beautiful ankles. An image suddenly filled his head, of heaving bodies and sweat-soaked skin. Let it happen, let it consume you….she is a woman, and you are a man, and you have needs…

"They would, for us! I know you have some wickedness in you, some boldness. Why not let it out, here? I know you have desired it," Boromir said, his heart beating faster, the desire growing in his breast, the need to conquer her, subdue her. Suddenly it all seemed so clear, so simple. The voice in his head was shouting for it, urging him on mercilessly, the words clear as daylight. Come, it is your duty! They will never know. She has never known it, she might actually enjoy it...Remember this morning, when she pressed her body to yours?

In a second's passing he had caught her, kissing her passionately, cruelly, almost. He could hear it, could hear it all now, the sighs and the screams and the shouting, and it fueled him. It should be his, by rights she should be his already!

She forced her face away from his, and he found her expression hard to discern. Had she not enjoyed it? But when he leaned in to take another kiss, he was met not with warm and yielding lips, but with a hard and resolute palm across his cheek.

"Was it not a good kiss, my lady? Give me leave to try again. Come, we are alone and there are none to chide us. Let us do as politics intended." His voice was growing cold, commanding.

"I will do no such thing, nor give you leave to let you take the right," Rhoswen declared, pushing herself away from him across the grass, stumbling to push herself to her feet.

"Why do you recoil? I am no thief!"

"You are not yourself!"

"What would you know of who I am?" Boromir asked viciously, and her hand connected with his face again, jolting his mind across a vast eclipse of darkness. When he opened his eyes and looked at her again, the veil of dark mist had lifted from his eyes, and he could see now that she was hurt -- grievously hurt.

"I know you are better than the words you speak now," Rhoswen spat. "I know you have honor, and you will not so easily take mine. I said today I was a peasant, but I am no whore."

The hated word 'whore' hit Boromir as if she had slapped him again, and only served to make his vision clearer still. Whatever darkness had overtaken him was receeding now, and quickly. His vision was normal, the sky was bright again. Suddenly he felt unclean, as though some hideous monster had disgorged him from its depths. "Rhoswen..." he begged. How to make her see? It had not been him, it had been something else!

"Leave me alone!" she cried, tripping and tumbling through the field, paying no mind to the grass that sprang back in her wake, blocking her path from view.

"Rhoswen!" Boromir called again. "Rhoswen!" He stumbled blindly into the waving grain, grasping about in the grass as though he might be able to catch her that way. "Rhosw—" His eyes had been minding the grass, and not the ground he tread on, and his boot, catching on a knot of grasses, tripped him up, sending him headfirst to the ground, where he knocked his head against the ground and a dark veil descended over his eyes.

When he awoke, it seemed a considerable time had passed. The sun had fallen lower in the afternoon sky, and the wind, what little there was of it, was still lazily moving the wheat back and forth in a golden tide. Of Rhoswen there was no sign, and Boromir cursed the silent demon that had driven him so. What right had he to ask that of her? And now she was gone, running away from him like a frightened doe, betrayed by the one person she thought she could trust.

"Fool!" Boromir hissed to himself. "She will not answer my call now." The scene changed color for a moment, the golden grass shifting to a less brilliant yellow, and the Captain looked up to see a cloud rolling in, followed by a host more, each one in the succession looking more and more ominous looking. A roll of thunder crackled through the sky, and a little ways off he thought he could hear raindrops pattering closer. The rainstorm was approaching. And when it arrives she will be out in the middle of it without cloak or hood, Boromir thought grimly. She did not run back to the villages. He walked back to the feasting revelers in silence, finding his brother in the very best of moods and trading song verses with some of the farmers from the village. Pulling Faramir aside, Boromir's news made his younger brother quickly solemn.

"We shall mount up riders. She cannot be left out in the storm. And she is only one woman, she cannot have gotten far!" Faramir was all for haste and quick decision, but when his brother hung back, the same guilty expression on his face, Faramir knew there was more to the story. "Brother, why did she run away?" Faramir asked quietly.

"I asked a dishonorable thing of her, Fara. I asked for what she should not have given me," Boromir said miserably. "I do not know why I did it, only that I did and…now she is gone!"

"That she needs to be found is the only important thing now," Faramir counseled his brother. "Mount up with us, and nothing need be said of why she ran."

Boromir nodded, following in his brother's wake as Faramir gave orders and shouted directions, bringing the party to an abrupt halt as farmers went for their horses to ride out to the far fields and the women walked to cover the ground where the horses could not go.

It seemed they had only been searching for a short while when the rain began, first as a welcome trickle and then as in pouring sheets, the sky so gray and dark it became hard to see, and the ground slick with mud and flattened grass. All throughout the fields people were shouting her name, and Boromir's heart was only sharpened in grief by the sound of it. Where could she have gone?

He was at the edge of the fields now, where a lane ran beside the Rammas Echor for the outriders to use. The wall was crumbling here, one of the older sections that was letting in the wolves that Cuhon had mentioned. Wolves, Boromir remembered, his heart falling even deeper at the thought.

"My lord!" Someone shouted from farther down the lane. "My lord, we've found her!"

Boromir spurred his horse to pursue the cry, following the lane near the Rammas Echor to another point in the crumbling wall. Boromir's eyes searched the gray stone through the driving rain until they found what they were looking for – a human shape clad in tawny brown, huddled against the stones of the wall, soaked through from the rain. Boromir dismounted immediately and ran to her, the upsurge of joy that they had found her quickly canceling out the melancholy and fatigue the rain had brought with.

Rhoswen gave a whimper of pain when he picked her up, her ankle swollen and the skin throbbing around it. But her eyes did not open. "Take care, my lord," someone said. "She may have twisted it on the rocks."

But Boromir was beyond advice or calls – the only thing he cared about was the woman cradled across his saddle like a limp doll, unresponsive to shout or call. He kept his horse in a gallop all the way back through Minas Tirith, the streets empty for the rain. Shouts went up as his horse thundered into the sixth level, sides streaked with sweat and rain, both rider and horse breathing heavily.

"Send for the Steward! A healer!"

"Are you hurt, my lord?" someone asked him as he handed off Rhoswen and slipped off the horse's back himself, landing a little clumsily.

"See to her first," Boromir rasped, pointing after Rhoswen, who was being carried swiftly inside. "I have no need of leeches now." He stumbled inside the King's House, up the stairs to his bedroom and his bed. He felt sick now, too, his stomach turning circles inside him. And his head! His head was pounding like a battle drum. He only just managed to strip off his sodden outer tunic and his boots before he collapsed, exhausted, on the bed.


It could be shorter, but I didn't feel like cutting it down. It's been kind of a crazy past few months here in Galway, so I haven't been great about updating anything, really, but I hope you enjoy this and I hope the length makes up for any of its other deficits. Reviews would be lovely -- I'm not so sure this chapter works, if you know what I mean.