The Evidence of Things Not Seen: Chapter 10
A/N: "What!" you say. "Sunday again already?!" :D
Having waited all these years, Gwen wouldn't wait another week. So, here we are.
Chapter the last. :')
Chapter the longest. :P
~:~:~
"A little nearer … and then a cushion … no, not that high … and a softer cushion." Gwen bit down on her tongue and all unladylike noises it might utter, and turned to hunt through the random pile of hastily collected soft furnishings. The one thing Narnia had not been prepared for in the return of its King was the arrival of its Queen.
Today had bid fair to be a frustrating day from the moment Gwen had been dressing. She had sat down to button up her shoes and discovered that she had gone through the heels of both stockings. One hole would have been annoying; two was extremely annoying. Gwen had vented this on the stockings by wrenching them both off and throwing them as a tight little ball together into the mending basket, instead of changing one stocking at a time. She had been standing, bare-foot, rummaging for a replacement pair, when a shout had echoed through Cair Paravel.
"The Dawn Treader! The Dawn Treader! The King! The King!"
The Gwen of this afternoon stopped and shook her head at the Gwen of this morning. What had come over her?! Her hair had been unbrushed, her feet bare – and the Dawn Treader had just been sighted on the horizon. Nothing would have been delayed in the least if she had stopped even one minute to make herself respectable.
Gwen steered her mind firmly back to the here-and-now problems of soft furnishings. A cushion, a cushion … why did ladies-in-waiting always have to worry about cushions?
They had known, from a week ago, that The Dawn Treader was on the way home. A Galmian trading vessel had brought the news of her putting in to Galma, but the captain had been in such a hurry to be first with the news at Cair Paravel, he had set sail with no other details. The Narnian Royal pennant had been flying from The Dawn Treader's mast head, so King Caspian must still have been on board – that was about all the fact they could derive.
There had been some Narnians who had wanted an immediate Welcoming Fleet to set forth, since Galma was only two days sail away, but Trumpkin had been adamant in opposition. The King had said that no-one was to set sail after him, no matter what happened or how long he was gone. Therefore, while he, Trumpkin, was Regent – and if any wished to query this, let them draw their sword for combat at once! – no-one was to set sail after the King, no matter how long he spent on Galma. Trumpkin even vetoed The Wind-Farer from setting sail on its scheduled voyage to Calormen, lest there be a mutiny and change of direction once at sea.
"Galma was only two days sail away!" Trumpkin was reputed to have shouted at The Wind-Farer's captain Lord Polidan. The King would be home in two days! Could Polidan not wait that long?!
Perhaps, Gwen reflected, that had had something to do with her excessive haste this morning. For it had been ten days, not two. Ten very long days, in which everybody had tried very hard not to look at the eastern horizon every minute – maybe restraining themselves to every other minute, give or take a few extra looks. Trumpkin had held firm, and Gwen hadn't really been surprised, as the facts of this morning's return had slowly circulated during the day, to hear that it had been Trumpkin, walking alone on the eastern shore in the early dawn, who had first sighted the ship. His had been the burden of all Narnia for over a year – he had deserved that reward.
But strung to such breaking strain of waiting, all Cair Paravel had waited no longer. There had been a dense crowd at the quay even before Gwen, heedless of all duties of dignity and discretion and lady-like deportment, with her feet bare and her shawl on sideways so the fringe tickled her neck, had rushed out of the castle to join in the wait.
Right then, it hadn't seemed to matter. Now – Gwen blushed. Probably, since everyone else's eyes too had been fixed on the approaching ship, no-one had noticed her just standing in the crowd. They might not even have recognised her. Gwen couldn't remember who she had stood among, nothing but the pounding of her heart and the matching, pounding thought in her mind. Rhoop, Rhoop, Rhoop. Surely-? Maybe-? Had he-?
And then – and this was the worst to remember – the Dawn Treader had finally drawn in, and the mooring ropes had been made fast, and the gang-plank had been lowered. And, though Gwen had only been able to see by standing on tiptoe to peer between the backs of the two people in front of her – they must have been centaurs, Gwen registered now, to be that tall and screening despite her own height – King Caspian had descended, with the most stunningly beautiful woman Gwen had ever seen, smiling on his arm. The crowd had begun to cheer.
Gwen hadn't – because behind the King and Queen had come four other men, four older men. One had had another young woman on his arm, and for a moment Gwen's heart had felt as if it stopped in dread. But then – then the last of the four men had come down the gang-plank. The other three had been grey-haired and well-built; this man was thin and drawn and white-haired. By something in the very way he stood, Gwen had known him.
Gwen wasn't sure she could blush any more at the memory. For she had begun to shout, almost shriek his name; she had veritably beaten on the backs of those poor centaurs who had stood innocently in front of her, and she had forced her way through the crowd, through the royal guards, through the royal party without so much as a curtsey, and into Rhoop's arms.
He had come back. He had come back.
She had a feeling she might have said that, somewhere within the circle of those thin, bony arms. She might have cried just a little, as well, with her face pressed into his tunic. She knew he'd cried, for she had felt hot tears trickle into her unbrushed hair. And he might have said something about 'You waited'...
For one, very long, moment or minute or eternity of time, there had only been the two of them, in each other's arms, in all the world. And then somewhere beyond that, the crowd had begun to cheer again, and it had dawned on Gwen that they were cheering for her and Rhoop as well as Caspian and the Queen, and she emerged blushing from Rhoop's embrace. Faces, at that point, were all she could remember: Caspian, at once the same and older, looking glad but startled; his beautiful young queen looking radiant and delighted; Trumpkin looking – thank the Lion! – at the King not herself; Lord Drinian – oh, the shame! – looking utterly startled; and then the three other men had pressed round.
Revilian. Argoz. Mavramorn. All of shining face and earnest greetings, and Mavramorn above all glowing with pride as he guided the other young woman forwards and said "Nerienne, Lady Gwen. Gwen, my wife!"
The first thing you noticed about Lady Mavramorn was that she sort of glowed, just like the rest of them; the second was that she squinted and had more freckles than you would really think possible. Gwen couldn't remember, but hoped that she had managed to utter some sort of decorous greeting, before the whole royal party, shepherded by the Talking Badgers of the Guard, had begun to move up the lawns towards the Cair. The crowd had parted before them and filled in after them, and Gwen had somehow been swept along too, still holding Rhoop's arm. He was home.
Aye, but the King was home, too. And, quite understandably, that was the main concern of all the other Narnians. It was certainly the main concern of Oscuns, the chief Faun-in-waiting, who had been standing, almost capering, at the main gateway to greet the King and Queen.
Gwen couldn't really blame him, either. She had spoken to no-one of why she had cared so about the King's voyage; it was entirely understandable he had assumed she had rushed down to greet the royal party in her role as the King's chief Lady-in-waiting. As the king passed into the courtyard, Oscuns had plunged forwards to pluck Gwen's sleeve for an immediate conference about the laying on of the ten-days-planned feast. Before Gwen had had time to hear more than a few words of what Oscuns had to say, Rhianel had appeared in tears because she had let the bread not scorch – "But burn, Lady Gwen, burn! Black!" – and the thousand duties of a lady-in-waiting had whirled up like a storm and swept her away from Rhoop without another word or look.
Gwen picked up two possible cushions and sighed at them. The King's simple former chamber was suddenly totally unsuitable – and all their effort, during the last ten days of waiting for The Dawn Treader's return, in getting it ready for him was wasted. The much bigger set of apartments in the wing above the Library had to be opened up and made ready at once. Which was why she was up here, arranging furniture and choosing cushions with the aid of a couple of fauns-in-waiting, while the Royal party was touring the rest of the castle.
She had been up here almost all morning, apart from a brief pause to acquire respectability in shoes and stockings again, and sweep her wind-blown hair back into its usual tidy bun. The matter of the Royal Apartments had been Oscuns' second pressing concern after the feast – all that must be done and that Gwen must do it because she alone, apart from Caspian's old Nurse, knew anything at all about having a castle with a Queen in it.
A Queen! Gwen looked carefully about the room. Furniture arranged, curtains hung, sea-chests unpacked as they had come up piecemeal from the ship, and everything Caspian might need brought over from his old chamber. There only remained the trimmings, such as the cushions on the footstool. Gwen fixed her mind firmly on the cushions. "I suppose that will do," she said, handing the softer one over. Had that not been said once before?
Gwen turned and went over to the window. A different castle, a different window, and the roses up the walls not in neat little rows in the garden – but the same Person watching over it all. "Let it be a girl, hey?" said Gwen softly, with a little smile. She nodded. "Thank You." The Star's daughter did not look in the least like she was going to grow fat and frumpy and frilly with age.
Age … Gwen steered quickly away from that line of thought, and turned quickly to look over the room from this angle. Yes, for the moment, there was nothing more. It might be impromptu, but it wasn't too bad for a day's work. She smiled at her two assistants. "Go and get some lunch, and tell someone else to tell Her Majesty that her apartments are ready for her inspection when she pleases."
Mentius and Voluns vanished with the speed of hungry fauns who have worked all morning and afternoon without a break. Gwen herself had taken a brief break for lunch – not to eat it but to rush down and help Oscuns with the near riot that had broken out, where all the other fauns-in-waiting and Bethen and Rhianel had all wanted to be the ones to wait on the royal party having their lunch on the terrace. The royal lunch had been slightly delayed while Gwen had scolded the girls back to the kitchens and Oscuns had arranged a sort of rota system in which a different faun took each dish.
Gwen paced quietly through the apartments, forcing her mind to think only about the here-and-now. Was this tapestry hanging quite straight? Was that chair pulled towards the hearth at just the right angle? Were the pine-cones in the fireplace – a gift ten days ago from the Talking Squirrels – arranged just as perfectly as they had been in Caspian's previous rooms?
It had been easier when she had been busy, with something to do with her hands and consider with her mind, with a crowd of duties to push aside her thoughts. Now there was only – waiting. The Queen's lady-in-waiting, if not formally confirmed as such. Waiting, with the memory of this morning nagging away – only drowned out by the louder anxiety of – what now?
Rhoop was back. And he was touring the castle with the King and the rest of the royal party, while she was here, attending to the whole life of responsibilities that had become hers in the four years since the War of Deliverance. Four years Rhoop knew nothing about – except they weren't the only four years he knew nothing about, any more than it was only four years of his life she knew nothing about! Years and years and years seemed to rise up before Gwen – so much time apart! She had been – what? Not much older than Caspian now, when Rhoop had gone away; Rhoop a year older. And he had promised to come back, and she had promised to wait for him – but now? They were two different people – what if–?
She hadn't waited, she hadn't found out, she hadn't asked. She hadn't even stopped to think, Gwen reprimanded herself sternly at the renewed thought of this morning. She had flung herself headlong at Rhoop and what if he – didn't – any more? She didn't know him at all, really, any more. That thin, white-haired man with the deep lines on his face – that was not the confident young man who had ridden away all those years before.
And he probably felt the same gulf the other way. You didn't get to be gaunt and lined and white-haired without a thousand troubles and adventures – all of which she knew nothing about. All those years, and she had lived quietly, comfortably, here in Narnia; at no risk whatsoever apart from possibly bursting a blood-vessel suppressing annoyance at the petty ways of Prunaprismia!
The whole situation was foolish, if not impossible! The matter should have been allowed to rest quietly, and instead she had jumped straight in with both feet – bare feet!
Gwen sighed in despair at her foolishness. This new Queen did not need ladies-in-waiting who were fat as well as foolish! On a practical note, this new Queen would need some Dryads-in-waiting to be recruited, though Gwen doubted that would be at all difficult, if the example of the fauns' enthusiasm at lunch-time was anything to go by. But they would need training, of course, and until then the Queen would have to manage with Gwen only. Lady Mavramorn, Gwen supposed, might help. It depended on exactly what the Duke of Galma's daughter, as it was reported she was, was used to.
But still, the duty of attending on the Queen would be mostly her own. 'I shall take one of those Vows of Devotion to the Throne,' her own, years-younger self had once said.
And Rhoop – the Rhoop she had known – had laughed. 'Break it when I come home, won't you?'
No. She couldn't.
Gwen opened the door and went out into the corridor. Ladies-in-waiting did not sit down in the royal apartments unless invited to by one of their Majesties – besides which, the rooms were too perfect for anyone to sit down in without disturbing things. All must stay just as it was until the Queen was here to see it. Gwen sat down on one of the polished chests in the corridor. There was nothing to do but wait.
~:~
The Queen did not arrive to view her new living quarters until nearly dinner time. Gwen had chanced one or two quick dashes down to help Oscuns with the arrangements for the great Welcoming Feast, before Voluns came hurrying to find her and whisper that Her Majesty wanted to speak with her Lady-in-waiting.
It was the King to see the rooms, too. Caspian merely looked around, nodded and smiled and then vanished to get changed for the feast, dropping a quick kiss on the Queen's cheek on his way. Gwen looked carefully at the floor. It was strange to be a proper lady-in-waiting again; the quiet mask of decorum that passed and fetched and carried. She felt, somehow, that the Queen would have wanted to be friendlier, to be more as Queen Susan and Queen Lucy had been than Prunaprismia. But Gwen couldn't manage it – not after the morning, at any rate.
The Queen was almost finished when the door burst open. "Oh!" said Lady Mavramorn. She dropped a hasty curtsey. "I'm too late. To help, I mean."
Gwen cast half a glance over her shoulder, even as she carried on brushing the Queen's long golden hair. "You didn't need to come and help."
"I should have! I hurried so I could!" Gwen noted that her gown looked rather as if she had, but this fact didn't seem to have registered with Lady Mavramorn. She shut the door and trotted round to stand in front of the Queen with a rather anxious expression on the squint and the freckles. "I'm sorry, Your Majesty," she murmured, curtseying again.
"You will have to help," said the Queen in very gentle reproach. "Lady Gwen can't be expected to have all the trouble."
"It isn't trouble, Your Majesty," said Gwen automatically.
The Queen looked round, and there was definitely friendly amusement like one might have expected from Queen Lucy in her eyes. "I have been finding fixing my hair for grand banquets somewhat of a trouble..."
There might have been something more said, as Gwen and the Queen looked at each other, some sort of understanding reached, but Lady Mavramorn piped up again in the silence. "Mavramorn" – and she blushed happily – "says His Majesty is waiting for you, Your Majesty. When you are ready?"
There was an understanding between those two, Gwen noted, as the Queen smiled and Lady Mavramorn smiled back and held the door open for her to pass through. A hum of voices arose – Caspian's, Mavramorn's, their two wives' in reply. Gwen stood still and waited while they passed on out of earshot. Then she put down the hairbrush in the gold embossed tray on the dressing table. It seemed to make a very loud noise in the utter quiet. She looked down at her own gown. It was not her best, not a gown for wearing to such an occasion as Narnia fêteing its returned King and new Queen.
She would have to go and change. She had better go at once. But Gwen somehow couldn't move. She spread out her hands and considered them, instead. Large, and bone-y, and so much older than either the Queen or Lady Mavramorn. Two happy young brides.
Gwen opened the door – and then turned sharply to the left, away from her own room and her best gown towards the back stairs and the kitchens. She just – couldn't – do it.
Oscuns was not in the kitchens, but Bethen was, flying about between serving trays and simmering pots. "Hello!" she cried. "It'll be all right, really it will!"
Gwen smiled. "I'm sure it will. Would you tell Master Oscuns I'm … too tired. After – it's been a long day. I'm just going to sit quietly."
Bethen paused with a dripping ladle in one hand. "Miss the feast?"
"Yes."
For a moment, Bethen looked completely blank. Then she nodded. "All right... if you're sure. I mean, yes, of course. I will. Do you need a cup of chamomile? If you're tired?"
Cushions and chamomile! "No!" said Gwen desperately. "I – I'll get something later. Yes – later."
The ladle and the soup puddle on the floor suddenly seemed to dawn on Bethen, and she shrieked and rushed for the trestle table where the tureens waited. "I'll send Rhianel up to you!" she cried, lifting a quick succession of lids and plunging the ladle into what Gwen hoped was the matching flavour soup. "With a bite to eat! You need to eat, Lady Gwen! Even with a headache!"
Perhaps, Gwen reflected as she dragged her suddenly heavy feet back up the stairs towards her room, Aslan had allotted to her care two ever-anxious kitchen maids who were prone to dramatic announcements because she needed someone to care for her, now and again. For, in their own way, they did. Rhianel appeared within about half an hour, bearing a tray with soup and bread and cake and half a glass of wine, and three roses that seemed to have been stuck rather hastily into another wine glass, given the way the water had slopped out onto the tray cloth.
"Bethen said I was to stay and make sure you ate it," Rhianel announced happily, plopping herself down on Gwen's hearthrug. "Don't you think the Queen's just beautiful?!"
Sweet sixteen. Gwen sat and ate and listened to Rhianel's blissful chatter. The Queen, the King, the Queen, the King, Lady Mavramorn, the four Lords – all was wonderful if you were sixteen years old and unattached. On and on and on...
She had not had a headache, she had not said she had a headache, for all Bethen had assumed it, but Gwen began to feel she might get one if she listened to much more. She broke into the flow to venture something about the washing-up.
Rhianel leaped up with a shriek like Bethen's. "Oh dear, oh dear! And you need to rest! I'm going, I'm going! Oh, and Bethen will be cross with me! Oh, and Master Oscuns! Oh, Lady Gwen...!"
The lamentations continued until she was quite beyond Gwen's hearing; would probably continue all the way to the kitchens. Gwen just hoped Rhianel did not meet anybody important on the way. Even Master Oscuns, who knew the two kitchen maids, would incorrectly assume madness or inebriation.
Gwen shook her head. But perhaps there was some value in bright and harmless youthful chatter, for her room was suddenly dark and empty. Shadows crept out from the corners, dark compared to the bit of bright evening sky outside the window. Rhianel must have chattered for over an hour, if not two. Two! Gwen smiled a very small smile, for the two balled-up holed stockings of this morning were looking back at her, rather reproachfully, from the top of the mending basket.
It seemed so very, very long since the brightness of this morning. Gwen sighed. You need to rest. But she wasn't really tired. And resting was simply being alone with her turmoil of thoughts. They came flocking back now the chatter was gone. What, what, what? The King was home. The "Four Lords," as Rhianel had lightly termed them, were home. And what?
Gwen swallowed. She was not going to cry. In fact, she didn't think she could cry. The bread and soup seemed to have stuck as a vast lump in her throat.
Oh Aslan, what? What now?
The room was silent. After a minute, Gwen stood up. Whatever she should or should not do, moping in her room probably wasn't it. There was a last chest of gowns which had come up late from the Dawn Treader. The Queen had said they didn't matter, not being unpacked until tomorrow, but it might as well be done now. The feast would probably be over by now, but the royal party would not be retiring just yet. Outside the window, or in any room in fact that was brighter than her own, it was still light. It was still only early evening. The King, the Queen, and their – companions – would sit in one of the reception rooms or go down to the shore or walk on the terrace. It was a shame the gardens around the Cair were not really developed very well, compared to the ones at Beaversdam, for people to walk in of an evening, but there were plenty of places for them to go. She would have the royal apartments to herself to do that unpacking.
It wasn't as if the Lady-in-waiting had anything else to do.
Voluns was pattering along the corridor as Gwen reached the small side door that led into the Royal closets. She stepped aside to let him past. He stopped and made a little bow. "The King has sent for you, Lady Gwen. In his study."
"The King?" Gwen queried.
Voluns nodded. "His Majesty said it was quite urgent, and whatever else you were doing you were to please leave."
Gwen bowed her head and mentally gave up the dream of the small comfort of knowing that she had done all the unpacking. It was a pretty hopelessly small comfort, but it would have been something. "At once," she said, and turned towards the main stairs. There was no patter of faun hooves after her. Caspian must have known she would come, no matter what, and told Voluns not to accompany her.
Why on earth would Caspian want to speak to her? Gwen doubted it was about her undignified appearance first thing this morning. The king was, after all, not his aunt. Maybe it was something for his rooms. Maybe, and probably most likely, it was something he wanted for the Queen. Gwen made herself smile, because it was – if you weren't hurting like you had never hurt before, even when the Voice had been lost in the tangled forest – nice to have Caspian home in Cair Paravel again. Even the empty staircase seemed more full of life than it had done in all the months he had been away. She turned down the long passage to the King's study, tapped once on the door, and went in.
Caspian was standing by the long windows that opened out onto the terrace. There was something, though Gwen couldn't place it, something almost in the movement of the air in the room, which suggested there was somebody else in the room, too. But no-one else was visible. Caspian looked round and smiled as the door clicked shut.
Gwen curtseyed. "Your Majesty sent for me?"
"Yes." Caspian paused. "Yes. I did."
There was a silence. Gwen waited, and Caspian looked back out of the window. He sighed, ran his hands through his hair, sighed again. "Reepicheep," he said eventually.
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"I suppose you have heard he went on to Aslan's country and did not return."
It was stupid to keep saying the same thing, but the answer was the same. "Yes, Your Majesty."
"He was a good friend, Reepicheep." The King's voice sounded as if the loss of the Mouse had only really struck home, or had struck home afresh, back here in Cair Paravel. The lump in Gwen's throat seemed to get a little bigger. Never again would Reepicheep's feet patter across the stone floors and that high and serious voice graciously address one. It seemed terribly appropriate that the King should speak of him first as a friend, despite all else Reepicheep had been.
"He would have wanted you to know, I think," said Caspian. "He counted you among his friends."
"Thank you, Your Majesty." Gwen bowed her head politely and then, because something more so very much seemed to need to be said about the courtliest and most chivalrous of Caspian's Knights, she added: "Reepicheep counted anyone who was the Lion's friend as his own."
A sudden light seemed to replace the touch of sorrow on the King's face. "Do you know?" he said brightly. "That is the best and truest thing anybody has said about Reep!"
Gwen hesitated. It was an inappropriate thing to say from a lady-in-waiting to a king, but perhaps it was not between two friends of Aslan: "I trust this has not spoiled Your Majesty's homecoming?"
Now Caspian's face did light up, bright with the same expression of humble and earnest joy as when he had ridden home the autumn before last after the defeat of the giants. "Narnia could not have given the Queen and I a sweeter homecoming." His gaze flickered for a moment towards the part of the study Gwen could not see from where she stood, and then Caspian went on. "The Queen … wished me to thank you for all the trouble you have gone to, making things ready. Especially as we sent no word of warning."
Gwen opened her mouth to say again that it was no trouble, but Caspian hadn't finished. "And – and she – wants – she and I – we – we would – would like you to leave off now, and go for a walk in the orchards."
"To – to what?!" said Gwen blankly. There was no doubt about it: the King suddenly blushed, deeply, and his eyes flickered uncertainly from where Gwen stood to the spot she could not see.
"Go – for a walk – in the orchards." Caspian gestured to the door he stood by, the private monarch's door onto the terrace with its access to the lawns and orchards beyond. "You have been working – too hard, all day. And-"
Caspian looked down and his voice was quieter and more solemn. "And I didn't realise. And I'm sorry."
"There isn't … anything … for you …" Gwen's mind stumbled at a loss for words.
"Yes there is," said the King, all at once as quick and stubborn as his uncle had ever sounded. "Now. Please. Go."
He looked at her in silence. And Gwen curtseyed, as a lady-in-waiting should. "Thank you, Your Majesty."
Caspian's head moved a fraction, as if he was about to nod in dismissal, as a king should. But then he held out one hand and took hers, as King Edmund had that day in Beruna over four years ago. He looked at her, opened his mouth, shut it, wet his lips – and finally shook his head. A king, Gwen noted, and yet a young man very much in love and suddenly understanding a lot more.
"Don't thank me," Caspian got out in the end. "Just – go. Please. And I'm sorry. Do – go."
She went. Straightened her gown, and tried to smile but found she was only blushing – and went. Out of the monarch's door onto the terrace, and down the little flight of steps onto the lawn, and across the lawn to the gate into the orchards.
Gwen found her hands struggling a little to fasten the latch after herself. She shook her head impatiently and forced it down anyhow, then turned towards the rows of trees. They were such ancient old trees, planted by the Four Monarchs themselves in the Golden Age. Gwen gazed up into the boughs. It was too early for the harvest yet, but the boughs were laden with the growing fruit. Harvest would be glorious when it came. She reached out and took hold of the tips of a near branch. Did they know? Was this the trees' way of welcoming the King and Queen home? Or was it because – once again – those Monarchs had been back in Narnia? King Edmund, Queen Lucy – Gwen smiled at the thought. And they, it seemed, had gone on with their kinsman and Reepicheep into Aslan's country, where nothing was ever sad or troublesome again.
That light behind Queen Lucy's eyes! No wonder even the crewmen of the Dawn Treader seemed to have come home with some shining happiness about them. Everybody except-
Rhoop was there, a little way down the line of trees. And her movement, or maybe just the bright colour of her gown among the green leaves, seemed to catch his eye. Rhoop glanced up, and then seemed to thrust something behind or into the bush he stood by, before straightening and turning towards her.
It was only past three trees. It was far less distance than she had run this morning. It seemed miles before Gwen came up to him. "Rhoop," she said.
It seemed forever before he answered. "Gwen."
The little leafy whispers and rustles of the orchard went on. And on. And on.
"I haven't seen you all day," said Gwen eventually.
"No." Rhoop looked down. "I suppose you were – busy."
"A feast is a lot of work," Gwen observed. "Especially at short notice."
"Yes." Again there was nothing but the noise of the trees. "It was a nice feast," Rhoop remarked in the end, his voice sounding carefully polite. "Argoz seemed to enjoy it."
"Argoz always liked good food."
Caspian had been to the end of the world to bring him back, had sent the two of them to speak to each other, and they could say nothing but polite common-places about a mutual friend!
Aye, for not even a king's command could change time nor the barriers that grew in it. They stood beneath the trees, and so many years of life – two such very different lives – seemed to stand between them as an impenetrable barrier.
"I hear Lord Bern lives too," Gwen ventured. That news had, in fact, come earlier than the Dawn Treader. Official dispatches from the Duke of the Lone Islands to Trumpkin, Regent of Narnia, had arrived at the start of the year on the first trading ship from the Lone Islands in living memory.
Rhoop nodded. "Only Octesian and Restimar-" He stopped.
And you, Gwen thought stubbornly. And you! For the man who had come back was not the one who had gone away. "I'm sorry," she said.
Again, he nodded, briefly as if it was a trying thing to have to acknowledge her condolences. "I presume … you must have known Reepicheep?"
For a moment, Gwen couldn't seem to find the will to answer. Then she too nodded. "Yes." What was the point? Why were they even having this conversation, if it could even be called such?
Perhaps Rhoop was having the same thought, for he seemed to glance at her with a wondering, puzzled expression she didn't know. Gwen felt suddenly defensive. "King Caspian sent me out here," she said shortly.
The expression in Rhoop's eyes changed to something totally unreadable. "Did he – does he – know – about-?"
The matter seemed to stick there, too difficult to be said. Gwen folded her arms and looked down. "I told no-one," she said, trying very hard not make her voice sound as small and sad as it threatened to. "But I suppose it was rather obvious this morning." The barrier which seemed to bristle even more over the thoughtless, reckless way she had flung herself through it this morning. "I – I – don't know how that happened," she blurted out.
"How what happened?"
The barrier! Once, long long ago, they had known what each other meant without asking, barely without saying it.
"This morning," said Gwen shortly. Now, of all times, she had to go and blush!
"But Gwen-!"
For the first time, it was two real words! Not measured, not polite, not an unknown mask – it was the exclamation of the boy she had known, and Gwen looked up with a jerk, quite despite herself.
"That-!" Rhoop stopped, and Gwen could only see the man again, the man with twenty years binding his tongue. The bleached white hair, the thin, drawn face she didn't know. His mouth worked, his lips moved, but no words came.
They had been apart too lon-
"No!"
When Rhoop jumped, Gwen realised she had said it out loud. But she suddenly didn't care, any more than she had cared this morning! "What?!" she demanded desperately. " 'That-!' – what?!"
Aslan! I asked that he should come back to me! All those years ago! Don't let him just come back! Give him back – to me!
"That was what I needed!" said Rhoop abruptly, with fierce determination as of one getting the words out despite everything. And he took one quick step forwards and seized her shoulders, as he had done the day they had parted and argued on the stairs at Beaversdam. "That was what I needed, to know that– that–"
He broke off again, and his hands loosened their hard grip as if to let go. Gwen put up her own hands and held his on. "That what?" she repeated gently. "That what, my Lord Rhoop?"
He smiled at his name, and Gwen smiled too. For his smile had not changed. If nothing else, his smile had not changed. It had a thousand lines carved into it, but it had not changed.
"That Aslan had heard my prayer," Rhoop whispered back. "When I realised, on the journey back, after I'd met Him on Coriakin's Island, that I really was coming back. That by His doing, and Caspian's, I was keeping that old selfish promise I'd made. And I realised, I couldn't keep you to that. Anything might have happened; I could only trust you to Him. And I kept telling myself, and Aslan, all the way home, that I would give you up; that by His grace I could give you up. I wouldn't cling selfishly to an old promise – that I'd trust you to Him. And I knew, knew, knew that was right – but it hurt – especially with – the king – and Mavramorn – but then – then – you were there. And you'd waited – all these years. And– and you still – loved – me – enough to-"
Rhoop got no further. Because the barrier of the years was gone, and Gwen took the last step forwards into the space between them, and he kissed her. A long, hard kiss – as he had not kissed her this morning – a kiss of love and homecoming and being sent back to one another.
"Oh, old girl, old girl..." It was what Rhoop had once called Felicia as a term of endearment, and Gwen found she didn't mind in the least, not when his eyes shone like that and his voice shook. His arms around her shook too. Gwen put her arms round him to steady them both.
"You came back," she said, in a rather wobbly voice. "He sent you back … just like I'd asked – like we'd both asked..."
"Just like we'd both asked," Rhoop echoed. "Except I think I included not to make you cry, and you are, old girl-"
Gwen buried her face in his shoulder. "That's nothing," she mumbled. "You should have seen me at the coronation. I was a waterspout; you'd have been ashamed of me..."
The man – the man who was the older version of the boy whom she had loved – chuckled his deep, rich chuckle – the older version of the boy's chuckle she had known and loved all her life. "Gwen?" he said solemnly, lifting her head off his shoulder. "Gwen?"
"Yes?"
"I think I would have just kissed you, not been ashamed of you."
"Which you are not going to do now," said Gwen firmly.
He raised one white eyebrow. "No?"
Gwen raised both her eyebrows demurely back at him. "Not until you've shown me what it was you hid when you saw me coming."
"Oh!" Now, suddenly, Rhoop blushed.
"What?!" Gwen demanded. "Hmmm?"
Rhoop opened his mouth, and shut it, and then let go of her and stepped away to the bush he had been standing by. "The orchard," he said, gesturing up at the great old trees, "reminded me. Of a long time ago. And – I was so bothered, all day – wanting you – trying not to want you – if you didn't want me. I realised I had to speak to you, whatever happened. So I slipped away out here. I – I was going to come and look for you. And bring you this. If you wanted it."
A daisy chain. A somewhat clumsy daisy chain, for the man with the sea-farer's hands was no better at it than a little girl of six had been, and this chain was further taxed by having the little wild roses, which had not grown in the Beaversdam orchards but did at Cair Paravel, woven through it.
"But I hadn't finished it yet," said Rhoop, with a reluctant-sounding half laugh.
"I'll wait," said Gwen. Her voice was peskily thick, and she forced it into a laugh to match his. "I've had – plenty of practice – at waiting."
Pain sprang up in the back of Rhoop's eyes. "Gwen," he said, his voice suddenly low. "I – couldn't come back. The others – slept. I – was trapped. In – darkness – waiting – they wouldn't let me go, until the King and – and Aslan, He said – came. And the bird led us out."
The bird? Gwen put her hand gently on Rhoop's arm, and the pain seemed to lift from his eyes. If that bird last year–
Well, they had so much to join up, from all these years of waiting. But first-
She nodded towards the wreath. "Courage, dear heart." Make this whole. Finish what a Greater One than us has done.
One, two, three more roses – three for the years of waiting for Caspian's voyage. One for last year, one for this year – and it was finished.
They both stood and looked at it. Then Rhoop lifted it gently towards her. "Bend your head down a bit, my Gwen."
~:~:~:~
"...things too amazing for me … to understand: … the way of a ship on the sea, and the way of a man and a woman..."
~:~:~The End~:~:~
A/N: As we started this fic with a challenge, so we shall end! Book, chapter and verse, and the plot bunnies will put Lemon Sponge Pie in your inbox! I have tried to persuade them this will be very very sticky … ;)
Thank you to all of you who have been reading this; and special thanks to my brother, for patiently beta-ing it; to Tam, for insisting that there had to be a kiss somewhere; and to Laura, from whose fic 'Sure as the Tide' much of the substance of the early part of this chapter came.
Excuse me. The author is happy and sad, all together. May the Lion of Judah bless you all.
~:~:~