Orphans continued to come to Edoras in a steady stream, and Lothiriel visited the orphanage every day during the week of Sumorende. She was afraid Lady Eambreth would be overwhelmed, but the former attendant threw herself into the fray with surprising, steady strength.
"I am so very happy, Your Highness," she went so far as to say with a delighted smile when Lothiriel managed to convince her to come up to Meduseld for an afternoon for tea.
Lothiriel returned the smile, heartwarmed at the sight of Lady Eambreth radiant when only a few months before she had been quiet, scared and bruised. "Then I am glad for you, Lady Eambreth," she said. "And for the children."
Lady Eambreth cradled her mug in her hands. "I wanted children," she said after a moment, and Lothiriel leaned forward a little at this revelation, surprised. "I would have liked even a child of Freca's, for I could have loved it, and it would not have been like its father." Her cheeks flushed, but her voice remained steady. "I would have made sure of it."
So Lady Eambreth was unable to conceive as well? Or was it Freca who was infertile? Lothiriel hoped it was the latter, that he might not sire unwanted children on anyone in his drunken wanderings. And perhaps Lady Eambreth would somehow have children of her own, one day. It was none of her business, Lothiriel realized, and started to turn her thoughts and the conversation elsewhere.
But Lady Eambreth wanted, or needed, to talk about it. "But I knew I could not bring a child into a world where it would be abused," she said. Her fingers laced more tightly together around the mug of tea. "So I took contraceptives." Lothiriel was very startled, but made no sign of it. "I got them from Brinweld," she admitted, raising her chin. "I think he suspected what I used the lennis for, but he never said anything."
"That was good of him," Lothiriel murmured, her mind still trying to catch up with her ears. The senior healer in the palace of Dol Amroth, a very elderly man, had been adamantly against the use of contraceptives; it had been to his younger assistant, a middle-aged woman, that her mother's ladies had applied in secret when they could not stand to bear another child so soon after the last one. Apparently opinions were different here in Edoras-- or Brinweld had understood Lady Eambreth's need.
"I think Freca suspected, too," Lady Eambreth said, her eyes wide and her face pale. "Or he was just mad that I couldn't conceive a child. So-- he took his anger out on me." Her fingers were trembling very slightly. "But that was just more proof that I couldn't bear a child."
"Lady Eambreth," Lothiriel said gently, "if this distresses you you don't need to talk about it."
Her former attendant seemed to shrink back a little. "You disapprove of what I did."
"No," Lothiriel said firmly. "I meant exactly what I said. There is no need to worry about it with Freca gone."
Lady Eambreth relaxed, and nodded. "I know," she said. "Only-- sometimes I can't believe those days are over for good, and I wake up in the middle of the night, wondering how much longer my respite is going to last." She shuddered. "It helps, somehow, to talk about it. To compare what I have now with what I had then. But if you'd rather not hear--"
"I would not stop you from relieving yourself of pain," Lothiriel assured her. In the back of her mind, uneasiness was growing, and she resolved to talk to the king about guards for Lady Eambreth during Sumorende. If Freca should return, he might be missed in the great crush of people.
Lady Eambreth was staring into the dark amber tea. "He hated to see me washing my monthly rags," she said abruptly, her voice trembling, "because it meant another month that I hadn't conceived. It made him so angry that he'd hit me. So I started doing it out of his sight, but--" she shook her head. "He still knew. I think he might have suspected that I was taking something. I caught him going through my things and through my herb chest. But he never found it, because I hid it here in Meduseld." She ducked her head, and tears started to roll down her face.
Lothiriel moved, a little awkwardly, around the table to sit next to her. "Don't cry," she said, handing the other woman a handkerchief. "Please. Freca's gone, and the king will have him arrested if he ever comes near you again. You don't need to worry about him." She felt a stab of rage for the abusive, drunken tyrant who could make his victim cry even from hundreds of miles away. Lothiriel looked somewhat helplessly at Lady Eambreth. "It's alright," she said. "Please don't cry."
Lady Eambreth wiped her eyes. "I know," she sniffed. "I know." She wrung the small square of cloth in her hands and was silent for a moment. "I was so frightened at the end," she burst out suddenly, though her voice was little more than a whisper. "The lennis started to smell stale, and I wasn't sure if it would work anymore. And then I missed a monthly course, and I-- I was afraid I was carrying Freca's child. But it was just the stress..." She started to cry silently again.
Lothiriel wished she hadn't been so reluctant to discourage Lady Eambreth from talking, but the crying seemed to have an almost cathartic effect. "I'm sorry," Lady Eambreth said between sobs. "I didn't mean to burden you with this. I just..."
"It's alright," Lothiriel reassured her. "It's alright."
"It was the only brave thing I ever did," Lady Eambreth said a little while later when she had calmed down. "And I could do it because it wasn't for myself." She took a sip of her tea, and Lothiriel guessed by her face that she found it cold.
"More?" Lothiriel switched out the mug for a new one, filling it with fresh beverage from the kettle and adding the honey that the Rohirrim were so fond of in their tea. As she did so, the door to the solar opened, and Lady Celgwyn stepped in.
She looked surprised at seeing the two women there, and her eyes widened almost imperceptibly at the sight of tears on Lady Eambreth's face, but she curtsied. "Good afternoon, Your Highness, Lady Eambreth."
"Please," Lothiriel said, rising and gesturing to the table. "Won't you join us?"
Lady Celgwyn hesitated, then sat down with them. Lothiriel poured another mug of tea as they talked about the orphanage and Sumorende. The older woman's presence seemed to have a calming effect on Lady Eambreth, as Lothiriel had hoped it would, but after a few moments the latter lady stood and curtsied.
"Excuse me, please," she said. "I must get back to the orphanage. I don't want to leave Elltha and Framlyth alone with the children too long." Elltha and Framlyth were the two women hired to help Lady Eambreth take care of the orphans. "I will return your handkerchief when I see you next, Your Highness." The now-sodden article was crumpled in her left hand. "Good day."
Lothiriel and Lady Celgwyn watched her go; then the older woman turned to her queen with a look of inquiry. Lothiriel didn't need it explained to her. "She was talking about Freca," she said. "It seemed to help her, and I didn't want to discourage her, but then she started crying." She shook her head. "I couldn't comfort her."
Lady Celgwyn also shook her head. "You did right, Your Highness. These things are best talked out. It helps drain the memory of its poison."
Lothiriel nodded, gratified. "She is very brave," she said, thinking of what Lady Eambreth had just told her. Then she realized that that might not be public knowledge.
But Lady Celgwyn nodded. "Yes," she said, meeting Lothiriel's eye for a moment. They understood each other.
"Sumorende is going well," Lothiriel ventured, wondering why her senior attendant was paying her this unusual visit in the middle of the afternoon.
Lady Celgwyn inclined her head. "Yes, Your Highness, it is." She hesitated, then reached for a cloth bag by her feet. "The king..." she said, and then stopped.
"The king?" Lothiriel asked. "Is something wrong with him?" Her mind flashed back to the last time she had seen him, that morning. He had seemed fine, with no more cares than the usual weight of the kingdom on his shoulders.
Her senior attendant shook her head. "He asked me to help him-- you-- with something," she said at last. "I told him that it might not have the desired effect, but he said he did not want you wearing out your eyes and hands with sewing." As Lothiriel observed that Lady Celgwyn seemed very ill at ease, the lady was remembering that the king had said more-- a little more, and then stopped, but it had been enough to give the astute Lady Celgwyn an idea of the true reason for his request.
Eyes and hands with sewing? As Lady Celgwyn handed her the bag, Lothiriel belatedly realized what must be in it. She undid the drawstrings and looked inside. Yes; it was small clothes, neatly folded and stacked, enough to make up any infant's wardrobe.
"In Rohan, Your Highness, infants' clothes are passed from mother to daughter," said Lady Celgwyn, her voice a little hesitant. "And if a woman's mother is-- cannot help her, then other women may contribute. No one expects you to make everything on your own, Your Highness. That is-- you may want to, or you may object to clothing your child in things that are not new?"
Lothiriel shook her head. "Thank you," she said, blinking back sudden tears. "You are very kind."
"I did not mean to upset you, Your Highness." Lady Celgwyn sounded concerned.
Lothiriel shook her head again and looked up. "I am not upset," she said. "Just grateful. Whose-- are these yours?"
"Some of them, Your Highness," said Lady Celgwyn. "Some my daughters'. Some were given by the other women-- though I did not go about asking," she said. "In truth there ought to have been something you could have used, but with Queen Elfhild having died so long ago, and then Princess Theodwyn, I'm afraid it was all lost. Meduseld has been a male stronghold for a long time, Your Highness." She smiled. "Some of the people here for Sumorende, who have not been for months or years, speak of how nice it is to have a queen in Edoras once again."
"I will try not to let them down," Lothiriel murmured, touched. "Will you tell me who else contributed these, so I may thank them?"
"They do not want to be thanked, Your Highness," Lady Celgwyn said. "But I will tell them." She rose to her feet. "Please excuse me, for I must prepare for the feast. Will you be there?"
"Of course," Lothiriel said. "Good day, Lady Celgwyn."
"Good day, Your Highness."
-
The feast for the last night of Sumorende was spectacular. The Great Hall stood dark and empty; instead, everyone, including the king and queen, ate in the streets. Nor were the monarchs allowed to contribute anything to the feast. Instead they were fed by their subjects. Lothiriel was selfishly glad the king was so well-liked by his people; greedy or despotic rulers had often found themselves dining on inedible portions on this night.
Lothiriel smiled with delight as they sat at a long table on a low dais, and watched the streets thronged with people who came to watch their monarchs and to feast themselves. That is, she was delighted to see the people so merry, though less delighted to be under observation.
A young woman with an astounding waterfall of golden hair carried heavy dishes to place in front of Lothiriel and her near neighbors, some of the nobility of Edoras. Lothiriel caught her eye and thanked her, smiling, and the girl blushed brilliant scarlet before bobbing a curtsy.
After the food, which was delicious-- she was learning to appreciate food all over again now that her morning sickness was passing away-- the tables were cleared away and there was dancing, much as there had been on the first night. But the merriment was less raucous, for she did not see alcohol anywhere.
"No one drinks on the last night of Sumorende," the king explained to her when she asked. "At least not in public. No one wishes to mar the memory, and more than that it's dangerous with the fires later tonight." That night the piles of leaves, some of which were higher than a tall man's head, would be lit into blazing bonfires, and attended until nearly dawn; when they had burned down to embers, daring couples or singles would leap across them hand-in-hand for good luck and prosperity in the coming year.
She danced with the king, a fast, whirling dance that made her red skirts swirl around her and left her breathless, but she shook her head when he asked if she wanted to sit down. Next a young man of Marshal Elfhelm's eored, blushing brightly and encouraged by the loud calls of his fellow riders, bowed and solicited her hand for the next dance. She would not refuse him, but stifled several winces as his feet, more used to stirrups than fancy patterns, found hers often. But from the approving grins on the riders' faces, she had made the right decision.
When the dancing had ended, she and the king lit the first bonfire together, as was traditional, and she leapt back as the pile of dry leaves ignited faster than she would have thought possible. The king steadied her, frowning thoughtfully at the blaze. "Sometimes they pour alcohol into the piles to make them burn better," he said, "but I didn't smell it that time."
The heat of the fires kept away the chill of the late autumn night, and Lothiriel talked with her ladies, and some of the riders, through the early morning hours, in better spirits than she had been in a long time. Her eyes burned with smoke and fatigue, but she did not retire. This was one tradition that Dol Amroth did not have.
No one suggested that the monarchs leap over the fire together, for which she was thankful, and not just because of the exertion. There was a minor bit of panic when one lady's trailing skirts caught fire as she didn't leap quite quickly enough over the coals, but a quick-thinking rider grabbed her around the waist, lifted her up, and set her down in a rain barrel. When the clouds of steam cleared, the young woman was laughing, obviously unharmed, and perhaps thinking that she would be jumping over the fires again that morning-- and not alone.
Lothiriel felt a twinge of sadness as she watched. But she forced it aside and turned back to her conversation with Lady Celgwyn.
When the sun rose, most of the revelers finally gave up their night watches, stumbling back to their homes or wherever they had found lodging. Lothiriel realized that the bottom of her skirts were stained with mud and cinders, and her feet were very sore. Perhaps she'd soak them in the washtub when she got back... or, no, she would just sleep. The day after Sumorende was a holiday as well, she had learned, and apparently for good reason. No one would wake again before midmorning.
Lothiriel hesitated when she and the king returned to their rooms. She took her shawl off her shoulders and laid it over a chair, then slipped her shoes off. "My lord," she said.
The king turned quickly. "Yes?"
"Lady Celgwyn said--" she hesitated again.
The king-- Eomer-- misinterpreted her silence. "I did not mean to offend you with what I did," he said quietly. "I meant only to help."
Lothiriel shook her head. "I thank you for it," she said. "It was kindly done, and will save me much-- trouble. Much care." Much heartache. "I thank you for noticing, and for taking the trouble to arrange it."
"You are welcome, my lady," Eomer told her, and hesitated. "I only want you to be happy here."
"I will be happy," she told him, and did not think she was lying, though her heart ached. "Thank you."